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World's Plant Life Far Less Diverse Than Thought
Meshach writes "A report out of FOX News (I know, I know) says that there are far fewer unique species of plants than previously thought. The report states that only about a third of named species are actually unique. The rest have been 'discovered' multiple times, often by separate scientists."
right?
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
I'll make you a deal. I'll support a ban on submissions from Fox News as long as we never have to see another submission from MSNBC, Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, or anything similar.
Or, you can simply evaluate stories as they are, and quit whining about "faux news". A news org can have a viewpoint and still be a news org. This is the model, in fact, in much of the world, especially Europe. America's one of the few places where big sources pretend not to have a viewpoint.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
The fact that existing discovered and named flora is redundant should not be too surprising. But the number that we have discovered has no bearing whatsoever on the amount or variety of undiscovered flora, at all. So a statement like "World's Plant Live Far Less Diverse Than Thought" is simply irresponsible. The former situation is simply not evidence of the latter. It has long been acknowledged that we have only formally "discovered" and categorized a small fraction of the Earth's actual diversity.
As far as i can tell as a non-american is that Fox News is a pretty lowly news outlet.
However that doesnt automaticly mean the story cant be true.
Just start assuming the opposite. "There are no duplicates within the millions of plants discovered." In a database of that size, with manually made entries for well over a 100 years, highly unlikely.
So, without further knowledge, one can only speculate about the percentage of duplicate entries.
As for Fox... I think it is worth following, in addition to a number of other sources. They definitely give a different selection of stories than less biased sources , but what they report is rarely flat-out false.
As for the Reader Comments on their story pages, and even the Opinion section, yeah, they're pretty out there.
Which one of those others fought a lawsuit to preserve their right to lie?
I have no problems with any news of any political leaning, but outright lying seems a bit much if you want to call it news.
That's almost by design. The Fox News bias is from the original founding idea: studies showed most vocal conservatives (as opposed to real conservatives) didn't want facts and didn't want to learn. They wanted to hear only what re-enforced their already limited and slanted viewpoints. It was consciously created with that in mind. Some of the "talent" involved have even made comments, off camera, at social events, like, "Oh, that's just the act, get over it," or, "It's what I do for a job, who believes that crap?"
Interestingly enough, surveys also show that those very same people, when presented with facts that disrupt or disprove what they want to believe will ignore those facts and will become even more emotionally entrenched and committed to what they want to believe is true - even after seeing proof it is false.
Considering how they ignore science when it's inconvenient to their agenda, like the recent memos on global warming, for example, they've shown they can intentionally distort science as much as they distort politics.
This really shouldn't come as much surprise. There are plenty of plants that look dramatically different at different stages of their life; if they were being "discovered" for the first time they could well be called different species. Add to that the differing languages spoken by different botanists when attempting to classify species and the problem grows very quickly.
And for that matter, with molecular biology our notion of "species" is changing as well. Now a species is defined more along the lines of a unique genome (or at least uniquely organized genome) than simply on where and how it grows. Now we realize that - especially in the plant kingdom - there are many pairings of different species of plants that can hybridize and produce viable offspring.
So indeed, the number was due to be corrected at some point. This happens in other sciences, too; a while ago a few species of dinosaurs were recently re-classified as likely being juvenile specimens of other species.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The real issue is that the organization itself has a view that skews towards a certain ideology. There's not an issue with individuals within said organization having a point of view of their own (it's almost always seen in its most obvious form with selections of stories done near the end of a given anchor's newscast for filler), but it's the overarching "we'll only recruit people with X ideology" that's an issue at some of the cable networks in the US.
But http://www.theplantlist.org/ quotes their data right on the front page:
Accepted 298,900 28.7%
Synonym 477,601 45.9%
Unresolved 263,925 25.4%
Note that a full 25% could go either way. Fox is putting the predictable spin on the story that ALL news media will probably put on this to generate readership, but the takeaway is that now we know more. This is generally considered a good a thing, especially when you want to do this sort of thing repeatedly. They have a method, and are looking to expand and perfect it. Mission accomplished.
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
You mean Fox News is real?! I thought it was just a parody invented by the Daily Show. We get the "International Edition" of that here, and they show clips of Fox. ... it is just a joke, right?
C'mon
I'll make you a deal. I'll support a ban on submissions from Fox News as long as we never have to see another submission from MSNBC, Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, or anything similar.
I'll second that if we can add Huffington Post and Daily Kos to the list.
