B and B

Grand Canyon age outrage?

Prior to New Years', there was a flurry of alarm across the "reality-based" neck of the blogosphere when the group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) put out a press release with two outrageous complaints:  that National Park Service employees at Grand Canyon National Park were not permitted to discuss the scientific age of the Grand Canyon with visitors, and that the bookstore at the National Park had been selling a book espousing the story that the canyon was created by the biblical Noah's flood for three years and had never conducted a promised review of the decision to carry the book.

Think Progress, Pharyngula, and Bad Astronomy Blog, to pick a few of the more prominent blogs, pointed to this story in outrage.  Now, some inquiries by National Parks Traveler and Park Ranger X strongly suggest that the first, and most outrageous, allegation is false.  Park Ranger X excerpts part of the official response from the National Park Service:

If asked the age of the Grand Canyon, our rangers use the following answer. The principal consensus among geologists is that the Colorado River basin has developed in the past 40 million years and that the Grand Canyon itself is probably less than five to six million years old. The result of all this erosion is one of the most complete geologic columns on the planet. The major geologic exposures in Grand Canyon range in age from the 2 billion year old Vishnu Schist at the bottom of the Inner Gorge to the 230 million year old Kaibab Limestone on the Rim.

Park Ranger X adds, "I've emailed a few of my contacts at GRCA, and so far, all deny any conspiracy and all freely give the canyon's age in education programs." 

There appears to be nothing for the reality-based community to object to here.  Indeed, if the NPS were not allowed to give an "official" response about the age of the canyon, why would there be a prominently linked page of "frequently asked questions" at the official Grand Canyon National Park website that includes the following:

How old is the Canyon?

That's a tricky question. Although rocks exposed in the walls of the canyon are geologically quite old, the Canyon itself is a fairly young feature. The oldest rocks at the canyon bottom are close to 2000 million years old. The Canyon itself - an erosional feature - has formed only in the past five or six million years. Geologically speaking, Grand Canyon is very young.

PEER's first complaint appears completely unwarranted.  The second complaint, about the selling of the creationist book, while more substantive, is perhaps overblown, as National Parks Traveler explains by comparing the creationist book to other books, also sold at national parks, containing Native American lore about the formation of geologic features.

A more compelling complaint than this would be about a recent dumbing-down of interpretive exhibits at popular national parks.  On New Year's, Pharyngula excerpted a letter to Science magazine from a recent visitor to the canyon from late 2005 that reads:

The modern visitor center [at Grand Canyon National Park] was architecturally magnificent but intellectually vacuous. With open spaces and giant images, it emphasized only the aesthetic experience. There was homage to John Wesley Powell, the man who carried out early explorations of the canyon and helped found the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Geographic Society. Yet the principles he so strongly promoted--rationalism and scientific curiosity as a means of appreciating the world and improving human welfare--were being relegated to obscurity. Schmidt notes that on viewing the canyon we ask, "How did this happen?" The current displays and signage at the Grand Canyon do their best to avoid any such question. As we left the park, we stopped to watch the sunrise at Desert View, a popular site. The most prominent sign at the overlook addressed only the visual beauty of the canyon and the religious significance of a distant mountain to Native Americans. One paragraph began, "The landscape seems consciously designed."

Along these lines, the official Grand Canyon National Park website also appears to have been diluted of much of its hard, scientific info at some point.  Compare the current "Natural Features and Ecosystems" page, which consists of a mere four paragraphs (two quite short), to an archived version I found using their search engine, which is split up into ten sub-sections on various topics, of which the "Geologic Features" page alone contains seven detailed paragraphs.

Bush's NPS is apparently making it harder for visitors to learn about the detailed natural history of our nation's wonders.  This needs to be corrected.

Carl Sagan, 10 years later

The universe has now been without Carl Sagan for ten years.  In honor of this man's enduring influence, blogger Joel Schlosberg is promoting a Sagan blog-a-thon, which I discovered only last night via Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy Blog.  Since Sagan's thoughts had a profound influence upon me during my formative years, I could hardly let this pass without joining in, at least in a small way.

My obsession with all things astronomical pre-dated my introduction to Carl Sagan's writings by many years.  Despite this, I had to be goaded into watching his 13-part Cosmos by my mother when it first aired.  As I recall, this pre-teen was already jaded by the hype surrounding the show and naively believed that no mere popular show could be worthwhile for a self-proclaimed expert like me. The show was already several weekly episodes old before I gave in.  I was immediately hooked — and immediately humbled.

