As a veteran of wars between groups cherrypicking articles that suit their conclusions from the hundreds of studies, good and bad, out there, this back and forth was all-too-familiar. Anyone reading Gavin Gibbons’ attack on Cecil’s column as a standalone article - something I’m often faced with - would have no doubt that he thoroughly demolished Cecil in every detail.
Cecil’s response looks to be a sound rebuttal, complete with both journal article evidence and a supposed prosecution witness making a surprise appearance for the other side.
Since I’m a frequent critic of Cecil’s science work, I’m compelled to acknowledge good work when I see it.
Does that mean that Cecil is right and Gibbons is wrong? I wish I knew. That Gibbons is a paid defender of a trade organization is usually taken to mean that you can discount everything he says as biased. Unfortunately, I’ve found that sometimes the industry is a good source of accurate information and that the attackers are far more biased on their side. You need to become an expert yourself to know when to believe which side.
I’m not an expert in fish stock and I’m certain that Cecil isn’t either. I found the evidence for both sides interesting but nowhere near final. Perhaps the real answer is that a non-expert shouldn’t try to address a question of this complexity in a column-sized article.
I think Gibbons should be discounted for better reasons than his paid position. He claimed that Worm “disavowed” his 2006 paper–strong language that Worm denied. The nonsense regarding PCB consumption was frankly insulting. I can’t read that as anything but intentionally misleading.
I’m a marine biologist that works in fisheries (government-paid, so neither industry nor conservation FWIW) and was indirectly involved with Dr. Worm’s more recent paper that Cecil cites. I think your last sentence on the real answer (“not answerable in column-sized sound bites”) is on target. In short, the answer is right down the middle: we’ve done damage (as found by Dr. Worm’s first paper), we are continuing to do damage in many, many places. But where the political will exists to turn damage around, it’s quite possible to recover and catch fish while we recover - many examples of doing so exist and there’s many sustainable seafood supplies out there.
Cecil’s answers are journalistic simplifications aided and abetted by the style of the top-line journals (Nature and Science); these two journals themselves are quite adept at cherry-picking “hell-and-handbasket” environmental warning cries so that headlines can be grabbed by non-expert journalists and the public hungry for controversy - while the more balanced articles take some digging and persistence to find. (This is not to say that the Science articles are bad science per se; but they tend to be one-sided in tone and interpretation).
Dr. Worm’s first Science article, in fact, raised a bit of a stink in the fisheries science community for its conclusions and/or oversimplifications, resulting in back-and-forth letters to the editor, etc., for some time. The second (2009) article was the result of the coming together of a larger group of scientists to try and reach a “consensus” viewpoint. This consensus viewpoint (that damage has been and is being done, but can be reversed and in placed has been or is being reversed) is a good one. However many problems continue to exist (e.g. mislabeling) and the political pressure to do the reversing doesn’t always exist, especially in non first-world countries.
What’s a member of the public to do? Probably the best right now is to find some of those “good/bad” seafood lists out there (there are several) and enjoy the seafood knowing it’s from a sustainable source. Keeping up the political/economic pressure on the bad ones is critical and should continue - for example through the many conservation groups that are doing so - but global rhetorical calls that “all fish are going away by 2048” are too easy to dismiss as “just more noise from those crazy environmentalists.”
One very critical difference between Cecil and an industry representative is when Cecil examines a question which is mailed in, he almost never* (IMO) seems to have a bias one way or another. When I send him research papers he asks for, or we have very lengthy discussions about any topic, he never says “Una, I think the answer is this, what can we find that supports that” it’s always, well, “what’s the Straight Dope here - which side is right, or is it both, or neither?”
Having helped Cecil with the original column in question here, and the follow-up, there was no observable bias IMO in the process of researching it and discussing the results. Of course I don’t live in Cecil’s mind, and unintentional bias could be at play, but in this case I think more than enough due diligence was done on this question.
I think in political-oriented or any opinion-based subjects there may be, but that’s pretty much expected.
