The New York Times has the story of an ornithologist who found the first-ever seen male of an elusive species of bird. What happened next is not what Dr. Christopher Filardi expected. Only three females had ever been observed. They are found in an area of Guadalcanal that is under threat of logging and other development. When he caught a glimpse of a male he was thrilled. Kirk Wallace Johnson explains what happened next.
Days later, when the team captured a male in a mist net, Dr. Filardi gasped. “One of the most poorly known birds in the world was there, in front of me, like a creature of myth come to life,” he wrote in a dispatch to the museum.
While the expedition was still underway, the museum released the first photographs of the bird, which seemed to be mugging for the camera. The mustached kingfisher became a viral celebrity, under headlines like “ridiculously gorgeous.”
It wasn’t until the public realized that Dr. Filardi had “collected” the bird — killing it for the museum’s research collection — that the adulation turned to venom.
What Filardi did is normal scientific practice. Rarely-seen does not mean rare. Filardi estimates the island population is 4,000 birds — a good size for an island habitat. He was not collecting a trophy. By collecting the kingfisher, he was obtaining information that is necessary to understand the bird: how it compares to related species, its genome, as a standard for further work, and so on. This is how science documents species to provide a base of knowledge about them.
While Filardi was still out in the wilds, he had no idea the internet had gone crazy. He was being called a murderer. People started trying to hack his Facebook account. His wife started getting death threats against him. He has moved on from the institution that sponsored the expedition to protect it from attacks aimed at him.
It’s having a chilling effect on the way science is being done.
…Many research expeditions are no longer being publicized; in some cases, there is a total blackout on media. As a result, the public will grow even less informed about the importance of this research.
You can’t blame the scientists. One distinguished ornithologist lamented the new culture of fear. “Some crazy vegan lady just shot up YouTube,” he said. “Who knows what could happen?”
We live in a time when scientists and the very idea of science are under attack. This is not good.
UPDATE: What Otteray Scribe said:
Scientist here as well. I have this bad habit of going to sources, and sometimes even journal articles when I read a story like this. I went to the parent story and read it.
Ornithologists want to collect complete specimens for future study. They now have the complete skeleton, organs, reproductive system, and RNA as well as DNA preserved for study using technology not even invented yet.
emphasis added
A blood sample might be enough to give you DNA information — but it doesn’t tell you how male anatomy differs from the female in this species, and 50 or a 100 years from now a blood sample won’t tell you if the species has been evolving or changing without a baseline specimen to compare it to. A blood sample can only be stored for so long and it provides limited information.