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Posted on 12/31/2001 9:30:22 PM PST by jennyp
Government field biologists have unwittingly detonated the explosive tension between science and politics in land-management decisions throughout the West.
At immediate stake is the credibility of surveys to determine how widespread the threatened Canada lynx is. But the controversy also is being used by some to claim science is being manipulated to support unpopular political decisions.
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The firestorm came after some field biologists in the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife sent unauthorized hair samples from captive lynx — and from a bobcat pelt — to a federal lab in 1999 and 2000. The survey is being used by federal scientists to detect the presence of the threatened Canada lynx. It will play a part in determining whether logging and wintertime motorized recreation should be restricted to protect the animals.
The biologists said they were testing the laboratory's capabilities. Sending in control samples is a common practice in lab testing. But the biologists, all working in Washington state, were acting outside the rules of this particular survey. And their actions were reported inaccurately in stories widely re-circulated by the media this month.
The Washington Times, for example, reported biologists planted lynx hair on posts at lynx survey stations in the Gifford Pinchot and Wenatchee National Forests. The paper said that if a whistle-blower hadn't acted, the fake samples would have shut down public lands to protect lynx that weren't actually there.
Investigators say biologists mailed to a lab, in vials, unauthorized control samples from captive cats. Several told their supervisors about it, and one notified the lab itself.
Even if undetected, the samples would not have shut down the woods. The federal survey is just one piece of a much more complicated land-use policy calculus.
Investigators so far have found the biologists weren't trying to skew the study, but only wanted to test the accuracy of the survey lab because of questionable results in the past. The unauthorized samples sent to the lab were segregated from valid field samples, so the survey was not skewed, according to the Forest Service.
But Barbara Weber, associate deputy chief for research and development at the U.S. Forest Service in Washington, D.C., saw real damage from what was done.
"It affects the reputation of us as an agency overall because we say we are a science-based organization," Weber said. "If people are tainting data and planting data, that speaks to the integrity and credibility of the agency as a whole and any policy we make with that data. It is huge, beyond what they thought could be an outcome of this."
Earlier survey planted doubts
The Canada lynx was listed in March, under the federal Endangered Species Act, as threatened in 16 northern states. Officials from Washington state to Maine are trying to determine the range of the animal and efforts are under way to improve lynx survival in 57 national forests.
Lynx are rare, inconspicuous and primarily nocturnal. They leave little sign, and avoid human activity. Unlike salmon, grizzly bears and other federally-protected species, relatively little is known about lynx in the contiguous United States. Even the basics, such as reliable population estimates, don't yet exist.
The U.S. Forest Service launched one lynx survey in 1998, which was discredited because the results were ruined at the lab.
After the current survey was launched in 1999, with a new lab and a new protocol, some biologists said they sent in hairs from captive cats to find out if the new lab in Missoula, Mont., could correctly identify them.
Jeff "Bernie" Bernatowicz, a Washington state fish and wildlife field biologist, said in an interview he told his supervisor that he sent in hairs from a captive lynx.
"I didn't trust the results of the lab, so I wasn't going to tell them I was sending in a blind sample. A 1998 study came out with the results of lynx up and down the Cascades, and that didn't seem logical. Most of us doubted it. How could there be so many lynx?"
Weber said she knew the faulty 1998 survey had shaken the confidence of field biologists.
"People in the Forest Service I think are confused as to who to believe and what to believe, and if I were them I would be confused too," Weber said. "I think it played a large role in terms of people taking things into their own hands."
But their doubts were no excuse, Weber said.
"If they had concerns, they could have raised those concerns with the supervisors and asked, 'How does this study work, and how can we know that the lab is accurately recognizing samples?' "
In a signed affidavit collected by federal investigators, Bernatowicz stated his supervisor knew he sent in the sample — collected from a lynx that had escaped from a Union Gap fur farm and was being held in a cage until its owner could get it.
The supervisor expressed "some concern," but then allowed him to send in the sample, Bernatowicz stated.
Federal field biologists working in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Southwest Washington also sent in unauthorized control samples, snagged off a wire fence around captive lynx at a wildlife park. A state fish and wildlife biologist also sent in a hunk of a bobcat pelt in his office.
