"Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors."

-Jonas Salk

Monday, June 29, 2015

Good Reporting on Bee Colony Collapse

by Nathaniel Johnson at Grist

4 comments:

coby said...

What did you think was so good about it? It really smelled of pro-corporate spin to me. I mean right from the start even with the old "climate has always changed" song.

Is the current situation really nothing but an overreaction to "natural cycles"? I confess I don't really know, but I was definitely under the impression that it absolutely is not. Do you endorse the implied "relax, it'll fix itself just like in 1895" angle?

Michael Tobis said...

What makes an article good or bad in my opinion is depth, not whether or not it matches one's preconceptions.

I am confused about the bee issue. But interested. I appreciate depth.

I guess I didn't read it the way you did.

Did you see the third part of the series? http://grist.org/food/heres-the-real-thing-killing-bees-us/

I'm really glad Grist is moving on from being just an echo of the green movement to some effort at interpreting evidence.

Is the article wrong? If so its wrongness is over my head. Maybe someone will rebut. I'm not an expert on the bee thing. But for now I feel I know a great deal more about it than I did before.

coby said...

I can't really claim to know better than the author either, but in this as in many, well let's be realistic, most things I am relying as much on my personal bullshit detector as anything else and that article smells. This is not at all simply because it disagrees with my preconceptions, it is the nature of the arguments and the absence of a seriousness in considering the opposition's case, which is barely presented.

And I suggest caution about assuming waters are deep just because they are muddy.

I'll see if I can get the time to read the rest of the series.

Florifulgurator said...

OT: Hi MT, I'm still using http://blogs.planet3.org but initforthegold is missing there...