Spotting the Myths about Spotted Owls Claims of Causality, Burdens of Proof, and the “Cause” of Rain in Seattle

Abstract

Professor Carroll and his colleagues deserve two forms of thanks for their critique of our earlier article (Freudenburg, Wilson, and O'Leary 1998). First, as we note again in the closing pages of this response, they show it is possible to take a professional approach to the expression of their disagreement, even on an issue they care about deeply. Second, if even researchers as distinguished as these misunderstood a number of our key points, then other readers may have misunderstood the points as well. Although we tried to be as clear as possible in our initial article, we will attempt to be even clearer and more direct in this response. The critique by Carroll et al. has two main parts. The first involves questions of scientific and technical judgments; the second has to do with what is sometimes called the moral exclusion literature and with the perceptions of those who live * in the logging-dependent communities of the Pacific Northwest. Our response follows the same basic organization.