[Insert pithy quote here]
In the past, when a Fox News reporter was given the task of count different plant species, usually went like "1...2... too many". But things are improved, probably after seeing really big numbers related to US debt or bank bailouts, now when faced with the same task this time realized that the amount of plants weren't that many.
No, it's real. It's got far and away the largest viewer base of any of the new channels. Glenn Beck is real too.
This is kind of like the inverse of Santa Claus.
No, a news organization can't have a view point and still be a news organization.
So, you are saying that there are no news organizations, and never have been any.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Well, there's a lot of details from the actual source of the study that are left out of the Fox News report. Like the fact that they used a taxonomic knowledge in a rulebase to reduce the set of unique plants. While fascinating, one must wonder how well an automated system could perform such a feat. Note: The part about putting "discovered" in double quotes is not found in the original source article but arises in the Fox News article. You might want to be careful as you could be insinuating gross incompetence in the field of botany across its entire history. It's also possible that this algorithm for reducing the list needs to be worked on.
My work here is dung.
'discovered' multiple times, often by separate scientists."
One would certainly HOPE it was from separate scientists, now wouldn't one.....
Having the same guy name the same snail again and again and nobody catching it wouldn't say much about the rest of the guy's peers.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
This is going to be really bad for biodiversity.
If taxation is legalized theft, then Capitalism is a prolonged rape followed by a slow death.
Popularity never has and never will be a redeeming quality in and of itself. Your average person is a mouth-breathing buffoon and it surprises me on a daily basis that they manage to tie their shoes in the morning much less go to work and do anything productive for society. Why would their view on what is a quality news source influence my opinion in the least?
>I'll make you a deal. I'll support a ban on submissions from Fox News as long as we never have to see another submission from MSNBC, Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, or anything similar.
None of those media news outlets have gone to court, though, to argue that their right to deliberately lie to and consciously mislead their readership is protected by the First Amendment.
http://www.relfe.com/media_can_legally_lie.html
That, to me, says cease using Fox News as a source (and burn it with fire).
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
It'd be nice if you fucktards would talk about the story instead of arguing about politics. Back in my day this was a nerd site.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Interesting. You claim that hundreds of scientists are in fact willfully falsifying data? An amazing claim. One which, of course, you'll actually have to provide evidence for, of course.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I can't see why this would be a political issue.
It isn't. But we have a moderation system where the average dumbshit can add the word 'Insightful' to any post he finds interesting. Since nobody considers the consequences of modding up comments that you happen to agree with, we end up with a thread like this where there's an interesting story about the problems with data collection but everybody's babbling about the source it came from.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
This doesn't inherently discredit them as a news organization
No, the fact they filed and won a lawsuit arguing that they are allowed to deliberately lie about the news does.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Teh make it simple for those just focused on the faux news angle:-
I'll leave it up to others to speculate on why this "story" is spun like that - though personally, blaming it on festivities implies that the Murdock press (and others) have a "silly season" that's shorter than a year.
To those who see this sort of story as "proof" that all scientists are wrong (I'm looking at you creationists) - just because your dick fits your hand - it's no more proof of "Intelligent Design" than it's acceptable to flop it out in public.
No, a news organization can't have a view point and still be a news organization.
So, you are saying that there are no news organizations, and never have been any.
Original quote in context: No, a news organization can't have a view point and still be a news organization. Well, not quite, a news organization can't set out to have one and still be a news organization.
I see FOXNEWS has taught you well, young Dimedici.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
Not only does every news organization have some point of view --- even if that 'point of view' is just slavish devotion to factual truth --- but people should keep in mind that "objective news reporting" has nothing to do with objectivity. It's a business strategy.
Basically once we had a small number of news organizations reaching large audiences, those papers had to work hard not to piss off 50% of their readership. Hence "objectivity", which isn't some noble goal, but rather a way to keep everyone happy. Unfortunately as we've seen, sometimes being objective actually means taking ridiculous arguments seriously, lest you be accused of having "bias".
I don't much have a problem with Fox News being a conservative/Republican Party news organ (which it is, take a look at the ties between Fox's management and the Republican party). I do have a big problem with the fact that they claim to be fair and balanced, and that 'serious' people are willing to accept this figleaf and overlook the slant, even while they would obviously dismiss a self-professed activist network.
Also, the lying, I don't much like that.
I know it may come as a shock to some but most people in the US aren't liberals.
"Liberal" is just the word the extreme right has made up to describe anyone they disagree with. It's a label, almost a pejorative they've created so they can just say, "He's a liberal," instead of dealing with something a person has said that has any validity. It's a way to call names instead of dealing with the facts.
