Releasers - Anne Kilmer couldn't possibly be more wrong!

[aa6g at aa6g.org]

Neil,

>I suspect what I have to say may produce an emotional response this is not
>my intention . I am speaking as an honest scientific type.

I think there's something missing from all these discussions. I bring it up
here because I see it more clearly in your posts than anyone else's.

Science is a method to determine true knowledge about the world. It has no
biases. Science does not advocate any course of action. The biases we bring
when examing the results of science determines the course of action we
advocate.

Many arguments I've seen here over the years are more about people using
science to justify their recommended course of action than the correctness
of the science.

>"There is no evidence that releases do any harm".

>We know very very little about butterfly diseases.

Let me use these statements to illustrate my point. Both of these are
probably true scientific statements. They do not indicate a course of
action either for or against butterfly releases. The bias you (Neil) bring
to the discussion as an environmentalist is that there should be no
butterfly releases because we should not make any change to the environment
unless we're really sure we know what we're doing. (At least that's how
I've read you over the years.) Others bring a different bias and they have
a different conclusion. Neither is right or wrong until you accept a
particular bias as true.

>Since we know so little it is foolish to claim there is no evidence of an 
>effect. Nobody is looking!

>Finally, in my defence, if you think my language is strong on this, Bob
Pyle 
>is on record as describing releasers arguments as "biological crap". That
is 
>a rational, logical, scientists view of it. One with a Phd in Butterfly 
>Ecology from Yale too.

If we know so little, how can a claim be made one way or another? It would
be more accurate to say, "We don't know."

As far as logic goes, well, it can be used to argue just about anything.
Since we start with different biases, use of logic does not mean we all
come to the same conclusions and certainly not one recommended course of
action.
How many times have you seen disagreements between scientists over what the
science means?

One last thought.... I had a discussion with a scientist who held that
biology is not a science because it cannot be reduced to numbers and
analyzed with mathematics. If I held that bias, then my logical conclusion
would be we should never do anything with the environment because we cannot
know anything about it to an absolute certainty. :-)

Chuck Vaughn <aa6g at aa6g.org>


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