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disinformation

reading this, it seems that the cat fans are mounting a dis information campaign very similar to the climage change denialist or the tobacco does't cause cancer croud any thoughts ? https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10530-018-1796-y — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:192:4701:BE80:519D:9181:46A7:996D (talk) 13:21, 25 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

On the pet owners section

I just deleted the pet owners section, I believe Wikipedia isn’t here to try to change minds on subjects and I think that the wording of the section was rather pointed at “convincing” people of how bad cats can be outdoors. Along with the reference to cognitive dissonance which just feels cliche, the fact that one journal piece is used, the whole thing needs to be rewritten if it wants to stay up IMO. 2601:1C0:5A00:4650:F0BC:F4F4:A6E2:92DC (talk) 20:02, 16 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's not one "journal piece", it's two articles published in scientific journals. If you have a problem with the claims made in the article--well, Wikipedia is not the place to vent them. Drmies (talk) 20:57, 16 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Extinctions of island species

Please tell me why you have deleted my edit about the claim that domestic cats have exterminated 33 (bird) species. The claim is false and I posted a reference about it. Please reinstate my edit immediately.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Strippedsocks (talk • contribs)

Because your edit [1] was not reliably sourced, per the content policy found at WP:PREPRINT, which says, Preprints, such as those available on repositories like arXiv, medRxiv or bioRxiv, are not reliable sources. Research that has not been peer-reviewed is akin to a blog, as anybody can post it online. Their use is generally discouraged, unless they meet the criteria for acceptable use of self-published sources, and will always fail higher sourcing requirements like WP:MEDRS. There was no evidence it was published in a journal later, and no evidence that the author is a recognized expert that would satisfy WP:SPS. Note that claiming that the IUCN is wrong about the number of species exterminated by cats, which seems to be the argument you're making here, is going to require excellent sourcing. Geogene (talk) 13:02, 1 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Non-neutral edits

@Strippedsocks:, This edit [2] is original research because the sources in it don't mention cats. The subject of this article is Cat predation on wildlife, not extinction as a general phenomenon. Additionally in your edit summary you write, They have not exterminated 33 bird species, as I prove in my preprint, which it seems must wait until it is published in a journal. Your preprint? This implies that a WP:SELFCITE issue is presenting itself here as well. Geogene (talk) 15:35, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Your page is not about extinction, you say? Is that why on such a short page you mention extinction as many as 11 times? And one more entry on extinction is too much, especially when it is just one sentence that gives necessary perspective?

The trouble with your page is that you are cherry-picking: selecting only a very few sources which support a particular view and deleting entries with contrasting views. Strippedsocks (talk) 15:41, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The views that are being deleted are your own personal opinions, not those of reliable sources, which is not allowed by content policy. Even if this were some kind of debate club where you would be allowed to present novel arguments, your arguments here are untenable. Do you know how many species of birds were eradicated by DDT? None. Zero. Does that mean that DDT isn't a problem for bird conservation? Of course not. It's just whataboutism. Geogene (talk) 15:44, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Geogene's edit. Drmies (talk) 15:46, 5 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I have been reading about resolving editing disputes on Wikipedia. So I am asking you just once more, for clarification, why will you not allow me ANY edits on this page? I even tried to cite a very relevant book for further reading but you deleted it. Please give a clear and concise reply numbered point by point. (I accept what you said about preprints, so that is not a problem for discussion and can be left out.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Strippedsocks (talk • contribs) 13:23, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand. I only have one edit to the article since my last post on this page, and it's this one [3]. It looks like you promoted the Loss (2013) study to a header by mistake by framing it with equal signs, and I demoted it. I didn't remove anything from Further Reading. Geogene (talk) 13:35, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think I see the problem now. You added this book [4] to the further reading section but it's being hidden by <ref> template. I'll see if deleting that template will make it appear. Geogene (talk) 13:41, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

And here you deleted it again, probably by mistake trying to get the wiki-markup to work [5]. The markup is not user friendly. But it's restored. Geogene (talk) 13:46, 7 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki Education assignment: Principles of Ecology

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 26 August 2022 and 22 December 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Nprocaccini, Jeanius1, Planariaworm (article contribs). Peer reviewers: KMorales34, Ablip, Lonelychild1.

— Assignment last updated by Chelsei.L (talk) 22:43, 24 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to add these two sources, to help expand on the topic of cat predation on wildlife, I would like to mention how one of the "human effects on biogeochemical pathways," such as global warming can have an impact on cats and how it might effect native species. Which also connected to the other topic I want to talk about, "Fear Effects," which I will explain how it affect the native species.

1) Beckerman, A. P., et al. “Urban Bird Declines and the Fear of Cats.” Animal Conservation, vol. 10, no. 3, Aug. 2007, pp. 320–25. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-1795.2007.00115.x.
2) Andrea, Thompson. “Adoption Group: Cat Invasion Due to Global Warming.” Livescience.Com, 6 June 2007, https://www.livescience.com/1582-adoption-group-cat-invasion-due-global-warming.html.

