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The Courage of Prediction
If, like me, you have a cynical streak, then you may share my suspicion of the process through which raw data are munged by statistical machines into trend charts with giant error bars, then distilled by policymakers into dollops of wisdom. Misplaced faith in oversimplified models, after all, has produced some whopping mistakes. Paul Ehrlich’s “Population Bomb” from the 1960s never fell. In the following decades, it was defused by advances in technology and retreats in fertility that ecologists failed to anticipate. In the late 1970s, geologists trumpeted warnings of oil production nearing its peak. Yet petrochemical companies now milk the Earth for one-third more oil than they did in 1980. And in the 1990s, fishery biologists unwittingly abetted the spectacular destruction of the Grand Banks cod fishery by basing their catch recommendations on mathematical models many knew to be flawed.
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Conservation magazine is published by the Society for Conservation Biology
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