African Clawed Frogs and Chytrid

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gretzkyrh4
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Joined: June 7th, 2010, 12:17 pm
Location: Baton Rouge, LA

African Clawed Frogs and Chytrid

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BillMcGighan
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Re: African Clawed Frogs and Chytrid

Post by BillMcGighan »

This is interesting because I recently overheard, yet again, an academic almost exclusively blame the spread of the invasive African clawed frog on the aquarium/tropical fish trade; his speculation stated as fact.
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gbin
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Re: African Clawed Frogs and Chytrid

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BillMcGighan wrote:This is interesting because I recently overheard, yet again, an academic almost exclusively blame the spread of the invasive African clawed frog on the aquarium/tropical fish trade; his speculation stated as fact.
Yeah, the blame game is played way too much in America these days, by scientists and managers as well as by politicians and the public. (There are still too many people out there - and even some here at FHF - who in similar unsupported fashion lay the blame for chytrid's far and wide spread on field biologists, though that idea has been discredited for a long time now.) And lots of times it appears the scapegoating is done mostly just out of intellectual laziness - combined, of course, with some kind of conscious or unconscious bias against the target group. It's especially shameful when it's done by people whose profession obliges them to differentiate between speculation and fact, and to first and foremost weigh the evidence (or lack thereof) when considering a matter. :( I hope you called that academic on it, Bill.

Gerry
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