Jeanius1 (talk) 16:01, 11 October 2022 (UTC)Jeanius1[reply]

Fear effects should be added to the article. The Animal Conservation paper is probably reliable for that, and it's a topic I've seen discussed elsewhere. I don't believe the sourcing for global warming causing a sudden increase in the cat population should be added without peer reviewed papers supporting it. The livescience article only quotes opinions from cat rescue groups, and a 30% increase between 2006 and 2007 doesn't sound like a climate change effect, which is a long-term phenomenon. The same goes for this content I just now removed [6]. The Daily Cat is probably not a reliable source, and are harsh winters really likely to be one of the main things limiting the feral cat population in Los Angeles? Geogene (talk) 23:03, 11 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Population management

It's inevitable that there will be some coverage of feral cat management strategies, but I don't think this article should be a WP:Coatrack for that. And recent additions in that aspect are problematic because they frame management options as a dichotomy between Trap-Neuter-Return and otherwise undiscussed "trap euthanize" options. In reality, cats are managed in many different ways, through toxic baits [7], [8]; hunting with air rifles [9], automated poison spray stations [10], with genetic engineering methods (gene drives) probably coming down the pipeline [11]. Turning everything into TNR verses Trap Euthanize is WP:UNDUE. But if we're going to mention TNR, the main point is that it should a minimum reflect the apparent scientific consensus that TNR does not work. [12] Geogene (talk) 20:10, 19 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"cats are the top human-caused threat to wildlife in the United States"

This is not correct? It says in the article linked to this claim:

"Estimates of annual US bird mortality from predation by all cats, including both owned and un-owned cats, are in the hundreds of millions13,14 (we define un-owned cats to include farm/barn cats, strays that are fed by humans but not granted access to habitations, cats in subsidized colonies and cats that are completely feral). This magnitude would place cats among the top sources of anthropogenic bird mortality; however, window and building collisions have been suggested to cause even greater mortality15,16,17. Existing estimates of mortality from cat predation are speculative and not based on scientific data13,14,15,16 or, at best, are based on extrapolation of results from a single study18. In addition, no large-scale mortality estimates exist for mammals, which form a substantial component of cat diets." Kirschn (talk) 08:49, 13 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It says in the abstract, which wasn't quoted Our findings suggest that free-ranging cats cause substantially greater wildlife mortality than previously thought and are likely the single greatest source of anthropogenic mortality for US birds and mammals. [13]. Now, parsing the text you quoted with my annotations estimates of annual bird mortality [MADE PREVIOUSLY BY OTHERS] are in the hundreds of millions...however window and building collisions have been suggested [BY OTHERS] to cause even greater mortality [CITES TO OTHERS' WORK]....Existing estimates of mortality from cat predation [BY OTHERS] are speculative and not based on scientific data.... There is no contradiction here, although the Wiki article may state the claim more strongly than the source presents it. Geogene (talk) 14:32, 13 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"the Wiki article may state the claim more strongly than the source presents it" is inherently problematic and needs to be fixed. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 23:44, 13 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"...after humans".. surely? Holocene_extinction JeffUK 07:55, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure what you mean by that. If there were no humans, there would be no cats. Geogene (talk) 14:47, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a bit concerned with recent efforts to suggest that the article has "too few opinions", namely in support of the notion that pet cats are not a signficant contribution to the problem, which is not at all what the sources are telling us. It's correct that Loss et al. (2013) pinned most of it in a specific place on feral populations, but that study certainly did not rule out the contribution of free-roaming (indoor-outdoor and outdoor-only) pet cats, and other sources certainly don't exclude them, either. And this article is not about feral cat predation on wildlife, but all Felis catus predation on wildlife. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 02:21, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Fear effects

Why was my contribution deleted? It was about cats striking fear into their prey. Please explain. The article without my paragraph strongly suggests that cats are unique in striking fear into prey and therefore that cats are evil. The paragraph I added puts cats in perspective, showing that they are not unique because all predators, even humans, induce fear in prey animals. You always delete my edits such that it is pointless trying to make the page better than just the c-rated and biased article it is. We will have to have a wider discussion about this article and why it is impossible to improve it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xhkvfq (talk • contribs) 18:26, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

@Xhkvfq: Moving the discussion here from my talk page [14]. Diffs of the edit in question [15] my revert [16]. Geogene (talk) 18:34, 20 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

As I noted in the edit summary, I think it's off-topic to talk about things like fear effects from dog walking in an article about predation by cats. I have some additional concerns about how you're framing things in your post as well. Geogene (talk) 18:36, 20 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree, as I explained on your talk page. How can we get a discussion going with impartial editors, etc? People need to discuss this more broadly because it is impossible to edit anything on your cat page. Xhkvfq (talk) 18:48, 20 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I see that you've written thes drafts [17], and [18]. If that's what you're planning for this article, it's a pretty clear example of WP:RGW on the issue of cats predating wildlife. Geogene (talk) 21:10, 20 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Just lay out here what changes you are trying to make, to what encylopedic end, and with what sources. User-talk discussions rarely resolve content disputes at articles, which are almost always of keen interest to more than the two editors in the original dispute. I'll say right off the bat that "The article without my paragraph strongly suggests that cats are unique in striking fear into prey and therefore that cats are evil" is basically nonsensical. It may indeed need to be clarified that prey in general are fearful of predators and that this is not unique to cats, but we do not need an entire paragraph about this; this is not the Predation article. And "it's off-topic to talk about things like fear effects from dog walking in an article about predation by cats" is certainly correct. ~~We might even consider removing the "fear"-related material entirely, since it may not be very pertinent.~~ Your goals seem to be shoehorning into the encyclopedia your random thoughts (most of which is just your personal opinion, and otherwise is your own "original research", taking disparate ideas from sources and synthesizing them together to make new claims not found in the sources). That is not what encyclopedia articles are for or how they are written.

