Returning to Powlesland and the kaka and kereru, the authors, unable to claim success in showing the desired effect, cited other studies as showing native bird population benefit from aerial 1080.One of these studies claimed population improvement for the kereru but did not look at the kaka.
This research by Innes et al studied twelve bird species, both native and non-native.However, the study was flawed in several ways.First, the study design is such that statistically valid conclusions are impossible.
There was only one control and one treatment area, which means that any observed population differences between control and poisoned areas might have been simply due to inherent differences between the areas studied, a fact that the authors all but admit in a single sentence in the methods section of the paper, but otherwise ignore.
Second, the treated and control areas were very different.This is substantiated by the very large differences in populations of the studied birds in the two areas.
Third, the author’s main analysis of the results used the wrong statistical model -- they used an area/year interaction term as an independent variable that is thus unable to isolate area effects, i.e., the difference between treated and untreated areas.
Lastly the authors misrepresented their own results.The title proudly proclaims the native population benefit, but they fail to note that populations of two species of native birds decreased significantly, according to their analysis.
However, we don’t need to pay much attention to that as such since their analysis was erroneous anyway, but the point is that the authors selectively reported their results to support their sponsor’s agenda.The authors presumably did not know that their study was fatally flawed in design and that they had used the wrong statistical technique.
In summary, not only did the design of the Powlesland and Innes studies preclude valid conclusions, but the authors incorrectly analyzed their results and even then cherry-picked the answers ignoring their own evidence of damage to at least some native species.
Taken together the studies show how one bad study references and misquotes another even worse study so that in the end they become one big self-reinforcing rumour that has no basis in scientific evidence whatsoever.
DoC tendency to misrepresent is endemic:Combine the above examples with dozens like them and it becomes clear that DoC is not being straight with the people of New Zealand.To test this conclusion, we systematically reviewed 40 randomly selected pages from DoC’s 1080 reassessment application submitted to Environmental Risk Management Authority (ERMA) in October 2006.
We found that fully 58% of pages contained serious distortion, misrepresentation or other errors of various kinds.Of these, 36% were outright misrepresentations (typified by the previously mentioned examples), 23% were factual errors, 20% were misrepresentation by omission, and the rest were unsupported claims.
The hierarchy of misrepresentation.
First, the researchers, who are dependent on DoC for their jobs, conduct what are often marginally designed studies to (as one paper put it) “prove the benefits” of 1080.Second, they analyze their data with what appears to be bias.
Third, the Abstract and Discussion sections of their papers almost never mention facts adverse to DoC’s 1080 promotion agenda, i.e., they cherry-pick the results.When one reads the actual papers this becomes evident (as in the case of the kaka detailed above).
Fourth, DoC takes this distorted and biased view of what the research actually shows and spins it almost beyond recognition.
Fifth, the public and the press, who in most cases actually believe what they have been told, take the final step of accepting and repeating totally unsupportable claims such as that 1080 has saved numerous native birds from extinction.
The truth thus proceeds from bad research by tainted researchers, into the DoC bureaucracy which distorts the information to suit its bureaucratic agenda, which then passes it off at considerable expense to the New Zealand public through an all too willing and uncritical press.
Thus it is not surprising that we have a goodly supply of New Zealanders who in all sincerity believe with religious fervour that aerial 1080 is a magic elixir for our forest ecosystems.