It's been so distorted by people that think there is their way and the wrong way that it really doesn't have any meaning any longer.
It still holds true. News organizations have always had a bias. That is why someone starts a news organization, to reflect/promote their bias.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
You can't. But nobody's claiming to predict the state of an arbitrary iteration. What you can do is predict an average trend. Like Moore's law predicts that transistor density approximately doubles every two years. If you look at the actual data, the numbers plotted are a bit erratic, but over time, it averages really well to that trend. Now, part of that is due to self-fulfilling prophesy, but the same idea holds. Or, the economy (in terms of GDP). You can predict a rate of growth over a couple decades, but you can't say what its state will be in any specific year. I think the US is somewhere in the ballpark of 3% growth per year in terms of decades, but I haven't checked. But of course, I can't say if 2024 will have a recession or not.
So in terms of GW, nobody can tell you what the temperature will be August 4, 2024. But what some people are saying is that the trend right now, and according to models, is saying that the temperature will approximately rise x degrees per century for some indefinite time period.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
***Not saying that I trust Xinhua much either but it's nice to read strangely phrased news that isn't dowsed in patriotism (their own non-international news of course drips with National pride and should not be avoided)***
Try China Daily http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/. Their international news seems reasonable, and much of their domestic news is much more critical of things in China than I would have expected. I'm sure that there are subjects they avoid and others they distort, but overall, they read much like a reasonably good western news source. Compared to Fox News or Ria Novisti they seem sort of reputable.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
The US has a different definition of "middle" than the rest of the western world.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Here's a rather contrarian viewpoint about plant diversity and natives vs. exotics. In a nutshell, Hudson argues that the decline in biodiversity is so severe ( due, essentially to humans paving the planet ) that most sources of plant diversity should be encouraged. Additionally he points out difficulties in defining "exotic" and "native" due to the way seeds spread naturally. This from a fellow who for many many years has been a source of seeds of rare and unique plants. He argues that feel-good councils that make rules about invasive and exotic species may do more harm than good. An interesting view from someone that I have a lot of respect for.
If there is even less diversity in the plant world than we thought, then I guess his argument may be even stronger. Anyway, possibly something more interesting to read ( ha! yes I know this is /. ) than the OP.
Related, excellent read, for those interested Plants, Man, and Life
Are you serious? Point 1: in the domain name Hudson states clearly his position -- he sells seeds of exotic plants. This should immediately set alarm bells ringing.
His argument in the linked-to "article" is utter nonsense. There is no doubt in the scientific community that non-indigenous plants cause incredible damage. They [the exotic plants] can displace native counterparts, change soil conditions (abiotic AND biotic), retard germination of native species, out-compete native species, and so on. Partly (but only partly) this can sometimes be because the introduced species have no competition (e.g. predators) in the environment into which they are introduced; they can grow and multiply with nothing in their way (i.e. they have an advantage over the native species). Introduced (exotic) plants can and do result in immeasurable damage to local ecosystems. Let me take your username as an indication of where you live and suggest you look up Kudzu. Now, tell me the benefits it provides in its introduced environments. Hudson is a fool.
Your whole post applies equally well (often better) to CNN and MSNBC.
Cable "news" is entertainment news.
If you actually want real news, watch broadcast news.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Climate is not chaotic in the mathematical sense until you get into geologic time scales that are long enough to negate the regulating influence of the Milankovich cycles (ie: millions of years). Weather is chaotic on timescales of days.
You can see the same mathematical concept in a pan of water on the stove, you can make a usefully accurate model to predict how long it will take to boil but there is no way to predict when or where the first bubble will start to form.
Climate model forecasts of climate trend (particularly golbal average temps) have matched observations within their defined error margin for over 30yrs now.
Since this stuff is so easy to google I can only assume you haven't tried answering your own question.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
"it doesn't predict a whole lot"
To be fair, it predicts what the standard model does, the problem is it doesn't add any novel and testable predictions that would allow science to determine if it's any better or worse than the standard model. It's worth pursuing until such a time when either model can come up with a "smoking gun" test. After all it took the best part of a century before the heliocentric model could make better predictons than the geocentric one.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
A minor point, but simply looking at the amount of time spent on a subject doesn't define bias. That coverage could have been good or bad (or McCain could just be boring and of little interest to the public). It does not indicate bias.
There are also interesting studies showing that when polled, most fox viewers held the least amount of true facts.
http://www.alternet.org/story/149193/study_confirms_that_fox_news_makes_you_stupid
Interesting enough, MSNBC viewers actually scored best on facts.
