Hi Jim,

interesting that the one little bracket in which I dared to expose some 
personal information based on my limited  experience elicited all the 
responses so far.


[snip]

  But (BUT . . . heh heh), I
>personally would feel more comfortable with the "simplifying" model you've
>outlined above if you had included at least one other group ("Group 1.5")
>consisting of those wise moderates who don't think the sky is always
>falling but who also don't think the sun is always shining.  Your
>simplifying model presents only two alternatives, but the problem with this
>Group 1/Group 2 typology is that these are false alternatives.
>
Simplifying always is easy to attack because it obviously does not reflect 
reality. However, all our perceptions, thoughts and opinions are 
simplifications. I guess a good measure is the key.
The reduction of a whole spectrum of opinions into two distinct groups was 
not the point of my post. It was merely a tool and was not intended to 
adequately represent reality. However, if you like you could see it as 
groups of traits rather than actual groups of people which would allow every 
real person to carry any mixture of these traits.


[snip]
>I'm more interested in your parenthetical "aside" that biologists who are
>"in the know" generally seem to fall into the "Group 1" sky-is-falling
>category, whereas ill-informed non-biologists who have the misfortune to
>toil in "unrelated disciplines" fall haplessly into the "Group 2"
>don't-worry-be-happy category along with evil manipulative resource
>extractors like foresters and farmers.  Methinks my "boundary work" (B.W.)
>early warning detection system catches a whiff of some real B.W. going on
>in your simplifying model . . . (not to be confused with B.S.--that would
>be indicated by a separate panel light on the master console).  :-)
>
It is interesting to see the adjectives and characteristics that you 
interpreted into my post (and none of which I used): "in the know", 
"sky-is-falling", "ill-informed", "don't-worry-be-happy category", "evil 
manipulative"
Sorry Jim, but I didn't write this, or mean this so it must be your shoe.


>Now, what concerns me is the claim you make that "most biologists who
>research organisms outside of the lab think that something is going wrong"
>(that is, with "the relationship of humans to their environment").  These
>Group 1 biologists--among whom I assume we can include "most" conservation
>biologists, eh?--presumably base their judgment that something is wrong (in
>the relationship of humans to the environment) on the evidence that they
>see daily which results from the careful research they conduct on organisms
>outside of the lab, no?
>

Many biologists who research organisms and systems in the field see them 
disappearing quickly (e.g., wetlands). Sometimes this happens for reasons 
beyond human control but often our species is actively involved. If this 
happens too often one starts to become concerned about the human ecology 
(i.e., our interaction with our environment).

>But what are we to make of the factual disputes that you rightly draw our
>attention to, but which occur *within* the group of biologists who research
>organisms outside of the lab ?  Take the example of an eminent and card
>carrying Group 1 sky-is-falling-biologist like E.O. Wilson, say, who tends
>to give out conflicting figures in order to further his argument that "we
>are in the midst of one of the great extinction spasms of geological
>history"? (Diversity of Life, 280).  Depending on his audience, Wilson
>tends to offer different numbers in different contexts, as Stephen
>Budiansky observes in his book Nature's Keepers :
>
I don't see that you make any point here with your polemic description of 
how *one* (prominent) biologist abuses figures to maximise the  impression 
he leaves on different groups of people. If you wanted to suggest here that 
many or all biologist do this I would like to see many more cases.



[snip]
>Suppose the real species extinction number is closer to *one* than it is to
>100,000?  What would this imply about what's wrong with humans'
>relationship to the environment?  "The fact that the actual, observed rate
>of extinction," Budiansky reports, "is not fifty thousand species per year
>but one  species per year thus comes as a surprise to many" (165).  For
>evidence, Budiansky cites Heywood and Stuart:
>
>"Heywood and Stuart, 'Species Extinctions in Tropical Forests,' 93-100,
>summarizes the field evidence for mass extinctions.  The authors note that
>documented extinction rates of birds and mammals have increased from one
>every four years to one per year; if other organisms show a like propensity
>to extinction, the total extinction rate would be at most about two
>thousand per year.  'Despite extensive enquiries,' they conclude, 'we have
>been unable to obtain conclusive evidence that massive extinctions have
>taken place in recent times' " (Budiansky, 262 n9).
>
This argument clearly shows a lack of biological understanding. If you would 
base your estimates of extinction on "actual, observed rate
of extinction" or "documented extinction" an organism that has not been 
taxonomically described yet could not get extinct. Because estimates of true 
rates of extinction have to be based on an estimate of the number of 
organisms existing on earth and an estimate of their ability to survive 
change, they tend to vary widely. To base an estimate for an extinction rate 
on the rate of extinction in birds is ridiculous because this is a highly 
mobile group of organisms whose diversity is negligible in comparison to 
insects.


