[TowerTalk] Bird Kills - But, Please Don't Kill the Messenger

[Tom Rauch]

> Here's the url of the well-publicized Bird Kill report - released by the
> American Bird Conservancy.
> http://www.abcbirds.org/download/towerkillweb.PDF There could be some very
> interesting discussions with the authors that are referenced starting on
> page 20 of the report.

The people writing that report must not know much about statistical 
analysis, or enjoy presenting data that is meaningless.

They used data collected from what might be unusual events 
between 1957 and present, totalled up the numbers, and presented 
those numbers as a figure that shows how bad towers are.

1.) Let's total up the race of people killed in all the major reported 
airplane accidents from 1957 through present.

2.) Let's total up the number of people killed in large bus accidents 
from 1957 through 2000.

3.) Let's total up the number of birds killed by cats since 1957 and 
see how many that is.

How silly can they get. Nowhere in the report does it express 
number of birds killed at towers vs number of birds in existence 
over the same number of years.




73, Tom W8JI
w8ji@contesting.com

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