doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Simon says, Oh, never mind…

Craig: we all get that academic fraud is rampant
https://www.ft.com/content/fcad4a70-5ba0-4c42-bcec-332cf3b19f5d
And they all get caught, eventually
Are you aware of a lead in wildfowl or eagle study that was proven to be faked? I understand the interpretation of the data may certainly be suspect.

We all get that research grants awarded by either the government or private industry come with an agenda

We all get that our moral and intellectual progressive superiors in government despise us "deplorables", our culture, and our standards - and are increasingly willing to make that clear.

We all get that political appointees do what their superiors tell them to do, not what is best for us or the wildlife

I don't believe however that proclaiming "the science sucks", some of which is now 60 years old with hundreds of published studies, or implying that professional wildlife biologist are all corrupt and duplicitous in a scam contributes anything helpful to the conversation.
What, exactly, about the "science" sucks - the methodology, the statistics, the lead levels, the sampling, the autopsies...or is it the assumptions and conclusions that "suck"?

Fair enough Doc drew, and I am willing to go through a long list of my points to ultimately agree with you. If it is okay with you, I'll use one of your earlier examples. Say you have a dear loved one in need of heart surgery, in an ideal world, would one turn to the type of research that Dr Fauci claimed was driving his covid policies, or do we have trust in the science that guides the cardiologist, just about to start the procedure?

I am of the opinion that the cardiologist must demand that their head and hands be guided by real scientific principals, maybe similar in a small way that the sportsman steward is, of our habitat. I get it, I wouldn't feed my grandkids old paint chips, but does the country truly benefit from kali political science wagging the dog? Solutions may solve your rhetoric concerns, but we are in a time where one must be loud and, or provocative to be heard. Isn't that why this subject appears on your radar?

I would edit to add, there are many voters who have absolutely no clue where grants or conclsions come from, only what the chairman wants them to see siktok. If you go back to the thread that linked soarraptors, living on a govgrant existence, at the time they sensationally splashed an xray image the showed some hundred twenty lead pieces, now long pulled.

Occasionally, I shoot at The Skyway Shooting Club in St. Petersburg, Florida about 3 miles from my condo. Nice club, but it is a poor setup because you shoot trap directly at a hillside and on the other side of that hill/backstop is a lake. They go through a lot of instruction about how to shoot, (I believe they even made me watch a movie) because of the numerous lawsuits they have had against them for people shooting into that lake. If you shot over that hillside you will be banned from shooting there anymore. You have to purchase their boxes of steel shot ammo at $10.00 a box and it costs $8.00 for a round of trap. A person walks with everyone when they shoot and you can't shoot until they tell you to shoot- so they can be behind you to watch you when you shoot. I recently started to drive about 40 miles up to Odessa and started shooting at The Silver Dollar Shooting Club. Beautiful place and better shooting. You can shoot your own lead reloads there and not have to worry about any wildfowl.

Dr. Drew: I am clearly not against all science (as most of it has been beyond-beneficial for all of us). My laser sight-corrected eyes and and my wife's rebuilt knee (with a cadaver ACL) are a testament to all that. Two college degrees and 25-plus years working as a federal government contractor has taught me a few things though...which you obviously understand as well..."We all get that our moral and intellectual progressive superiors in government despise us "deplorables", our culture, and our standards - and are increasingly willing to make that clear."

Corrupted science is my particular dislike, and it seems to be rampant these days. We are clearly in an immense culture war, and since demography is destiny (& our borders are now completely porous) we seem to be losing that war. Not sure how it will all end-up but I've largely thrown in the towel. I simply can't spend all my remaining days angry & frustrated so... I collect my paycheck, vote my conscious, and I keep my head down and my mouth shut (pretty-much everywhere else but here). I'm grateful for the many good things in my life and I try to make every day count. I do what I can in my immediate world to promote what I believe to be true and just, I try to get closer to my God (not an easy thing for me) and I try very hard to be positive influence, not a negative one (& that, for me, is where the real challenge lies).