While a seafood industry representative could definitely be said to have a bias, the limited selection of scientists that you and Cecil quote (Worm, Pauly and… Mother Jones?) are considered by many in the field to be very much on the conservation/alarmist side of neutral - in a way, this is how they made names for themselves. Or perhaps it’s better to say that the “top-line” journals picked them and made them well-known due to their controversial positions. As I said before, this is not bad science on their parts per se (individual scientists invariably trend towards a viewpoint coming from their results and experience even if their funding source is “neutral”) but it’s definitely quoting from one side of the literature.
Perhaps a definition of due diligence in typical journalism but I’ve learned to expect much more from you and Cecil!
Still, to be fair, this set of columns almost exactly mirrors what happened in the scientific literature itself (A gloom-and-doom article from Dr. Worm, a lot of letters of protest from the other side, a follow-up more nuanced article). Saying that Dr. Worm “repudiated” his earlier work is certainly spin, but he did add considerable nuances and caveats to his earlier claims.
I consider this to be an excellent piece of journalistic work. My thanks to Cecil for playing it straight and to Una to giving the documentation to back up what Cecil already knew (of course).
You may want to see the first column; more references are listed there. There were also some references not listed used for confirmation. I did not look at the Mother Jones News reference so I can’t comment on that.
Perhaps there is a point there, but I’ll add that there was definitely a preponderance of views reflecting what Cecil ultimately chose to write about. While articles published in mainstream journals such as Science and Nature do get a harder look, they often are only starting points for a massive download of technical papers both supporting and rebutting a theme. In the case of the fishy column, a total of exactly 40 sources were reviewed by myself - Cecil found a large number himself, but I’m honestly uncertain of how many, to tell the truth. Actually I tell a fib; 40 were acquired by myself, I reviewed perhaps 60 or 70. Again, I have no clear idea of the total number examined by the Big Guy, but he does a damn lot of work so it could be quite a large number.
I’m only Cecil’s handmaiden…err, can guys have handmaidens? That sounds somewhat un-manly. I help out where I can because while he knows everything, he does have limited time to chase down references at the library.
And I’m certain that Cecil, like myself, appreciates very much your kind words.
Just wanted to give Cecil props for an excellent rebuttal. The PCB argument stuck out when I read the Gibbons letter, and I am heartened that Cecil nailed him on that.
Thanks for taking the time to explain your working methods - it gives me hope and strength to see the lengths at which you are still going in the name of Fighting Ignorance.
Most of the articles actually cited in the first column were on PCBs with which I have no quibble whatsoever. And I don’t disagree with Cecil on any fact here on wild fish, actually - and this writing and research is better than 99% of any other newspaper-length stories on the issue.
So, on wild fish, perhaps it’s simply a matter of opinion and future outlook (very legitimate opinion, so I’m not going to call it spin). I’m lucky enough to work in a region where the fisheries and management bodies learned fairly well from the Atlantic cod and other examples, and got smart, and (with constant, constant diligence) are doing reasonably well at the moment. Such places do exist (and Cecil does briefly acknowledge their existence) and over the years I’ve seen several non-rosy places turn around and get on the road to improvement. So it’s sometimes disappointing that the rare islands of light, and real working efforts, tend to get lost in the gloom that many of the world’s fisheries are still in and reported to be in - the islands are less common than any of us would like them to be.
I thought the most egregious example involved highlighting smaller fishing grounds and not mentioning the larger ones.
One of the industry cites that I’d like to follow up on is, “The researchers concluded that heart disease benefits outweigh theoretical cancer risks by 100- to 370-fold for farmed salmon.” I don’t find that implausible, though the magnitudes are surprising and I wonder whether the dose-response effects are linear. Does somebody who eats 100 pounds of fish per year face 100x the cancer risk of somebody who eats 1 pound? Or is it more? Perhaps that might be discussed in GQ.
I can’t comment on the state of the fishing industry as I have no clue which side is right, but I WAS pleased to see the total smackdown over the accusation of shoddy research.
My experience has always been that chances are two people can look at the same article and come to two different conclusions, it’s human nature. But to accuse someone of NOT doing their research in the first place?
