Richard's Wood asked "So where is the science in record keeping?". It is as much a mistake to equate the records committee process with a secretarial task as it is to equate it with a judicial task. The best description is that it is a peer review process familiar to anyone who has tried to publish scientific data. The "science" is done by the field birder (hence the phrase "citizen scientist"), who writes his/her finding in a documentation. A records committee then acts as a peer-review panel, and as an editor. It may be a terrible process, but it's the only we have, and it does a pretty job of enabling careful, science-minded citizens to contribute to our ever-changing understanding of bird distributions.
Paul Hertzel Mason City, IA At 11:49 AM 7/23/2007, Richard Wood wrote: >We also have to remember that not everyone on a records' committee >IS a scientist. Anyone could be on the MOURC, for example. All you >need is to be a birder and to be elected by your fellow birders. > >Also, real scientists just don't blindly and for no reason through >out data that doesn't fit their hypotheses; that would be called misconduct. > >Richard > >Richard L. Wood, Ph. D.