PS: I have seen your drafts at Draft:Cat predation on islands and Draft:Human–cat conflict, and they are personal op-eds (completley redundant with each other) presenting a contrarian viewpoint that verges on fringe-theory advocacy; they are not encyclopedic at all and the second of them is not a viable topic even with a total rewrite (the first could be a viable topic, but only if Cat predation on wildlife got so long that we needed to split off side articles on subtopics). Please review our core content policies as well as WP:Writing better articles and WP:Wikipedia is not a blog. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 20:52, 22 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

PPS: I've been over your paragraph and agree with its reversion. It utterly misses the point and is extraneous, confusing blather. The point is that the native wildlife on these islands do not have natural predators there and are ecologically naïve. The introduction of cats to these islands produces a cascading and population-disruptive ecology of fear effect, that is specific to these cats and these native species on these islands. It has absolutely nothing of any kind to do with the general fact that prey animals have evolved fear responses to predators. That the same ecology-of-fear effect can be observed under other circumstances (dogs, humans) in other places is completely irrelevant; while it is further evidence that the ecology-of-fear effect is measurable, it has nothing to do with cats and island sea birds. The entire point of your editing in this topic area seems to be "I love cats, and people saying anything critical about them upsets me, so I'm going to champion the cause of their honor". This is not encyclopedia writing, it's WP:ADVOCACY / WP:ACTIVISM. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 21:03, 22 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Two drafts with potential sources, maybe the nugget of DUE presentation of contrary claims

Please see: Draft:Cat predation on islands and Draft:Human–cat conflict. These are not viable drafts, but they contain a variety of sources that might be usable here in a WP:DUE manner. The entire gist of both drafts can probably be summed up in a single paragraph here along the lines that claims about the specific number of species extincted by cats has been subject to some debate, both because some turned out to have been pushed to the brink of extinction but not quite over that cliff, and because of definitional disputes about "species". — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 20:52, 22 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Lynn et al (2019) versus Loss & Marra (2018)

In user-talk, Xhkvfq has finally come up with a source (one) in support of their position, "I still stand firmly by my statement that the page Cat Predation on Wildlife is hugely biased and needs balance." It is this:

Lynn, William S.; Santiago‐Ávila, Francisco; Lindenmayer, Joann; Hadidian, John; Wallach, Arian; King, Barbara J. (3 June 2019). "A Moral Panic over Cats". Conservation Biology. 33 (4): 769–776. doi:10.1111/cobi.13346.

This is a rebuttal piece to the following:

Loss, Scott R.; Marra, Peter P. (25 March 2018). "Merchants of doubt in the free-ranging cat conflict". Conservation Biology. 32 (2): 265–266. doi:10.1111/cobi.13085.

Xhkvfq didn't mention (perhaps didn't know about) refutation of the Lynn et 2019 work above:

Crespin, Silvio J.; Moreira-Arce, Dario; Simonetti, Javier A. (5 May 2020). "Killing with compassion for the sake of conservation: response to Lynn et al. 2019" (PDF). Conservation Biology. 34 (4): 1035–1037. doi:10.1111/cobi.13525. One-liner summary: "Billions of native animal lives should not be ended by invasive species, even if we feel bad about eradication."

Most of Lynn et al. published later a response to that as well:

Lynn, William S.; Santiago‐Ávila, Francisco; Hadidian, John; Wallach, Arian; Lindenmayer, Joann (5 May 2020). "Misunderstandings of science and ethics in the moral panic over cats: reply to Crespin et al. 2020". Conservation Biology. 34 (4): 1038–1040. doi:10.1111/cobi.13527. Note the doubling down on their mischaracterition of these concerns as a "moral panic". No free full text of this one has been found yet, but it might be readable by WP:The Wikipedia Library if someone really wants it.

While Conservation Biology appears to be a reputable journal by the journal metrics I just looked up, and it is not listed at WP:RSNP as problematic, that particular article is neither a work of primary-research science nor a secondary literature review (which would be much more valuable than the former). It is an opinion editorial, clearly labelled an essay, and it is polemical in nature. Its very title is an accusation that people who disagree with the authors are engaged in a moral panic, and the authors do nothing even in their abstract to disguise the fact that they are advancing a colleague-condemnatory opinion: "Some conservationists ... claim that those who question the science or ethics behind their arguments are science deniers (merchants of doubt) seeking to mislead the public. ... we believe these ideas are wrong and fuel an unwarranted moral panic ... it is a false analogy to compare [us] with corporate and right-wing special interests that perpetrate disinformation campaigns over issues, such as smoking and climate change." In short, it's a butt-hurt rant about the tone of and the analogy used by two of their ideological opponents, namely Loss & Marra 2018 (another opinion piece, not the Loss & Marra 2017 research paper we already cite in our article). The authors are correct that Loss & Marra used a bogus analogy against them, but this has absolutely nothing of any kind to do with the underlying science, and is only about collegiality in academic publishing (which the authors of this essay are of course also failing at dismally, perpetuating the mudslinging to push their "protect the kitties" agenda instead of sticking to the science).