This is just more repetitive and silly nonsense Preacher. In the last Lead Thread that you provided the link to, you repeated your baseless idea that scientists who fake or fudge data all eventually get caught... and that they pay a hefty penalty.

I quickly refuted that by reminding you and the other anti-lead ammo advocates here about the 2009 Climategate scandal where leaked emails showed that climate data was being falsely manipulated by researchers at Penn State University and East Anglia University in order to propagate the notion that the Earth was warming far faster. After that, talk about Global Warming suddenly became very quiet for about a year until the scandal faded from the public's short memories. Then the "Scientists" went right back to providing more highly questionable data, and calling anyone who questions it a Climate Denier. No need to rehash some of the Global Warming debates we've had here. I have also told about the trout dinner I enjoyed in college. The trout were supplied by a researcher who was studying the effects of acid mine drainage contaminating Pennsylvania trout streams. He told me he sacrificed the fish for us to eat at a college party, and would place the blame on low pH exposure in his study results. He explained that manipulating data was pretty common to achieve the desired conclusions. He went on to tell us how, at that time, it helped a lot to work the word "Cancer" into any grant application... just as the new favored buzz-word to procure funding is now "Climate Change".

When Ben Deeble did one of his huge dumps of links to anti-lead ammo studies. I read them and noticed a very wide disparity in what the researchers claimed constituted a lethal blood lead level in ducks. I have repeatedly asked the anti-lead true believers here numerous times to explain that. They all can't be right. So do we believe them, and just pretend that the data doesn't come close to a consensus? It would seem you want us all to simply stop asking you uncomfortable questions, and you instead hope Dave Weber will lock or delete the Thread and shut down any further discussion that doesn't agree with your preconceived notions. That is intentionally deceitful behavior.

One study I referenced earlier, was posted in the Lead and Condors Thread. It told the horrific story of the eagle that had blood lead levels that were alleged to be far beyond lethal, and literally off the charts. Are you saying that you actually believe that blood lead levels can be so high that an avian research facility couldn't even measure them? Well, it would appear you do.

And are you really saying that you also actually believe that an eagle with such a massive and fatally toxic dose of lead could actually have the ability to fly, and still be strong and coordinated enough to perch on a tree branch? Somebody needs to call the Vatican to investigate such a miraculous event, because they might wish to build a church on that spot.

So who even got the chance to prove that was a fake study? As with most of what passes for science on the subject of advancing lead ammo bans, there was no peer review. When they publish this bullshit, they don't provide the carcass or the lead laced gut piles for independent toxicological analysis. So what exactly is left for readers who can actually comprehend that there is no way for it to be even remotely credible. They just put this garbage out there and count on naive guys like you to accept it, and to be critical of anyone who dares to question it.

Here is an interesting study for the few who are capable of critical analysis. The Chicken Little's are unlikely to get past the first sentence without again jumping to the conclusion that lead ammo has to go:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0300985818813099

Note first that the first sentence of the Abstract specifically emphasizes ingestion of lead from spent ammunition as a cause of mortality in eagles. Then note that this was a study of 93 eagles that were admitted and either died or were euthanized due to lead toxicity over a period of 11 years from 2004 to 2015. This was done at the Raptor Center at the University of Minnesota. Now go to Table 1 on page 291 and note that only 27 of these 93 birds were found with Lead particles found within the gastrointestinal tract (clinicalradiographs or necropsy) So only 29% of the sick birds had lead particles in their digestive system, and the study does not say what the source of those lead particles was. Yet the Abstract focused only on lead from spent ammunition, and nowhere in the entire study was there mention of all of the many other sources of lead contamination in the environment.

