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Reefgate! (Read 13626 times)
pjb05
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Re: Reefgate!
Reply #105 - May 4th, 2010 at 4:27pm
 
Well a 'response' has now been issued by the GBRMPA (via Fishing World magazine). They seem to have the same mental block as FD, ie not being able to respond the the actual substance of Walter Starcks criticisms:

In an email to the GBRMPA Fisho asked the following:

What is GRMPA's response to concerns raised by the recreational fishing community and some scientists re potential conflicts that have arisen over allegations that a senior GBRMPA manager, Laurence McCook, is partly funded or supported by the Pew organisation?

Many Fishing World readers are concerned that Pew is undertaking campaigns to ban or restrict fishing invarious Australian waters and are concerned that an employee of the GBRMPA could be publicly associated with anti-fishing activities. Could you confirm and/or detail Mr McCook's association with Pew and outline GBRMPA's policy on its staff's association with organisations which promote fishing bans?

Could you also respond to recent claims made by scientists (namely Walter Starck) that Mr McCook published a paper which could be considered "biased" against recreational fishing and that it misrepresented other scientists' research (ie, Heupel et al) in the context of Mr McCook's employment with GBRMPA and his association with Pew?

What are GBRMPA's policies on disclosure of any such associations? Did Mr McCook outline his association with Pew in his recently published paper? If not, why not?

Late last week the GBRMPA responded via chairman Dr Russell Reichelt with the following press release (reprinted in full):


The following is supplied to Fishing World.

Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) Chairman Dr Russell Reichelt said the GBRMPA recognises fishing as a legitimate use of the Marine Park.  

"Fishing on the Great Barrier reef is an important pastime and source of income for both Queensland coastal communities and the Queensland seafood industry."

"While the primary aim of the zoning is to protect biodiversity, a scientifically robust Zoning Plan such as the one in place in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park not only protects the health of the Reef but secures fish stocks for future generations."

Dr Reichelt said the management of the Great Barrier Reef is based on robust, peer reviewed science, conducted by many of the world's leading scientists.

"These scientists are based at such internationally recognised institutions as the Australian Institute of Marine Science and James Cook University and many have been published in the world's leading scientific journals."

"There is a significant difference between published, peer reviewed scientific articles and opinion pieces published in non scientific journals and web blogs."

"Dr Starck has offered an opinion on the report 'Adaptive management of the Great Barrier Reef: A globally significant demonstration of the benefits of networks of marine reserves', as is his right, however we do not conduct technical reviews of such articles given there are a very large number of them in the public domain."

"If Dr Starck would like to go through the same stringent editorial processes that the aforementioned report did, we would be pleased to take his published work into account," he said.

The support provided by various science institutions and charitable trusts (ie. the Pew Charitable Trusts), and the affiliations of all authors were fully disclosed in the report.

The GBRMPA supports its staff in seeking or accepting professional development opportunities such as the prestigious Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation awarded to Dr McCook in 2005.

"As a management and technical agency we strive to ensure our practices are world's best practice and such fellowships give our staff an opportunity to research and study the very best the world has to offer," he said.

Dr McCook's fellowship was for reef resilience and his work involved the Great Barrier Reef and reefs in Indonesia. His work did not involve the Coral Sea, nor does the report mention the Coral Sea.
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pjb05
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Re: Reefgate!
Reply #106 - May 4th, 2010 at 4:34pm
 