The essay does not in detail address anything like the broad body of research in this area. It does go to some pains to criticize cats-as-a-rabies-vector and toxoplasmosis as they relate to humans, but this really has nothing to do with our subject, since ours is not an article about zoonotic cat–human disease transfer (our only disease material here is about cat–wildlife transfer). Indeed, after the "screw Loss & Marra" ranting that takes up the entire first half of the essay, the bulk of the remaining material is about human zoonosis (and fears thereof), not about cat predation on, or spread of diseases to, wildlife.

This essay is problematic in its content in other ways. E.g., "there are significant ... ethical and policy issues ... relative to how people ought to value and coexist with cats and native wildlife": This is pure, unadulterated socio-political positioning, and has nothing to do with scientific facts at all. It's advocacy. The so-called conclusion, "Society is better served by a collaborative approach to produce better scientific and ethical knowledge about free-ranging cats", is just empty buzzword-laden rhetoric that has no implications for our article or any of its sources. There is no demonstrable evidence of lack of "collaboration", nor any evidence that the scientific data (aside from nitpicks one might have with very particular papers) is wrong; certainly the preponderance of it is not. "Ethical knowledge" is undefinable gibberish (like "moral fact" or "upstanding data" or "conscientious observation" or "respectable information"; it is confusing two different categories of things and producing an oxymoron).

It also, in its more substantive parts, is not aiming in the direction Xhkvfq seems to believe it is: "There are good ... reasons ... to be skeptical that free-ranging cats constitute a disaster ... in all circumstances." This a) does nothing whatsoever to dispel evidence that free-ranging cats are disastrous in many circumstances, and b) has nothing to do with the claims in our article, or even the claims in the sources used in that article, since neither are using any "in all circumstances" language. In short, it's a straw man. More to the point, though, on p. 773: "[Our] skepticism should not be used to deny the impact cats may have when rigorously documented for specific contexts." The authors are telling us directly not to try to misuse their essay in the way Xhkvfq seems to want to misuse it. And more yet: "We welcome calls for the adoption of a precautionary approach, when it involves the implementation of mitigation measures that are not harmful, and monitoring and adaptive management". That is, the authors support extirpation if it comes to that, as long as a "harm-reduction" path is tried first, and here and several other places they urge for ethics monitoring of extirpation efforts. (The thing is, "mitigation" or harm-reduction measures already have been tried, again and again, in multiple ways, and have not worked.)

If this essay turns out to be demonstrably influential (notable authors, cited a lot, covered in the press, etc.), then there might be a WP:DUE reason to mention it as a considered opinion in the topic area, directly attributed to the authors, not stated by us as if the opinion is demonstrable fact. However, to the extent any of it is actually generalizable to the topic instead of being anger with Loss & Marra, or kumbaya "be sweet to all the creatures" stuff, this seems to be a fringe viewpoint. They're basically accusing their ideological opponents of engaging in a pseudo-scientific conspiracy (and in smear campaigning, meanwhile the authors of the essay are themselves smearing other academics, who mostly actually have much better claim to that term). As for notable authors, we have no articles on any them, except Barbara J. King, a former academic anthropologist who is now a pop-science writer – someone writing entirely outside their own field. Of the others, two are directly associated with "predator protection" stance-taking bodies; one is Carnivore Coexistence Lab [19] which has no expertise in anything but protecting native wolf populations in the US; and Centre for Compassionate Conservation [20] which is also focused on wildlife and has nothing to do with domestic species (beyond putting out a position paper against using an infertility drug on Australian feral horses – specifically opposing a bill to outlaw culling them, I might add). Neither of these organizations have anything to do with management of feral cat populations or reducing their wildlife impact. Oh, doing some more background research, there's a third: PAN Works [21], "a nonprofit think tank dedicated to the wellbeing of animals" to "cultivate compassion, respect and justice for animals, a reverence for the community of life, and a desire for people, animals and nature to thrive together. ... a global platform for ethicists, scholars and civil society working to improve animal wellbeing." So, very clearly an advocacy not research group. Oh, and there's another one: Project Coyote [22]: an advocacy group around human coexistence with coyotes (and bears and other native predators that actually belong in their environments), with a particular focus on "reforming predator management", which is a clear bias; but no connection to feral cats. Another was formerly with the the Humane Society of the US which is obviously an advocacy body, but also with US Wildlife Protection Program, so at least able to see both sides; yet also closely associated with WellBeing International [23], which "envisions people, animals and the environment thriving in a healthy and harmonious world", i.e. another advocacy organization.

"As ethicists and scientists who value the lives of individual animals as well as the preservation of biodiversity, we recognize that non-native species may, in specific circumstances, pose a threat to native wildlife" is key for two reasons: it establishes clearly that the piece is based in an "ethics" moralizing position not just science (if you think that's a stretch, the very next sentence says "conservationists ... losing their moral compass"). They continue more bluntly and emotively and personally condemnatory in this same direction: "the harming of sentient, sapient, and social individuals, such as cats, that Loss and Marra (2018) ... countenance requires strict ethical and scientific scrutiny". This is a piece of regulatory advocacy aimed directly at colleagues they disapprove of. Secondly, it also makes clear that, despite this angle, it is not actually a refutation of the premise of non-native cats' deleterious effects on native wildlife to begin with, and that matters very much here.