>Seems to me that this is where the courageously edifying mythically heroic
>members of "Group 1.5" would come in!  We need wise moderates who are able
>to weigh conflicting sources of evidence, make some sort of evaluative
>judgments in order to separate the B.W. from the B.S., and tell the rest of
>us ignorant morons in the world what's really going on.
>
>As I see it, this is where sober and talented science journalists like
>Budiansky have a real part to play in environmental discussions.

Well but it would help this heroic group to have some background in the 
disciplines the want to help clarifying.

>Budiansky's work is typically a model of careful scholarship, intellectual
>integrity, and fairness.

I tried to look up his background on the internet but couldn't find that 
much. I found some background at 
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/bookauth/ba981209.htm
"Formerly the Washington editor of Nature and a deputy editor at U.S. News 
and World Report, Budiansky is now a correspondent for The Atlantic, which 
recently published his article on machine translation. He is working on a 
history of Allied codebreaking in the Second World War, which will be 
published by The Free Press."
There he writes himself (on the question: "How did you become interested in 
the topic of animal intelligence, and what drew you to write a book on it?): 
"The simplest answer is intense personal interest. I raise sheep; keep 
horses, dogs, and cats. People who work with animals are always wondering 
about what's going on inside their heads."
I don't want to jump to conclusions here but it seems to me that his nature 
experience is mostly based on dealing with domesticated animals. I agree 
with much of what he writes in the article but he seems to believe that he 
knows awfully lot about the animal psyche and at the same time criticises 
the animal rights people for over interpreting animal behaviours.


On the philosophy popularizing side of things,
>however, there is a real need for someone of a Budiansky-calibre talent to
>make ethics accessible and intelligible.  Some of Mary Midgley's work at
>times does this, perhaps.
>
>What is Budiansky's take on Wilson?  ". . . [T]he fact that Wilson uses
>different figures in different contexts--low numbers in scientific
>journals, high numbers in his popular books and magazine articles, and the
>highest numbers in newspaper interviews and other carefully orchestrated
>media events--and . . . the fact that his conclusions are usually
>accompanied by calls for an immediate halt to economic development are
>uncomfortably suggestive that something closer to politics than to science
>may be at work here" (165).
>

I cannot (and don't want to) contradict this.


>And this is why your boundary-drawing classification scheme of
>knowledgeable biologists in Group 1 and everyone else in Group 2 strikes me
>as somewhat naive:
>

As I mentioned before I wasn't classifying here but throwing in a little 
observation from my personal experience. I should have declared it as such.
> >Interestingly enough, most biologists who research
> >organisms outside of the lab think that something is going wrong, whereas
> >most supporters of "generally we are doing fine except for some details"
> >come from either biology unrelated disciplines such as economics or from
> >more manipulative disciplines such as forestry, agriculture, landscaping
> >etc.
>
>Biologists "who research organisms outside of the lab" are probably no less
>political or ideological than the rest of us.  In fact, I'd venture the
>guess that such biologists are probably *more* ideological, since they are
>likely to consider their own work as scientifically objective in a
>positivistic sense--i.e. they probably assume that since they "research
>organisms outside of the lab," that they are therefore automatically closer
>than the rest of us to "knowing the facts."  This is a scientific conceit,
>pure and simple.
>

This is an unsubstantiated assault. Of course, people who work in a certain 
discipline tend to think that they understand more about it than people who 
don't work in this discipline. Positivism is unfortunately still somewhat of 
a problem in biology but again not so much in field biology as in laboratory 
biology because many ecologists have recognised by now that natural systems 
are beyond human grasp. IMO you are pretty far off with your guess. I would 
rather think that biologist tend to be emotionally charged because it hurts 
to see things being destroyed that you studied and learned to love and that 
it is hard to deal with the fact that numbers often don't do justice to what 
you really see happening out there. For example, population sizes of most 
species naturally vary largely in a given area. Therefore, it is very 
difficult to statistically "prove" a decline in abundance. However, the 
biologist researching an organism might have seen large expanses of the 
original habitat of the organism being paved over by a parking lot knowing 
that the species will decline drastically in the future but she or he might 
not have the data to "prove" this. That's a frustrating experience and 
sometimes leads to irrational actions or statements but mostly only 
introduces biologists to the political dimension of the whole problem.



>Anyway, other than that I enjoyed your post very much, Volker.  Just
>couldn't help thinking about it in terms of our recent discussions about
>boundary work, though.  <smile>
>

I'm glad you liked it. I wasn't as offended by your post as I made it sound 
either and enjoyed to hear your open opinions. Furthermore, I hope that I 
succeeded to shoot down your glitches as well as you pointed out mine.

Cheers

Volker
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