Sagan's knack for communicating the wonder of the universe went beyond any single field of science, which makes him unique amongst modern science popularizers.  He could talk about the the formation of the known universe and the spectacle of the Big Bang, effortlessly glide into discussions of the puzzles of the human brain, then take off again into the realm of cells, genetics, DNA and the ultimate mystery of life itself. Amidt this, he would remind us of the potential nuclear holocaust that for so long threatened to extinguish all these wonders on this tiny planet — this "pale blue dot."

Sagan would never let us forget how awe-inspiring the universe is and our miniscule place in it. But he would also never let us forget the joy and wonder of our existence. His presence is missed, but his influence will live on for a long time to come.

Pileated v. Ivory-billed: Sibley's story

David Sibley, famous bird expert, author, and artist, and now the most famous ivory-billed skeptic, has a story describing how he came to his conclusion that the bird in the 2004 Luneau video is not the long-missing Ivory-billed Woodpecker, but rather a common Pileated Woodpecker. In it he writes about his reaction to the initial announcement of the ivory-billed's rediscovery last year,

I studied the paper and watched the video as soon as it was posted. Mostly I studied maps, dates, and locations of sightings. I accepted the reported proof without question.

He then describes his trip to the woods of Arkansas himself, where he saw many Pileated Woodpeckers but no Ivory-billeds. When he returned home, he watched the Luneau video again. His new reaction:

Instead of seeing an ivory-bill, there was a bird that looked like a pileated - small, grainy, and blurry, but just like all the pileated woodpeckers I had seen in Arkansas. I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach. I looked again and again, trying to refute my own conclusion, and I wept as the realisation set in - that this was not an ivory-billed woodpecker, and that this was a mistake that could have profound repercussions in the birding and conservation communities.

I don't know if he is correct or not, but this story may help to explain why his analysis of the video, published yesterday in Science magazine, is not nearly as thorough as the original one by the Cornell team led by John Fitzpatrick.

Ivory-billed questions

There is a new paper out in Science magazine that purports to cast doubt on the last year's celebrated rediscovery of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker in the forests of Arkansas. The first author is David Sibley, renowned birding author and artist. Sibley's target—the brief, blurry video, shot by David Luneau in 2004, that is the only photographic evidence yet presented for the woodpecker's modern existence. Sibley and his co-authors argue that the bird seen in that video is, in fact, a common Pileated Woodpecker.

In response to this new paper, some of my favorite bird bloggers are giving up on the Ivory-billed. GrrlScientist at Living the Scientific Life wrote a post titled, "Goodbye Beautiful Dream", saying, "This bird's existence becomes less credible, more tenuous, with every passing day." Nuthatch at Boostrap Analysis wrote, "In the world of science, a situation of this nature would generally be considered to be at the 'back to the drawing board' stage. And I think that's where the IBWO is at. Still awaiting rediscovery."

After reading the Sibley paper, and the response to it written by the team that announced the original re-discovery last year, I am not so ready to give up. In fact, reading once again the evidence that the Cornell team led by John Fitzpatrick has put together, as well as their comprehensive analysis of the grainy video, I am impressed anew at the strength of their case. In comparison, the analysis by Sibley and his collaborators appears incomplete—their conclusions, therefore, unconvincing.

I have only yet briefly perused the evidence on both sides at this point, so my opinions may evolve. But right now, I am troubled by the tendency of Sibley and his collaborators to casually dismiss evidence contradicting the pileated hypothesis and supporting the ivory-billed hypothesis.

To take one example, Fitzpatrick's team has suggestive evidence that the fast wingbeats and direct flight-pattern of the bird in the video is far more consistent with the ivory-billed hypothesis than the pileated. Sibley dismisses this in one sentence at the end of his paper: "We agree that 'we lack sufficiently comparable data for objective comparison' of these features." He and his co-authors spend a little more space on this subject in the supplemental materials, stating that "identification based on the wingbeat rate of the bird in the Arkansas video requires clear evidence both that it can be matched by an ivory-billed woodpecker and that it cannot be matched by a pileated woodpecker."