Walter Stark responds:
The following letter has been sent to Minister Garrett: Dear Minister Garrett, I bring this matter to your attention as the Minister responsible for oversight of the Great Barrier Reef Mariner Park Authority. My email of 14 April 2010 to Russell Reichelt, GBRMPA Chairman Re: Serious concerns with report on adaptive management of the GBR, has as yet received no reply or even acknowledgment of receipt from either GBRMPA or your office. The attached Media Response from GBRMPA dated 30 April was received by Fishing World magazine in response to their enquiry on this matter. As the response quotes Dr. Reichelt extensively on this situation it seems apparent he is fully aware of it and has chosen to ignore it. This stands in marked contrast to the prompt response from JCU when this same matter was brought to their attention in connection with the involvement of the ARC Centre for Excellence in Coral Reef Studies which they administer. The Deputy Vice-Chancellor has assured me that JCU takes such allegations seriously and they will be investigated. The dissembling Media Response from GBRMPA is not only pathetically inept, but also incorrect and self negating as well. It is dissembling in that it addresses none of the substantiative issues I have raised. It is inept in that not only is it unconvincing, it also presents the appearance that Dr. Reichelt must either believe he has no obligation to address such serious allegations or that he can simply ignore them. It is grossly incorrect in characterising my concerns as simply an opinion. On the contrary, the important issues I have raised are overwhelmingly matters of simple unequivocal facts which are clearly set forth and may readily be verified. It is self negating in that if one is to accept the argument presented, the response itself must be dismissed because it is only an opinion piece not published in a peer reviewed scientific journal. It might also be added that the idea that allegations of misconduct can be ignored if not published in a peer reviewed journal is pure self serving drivel. I would like to draw your attention to the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research, which is jointly administered by the ARC, National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and Universities Australia. The Code is available on the NHMRC website at http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/publications/synopses/r39syn.htm I am sure that a careful reading of this document and of the details of the issues I have raised will indicate that this is a matter of much greater concern, and indeed obligation, than has been recognised by either GBRMPA or your office. The failure of GBRMPA management to properly address this issue has now been compounded by this pathetically inept attempt to justify ignoring it. As GBRMPA is your responsibility I assume you would wish to be appraised of this situation and take steps to assure it is handled properly before even more damage is done. I will close with a quote from legal scholar Susan Kuzma (1992): “In the long run, the more corrosive force [of scientific misconduct] is the undermining of public confidence in an important public institution and the engendering of a cynical perception that the reporting and the funding of scientific research is a rigged game. Criminal prosecution plays a valuable role in demonstrating a commitment to absolute integrity in this important arena.” (1.) (1.) Sovacool, B. K., ‘Criminalization and Due Process to Reduce Scientific Misconduct,’ The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 5, Issue 5 September 2005 Sincerely, Walter Starck Full documentation on this issue may be downloaded at: http://www.goldendolphin.com/eco/Extraordinary Claims Regarding GBR Green Zones+++.pdf
Walter Starck on 03-May-10 05:17 PM
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« Last Edit: May 4th, 2010 at 7:12pm by pjb05 »  
 
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Re: Reefgate!
Reply #107 - May 8th, 2010 at 10:51am
 
Quote:
The bias in the paper is the best evidence.


How is it evidence that scientists are being pressured by golden triangles?

Quote:
It's curcumstantial of course along with evidence of their funding by the GBRMPA and Pew.


You mean it's a dot and you can draw whatever picture you want around it?

Quote:
Short of a signed and witnessed confession (unlikely), thats the best your going to get.


So what you are saying is that scientists are unable to speak the truth because of golden triangles, but there is no way for this to be exposed, except for joining a dot?
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Re: Reefgate!
Reply #108 - May 17th, 2010 at 10:58am
 
With the merry dance FD has lead it might be easy to forget what the original complaint was about (some method in that perhaps). Here's another article by Walter Starck which covers the same ground but also raises some new points:

Confirmation by silence: No explanation for scientific integrity concerns       
Wednesday, 28 April 2010 04:18

The serious issues of scientific integrity presented by the scientific report on adaptive management of the Great Barrier Reef (McCook et al., 2010), and to which I have drawn attention have resulted in no response from the authors, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) or Australian Environment Minister Peter Garrett. It appears that no credible explanation can be offered and responsible authority must think the entire matter is insignificant enough to just be ignored.

To reiterate briefly, the major concerns raised include:
•The authors declared no conflict of interest when all 21 of them are either employees of GBRMPA or have benefited from a total of millions of dollars in funding from them. In addition, any other research they do on the reef must also be approved by the GBRMPA. That this situation should be seen as devoid of conflicting interest makes a farce of the very concept. Although the journal which published this study has clear and explicit requirements for authors to disclose sources of funding and to address conflicting evidence, neither was done. This omission falsely presents that no such funding or conflicting evidence exists when in fact it is voluminous.
It has been falsely represented in both news releases and the report itself that closure to fishing has resulted in a doubling of fish numbers on many protected reefs when in fact only one of the eight reef areas surveyed showed such an increase and five of the eight areas showed a decline. In the one area which did show the doubling, it had the lowest numbers to start with and the fished reefs in that area also exhibited a similar increase. That such inter-annual fluctuations are common, natural and well known was ignored.
•It was also falsely claimed that the economic value of the GBR is A$5.5 billion (US$5.05 billion) and that, "Tourism accounts for the vast majority of reef-based income and employment. ...income from tourism is estimated to be about 36 times greater than commercial fishing." These claims are highly misleading. The value cited for the GBR includes the total for all tourism in the region when half of all tourists do not even visit the reef and the reef component for the majority of those who do see it, is a one-day tour. The economic value of commercial and recreational fishing plus retail fish sales and seafood meals in restaurants, actually makes the total value of fishing closer to twice that of reef tours.
•Numerous additional arguable, doubtful and even demonstrably false claims are also made with no discussion of conflicting evidence. Remarkably, some of the strongest and clearest of such conflict comes from other work published by the same authors.