When the results for the bobcat pelt came back as unidentifiable, the biologist, Tom McCall, didn't try to keep its origin a secret. He laughed and said, "Those samples were taken from old Harry."
His supervisor — whose name was blacked out in the investigative report — said of the unauthorized control samples:
"I didn't think it was any big deal. This was due to the fact that I did not believe Mr. McCall was trying to tamper with the integrity of the survey by creating a false impression that lynx existed in the survey. In retrospect I can understand why submitting false information to the survey could color any other information sent in."
The first the lab learned of the unauthorized samples was in September 2000. A Forest Service biologist on his last day on the job before retirement phoned the lab to say biologists were concerned about how the survey was going, and were sending in fur from captive lynx as a control sample.
Workers at the lab called the Forest Service, which launched an investigation last February that was completed in June, and determined that the survey was not skewed. The biologists were counseled, but not disciplined.
Credibility undermined
The incident wounded the scientific credibility of state and federal agencies that turn to science to defend politically unpopular decisions, from turning off irrigation ditches for salmon to silencing chain saws for spotted owls.
For some, the incident fueled long-held suspicions.
"There are always questions about the validity of science in any of these studies, that it is biased one way or another," said Nicholas Haris, western-states representative of the American Motorcyclist Association, which advocates for off-road vehicle access to public lands. "Everybody seems to back their decisions with science, but a lot of people feel a lot of these things are predetermined before it starts."
The scandal metastasized in just one week this month after results of the Forest Service investigation were leaked to the media after congressional briefings.
Members of Congress and secretaries of two federal agencies have called for investigations by inspectors general as well as the General Accounting Office. Washington state lawmakers also have called for a hearing.
Daniel Kemmis, director of the Center for the Rocky Mountain West, a politically moderate think tank based in Missoula, said the reaction should come as no surprise, given the extent to which agencies and user groups have resorted to the mantra of "good science" to do the heavy political lifting in natural-resource disputes.
"I've become more and more perturbed by the way that people on both sides of the political fence are always calling on science as the final arbiter on natural-resource decisions," Kemmis said. "To me it's either cynical or naïve."
Appeals to science are often an effort to short-circuit or skip the hard, political work of building collaboration, Kemmis said.
Even biologists can't forget they work in a political context, said Jeffrey Koenings, director of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Koenings blamed the scandal on arrogance among biologists who either didn't appreciate how their actions might be interpreted by others, or didn't care. "We make hard decisions that affect people's lives and if you are going to affect someone's life you have to make sure it is predicated on hard scientific evidence and that you have the resource in mind, and not someone's personal agenda. That's what so damaging about this, it calls all that into question," he said.
Koenings has apologized for the incident, which he said was isolated.
The scandal will undermine support for species-recovery efforts unless investigations restore the agencies' scientific credibility, said Rep. Jim Buck, R-Joyce, Clallam County, chairman of the House Republican Caucus.
Credible science is the only effective ammunition in conservation battles, Buck said. It is the only way to accurately scope the nature and extent of environmental problems, discern an appropriate response, and sell it politically to an often wary public, Buck said.
"It's the only thing you have to hang your hat on."
It should. I said the same thing in post #8 on this thread.
Let's get the order straight:
The "salting" on scratching posts was done in the 1998 'study'.
The 'control samples' were sent later, to cover their a$$ after they got wind down the grapevine that they had been snitched off by some of their cohorts.
Right. Exactly my point.
Thanks for coming out for all here to see.
You just have no intellectual honesty, do you?
Let's get the order straight:The "salting" on scratching posts was done in the 1998 'study'.
The 'control samples' were sent later, to cover their a$$ after they got wind down the grapevine that they had been snitched off by some of their cohorts.
Where do you get that from? None of the articles say that, do they? The 1998 study was discredited because the lab screwed up. Nobody has claimed fur was planted in the 1998 study. If you think otherwise, then please point me to the article that says so. The hairs were sent in in 1999 & 2000.