The wingbeat rate of ivory-billeds is unknown, but the Cornell team has presented suggestive historical evidence that it is similar to the wingbeat rate of the bird in the video. The wingbeat rate of pileateds should be simple to measure, since they are so common. But Sibley's group has apparently made no effort to study this. The Cornell group, on the other hand, has looked into this issue and reports on their web site:

The wingbeat frequencies of Pileated Woodpeckers in our videos from Arkansas are 2-4 beats per second in level flight (many examples) and 4-7.5 beats for short periods during hasty departures (n = 5). Moreover, experts who have studied Pileated Woodpecker flight using video analysis timed the fastest departures at 7 beats per sec (Tobalske 1996, personal communication). Thus, wingbeat frequency of the woodpecker in the Luneau video [8.6 per second] is faster than any recorded Pileated Woodpecker.

Sibley's case would be more persuasive if he took this evidence contradicting his hypothesis more seriously. On this point, this is not a mere argument over the precise placement and color of a few pixels in a fuzzy image.

As another example, Sibley and his co-authors gloss over the substantial amount of non-video evidence that the Cornell team published a year ago.

The recent sight records (1, 4) were all very brief and most involved a single observer, matching the pattern of reported observations over the past few decades (5–8). Although such observations provide strong impetus for continued searching and habitat protection, they cannot be taken to confirm the species' presence because they do not provide independently verifiable evidence.

The Cornell team, naturally, does not take lightly this casual dismissal of the bulk of the evidence bolstering their case. They write, in a footnote in their response to Sibley's paper:

Sibley et al. (2) incorrectly claim that the sight records we reported (1, 10) ‘‘were all very brief and most involved a single observer, matching the pattern of reported observations over the past few decades.’’ In no case since the 1940s was a report of an ivory-billed woodpecker (such as the original one by Gene Sparling) promptly followed by multiple repeat sightings in the same area—sightings that included a close encounter shared by two individuals, each having extensive experience with pileated woodpeckers in southern forests. After studying the evidence at length, the Bird Records Committee of the Arkansas Audubon Society voted unanimously to accept the documentation of ivorybilled woodpecker (www.arbirds.org/ivory_billed_woodpecker.html). Comparable validation by critical and experienced local experts has not occurred following any previous report of this species.

No one would give a hoot about this video if there hadn't been so many other sightings by so many experienced individuals in the same area in a short span of time. By not acknowledging the significance of these sightings, Sibley shortchanges his own argument.

This whole controversy should be moot relatively soon. With the exhaustive nature of the search that has been going on in the Arkansas woods this winter, if the Ivory-billed Woodpecker inhabits those forests, there should be plenty more circumstantial evidence soon forthcoming. If no such evidence is presented over the next few months, then strong skepticism of the continued existence of the ivory-billed will be more than justified.

Tangled Bank 49

The 49th Tangled Bank is at Living the Scientific Life. With pictures!

Great Backyard Bird Count this weekend

The annual Great Backyard Bird Count is this weekend—through Monday in fact. To learn more, visit the official web site. Anyone can join in. It's a fun way for all those interested in birds to help scientists gather data to learn more about them.

It's rather cold and wet here in south central Texas, but we have every intention of participating—just like last year.

UPDATE: Well, I sat outside, walked around a bit, a froze my feet off for an hour (its in the 30s here today, which is brutal for this part of the world). Saw a few birds, but missed a few species that are quite common in our yard and neighborhood, such as Northern Mockingbird and Golden-fronted Woodpecker.

Below is the list we submitted for today. We'll do it again tomorrow and probably Monday as well, when it should be a bit warmer.

2 House Finches
2 Northern Cardinals
2 Black-crested Titmice
2 Carolina Chickadees
1 Orange-crowned Warbler (visiting the feeder, strangely enough)
7 White-winged doves
1 Vulture, either Turkey or Black
2 Western Scrub-Jays
2 Lesser Goldfinches (unusual!)

I and the Bird plus Tangled Bank

I've been remiss in not pointing to this week's editions of I and the Bird and Tangled Bank.

I and the Bird is hosted this time by Amy Hooper, editor of Wild Bird magazine, at Wild Bird on the Fly.  Amongst many other alluring posts, Wise Crow reports about his concerns about the potential effects of a proposed off-shore farm of wind turbines near Galveston on the huge flocks of migratory birds crossing the Gulf of Mexico every spring. Also, Ocellated gives a brief primer on the practice of bird banding.

