Scientists Admit They Were Wrong - AGAIN!

Hmmmm, an object lesson about the problems that jumping to conclusions can pose: From Physorg.com Do birds, bees dance to same tune? How science goofed Published: 13:30 EST, October 24, 2007 A clutch of scientific studies showing that the foraging patterns of albatrosses, bumblebees and deer conform to a single mathematical axiom all got it wrong, researchers said Wednesday. The new work overturns a cornerstone study from 1996 claiming that the airborne seabirds trace an elegant pattern known as Levy flights, named after the French mathematician who first described them. It also upends or casts a long shadow over a slew of follow-on studies by biologists seeking to extend the albatross findings to other animals, including bees, reindeer, grey seals, spider monkeys and microscopic zooplankton. ... If all this published research turns out to be baseless -- as now seems likely -- it raises the intriguing and troubling question of how so many scientists working independently could have gone so badly astray. Lead author Andrew Edward, a research scientist at the Canadian government's fisheries and oceans department, uncovered two problems with the study on albatrosses, only one of which affected subsequent research. The first was simply an error in the raw data collected from tracking devices attached to the birds, which were mistakenly thought to be in the air when they were, for much of the time, soaking up the sun while sitting on rocks. The more important error, however, was in methodology, which is what started the chain-reaction of mistakes. Rest of story.