The more I read of the actual content in the essay, the more apparent it is that it is in large part confused, activistic nonsense. I'm shocked this actually got published in any journal at all (even an ethics one, which might have made more sense). It makes obviously nonsensical arguments, such as that because any predator can have something of a population suppressive effect on its prey species, that overwhelming evidence of cats wiping out or nearly wiping out various species in environments in which cats are invasive, and killing literally billions of birds and other small animals per year in general, somehow cannot be distinguished from native-species predation in any environment. This is, to put it bluntly, complete horseshit. And here's a double straw man: "it may be tempting to appeal to a precautionary approach that would argue that even if the impact of freeranging cats on nature and society is not settled science, we should take action to reduce or eliminate outdoor cats as a matter of precaution." Not only is there no non-fringe doubt at all about such cats' impact, no one (that we know of, covered with reliable sources in our article) has advanced any such precautionary "just kill them all now, just in case" idea; it's pure scare-tactic argument to emotion. In reality, culling of all feral cats (and rats, and foxes, and some other species) has been advocated (by anyone notable enough to quote) only in closed ecosystems like various islands. And programs to do this have been remarkably successful. One of the closing sentences in the essay (p. 774) is particularly rich: "Finally, we urge everyone concerned with free-ranging cats to reject framing this debate as a matter of us versus them." The entire point of their piece is castigating and questioning the ethics of Loss & Marra, a textbook case of "us versus them".

I do not believe this essay has any implications of any kind for this Wikipedia article. It is primarily a tit-for-tat personality dispute, mired in a "don't shoot feral cats because that's mean" emotive position, and confused cavilling about what the actual science is saying and on what basis, plus a pretense that more "collaboration" is needed when there is no independent evidence of any lack thereof (all they have to support the idea is a quote from a conference calling for a "consensus on how to manage conflicts with outdoors cats", which is a call for collaboration on regulatory solutions not a claim of lack of collaboration in the science). In short, this is not a science article of any kind, it is a socio-poltical opinion piece about what to do at the public policy level and how to arrive at that decision, and what voices should count (not Loss & Marra!) – what the authors call an "ethical dialogue that has just begun". It is not about the science question of what the facts of invasive cat predation are. The only even slight potential I can see this essay having with regard to our article is brief mention in the "Feral cat population management" section, but only along with analysis and summary of the position the authors are railing against (Loss & Marra 2018, Marra & Santella 2016, and a few others they cite by name), and post-publication rebuttal of this essay by others (Crespin et al. 2020). Remember that Loss & Marra themselves wrote "cat population management is traditionally contentious"; this essay is simply proof of it. Something from Lynn's own official bio: "specializes in animal and sustainability ethics as they interface with public policy. Exploring why and how we ought to care for people, animals and nature, this is practical research translating insights from his interdisciplinary training in ethics, geography and political theory into public dialogues over moral problems." Advocacy not science. Here's a key example from the essay that is also a fringe position: "the intrinsic value of all animals (wild and domestic) in conservation". Domestic and invasive animals have no "instrinic value" within conservation whatsoever, by definition. Conservation is about protection of a natural environment from invasive species and other anthropogenic disturbance and destruction. The authors have taken an idea from the philosophical ethics of the animal-rights platform (and vegan activism for that matter), "the intrinsic value of all animals", and glued it onto a field, conservation, that is not based on that idea at all and in fact mostly supports efforts to extirpate invasive species from environments in which they do not naturally belong! (Re-quote: "conservationists ... losing their moral compass"; the authors are angry at conservationists for not holding the authors' viewpoint that feral cats are "precious", but trying through verbal sleight-of-hand to stick this viewpoint onto them anyway as if they'll aborb it by osmosis.)

Review the abstract of the Loss & Marra 2017 paper we already cite, and reflect on the fact that literally zero of their scientific conclusions are refuted by the essay above; rather, the two researchers were kevtched at for taking (in Loss & Marra 2018, an op-ed, not this 2017 science paper) a false-analogy potshot at their opponents.

Domestic cats (Felis catus) have contributed to at least 63 vertebrate extinctions, pose a major hazard to threatened vertebrates worldwide, and transmit multiple zoonotic diseases. On continents and large islands (collectively termed "mainlands"); cats are responsible for very high mortality of vertebrates. Nevertheless, cat population management is traditionally contentious and usually involves proving that cats reduce prey population sizes. We synthesize the available evidence of the negative effects of cats on mainland vertebrates. More than a dozen observational studies, as well as experimental research, provide unequivocal evidence that cats are capable of affecting multiple population-level processes among mainland vertebrates. In addition to predation, cats affect vertebrate populations through disease and fear-related effects, and they reduce population sizes, suppress vertebrate population sizes below their respective carrying capacities, and alter demographic processes such as source-sink dynamics. Policy discussions should shift from requiring "proof of impact" to a precautionary approach that emphasizes evidence-driven management to reduce further impacts from outdoor cats.

That is from:

Loss, Scott R.; Marra, Peter P. (October 12, 2017). "Population impacts of free-ranging domestic cats on mainland vertebrates". Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. 15 (9): 502–509. doi:10.1002/fee.1633. JSTOR 44989405. S2CID 89648301.

Importantly here, this is not even a source we are relying on for anything in our article at all but an ecology-of-fear side point. While we could cite it for a large number of other scientific claims, the fact is that all these claims are already cited to other reliable sources, which the Lynn et al. essay does not refute in any way either.

