#incorrect science

[greentrickster]

I walk calmly up to the microphone at the Entomology/Ichthyology group conference and lean in.

"Butterflies and moths are a subspecies of flying fish, because they all have scales that come off if you rub hard enough."

I am never invited back to the conference, because my body is never found.

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

Well, tagging WWF in my Twitter thread about the #CrouchingTigerHiddenData work wasn’t successful: the account WWF_Tigers still ended up posting this statement on Twitter: 

The image reads: @WWF_Tigers: “More privately-owned tigers exist in US than wild ones in the world. WWF continues to call on US legislation to better control ownership of big cats, and prevent them from being laundered into wildlife trafficking rings #HoustonTiger” The image is a link to the CNN news story about the tiger. 

This is a problem. 

The number of tigers WWF is quoting here is 14 years old.

They’re from that one non-peer-reviewed census by Werner in 2005. As far as I can tell, WWF has been sourcing their 2008 “Paper Tigers” report for an estimated number of 5,000 tigers in the United States for the past 11 years. (Only 1,129 of those were actually in private or “pet” homes) The authors who wrote that report didn’t do their own census work on US tiger populations - instead, they used Werner’s 2005 paper as a major basis for their analysis, noted that it might not be completely accurate because of off-grid / hidden tigers, and ended by concluding there’s a “rough estimate of some 5,000 tigers in captivity” in the US. There has not been a single follow-up study in over a decade that has checked if those numbers are still accurate. (Except for mine, which indicates they’re not). 

More importantly, that report by WWF in 2008 found zero evidence that US tigers from the pet population were ending up in international black markets. They recommended a number of changes to the US regulatory system - like the closure of the generic tiger loophole in the Captive Bred Wildlife program - which have actually been implemented since, and laws about ownership and breeding of dangerous big cats in the US have only gotten stricter since 2008. It stands to reason that you’d expect less trafficking in that situation, not more. This assumption is reinforced by the fact that in all of the exposes about tiger farms and international black market trafficking of tiger parts published in the last couple years, not a single one even mentioned the participation of US entities or the involvement of US tigers! 

So, to sum up, WWF’s tiger account is tweeting out 14-year-old data and actively contradicting the results of one of their organizations’ own major reports. Apparently the “number of pet tigers in the US” is such common knowledge now that even international conservation organizations don’t need to fact-check it before they make public statements. 

I dropped some truth-bombs about my research and their sources in the replies to that tweet, as well as sharing more information about my work in retweets. Please come signal boost my comments on Twitter, because this is appalling and I want people to start paying attention. The link to their tweet is here, and my profile with my extended comments is here. 

[crepeycrepeyspacewizard]

I'm not a scientician but I think there might be something wrong with this globe

[somepikminpostcards]

[island-delver-go]

Centaurs are actually insects

[vampiricicarus]

*sees an info post* hm. Seems legit. *immediately sees the same post, this time with a reboot to a reputable source* *click on it* the first post was so wrong that the misinformation is clearly “source: I made it up”

[introverted-dragon]

Quarantine: Day #40

I got bored and decided to conduct several experiments at once:

Experiment #1: Testing the suggestibility of my 7-year-old brother.

Experiment #2: How easily malleable are other people’s minds?

Experiment #3: How quickly can I make my little brother believe that I (a suburban Texas teenager) am raising alligators inside my closet?

~Note that all of these experiments were thought up and began testing within 5 seconds of having the thought, so results may not be conclusive~

[DISCLAIMER: THIS IS NOT AN ACTUAL SCIENCE EXPERIMENT. THIS IS JUST AN INTJ BEING BORED AN HAVING SOME FUN WITH A YOUNGER SIBLING]

Experiment #1

Hypothesis: My little brother is extremely suggestible. 

Conclusion: My little brother is indeed extremely suggestible  because he is little and his mind is more accepting that there are things he does not know. He also has a greater tendency towards acceptance of new ideas (no matter how bizarre) and a lesser tendency towards argumentative behavior and skepticism.  

Experiment #2

Hypothesis: The malleability of the human mind decreases with age and differs between personality types.

Conclusion: While data is currently incomplete (as I need to meet up with my INTP friend to attempt this experiment again before moving on to an adult), from my case subject, I have found my hypothesis to hold true at least for the young mind (I will test this data again at a later date). The subject’s mind was easily misled by my easy explanations for any doubts as to my point, and led to the expected outcome within the span of 5 minutes. 

Experiment #3

Hypothesis: My little brother will believe that I keep alligators in my room within 3 minutes of my first sentence relating to the subject.

Conclusion: My little brother appeared to perform less adequately than I had expected, as it only took about 2 minutes for him to transition from doubt into questioning the logistics of alligator keeping. And it was hilarious. He was convinced that I had alligators, and was concerned that I or someone else had or would get bitten. He also told me that he had hidden in my closet for hide-and-seek and had not seen alligators. I told him that I owned a Portable Swamp (Harry Potter reference, anyone?), and that I kept the alligators in there, where they would be comfortable. He told me it was creepy to have a swamp in one’s closet (to which I responded by giving him a better alternative to describe his emotions, which was ‘worrying’). He asked why he hadn’t seen a swamp or alligators in my closet, and I asked him if luggage could escape from a suitcase (as a metaphor for the alligators staying within the confines of the hidden portable swamp when it is not active). He misinterpreted, as I had expected, and I explained that the suitcase was the swamp and the luggage was the alligators. He seemed to understand, and genuinely looked terrified by the thought of my housing alligators inside the home. He told me that he didn’t believe that I raised alligators, but immediately retracted any scientific value of his statement by telling me that he would tell our parents. After I explained that they already knew and that they were keeping it a secret from him as to keep him from freaking out, he asked me for reassurance that I there were, in fact, no alligators in the closet. I told him he could look for himself, and I think his continued threats to tell our parents, his apprehensive looks toward the closet door, and the fact that he didn’t attempt to go near the door as he left, and even told me to let the alligators starve when I told him he needed to go to bed before I fed them count as evidence that he believed me more than he didn’t. 

Prior to this experiment, I also realized that my brother is likely an ESTP, based on his worldly outlook and decision-making skills (and, genetically, if personality type is partially linked to parentage, our dad is an ESTP, so)  

Experiments conclusive to extremely entertaining. 11/10 would do again. 

[mothmaidenn]

current mood over this new ‘scientific’ study that’s going around rn