So even if lead ammo was the sole cause of lead poisoning in those 27 sick eagles, which is highly doubtful considering that many other sources are much more bioavailable, that amounts to about 2.45 birds per year admitted to a facility specializing in treating sick or injured raptors... Which is hardy excessive compared to the numbers that are killed due to windmill strikes and numerous other causes. From 1986 to 2017, the leading cause of Bald Eagle deaths in Michigan was being hit by cars. So with that knowledge, surely people like LGF will stop driving a car, because it would be hypocritical to continue placing birds at risk. Plus as Ted noted, we have a healthy and rapidly expanding eagle population. I am now much more likely to see a Bald Eagle in Pennsylvania than a native Ringneck Pheasant. But for this, the Chicken Little's are running around screaming that lead ammo must be banned. Remember that the mortality rate in eagles is greater from electrocution and collision trauma than of poisonings from all sources including lead. And lead ammunition is not the sole cause of lead poisoning in eagles. Far from it. It's sad to think that any shooter or hunter would simply bury their head in the sand and just allow the anti-gunners and anti-hunters to incrementally destroy us. They won't ever stop, even if they succeeded in banning lead ammo entirely.

I can't improve on Doc Drew's response: blaming inconvenient science on corrupt scientists or commie plots just reveals ignorance of how science works. There were years of study all pointing to the same conclusion on ingested shot killing waterfowl; if that research was all wrong, please show us the studies proving it.

I first encountered the issue in 1968, talking to an old warden on Sauvie Island outside Portland. He told me of finding hundreds of 'green-asses' every year, dead or dying ducks with their vents stained green from undigested food dribbling out because ingested lead bound digestive enzymes. They simply starved. Observations like this go much farther back and finally led to the research at the USFWS wildlife toxicology lab at Patuxent which eventually led to the lead ban.

And yes, lead shot does sink into the mud and become unavailable to birds picking up grit from the bottom - you don't find green-asses anymore.

Every condor in California is trapped annually and put through a dialysis-like procedure to remove lead from their blood, the lead coming from gut piles and ground squirrels shot with .22's. This is very expensive and personnel-intensive but the birds would die out otherwise.

The main reason that there are more raptors today is that they have recovered from the DDT era, during which bird and fish eating species nearly went extinct due to DDT thinning their eggshells. Like lead sinking under mud, DDT is disappearing from the environment in North American and Europe after the ban and the birds have recovered, but it is still a huge problem in the tropics, where it is widely used, and for northern birds which winter in the tropics.

As to saying that other things like wind turbines kill eagles and everything else that flies, yes they absolutely do, which is why I favor nuclear power over wind, or covering much of the US with solar farms. But adding to that mortality with lead poisoning doesn't negate the impact of either - mortality is additive. That's like the cat-lovers saying that window strikes, poisoning, and predators also kill songbirds so why worry about the billions killed by cats?

Wildlife numbers worldwide are plummeting at a terrifying rate, for any number of human-related causes. It is up to us to resolve as many of those factors as possible, not point to some as reasons to ignore or justify others. We are destroying Creation for our own convenience.

"2009 Climategate scandal where leaked emails showed that climate data was being falsely manipulated by researchers at Penn State University and East Anglia University"
Not that simple and you should know better
https://stories.uea.ac.uk/the-story-behind-the-trick/

Please post a link or reference to a lead toxicity study in waterfowl or eagles that was retracted for falsifying/faking data. 500-600 papers are retracted every year - there's gotta be some from wildlife biologists
https://www.science.org/content/art...about-science-publishing-s-death-penalty
They call it the "death penalty" because research misconduct is a big deal in academics
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK214564/

Please post a quotation where I advocated a lead shot/ammo ban

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0300985818813099
86 or the 93 had histologic evidence of lead toxicity.
Maybe they pooped out the ingested lead?? Or eventually puked the lead out with the casing??



https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jwmg.21822
1,490 dead eagles. 176 from lead poisoning

https://www.researchgate.net/public...ational_Wildlife_Health_Center_1975-2013
2,980 bald eagles and 1,427 golden eagles
879 were poisoned, and of those poisoned, 552 were poisoned by lead