I don't normally do a citation analysis of this length and detail, but it seems warranted here given the extremity of the claim that "the page Cat Predation on Wildlife is hugely biased and needs balance", and the rather single-minded insistence on this by Xhkvfq (plus the fact of this overall subject area having few watchlisters; no one else is likely to examine the source closely). If there is a balance problem in this article, the Lynn et al. 2019 essay certainly does not demonstrate it.

Author comparison (via Google Scholar if not otherwise noted):

The original paper (and original op-ed) authors:

Scott R Loss (Oklahoma State University, PAN Works): 7,435 citations - conservation biology, ecology, urban ecology, invasive species, disease ecology (academic scientist)
Peter P. Marra (Georgetown University): 30,244 citations - avian ecology, migratory birds, conservation science, ornithology (academic scientist)

Authors of the essay above:

William S. Lynn (Clark University): does not rate a Google Scholar profile; there are two researchers by this name, and the one we're looking for has stats on ResearchGate: 509 citations - animal ethics, ethics and public policy, ethics and science, sustainability ethics, hermeneutics, interpretive policy analysis, precautionary principle (is an academic, but clearly a political activist and moralist, not a scientist)
Francisco J. Santiago-Ávila (Project Coyote, Carnivore Coexistence Lab): 711 citations - nature ethics and policy, large carnivores, multispecies justice (?!?), animal studies (another activist; not a scientist judging from his published work; former academic with University of Wisconsin)
Joann M. Lindenmayer (Tufts University): No GScholar profile, but found on ResearchGate; 74 citations - environmental science, soil science, ecology, social policy (is an academic but "social policy" = advocacy; almost all of her material is about "One Health" notions and urban animal welfare)
John Hadidian (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, ex US Humane Society, ex US Wildlife Protection Program, WellBeing International, and Project Coyote again): No GScholar or ResearchGate profile; no citation data - wildlife biology, urban wildlife, urban ecology, animal welfare and protection, integrated pest management, primatology, anthropology (a low-impact academic by training, unclear if he's a scientist; background in anthropology not zoology or ecology, which he picked up later, but focused on urban/domestic welfare)
Arian Wallach (University of Technology Sydney, Centre for Compassionate Conservation); 6,649 citations - apex predators, trophic cascades, novel ecosystems, environmental ethics, compassionate conservation (an academic, and the best-cited of this bunch, but far behind Marra's 30K); some work is actual science not just public-policy stuff, though there's a lot of that as well)
Barbara J. King (Scientific American); no GScholar or RG profile; no citation data - anthropology; ethology, including animal emotions (former academic with College of William and Mary, but out of her field)

Authors of the rebuttal:

Silvio J. Crespin (University of Chile, University of Concepción, Instituto de Investigaciones Tropicales de El Salvador); 295 citations - conservation science, human–nature coexistence, Pasteur's quadrant (academic scientist, but also a conservation activist)
Dario Moreira-Arce (University of Concepción, Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Instituto de Investigaciones Tropicales de El Salvador); 2,150 citations - wildlife ecology, conservation biology, landscape ecology (academic scientist)
Javier Andrés Simonetti Zambelli (University of Chile, Instituto de Investigaciones Tropicales de El Salvador); 6,587 citations - wildlife ecology, wildlife conservation, species diversity, biodiversity, conservation, conservation biology, ecology and evolution, climate change, natural resource management (academic scientist, probably also a conservation activist, and some involvement in public policy)

This took a great deal of time to dig into. Please present better sources than this. Hint: if it's an op-ed, it is not a good source, because it is a primary source full of opinion, not a secondary source presenting an overview of facts (not even a primary source presenting novel scientific research, just socio-politicized opinion-mongering). PS: I say all this as a "crazy cat gentleman". Being a cat fancier does not equate to pretense that cats (including both feral populations and indoor-outdoor pets) are not murder machines when it comes to local small wildlife. The absolutely are, and it is a real problem. Keep your cat indoors. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 06:34, 31 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Addition of old sources and misuse of primary sources

This edit [24] by user:VampaVampa is undue emphasis on scientific papers from the 1970s that seem to contradict later work, which goes against the RS guideline at WP:OLDSOURCES. It also contains some weird WP:OR editorializing about Songbird Survival's website content from 20 years ago: The advocacy group SongBird Survival, a limited company which achieved charitable status in 2001 and funds research into the causes of declining songbird populations, noted on its website in 2006 that "cats are frequently singled out as the primary reason for the disappearance of Britain's songbirds" and described the claim as unjustified. It decried the absence of numbers for cat predation on birds from the 1997 survey by the Mammal Society, and drew a comparison between the figure of 55 million birds killed annually by UK's suggested 9–10 million cats, derived from an estimate by Cats Protection, and the 100 million birds preyed on by the 100,000-strong UK population of sparrowhawks each year. It suggested that the hunting instinct of cats "could be dulled by their reduced need to catch their own food" and by human-sourced amusement, while noting that the total 2002 value of the UK cat product and service market approximated £1.5bn.^[1] sourced only to the Internet Archive and looks like it has the effect of watering down or discrediting the modern viewpoint on cat predation. It also presents an undue emphasis on RSPB's fringe scientific view that cat predation is not a significant issue and states in Wikivoice that, The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds points out that there is no scientific evidence for predation by cats to negatively affect bird populations in the country. Geogene (talk) 17:37, 25 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Some additional commentary I posted on VampaVampa's talk page that I'm reposting here: An observational study of five free-roaming farm cats carried out over 360 hours during the winter of 1978–79 in Cornwall.... A WP:PRIMARY study of five cats over two weeks? In addition to being old, this is too small a sample group to take seriously. The selection of prey species was reported as consistent with contemporary findings from New Zealand (1971–73), which concluded that birds were a minor food source for cats except in novel island habitats is wrong, see the landmark 2013 paper in Nature [25]. The considerably lower degree of effort put in by inefficient hunters suggested that provision of "farm food reduced the need to hunt" is also wrong, some modern studies have found that feeding cats increases their hunting [26]. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds points out that there is no scientific evidence for predation by cats to negatively affect bird populations in the country. is wrong because literature review I just mentioned said that the negative effects of cats on wildlife is global in scope. Geogene (talk) 04:44, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Geogene: You have cited the guidelines on the age of sources and on original research to justify reverting my contribution. However, there is nothing in those guidelines that (a) prevents the use of older sources as such, (b) suggests that a prior version of a website as preserved by the Internet Archive is not a "reliable, published source". To claim either of these things is quite absurd.

