The science in the WWF report is unbearably bad. They fudge numbers and basically say that:

A) they do their honest best
B) they fudge in what they believe to be the right direction

Doing your best isn't good enough. You need to actually have enough valid data, of the right types, not fudge your numbers to represent what you guess the data would say if you had it. Guessing is less accurate, and less scientific, than using real numbers.

You may think I'm joking, but they admit this in their report. For example they said their data about biodiversity over-represented whatever species people liked to study. So they just counted those less. How much less? Well, something about dividing the world into regions which they assume to be equally important, and then assuming that the convenient already-collected data for each region really is representative.

And people study vertebrates more than invertebrates. So how can they make conclusions about invertebrates, without nearly enough data? Easy. Just assume the trends for vertebrates apply.

-- Elliot Temple
curicuri.us
Dialogs