Buried in this. You are correct. Golden Eagles die from lots of things
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9286660/
We recovered 175 dead golden eagles that were tagged with transmitters and determined the cause of death for 126 (72%). The observed causes of death were starvation and emaciation (N = 37), shooting (N = 16), collisions (N = 16; five with vehicles, two with wind turbines, two with power lines, one with a train, and six undetermined), accidents (N = 15; four predation, two impacts with natural features, one drowning, one burned in a wildfire, and seven trauma but in natural settings), electrocution (N = 13), poisoning (N = 10; four lead, three multiple substances including lead, two Aldicarb, and one anticoagulant rodenticide [Cholorophacinone and Diphacinone]), disease (N = 8; four West Nile virus, two septicemia, one complications from knemidocoptiasis, and one with multiple issues), intraspecific fighting (N = 7, 6 of which were AY3 individuals), and trapping (N = 4; one Conibear, one snare, and two unspecified traps).
For > 1 yr golden eagles, the model indicated most deaths were from shooting (20%), collision (18%), electrocution (14%), and poisoning (13%).

Your personal observations regarding eagle recovery in PA (a good thing) are irrelevant to whether eagles are dying from lead ingestion. Is it really your position that lead has no toxicity in wildlife? Based on one anecdotal report of high lead levels in a surviving eagle?

But we're just repeating ourselves. Dave can do what he wants. His forum.

You seem to be a passionate advocate, but I'm not so sure your likes and dislikes are any more valid than any others.

I believe lead is a toxin, that can be harmful and deadly to wildlife. I hope you can join me in a brief smile, inappropriate as it might be. The one thing that's indisputable would be, were I a sick Bald Eagle, the science says to decline chelation therapy.

Back to my question, what do we do about polisci.

This is rich... LGF posts that he can't improve upon the Preachers response which "reveals ignorance of how science works", then in the Preacher's very next post he admits that at least 5-600 Scientific Papers are retracted every year, and he provides a link that admits 60% of the thousands retracted are due to FRAUD.

Hahahaha! Trust the phony science, and just ignore what you actually see and read! And pretend there is no FRAUD even after the Preachers posts a link to an article proving retractions due to FRAUD exist, and that the number is only getting larger.

LGF also repeats the lame excuse that all those thousands or perhaps millions of tons of lead shot that was deposited in lakes, swamps, rivers, oceans , and other wetlands is no longer killing ducks because it has sunk deep out of reach into the silt. This is a silly assumption that neglects some very important facts. Not all bottoms of all water bodies are covered with deep silt. There are gravel, clay, and rocky bottoms, firm enough that lead shot won't sink deep, if at all. Furthermore, the density of pure lead is is 11.3 gr/ cu. cm while the density of gold is much greater at 19.4 gr./cu. cm. Yet divers and treasure hunters manage to find gold bars, coins, and objects from shipwrecks that happened hundreds of years ago. This much denser gold did not sink totally out of sight or out of reach. Guys who pan for gold in creeks routinely find lead shot. Bullets fired over 150 years ago on Civil War battlefields are often found on or near the surface. Then we have to consider that different ducks have vastly different feeding habits. Dabblers typically do not probe the bottom where spent shot would be. They feed on suspended aquatic vegetation and invertebrates. Stiff-tail divers actually probe into the silt where LGF says this spent shot is inaccessible. And don't forget that silt is easily churned up by storms and wave action. The ducks should still be dying in large numbers, and hunters should be reporting large numbers of waterfowl with green stained asses and other symptoms of lead poisoning.

It was also interesting that Preacher once again did not did not even try to address the questions I have been asking about obvious bias and widely conflicting data about what constitutes a lethal blood lead level in ducks. He essentially ignores the reporting of the eagle that had a blood lead level so high it was reportedly way beyond lethal, and too high to even measure... yet it was somehow still healthy enough to fly and perch in a tree.

