Questions 1. What is the major conflict between Brad and Mary in terms of the scientific process?

Make a list of Brads arguments and valid pieces of evidence and Marys response to each. Mary believes that brad should be doing more research and that he should try to gain more evidence before coming up with a conclusion. 2. What do you think about Brads concern that by waiting with the announcement they could miss their chance to save the birds? If the bird does exist, then waiting for the announcement would be to long because by the time it would have been announced, the birds might have gotten extinct. 3. Imagine you are the owner of a company that owns the logging rights adjacent to the area of the woodpecker sightings, or a biologist trying to protect the habitat of another endangered species in another part of the state. Do you think that they would be satisfied with the same amount of evidence in this case as Brad? Why/Why not? No they would not be satisfied with the evidence because its not enough proof to go through the trouble of searching for a bird that might not even exist or maybe just a bird. The last of its species. 4. What is the right amount of evidence? How can you determine the answer to that question? I believe that the right amount of evidence is conceived when your colleagues or the people around (people that werent present in your research and experimentation) would feel just as confident as you do when you share out all your evidence.

Case of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker by Stanger-Hall, Merriam, & Greuling

Page

5. Give other examples of public discourse, policy decisions, or controversial issues where your insights from this case could be applied. Since the Mayan calendar ended with the year 2012 many people came to the conclusion that it meant that the world was going to end that year. People made plans and gave up things all because this rumor wasnt being put into full light. Not many people actually questioned the other possibilities that the calendar held, like how the year 2012 was the equivalent to our month of December. The calendar would just start over. 6. Decide how much evidence you would need to accept the claim that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is not extinct. I would need fresh DNA samples as well as the bird its self! The bird in the flesh would prove everything. 7. Decide how much evidence you would need to accept that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is extinct. I would need no evidence of its existence. If there was no data or proof that it might be alive then I would believe that it has long been extinct. 8. Put yourself in Brads positionwhat would you have told the reporter? I would have told the reporter that the evidence of our current project is going well. The amount of evidence is really adding up, however, we are going to need much more proof if we want this to be funded. 9. Does it matter to you who presents the evidence? Yes it does matter. Lets say you presented the evidence to the partner that youre working with, while he is just as excited as you and enthusiastic the same way you are about the information you just discovered. Once you show him the evidence, strong or not, he is going to want to believe you. Therefore, you must show your evidence to someone who sits outside your circle and someone who can look at your evidence in a different way. 10. Who presented the evidence in the real Ivory-billed Woodpecker case (who was present at the press conference)? John Fitzpatrick from the ornithology lab presented the evidence for the real ivory-billed woodpecker case.

Case of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker by Stanger-Hall, Merriam, & Greuling

Page

Case of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker by Stanger-Hall, Merriam, & Greuling

Page