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> We initially focused this search on US studies, but due to a limited sample of these studies, we expanded the search "Our data about US were so poor that we

> We initially focused this search on US studies, but due to a limited sample of these studies, we expanded the search "Our data about US were so poor that we needed to add data from other continents" > cats kill 1.3–4 billion birds each year in the U.S. "But we still ended somehow with this bold and likeable value made with a mix of pure air, foreign data and statistical spice" Another case of turd data polished to gold by the magic of science. People will repeat it for decades online.

callalex 3y ago
You provide quotes but no attribution for those quotes.
- pvaldes 3y ago
  Fair point. This is the original article in nature. https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380?WT.mc_id=FBK_NCOMMS#abstract https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380?WT.mc_id=FBK_NCOM... "Methods: We searched JSTOR, Google Scholar, and the Web of Science database [...] within the Web of Knowledge search engine [...] to identify studies that document cat predation on birds and mammals" "We initially focused this search on US studies, but due to a limited sample of these studies, we expanded the search to [...] other temperate regions. We also searched for studies providing estimates of cat population sizes [on] the contiguous USA and for US studies that estimate the proportion of owned cats with outdoor access and the proportion of cats that hunt wildlife. [Our] search terms included: ‘domestic cat’ [combined] with ‘predation,’ ‘prey,’ ‘diet,’ ‘food item’ and ‘mortality’;" "We estimated wildlife mortality in [...] USA by multiplying data-derived probability distributions of predation rates by distributions of estimated cat abundance" "[]" edited by me for clarity Data-derived distributions based on a poor sample were extrapolated to every ecosystem in US? Data with a special focus on temperate areas were extrapolated to temperate and non temperate? Have deserts the same amount of birds as forests? Assuming that preys are equally distributed on USA would need to assume that every ecosystem is equal, or that cats are equally successful chasing birds in all terrains. This seems unlikely. To start because birds migrate and its distribution is patched. Cats can't migrate. Taiga in winter don't has the same birds as Florida in winter
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - pvaldes 3y ago
    not to mention that there is a huge bias in bibliography by design, because any predation study of type 'we didn't found any evidence of wild animals preyed by cats in our place' wouldn't be published. If you base your search on bibliography you are pruning all the negative results. This is like removing all negative numbers before calculating an average value. We need to remember also that "Local cats killed minus 1000 birds", would be a perfectly acceptable result [1] that is excluded from the search and the article. [1] (= Cats save 1000 birds by killing egg-eating rats)

callalex 3y ago

You provide quotes but no attribution for those quotes.

pvaldes 3y ago
Fair point. This is the original article in nature. https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380?WT.mc_id=FBK_NCOMMS#abstract https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380?WT.mc_id=FBK_NCOM... "Methods: We searched JSTOR, Google Scholar, and the Web of Science database [...] within the Web of Knowledge search engine [...] to identify studies that document cat predation on birds and mammals" "We initially focused this search on US studies, but due to a limited sample of these studies, we expanded the search to [...] other temperate regions. We also searched for studies providing estimates of cat population sizes [on] the contiguous USA and for US studies that estimate the proportion of owned cats with outdoor access and the proportion of cats that hunt wildlife. [Our] search terms included: ‘domestic cat’ [combined] with ‘predation,’ ‘prey,’ ‘diet,’ ‘food item’ and ‘mortality’;" "We estimated wildlife mortality in [...] USA by multiplying data-derived probability distributions of predation rates by distributions of estimated cat abundance" "[]" edited by me for clarity Data-derived distributions based on a poor sample were extrapolated to every ecosystem in US? Data with a special focus on temperate areas were extrapolated to temperate and non temperate? Have deserts the same amount of birds as forests? Assuming that preys are equally distributed on USA would need to assume that every ecosystem is equal, or that cats are equally successful chasing birds in all terrains. This seems unlikely. To start because birds migrate and its distribution is patched. Cats can't migrate. Taiga in winter don't has the same birds as Florida in winter
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- pvaldes 3y ago
  not to mention that there is a huge bias in bibliography by design, because any predation study of type 'we didn't found any evidence of wild animals preyed by cats in our place' wouldn't be published. If you base your search on bibliography you are pruning all the negative results. This is like removing all negative numbers before calculating an average value. We need to remember also that "Local cats killed minus 1000 birds", would be a perfectly acceptable result [1] that is excluded from the search and the article. [1] (= Cats save 1000 birds by killing egg-eating rats)