What WP:OLDSOURCES says is that "older sources may be inaccurate" (emphasis mine). That does not justify the assumption that they are automatically inaccurate. They may be, and that has to be determined with precision. If you, Geogene, know that there are newer findings that contradict older research, then it would be great if you could improve the article by demonstrating that. However, that older research is obsolete cannot be inferred from the fact that newer sources do not agree with it. It is important to remember that studies which do not use the same method (do not control for certain variables etc.) may arrive at different findings. Thus, it would have to be shown that the newer studies knew of the older research (as it is a researcher's duty to do a review of the state of the field) and showed explicitly in what way it was flawed. Then and only then can the older studies be regarded as superseded. Failing that, there is a very strong possibility that the newer studies simply ignored the old research, or that the two have followed different paths and that the differences have not been reconciled persuasively. Every claim on Wikipedia has to be sourced and that also applies to saying that research is superseded. You cannot automatically infer that from the publication date, or else a 2024 study saying the Earth is flat would be somehow more valid than a perfectly sound astronomy paper published in 1970.

Incidentally and by way of example, the 2013 Nature paper you have pointed me to cites five sources for its claim that "The exceptionally high estimate of mammal mortality from cat predation is supported by individual US studies that illustrate high annual predation rates by individual un-owned cats in excess of 200 mammals per year". One of these five sources is from 2014, but the other four are from 1940, 1951, 1952 and 1953. Should I conclude that the paper is based on obsolete work? It is absurd to judge a paper by its date, period - it can be called obsolete only once it is shown to be so. And it shows an absurd level of bias to suggest that a study from 1979 is not "modern".

The way to approach the matter is clearly to start a full literature review and add further sources to the article. The second article you have pointed me to is not even currently cited. Instead of deleting information you could well focus on adding information that corrects the point of view that you allege is wrong. I would encourage you to share your knowledge of the newer literature and explain its conclusions in the article, and to do that without automatically assuming that they are more correct because they are newer.

Moving on to your other accusation, original research occurs when one makes a claim which is not in the cited source, i.e. when one presents an unfounded interpretation. But retrieving and checking the sources, then reporting their content in an accurate way, without making any additional arguments that are not in the source, is not "original research". To find in the source what you have not expected to be there is not "original research", it is keeping to the facts over and above your starting assumptions. It would have been "original research" if I had made an explicit allegation about Songbird Survival and the academic research it sponsors. You are confusing motivations or agendas (everybody has one) with the content of the article. What I personally think or suspect about Songbird Survival's possible relationship with the pet industry before or after consulting the evidence, or whether I like them or dislike them is immaterial, because the article has to be based on facts. What I have done is to reconstruct and document the views of Songbird Survival on the subject of cat predation as they had developed, which sheds light on the history of research into the subject. I started off with the Internet Archive because there was a dead link in the section. That is not original research. You may well argue that an account of the evolution of Songbird Survival's views and arguments belongs in the Songbird Survival article - but which Songbird Survival stance is the real one? You are free to question my motives as I am to question yours, whatever, but the rules are for making sure we report everything that is relevant to the article and that we do it accurately. Instead of acting as an editor, you have chosen to question my sources and the obvious absurdity in your accusation is that IA is a perfectly legitimate source used extensively on Wikipedia and there is no need to impugn my motives for using it to access information. I am not sure if you want to say that the initial positions of Songbird Survival have been superseded because they constitute "older research"? I have said what is in the source, and added nothing extra. I have inevitably made my subjective selection of information to include from the source, which you may say is too detailed, or not relevant, but how is it less relevant than what had already been there?

In the version you reverted the article to, the UK section is led by a generic single-sentence comment by David Attenborough, which as it stands (i.e. without further sources on why he said what he said) is nothing but his personal opinion, just one that happens to be published. That is hardly more relevant than the position of Songbird Survival in 2006. The statements of Songbird Survival on their website, however, are also not backed by any reliable published sources. They are statements of opinion, similar to the position of the RSPB, although the RSPB leaflet at least cites some scientific literature. That is why I went back to the 1979 article that was accessible to me, to see what scientists had been saying before the controversy between RSPB and Songbird Survival began. It is something of a contradiction here that Songbird Survival had been making claims about the absence of research of sufficient quality when such studies had in fact existed and continued to use this argument as late as 2016 without bothering to cite any actual science.