Tangled Bank, the science carnival, is hosted this time at Kete Were. Particularly noteworthy is a post at the blog Galactic Interactions from Vanderbilt physics professor Rob Knop on the mystery of the physical parameters of the Universe as we understand it and how the promoters of Intelligent Design take advantage of that mystery. It is noteworthy because it is a well-written post on a compelling topic, but also because Knop was a colleague of mine from graduate school way back when. How about that!

Tangled Bank at Science Blogs

Tangled Bank has arrived at the blog Adventures in Ethics and Science, hosted by philosopher Janet Stemwedel. In case you weren't aware, her blog is one of the fifteen science blogs recently assimilated by Seed magazine's science blog borg named, fittingly, Science Blogs.

At this week's edition of Tangled Bank, you can read even more (aside from my own post) about the non-Earth-like planet recently discovered via gravitational lensing. The additional material comes from a very thorough fellow named Anthony Kendall.

Also, learn about the "Top 10 Science Discoveries ... Ever!" from David Wheat of the blog Science in Action. A compelling headline for a very interesting article.

Tangled Bank: The thirty-sixth edition

Welcome to the thirty-sixth edition of the Tangled Bank—the bi-weekly repository of some of the best science blogging that can be found anywhere on the Internet. As an occasional science writer myself, typically on astronomy, physics, or Earth-science subjects, it is an honor to be your host.

It has been a tragic week in this corner of the world. A great city and numerous smaller towns not far away from here have been decimated and an untold number have been killed, due to a combination of natural power and human neglect. But, as hundreds of thousands of displaced Louisiana residents find temporary shelter in my state of Texas and all over the country, the power of human kindness has reached out to dampen the pain and to attempt to reverse the course of tragedy.

This edition of Tangled Bank contains fascinating entries on a wide variety of topics, as it typically does. Not surprisingly, a few concern Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. But first, we must go back in time—to learn about how life forms on our planet took the forms they have. And much, much more.

The Past

*   The post Café Scientifique and Jack Cohen, from Alun at his eponymous blog, goes far back in time, discussing the evolution of life on Earth and what features of organisms represent unique developments in evolutionary history.

*   Traveling comparably far back in time, Afarensis at Afarensis: Anthropology, Evolution and Science writes about Ichthyostega in How Cool Is That!. Ichthyostega is "one of the first land dwelling vertebrates," as I discovered from a slightly earlier post of Afarensis'.

*   Shooting forward hundreds of millions of years, we come to the The Fall of Rome. No, this is not a post by Edward Gibbon, who, perhaps to his regret, did not survive to witness the Internet and the blogging phenomenon. Rather, this is a post (actually, a book excerpt) by Bryan Ward-Perkins, at Oxford University Press's blog. It discusses archaeological evidence that the fall of Rome was not a painless transition from a Roman world to a medieval one as some suggest, but rather was indeed the "end of a civilization."

*   Moving further forward in time, we come to the subject of a the post A Bark With Bite by Matt at Pooflingers Anonymous. He proposes a hypothesis for how primitive tribes of Peru discovered the medicinal properties of quinine.

*   Discussing events of a century ago, Josh Braun of Wide Aperture writes about the Cardiff giant and "attempts to bolster Christian doctrine with scientific rationales" in Poor science, lousy religion, and the circus in America.

The Present

*   The present, at least in this part of the globe, is dominated by the horrible news out of hurricane-ravaged Louisiana and Mississippi. Addressing the increased vulnerability of New Orleans to powerful storms due to the gradual erosion of its surrounding swamps, Mike at 10,000 Birds asks the question What Good is a Wetland?, and concludes that "We as a species are inextricably tied to our environment, whether we'll admit it or not."

*   In response to the destruction and loss of life, The Questionable Authority, in Science, misuse of science, Katrina, and responsibility, calls for scientists to do more to fight the abuse of science: "It is time to fight for reality."

*   Jim Hu at blogs for industry discusses some details about the measurements of the degree of contamination of the water that has taken over New Orleans. Not something anyone would want to be stuck in.

The Future

*   What does the future hold? Human-induced climate change is a virtual certainty in the short-term. Daniel at A Concerned Scientist, in Literature Review: Climate Change, discusses the scientific consensus on climate change. He brings up the 2004 publication by Naomi Oreskes that caused a stir amongst the global warming skeptics.