It seems to me that Cecil, Peerless Master though he be, skates on the thin ice of an (informal) circumstantial ad hominem when he writes:
Admittedly, Cecil goes on to argue–flawlessly–against Gibbons using strictly facts and evidence, point by point. His rebuttal was, typically, scrupulous and scholarly.
But I do find it slightly disappointing when I see him include a statement that is not only unnecessary and irrelevant, but also unsupported by facts* and improperly dismissive of another’s viewpoint.
*Sure, it stands to reason that Gibbons has a vested interest in making the arguments that he does. But stating this publicly, as if it were undisputed fact, and making an unequivocal claim along the lines of, “to an extent your complaint is simply that ” is just a textbook example of a circumstantial ad hom. Thing is, Cecil doesn’t know for a fact what Gibbons’ desires or complaints are, so any questioning of them is just poisoning the well.
I can think of no good reason for Cecil to have included the statement, at all. It sounds just amateurish and desperate. Even more strange is how utterly unnecessary it was to begin with. As I have noted, Cecil fairly well demolished Gibbons’ objections with sold information.
The reason for including the statement was to get, up front, to what much of this thread is about: “To an extent your complaint is simply that I put a darker spin on things than you’d like.”
If that was all there was to the complaint, there would have been no need for a follow-up column. The claim of shoddy research, though, Cecil had to fight.
There are several posts in this thread trying to correct Cecil’s work by saying that the answer isn’t clear cut. I don’t think Cecil was saying that it was. I thought he was saying, very clearly, what squidfood said in this thread:
In order to say that, Cecil began the article by saying that there are those with darker spin and those with happier spin. (Industry reps will certainly put the most positive spin possible.) Cecil concluded the article by saying pretty much what squidfood said.
On the contrary, DSYEsq, been reading him for decades. I love 'im to death, and understand that he’s not doing this to win any high-school debate team matches. Still, I do think that once things come down to specific rebuttals and responses, as this particular column did, then his prose should be just a bit more formal and airtight.
That’s just IMHO, though. Reasonable folks can differ.
CKDexH:
Quite right. Cecil was clearly acknowledging the complexity/ambiguity of this issue, and how differing view points can alter interpretations. But I also think he could have done that without making the unequivocal declaration about Gibbons’ intentions, that he did.
Basically, I respectfully disagree with both his (and your) apparent belief that it’s rhetorically OK to go ahead and positively assert that one’s opponent is definitely skewing things because of personal circumstance. Sure, it’s very highly likely, but I just don’t think it’s appropriate to state it as fact.
Extremely minor issue, though. I’m not gonna keep fussin’ about it.
I found an article on the Harvard fish study. I add emphasis.
“…the benefits of eating a modest amount of fish per week–about 3 ounces of farmed salmon or 6 ounces of mackerel–reduced the risk of death from coronary heart disease (CHD) by 36%.”
I’m happy to hear that. But portions at my favorite fish joints typically exceed 1/4 pound. What if I eat 1/2 lb. of fish once a week, or 1 lb. over two sittings?
“For example, for farmed salmon, the cardiovascular benefits are greater than the cancer risks by a factor of at least 300:1. With the exception of some locally caught sport fish from contaminated inland waters, the levels of PCBs and dioxins in fish should not influence decisions about fish intake.”
Ok. I’ll be careful if a friend lands a big one on the Delaware. But this is what reassures me:
“The levels of PCBs and dioxins in fish species are low, similar to other commonly consumed foods such as beef, chicken, pork, eggs, and butter.”
In practice we’re making choices between different foods. So it seems that fish remains a fairly healthy option -relative to the non-vegan alternatives- though the article notes that pregnant women might want to limit their weekly consumption to 2 portions, “…and avoid only four species of fish–golden bass (also known as tilefish), king mackerel, shark and swordfish–larger, predatory fish that have higher levels of mercury.”
Generally, it’s assumed that at low levels, dose-response for carcinogens is linear. I’m not sure it’s really made it past an assumption at this point. But it’s plausible, given what we know about how carcinogens work, and as far as I know there’s no real research suggesting a different type of curve, so everybody is happy to go with the easy linear model.
