Woody's Last Laugh: How the Extinct Ivory-billed Woodpecker Fools Us into Making 53 Thinking Errors

Woody's Last Laugh: How the Extinct Ivory-billed Woodpecker Fools Us into Making 53 Thinking Errors

by James Haney
Woody's Last Laugh: How the Extinct Ivory-billed Woodpecker Fools Us into Making 53 Thinking Errors
Woody's Last Laugh: How the Extinct Ivory-billed Woodpecker Fools Us into Making 53 Thinking Errors

Woody's Last Laugh: How the Extinct Ivory-billed Woodpecker Fools Us into Making 53 Thinking Errors

by James Haney

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Overview

'When I was appointed Co-chair of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service team charged with preparing a preliminary recovery plan for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, I had naive notions about the work ahead. Dr. Haney's book would have been an immense help in navigating the many strange behaviors, misconceptions, and bitter disagreements that ensued. Woody's Last Laugh reveals that I, too, fell to faulty thinking about the Ivory-bill and the question of its continued existence or extinction. I highly recommend this book for anyone involved in endangered species recovery as a way to avoid the many cognitive biases that we all face.' Jon Andrew, Co-chair of Ivory-billed Woodpecker Recovery Team (retired)

Woody's Last Laugh explores a simmering controversy amid scientists, conservationists, birders and the media: the supposed 'extinction' of American ivory-billed woodpecker. Among the first to identify rampant mental errors inside conservation and environmental professions, the book identifies 53 distinct kinds of cognitive blunders, psychological biases, and logical fallacies on both sides of the woodpecker controversy. Few species have ever provoked such social rancor. Why are rumors of its persistence so prevalent, unlike other near or recently extinct animals? Why are we so bad mannered with each other about a mere bird? How is it that we cannot agree even on whether a mere bird is alive or dead? Woody's Last Laugh uncovers why such mysteries so mess with our heads. By exploring uncharted borders between conservation and mental perception, new ways of evaluating truth and accuracy are opened to everyone. Author Dr. J. Christopher Haney is a biologist, conservation scientist and lifelong birder. For 12 years he was Chief Scientist at Defenders of Wildlife. In 2010, following the Deepwater Horizon oil blowout, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service invited him to lead the largest pelagic study of marine birds ever conducted in the Gulf of Mexico. Since 2013 he has been president of Terra Mar Applied Sciences, an independent public-interest conservation research firm which he founded. If there is one lesson Dr. Haney hopes his book delivers, it is to not overvalue our thinking skills. Human reason is fallible, even among scientists and technical experts. To improve our essential relationship with nature, conservation practices will need to devote as much attention to the unbridled thoughts as the unswerving sentiments. Dead or alive, however, the ivory-bill got the last laugh on us all.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781803410043
Publisher: Collective Ink
Publication date: 12/01/2021
Pages: 536
Product dimensions: 5.51(w) x 8.55(h) x 1.15(d)

About the Author

Dr. Haney is currently President and Founder, Terra Mar Applied Sciences, LLC, a company he organized in 2013 to sponsor research in the public interest. His professional expertise encompasses marine science, wildlife biology, ecosystem management, and conservation policy, including decision-making under uncertainty. He lives in Washington, DC.

Table of Contents

A Time before Myth

Chapter 1 Parallax View 13

Advent of Myth: 1731-1932

Chapter 2 Leaving Utopia 57

Chapter 3 Frontier Lament 75

Chapter 4 Swept Along 93

Chapter 5 Unconsummated Rescue 115

Chapter 6 Buried Alive 135

Enforcing Myth: 1932-2004

Chapter 7 Consistent Contradiction 157

Chapter 8 Curse of Small n 185

Chapter 9 Poetic License 209

Chapter 10 Desperate Guessing 229

Chapter 11 Scorned Witness 251

Dismantling Myth: 2004-present

Chapter 12 Rorschach Test 273

Chapter 13 Guillotine Fence 317

Chapter 14 Twain's Rebuke 345

Chapter 15 The Last Laugh 371

Afterword 405

Appendix A Did anthropogenic Allee effect kill the ivory-bill? 415

Appendix B Was ivory-bill a Pleistocene relict? 441

Appendix C Dividing to conquer: cognitive gaffes in repudiating the Luneau video 463

Further Reading 488

Glossary Cognitive biases and logical fallacies linked to the ivory-bill 490

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