Maybe Another Angle To Explore-Flaws In Their Research???

[Shane_78]

I have to agree with Matt. I read all the posts you put up there but I still don't thiknk that proves MPAs don't work. There is an huge amount of science out there justifying them and us coming out with these few things is not enough... I feel like this will happen no matter what we do. its very deflating.

[Adamy]

There is an huge amount of science out there justifying them

Correction!! There is a huge amount of LITERATURE supporting MPA's it ISNT science!! Which is the very point I/we are trying to make and actually making it quite successfully. Well maybe not the 3 or 4 people posting on this site but a good number of qualified scientists that are now questioning the validity behind the so called "science".

The body of literature actually doesnt prove that MPAs work and if you think it does may I suggest that you dont know how to read and interpret the data. Because many times the data (findings) contradict the authors conclusions, which means it isnt science - its just literature based on a personal bias - then passed on to a reviewer who has a similar personal bias, published by a journal which also promotes the same bias.

Yes some closures may be coming - but the science behind the proposed closures, not only can be, but is being debunked as we speak. The MBAA for instance is doing a good body of research, not aimed at stopping closures but ensuring that any closures are minimised and based on real science along with economic and socio-economic supporting data. Real science withstands critical review.

The main problem is people confusing the green spin on the literature available which supports the closures and interpreting it as real science and fact - when it is exactly that.... SPIN!

Adam

[billfisher]

Shane, I don't think you understand hoe science is supposed to work. Here's some more from Hilborn:

The scientific community gave a collective sigh of relief just before Christmas
2005 when Judge John E. Jones III ruled that intelligent design is not a scientific theory and cannot be taught alongside evolution as an alternative scientific hypothesis. There is no better way to unite any group of fractious scientists than to bring up creationism and intelligent design as alternative scientific hypotheses—scientists know that these faith-based ideas are not scientific and have no place in a scientific course. The court’s ruling is a triumph for the scientific method of hypotheses being confronted by data and a setback for those with a political agenda masquerading as science.

However, before we congratulate ourselves too much for the triumph of the
scientific method over belief, I suggest the fisheries community needs to look at itself and question whether there is not a within our own field a strong movement of faithbased acceptance of ideas, and a search for data that support these ideas, rather than critical and skeptical analysis of the evidence. This faith-based fisheries movement has emerged in the last decade, and it threatens the very heart of the scientific process—peer review and publication in the top journals. Two journals with the highest profile, Science and Nature, clearly publish articles on fisheries not for their scientific merit, but for their publicity value.

Beginning in at least 1993 with an article I co-authored (Ludwig et al. 1993), Science and Nature have published a long string of papers on the decline and collapse of fisheries that have attracted considerable public attention, and occasionally gaining coverage in the New York Times and the Washington Post. I assert that the peer review process has now totally failed and
many of these papers are being published only because the editors and selected reviewers believe in the message, or because of their potential newsworthiness.

A paper in Science (Roberts et al. 2001) purported to show an example of how a marine protected area (MPA) increased yields outside the protected area, when in fact the abundance of fish outside the protected
area increased within one year of the establishment of the MPA. Any competent peer reviewer would have seen the flaw in this logic—the theory of MPA impacts on adjoining areas requires at least a generation for abundance to build inside reserves and recruitment to spill out (Hilborn
2002). The displacement of fishing effort from inside to outside the reserve should initially cause abundance outside to decrease, so the increasing abundance outside the reserve after MPA establishment must have been due to an uncontrolled effect.

A community of belief has arisen whose credo has become “fisheries management has failed, we need to abandon the old approaches and use marine protected areas and ecosystem-based management.” I fear
that this belief has shaded the peer review process so badly that almost any paper showing a significant decline in fish abundance or benefits of marine protected areas has a high probability of getting favorable reviews in some journals regardless of the quality of the analysis. Critical peer review
has been replaced by faith-based support for ideas and too many scientists have become advocates. An advocate knows the answer and looks for evidence to support it; a scientist asks nature how much support there is for competing hypotheses.