Genetics

*   Switching from a chronological path to a specialty-oriented path, we come to a few posts on the subject of genetics. Dr. Hsien Hsien Lei at Genetics and Public Health Blog writes about, as she puts it, "a touchy subject"—the genetics of skin color in her post MC1R Gene Locus and Skin Color.

*   Reed Austin Cartwright at Derem Natura tells us about one of his all-time favorite scientific illustrations in Chimps are Laughing at You. This figure illustrates that the genetic differences between us humans are far less than variations in many other species.

*   Providing a welcome public service, PZ Myers at Pharyngula has read the recent scientific paper describing the chimpanzee genome so that we don't have to. He summarizes the findings for us and offers some personal commentary at the end.

Medicine

*   Chris Tregenza at Myomancy informs us about research into dyslexia, and its possible roots, in his post Auditory Processing Disorder and Dyslexia.

*   Ruth Schaffer at The Biotech Weblog tells us about the development of a new drug that may help prevent or slow the onset of AIDS in HIV-positive patients in her post Vif Dimerization Antagonist: Drug Candidate against AIDS.

*   Orac at Respectful Insolence writes about Avoiding scientific (self-)delusions. Testimonial-based medicine is not the way to go. Stick with evidence-based. Read his post to learn more about why.

Biology and ecology

*   Andrew at Universal Acid relates the tale of creatures than can literally cause other creatures to jump into a lake against their will, even if the latter creature cannot swim—and there are no firearms involved. Read Bizarre parasite manipulation to find out the gory details.

*   Alien species are a major problem these days. Not the outer space kind, of course, but the outside-of-their-historical-location kind. Nuthatch at bootstrap analysis writes, in as the worms turn, about a synergy between introduced earthworms and introduced buckthorn. The result is a situation that complicates habitat restoration beyond removal of a single alien species.

*   Meanwhile, Jennifer Forman Orth at Invasive Species Weblog, in Molluscan Mess, provides a brief update on the possible treatment of a Massachusetts lake with herbicide to kill off an invasive species. This is obviously not an extremely popular course of action with those who live nearby.

Science and the Public

*   GrrlScientist at Living the Scientific Life offers some of her Thoughts on the Value of Blogs to Science. She has a very clear idea about the most compelling value of science blogs, and it is one with which I heartily concur: "public outreach and education." Read her post to find out why she thinks the scientific community needs to work harder on this front.

*   James at Ruminating Dude has some thoughts of his own—they are about how to best teach chemistry in high school. In A Practical Chemistry Curriculum, he discusses what he feels are the shortcomings of the current approach.

*   For at least some good news on the public front, the Mad Scientist at The Daily Transcript has a post on Public understanding of Science. It discusses some research on the state of science literacy in the United States, and, while the absolute numbers may not be anything to jump for joy at, the trends (in a few cases, at least) are in the right direction. And as a Ph.D. astronomer, I am amazed that even 11% claim to "understand the process of radioactive decay." I'm not sure I do anymore. Or that I ever did.

Humor, Satire

*   After the emotionally exhausting events of recent days, perhaps it is wise to end with a collection of humorous and satirical posts. Alexander Blaisdell at FrinkTank is amazed at the latest pronouncement from Chinese scientists that "lake monsters can't possibly be real."

*   The Scientific Indian rants against pseudo-science in Identifying The Bullshit around us

*   Mark A. Rayner at the skwib pokes fun at London Zoo's short-term human exhibit.

*   Nearing the end, madbard the dubious biologist titles his post Why Creationism Will Save the Public Schools. But I'm not sure he really believes that.

*   Finally, Patrick Francis at The Science Creative Quarterly writes about How the Scientific Developments Elucidated in Science Magazine Will Affect My Life (Volume I).

Coming soon... Tangled Bank #37

And so the thirty-sixth edition of Tangled Bank comes to a close. The next edition will be on Wednesday, September 21, just up the road at milkriverblog. (For those who attended 'I and the Bird' here last month, this handoff may sound familiar.) Send your submissions to either hurricanetg@hotmail.com, pzmyers@pharyngula.org, or host@tangledbank.net. See you there!

Tangled Bank is nearly here

On Wednesday, the science blog carnival, Tangled Bank, will be here for its 36th edition. This is an event I've been looking forward to for quite a while now. Many fascinating submissions have already arrived. No doubt more are on their way. Please send them in by 7pm CDT Tuesday. Then be sure to visit Wednesday to get your biweekly dose of the best science blogging on the web.