Preacher dishonestly attempts to twist my argument by asking if it is my position that lead has no toxicity in wildlife, when I have never once made such a statement. In fact, it was a really stupid question considering that I acknowledged right here that eagles die from lead poisoning, but die in greater numbers from electrocution and being struck by vehicles.

Preacher also asks me to provide a QUOTE where he has ever advocated a lead ammo ban. But I never claimed he made such a direct statement. He really doesn't have to because he is showing us that he is supportive of the anti-lead so-called research, and is highly critical of anyone who dares to even question it. Actions really do speak louder than words.

In the past Lead Ammo Threads, I have also posted links to research that intelligently disputes the agenda driven anti-lead ammo research. There really is strong conflicting science out there that is in opposition to the notion that lead ammo is such a serious threat, that some isolated poisonings are just cause for further bans and restrictions. I thought we are supposed to be managing wildlife on a species population basis rather than an individual basis, and making knee-jerk policy based upon threats that are not nearly as bad as other things that are largely ignored. Here's a link to Hunt For Truth, a Pro-Hunting organization that has amassed and reviewed tens of thousands of papers and studies that refute the idea that lead ammunition is the major source of lead poisoning in birds and animals. I've posted this before, but apparently the Preacher couldn't be bothered to consider any data that our former anti-lead Guru Ben Deeble wouldn't agree with.

https://www.huntfortruth.org/

https://web.archive.org/web/20170319070811/http://www.huntfortruth.org/science/scientific-opinions/papersstudies/

Here's another paper that recognized metallic chunks of lead such as shot pose far less risk to birds than other more bioavailable sources such as lead dust, paint chips, pesticides and chemicals, etc. If ingested, they typically pass before any significant amount can be absorbed into the system. Anyone remember Amarillo Mike telling us that he has several dozen lead shot pellets embedded in his posterior from a hunting accident, and isn't suffering from lead poisoning? If he had the same amount of lead dust in his tissue, he would likely be dead. The information is out there for anyone who is intelligent and open-minded enough to understand that there is a ton of anti-hunting, and anti-gun, and anti-lead ammo bias in Academia. And anyone who says that Game Department wildlife biologists are infallible and always working for hunter's best interests is smoking crack.

https://dr.lib.iastate.edu/entities/publication/88187710-c019-4aa5-9bdb-94fd6351ddbe

Finally, I have cited the 2009 Climategate scandal several times as one source of evidence that science is sometimes falsified in order to reach a predetermined conclusion. It hit close to home because I am embarrassed to say my Alma Mater was involved in the FRAUD. So I followed it very closely when it happened. If Pensylvania State University was innocent, I would have defended what they did. Not every Meterologist at Penn State participated. I took a course in Meterology taught by Dr. Joel Myers, the co-founder of Accu-Weather. He and Penn State Meterologist Joe Bastardi refute much of the radical Climate Change propaganda. The Preacher has not paid attention to what has happened with that huge scandal that very nearly derailed the Global Warming agenda. When it happened, it was a huge embarrassment to the guilty parties. Even the Liberal Media saw how bad the falsification and manipulation of data was, and they steered clear of reporting about Climate Change for many months. They waited until the memory of the scandal faded away, but could never get past many people like me who remembered exactly what happened. So in recent years, the Left has twisted the truth again, and are trying to place the blame on the Hackers who intercepted and published the Smoking Gun emails. Now they are accusing the people who exposed the truth of misrepresentation, and attempting to discredit them as Climate Deniers. The Left has done the same with the fraudulent data published by Dr. Michael Mann with his discredited Hockey Stick graph that falsely proved Global Warming at a faster rate. They are shooting the messenger in an attempt to save face. Hitler's propaganda minister Josef Goebbels would be proud, and the Preacher should know better.