There is a quip about comparing apples to oranges. The idiom is typically used to dismissively refer to some benighted person who has tried to compare incommensurable items as a basis for bogus contrasts or trends. Apples are not oranges, so if you have more apples one month hence, it doesn’t tell you anything about the number of oranges you have now or then, despite the fact the contrasted items are both fruit. Or, put another way, if you only know that you have 2 apples now and 20 oranges one month from now, you can’t establish a trend in either apples or oranges despite wanting all fruit to be equal. Grizzly Bear Apples and Oranges Given that no more than six degrees separate all living t
Muddy Science Science is a value-laden and often political process. The proximal means for this dis-objectification can be found in the questions asked, the research funded, the results reported, the interpretations featured, the results selectively applied, and the frames foisted upon naïve end-users. Essentially every worthwhile commentator on the scientific enterprise has said as much. The potential quotes abound. To feature just two, Bill Ascher, Donald McKenna Professor of Government at Claremont-McKenna College noted: “Knowledge generation is a political process…affected by the value systems of institutions, professions, and individuals.” Dan Sarewitz, Professor of Society and Science
photo by Judy Tilly. The press coverage of endangered species management tends to highlight conflicts. “If it bleeds, it leads.” All too rarely we read stories about people coming together to solve shared problems. But one such story related to the recovery of grizzly bears centers on the Cooke City area near the northeast entrance to Yellowstone Park. In 1987 the Congressional Research Service dubbed Cooke City “a black hole for grizzly bears”—a place where bears entered but did not exit alive. That is no longer the case. Although some conflicts still occur, the Cooke City area has become a model for amicable coexistence between grizzly bears and people. What happened here? And what can we