No, I understand your point that these guys were recklessly acting on their own & not following a good protocol in any sense. I was referring to where NMGA pointed out that if their story was true, they should've been salting the data with bobcat hair instead of lynx hair, to smoke out false positives. Salting the data with lynx hair, as they did, would only smoke out false negatives - which contradicts their story.No More Gore Anymore pointed out that if they were suspicious of false positives coming from the lab, they should've planted a bobcat sample to see if the lab would score that as a lynx. That makes perfect sense!
It should. I said the same thing in post #8 on this thread.
Efforts to manage wildlife under the already controversial Endangered Species Act have been hurt by the seven federal and state scientists who sent bogus lynx-hair samples to a lab.
The incident wounded the scientific credibility of state and federal agencies that turn to science to defend politically unpopular decisions, from turning off irrigation ditches for salmon to silencing chain saws for spotted owls.
It sure does. IMO, this faltering or fraud (call it what you will) is just one more reason why the government should own as little land as possible. Let private sector business utilize it. How about a network of FreeRepublic Patriot's Parks all across the country.
If a person or group of people want to protect a species let them buy the land and preserve it for that purpose.
You are right, the articles that you have inserted do not say that, but it is the only logical conclusion that is supported by all of the facts available.
When a jury deliberates, it is usually what pertinant facts they were NOT told that they have to figure out, is it not?
Jenny, what one does in a single-blind test is submit test samples to the lab from two populations, known and unknown. In this case they would have been captive samples and field samples. Whether the known samples were lynx or bobcat is immaterial to the point.
Immaterial to whether they acted improperly, I agree! Look, in light of your background explanation of what a proper procedure would entail, it's obvious they acted improperly. At this point I'm trying to figure out if they were merely lazy, arrogant, & incompetent (what they're essentially arguing) or if they indeed were trying to fraudulently plant lynx into the actual data.
Whether it was lynx or bobcat should be material to that second question, because it reveals whether their stated rationale is internally consistent.
If you suspected false positive hits for lynx & wanted to test the lab for it during the next survey (assuming you were arrogant/lazy enough not to care about doing it right as part of a standard protocol), which kind of hair would you insert - lynx or bobcat? It seems obvious that it would be bobcat, to confirm your suspicions that the lab was misreading it as lynx. But they didn't do that, they did the opposite: They inserted lynx hairs. I'm just saying their specific actions contradict their cover story.
Which is why I'm starting to agree with you that it must be a coverup on some level. Don't you see that?
LOL, yes, I do see that you are coming to some conclusions but one has to be certain ;-) All experimental designs are subject to several factors. The sampling requirements for a false positive or false negative are different. Large numbers of trials necessary for statistical certainty can get expensive. One seldom gets many samples of an endangered species. This means that one must have enough confidence in the lab to regard their conclusions to be totally reliable. That means that one should qualify the lab in advance of the study.
If this were a lab qual, I would first make a call on the lab to see if they have validated their procedures by indepedent third-party audit. I would cross their process documentation with the handling of a sample that was already in the lab. I would look at calibration data, request their SPC charts, check the training logs on the technicians, and go through their audit file. If they've got all that, it looks clean, it cross-checks when I call the auditor, and I know their reputation or have experience with them, I'm done.
Lacking any of that, I might perform a set of extreme vertex screening experiments to see if I wanted to go into further tests. I would ask them what the minimum mass of the sample must be. Some of the submissons might be marginally below that (to see if they react to their own specs). I might take the two fur samples and break them into four tests: lynx, bobcat, both, and a second bobcat (assuming that lynx samples were harder to get). I would NOT tell them what I was sending. The vials would be merely numbered. (Remember, you are sampling DNA, the lab tech is unlikely to recognize the fur.) This test verifies that the lab is capable of identifying both species and individuals, and that they will react to out-of-range data (the mixed vial) with a response of, "invalid sample, but it could be this." If I get all that, I would repeat the test with but two of the samples from one of the same individuals as before. That way I get data from different sample preparation procedures and perhaps different technicians and I get to see how well the equipment repeats in separate trials.
Screening experiments are an artform because few can afford the number of samples required for statistical certainty. The setup I just described is a pretty rugged indicator of the lab's performance.
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