blomborg7

Four misquotings, of Paul Colinvaux and E. O. Wilson

This page was created by me, Jeff Opal on 12-FEB-2004, and was last updated 12-FEB-2004

On pages 254-255, in chapter 23 (titled, "Biodiversity") I found three misquotings of the biologist E. O. Wilson and one of biologist Paul Colinvaux. Two of these are quite severe, in my opinion (the one of Colinvaux and the third one of Wilson that I describe below).
The first two of these misquotings appear on page 254 where Lomborg says:

The correlation between the number of species and area was formulated by the biologist E.O. Wilson in the 1960s.2043 The model seemed appealingly intuitive.2044 Its logic is that the more space there is, the more species can exist. The theory was launched in order to explain the number of species on islands, and it works well in this context. Wilson formuated a rule of thumb: if the area is reduced by 90 percent, then the number of species will be halved.2045 But the question is, of course, whether the theory for islands can be used on large and forested areas such as rainforests.

These words misquote Wilson twice, as can be seen by comparing Lomborg's words against these words from the source ("Extinction: Are Ecologists Crying Wolf?" Science, 253:p. 737) Lomborg cited:

Extinction curves are calculated by inverting the relationship: treating habitats as "islands" and asking what happens to species as the "island" shrinks. Clearly, if a habitat drops below a minimum size, the community as a whole will cease to exist. But how fast does this take place? How much room is there for recovery? "The rule that is followed for teaching purposes," Wilson says, "is that for every 90% loss in area, the number of species that can live indefinitely there is cut in half."

    Lomborg's cutting out the words "The rule that is followed for teaching purposes" misquoted Wilson, because Wilson clearly intended to mean that he regards this rule as one that shouldn't necessarily be used outside of classrooms. By cutting out these words, Lomborg thereby helped himself to smear Ehrlich and Wilson with the claim (a false one, Dr Jeff Harvey has said to me in an e-mail reproduced here) that the Wildlands project called for forcibly moving millions of Americans from their homes to preserve wilderness area. Two other misquotings Lomborg did to support this smear are described here.
     Wilson was also misquoted with Lomborg's words "if the area is reduced by 90, then the number of species will be halved", which is substantially differenct from "for every 90% loss in area, the number of species that can live indefinitely there is cut in half". The words "that can live indefinitely there" obviously alludes to there being a delay (during which humans can act) between the reduction of the area and the actual loss of the species. Also, Lomborg's removal of the words "that can live indefinitely there" serves to subtly suggest that Wilson might be reflexively assuming, without justification, that species eliminated from a particular area can't be found anywhere else.
     A few paragraphs later, on the next page, Lomborg says:

The issue of biological diversity resembles the classic battle between model and reality. The biologists acknowledge that there is a problem when it comes to the figures. Myers says that "we have no way of knowing the actual extinction rate in the tropical forests, let alone an approximate guess." 2050 Colinvaux admits in Scientific American that the rate is "incalculable."2051 Even so, E.O. Wilson attempts to put a lid on the problem with the weight of his authority: "Believe me, species become extinct. We're easily eliminating a hundred thousand a year." 2052 His figures are "absolutely undeniable" and based on "literally hundreds of anecdotal reports."2053

These words severely misquote both Colinvaux and Wilson.
Colinvaux's full statement from which Lomborg extracted the word "incalculable" is this:

Lomborg's words falsely implied that Colinvaux was using the word "incalculable" in the way Lomborg uses it in his chapter about biodiversity, with a lower bound for the overall extinction rate far smaller than what Colinvaux actually believes. As becomes obvious from reading Colinvaux's original statement, Colinvaux meant "incalculable" to mean "impossible to precisely measure but somewhere within a range of unacceptably large".

In reply to these criticisms, Wilson agrees that "of course" more data are needed. But, he says, the imminence of the extinction problem, particularly in tropical forests, is "absolutely undeniable." There are "literally hundreds of anecdotal reports." He adds with some heat: "Believe me, species become extinct. We're easily eliminating a hundred thousand a year."

As human beings lay waste to massive tracts of vegetation, an increasing and incalculable number of species are rapidly becoming extinct.

That Lomborg blatantly lied about what Wilson said becomes obvious when Lomborg's words (quoted above alongside the misquote of Colinvaux) are compared to the actual words of the source (page 736 of the same article in Science):

   As the source clearly shows, Wilson didn't say that is figures for how many species are lost are undeniable, as Lomborg claimed. The Wilson's words "absolutely undeniable" were about the imminence (danger) of the extinction problem.
   This misquoting serves to reinforce Lomborg's bizarre claims attesting that Myers 1979 guess of 40,000 species going extinct every year has had widespread influence.
   When making this web page I noticed yet another way Lomborg's words misquote Wilson. As one can see from the text of the original source above, Wilson's words about the extinction problem weren't limited to the problem in the tropics, which was the subject of the Myers and Colinvaux quotes Lomborg placed alongside the quotes from Wilson. Wilson actually was referring to the global extinction problem. Lomborg's false context implies that Wilson was talking about his figures for extinction rates in the tropics. Lomborg has thus falsely implied that Wilson's claim of 100,000 species going extinct every year was limited to the tropics, which further falsely implies that Wilson contends that the global rate is even larger than 100,000 per year.
   Also, notice that Lomborg here succeeded in juxtaposing these three claims:

(1) Myers says we have no way of even approximating extinction rates in tropical forests
(2) Colinvaux says that this rate is incalculable
(3) Wilson "attempts to put a lid on the problem with the weight of his authority", saying that his own figures (one being: 100,000 per year) are absolutely undeniable.

This combination is obviously intented to imply that Wilson, and by extension other ecologists publicizing alarmist estimates for extinction rates, are putting up a false front, pretending that they think their figures for extinction rates are precise and sound when they actually don't believe this at all.