It seems surreal, that this situation stems from what their own press release described as “a ‘who’s-who’ of Australian coral reef scientists”, an institution which modestly calls itself a “Centre of Excellence” and publication in one of the world’s most prestigious scientific journals. 

Left to stand unaddressed, this situation makes a farce of any pretence of scientific integrity, procedure or even facts. If as a society we can no longer recognise such an obvious violation of both reason and ethics on this level, the future of what is indeed the world’s luckiest country does not look very hopeful.

Across the nation, farmers, graziers, fishermen, miners, developers, ordinary property owners and indeed the entire productive sector is struggling under the burden of a bloated and unaccountable bureaucracy claiming scientific authority based on made-to-order research findings they have bought and paid for.

The resulting impact on people’s lives is not just an inconvenience. It is frequently devastating and is growing steadily worse. Recent Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) statistics show a 30 percent decline in the gross value of Australian fisheries and a 44 percent decline in real value of fishery exports over the past decade.

None of this is due to collapse of the resource. All of it is a direct result of increased regulation with dubious science playing a central role. When are we going to hear any expressions of outrage or even concern about any of this? Is it going to require an economic collapse and real hunger to halt this obscene charade? 

Coincidentally, the lead author and two others of the McCook et al. report have been recipients of generous Pew foundation fellowships. The Pew Environment Group is also a prominent sponsor of the Protect Our Coral Sea campaign which has commissioned another recent study by the same Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies that produced the McCook et al. report.

One author is common to both reports. This study finds that the most cost effective management for a vast new Coral Sea Marine Protected Area would be to make it a no-take zone and have it managed by GBRMPA. Taken together, the findings of the two reports and Pew involvement raise a further concern with regard to undisclosed interests.
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Re: Reefgate!
Reply #109 - May 17th, 2010 at 7:52pm
 
Quote:
Confirmation by silence: No explanation for scientific integrity concerns


I thought you said people were taking Walter seriously? Tell me PJ, do you think the 'no response' is out of fear of Walter's exposure, or because he isn't even on the radar of the people that matter?
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Re: Reefgate!
Reply #110 - May 17th, 2010 at 8:02pm
 
freediver wrote on May 17th, 2010 at 7:52pm:
Quote:
Confirmation by silence: No explanation for scientific integrity concerns


I thought you said people were taking Walter seriously? Tell me PJ, do you think the 'no response' is out of fear of Walter's exposure, or because he isn't even on the radar of the people that matter?


His allegations are serious and well substantiated. What are you saying, it's OK to ignore them? Also that fishermen and the jobs they create don't matter?
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Re: Reefgate!
Reply #111 - May 17th, 2010 at 8:09pm
 
I think it's OK to ignore them. That's what I tend to do. You have to choose your battles PJ. Every time I have taken him seriously in the past I ended up regretting wasting my time debunking what amounted to little more than a primary school level analysis.

Anyway, I thought you said people were taking him seriously. Are you now conceding that they aren't?
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Re: Reefgate!
Reply #112 - May 17th, 2010 at 8:23pm
 
[date=1274090941]I think it's OK to ignore them. That's what I tend to do. You have to choose your battles PJ.

Is that code for avoiding defending the indefensible?

Every time I have taken him seriously in the past I ended up regretting wasting my time debunking what amounted to little more than a primary school level analysis.

Is that code for you trying to obsfuscate the patently obvious?

Anyway, I thought you said people were taking him seriously. Are you now conceding that they aren't? [/quote]

What I said was that he is widely quoted in the media as a coral reef and fisheries expert in the context of you suggesting he is some sort of phoney. And so all those hard nosed journalists will then have to have been duped too.

The stonewalling of the of Garrett's office and the GBRMPA is a different matter. The most obvious explanation is that they don't want to defend the indefensible.   
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