(Apologies for the URL. It is not intended as a flame, but rather what was published)
Wasn't there already an article on Slashdot about a large percentage of medical researchers wilfully falsifying data? Do you really expect it to be so very different in the other fields? Students who cheat their way through school will continue cheating in the real world.
Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
Look, let's just ban timothy and kdawson, and call it a day.
A precedent that doesn't exist. http://www.campaignfreedom.org/blog/detail/fox-lies-videotape-debunking-an-internet-myth
What gets picked to be passed on is based on bias. This can be picked up and used as, say, an argument against global warming. So it's a good story, and they'll just put it out and let someone else make the link, which they'll then report on again with more editorializing. Not that it will always be done, or that it will even be done this time, but this is just an illustration of how news without bias can still be biased.
Learn to love Alaska
"What is more appalling are the five major media outlets that filed briefs of Amici Curiae- or friend of FOX – to support FOX’s position: Belo Corporation,
To start, amici curiae is friend of the court, not friend of Fox or any specific participant. These are common and done when a far-reaching decision may be made and the court might not be aware of all the technical issues involved.
Further, as for Belo, fuck yeah. I grew up in Dallas. The ultra-conservative Belo corporation has been perverting news since before I was born, and I could tell in 2 minutes whether I was watching channel 8 or one of the others because of the slant in the news. Of course, they got big enough and bought out the other daily paper and shut them down. As someone that used to buy both, I was sad to see a place as large as Dallas drop to a one-paper town. But then, that was happening all over. But yes, I'll gladly stop using Belo. News from them isn't any better than Fox and they were defending their right to lie for profit. Everyone else calls that fraud, but corporations call that good business.
Learn to love Alaska
Frankly, I just have one (math) question for CAGW proponents: since when can you predict a chaotic, tightly-coupled, nonlinear system more than one iteration into the future within one sigma of reality?
You understand neither statistics nor chaos theory.
Ask me whether the coin I'm flipping will be heads or tails. My prediction rate will be pretty lousy. Ask me whether the coin I'm going to flip 1000 times is going to be 800 times heads, 800 times tails or something in between, and my prediction will be pretty accurate.
A chaotic system is one that doesn't exhibit a linear pattern over long iterations and where starting conditions strongly influence end states. This means that it is entirely possible to model (and therefore predict) chaotic systems far into the future. You just can't do it without going through all the intermediary steps.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Well, the finding is by the Royal Botanic Gardens in London, and other reputable sources. And it seems plausible; before DNA sequencing and the Internet, it would be incredibly hard to prove nobody else had named the species previously.
Yes. If the "news" was really that a list of plant names will mostly be synonyms, it was already a well-known fact. Both because of the reasons you cite, and because reclassification creates synonyms. Say you have 100 species of Cereus, and you claim they are really two different genera: ten Cereus and 90 Foocereus. You publish your results. You just created 90 synonyms. Repeat this over the centuries, starting with Linnaeus in the 1700s ...
I can see no rational reason for TFA calling this a "surprising lack of diversity".
but what they report is rarely flat-out false..
What is rarely? One out of 10? 100? 1000? 10000? times. In my experience it's more like 10-100 then 10000.
I see that we think completely different, but then I don't live in the US but Sweden and for me if a news media is lying at least once I will PERMANENTLY ignore it. Sure we have our share of bad "newspapers" like Aftonbladet and Expressen, but in my eyes they just not newspapers but sensationalist tabloids so I completely ignores them. Sure if they report anything interesting I investigate it, just like if a stranger on the street would have told me. But I will never tell someone "A stranger/Aftonbladet/Expressen/FOX told me X and Y" but "A stranger/Aftonbladet/Expressen/FOX told me X and Y and I looked it up here Z and it was actually true".
If you don't ignore a biased media you tell the it is OK to lie and twist news to fit them. Do your self and the humanity some good:
"Stop COMPLETELY to take so called news from biased media"
What if instead of linking to news source third party slashdot linked to THIS: http://www.theplantlist.org/
Would 50% of the post be discussing the third party news source instead of the real news. I don't even think the news is the spin of the third party (which was, "Look! Scientists have goofed an estimate!" (One that will alway be a moving target, in this case the plant count)). I think the real news is this: There is a group working to create an open, coordinated effort to prevent the very thing that the triple-faced thirdy party is spinning negatively.
In other news, post is now both the plurar and singular form of the word "post".