You question the value of the 1979 article by ridiculing the fact it was based on a study of five cats over two weeks. Now, the intensity of qualitative research means it cannot be done on a huge scale without incurring massive costs. It is an approach which offers certain very clear advantages over its number-crunching alternatives. For one, it offers actual numbers obtained from field research, not statistical extrapolations. For another, we learn what ecosystem (what prey was available, environmental pressures etc.) the figures were obtained in. By contrast, the 2013 study in Nature is merely based on global estimates. It admits that "there was a relatively small sample of US studies that estimated predation rates" (emphasis mine: the studies sampled were themselves also not based on actual numbers) and that therefore the information had to be collated from various studies covering the temperate zone all around the world. Note that this means that there is still today in the United States a paucity of studies like the 1979 one, which you want to throw out altogether as obsolete.

In summary, while you may wish to dispute this or that point or phrasing in my contribution, I cannot see a valid justification for you to delete it as a whole and restore a brief paragraph citing journalistic articles alone, some of them with a biased viewpoint that promotes the agenda of a lobbying organisation. The way to go is expand, not delete. Name-dropping David Attenborough is not a way to establish what is or is not a fringe theory - if the RPSB position is "fringe", you must demonstrate that with a reliable, published source which actually gives such evidence. As ever. From the fact we have to discuss this at such length, and that there are controversies within the field that have not been resolved in the article, it should be clear that a decent literature overview is badly needed. VampaVampa (talk) 21:09, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That is a wall of text that I'm not going to read in its entirety, but that doesn't appear to be based in policy or guidelines. But I am going to comment on your initial edit summary [27] NB. the article as a whole is biased in favour of the recent research trend to exaggerate cat predation where you acknowledge that you're adding out of date information to try to shift the POV to a more pro-outdoor cat point of view, and away from the current scientific mainstream, which you apparently disagree with. Geogene (talk) 21:53, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

To cite WP:NPOV against my contribution you need to prove that 1970s science which has not been demonstrably superseded is WP:FRINGE. The same applies to preferring the viewpoint of one organisation (SongBird Survival) over another (RSPB). There is no section in the article that explains how "older research" has been replaced by newer research, or what the scientific paradigm shift has consisted in. If your WP:WIKILAWYER strategy is to ignore what I say and instead cherrypick from my contribution, please note that WP:WALLOFTEXT also says: "Not every matter can be addressed with a one-liner".

I would appreciate if you could be clear as to what you are actually contesting in my contribution, because in summary of the above:

(a) WP:OLDSOURCES does not automatically invalidate older research (i.e. that research has to be dismantled in a verifiable way)

(b) there is nothing in my contribution that is not in the source. VampaVampa (talk) 22:12, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Roughly 50-year-old primary research papers that are contradictory of modern scientific consensus are not a "may be inaccurate" situation but an are one. A single defunct advocacy organisation's opinion, based on a "study" that only involved 5 cats is clearly undue. The fact that doing statistically meaningful studies is expensive and difficult is irrelevant; it is not a free pass for extrapolating from statistically worthless data into a generalized claim. the article as a whole is biased in favour of the recent research trend to exaggerate cat predation is a clear declaration of trying to advance a "cat-defense" advocacy position against current scientific consensus among researchers on the topic and dismiss them all as a conspiratorial bias-farm, and that's pretty much the definition of WP:FRINGE editing.

VampaVampa is grossly misunderstanding how we do things here. E.g. someone publishing 2024 articles claiming the earth is flat would not consistitute valid research, because it would not affect in any way the overwhelming scientific consensus that the earth is round (technically, an oblate spheroid). VampaVampa is trying to set up a situation in which source age is meaningless, and only agreement of sources with VampaVampa's viewpoint can matter. VampaVampa's attack on the science as "just estimates" is exactly the same as creationists' attempts to pooh-pooh evolution as "just a theory"; it's a misunderstanding of what "theory" and "estimate" mean and how science actually works. A principle in science that has become broadly accepted because it closely fits the data and can be used accurately to predict results becomes a theory (versus just a hypothesis, which is what the ignorant mean when they misuse the word "theory"), and all of the conclusions that science comes to based on testing data models against particular theories are estimates. Science's actual goal is the production of practically usable estimates that survive repeated testing with sound theories and properly gathered data.

If VampaVampa wants to raise an issue with Songbird Survival as a source, they are welcome to present evidence that SS's data, conclusions, etc., are contradictory to the state of current research consensus. VampaVampa has not done that, but just issued an opinion that they don't trust SS and how SS arrived at its conclusions, and "therefore" VV is free to make use of old and advocacy-oriented source claims that no other editors accept. WP does not work that way. Editor A does not get to impose sourcing that editors B, C, etc. have pointed out serious problems with, simply because Editor A doesn't like (but can't demonstrate anything wrong with) sources that B, C, etc. accept. This is not an "everyone gets to use a source they like better" system. We evaluate sources by how well they align with the current state of the research as a whole.

Anyway, if this doesn't resolve itself pretty quickly, the thing to do is open a WP:RSN discussion about VampaVampa's cat-advocacy source and 1970s papers and how they do not align with present-day research. VV, in turn, is welcome to also present a case against SS as a source. That would probably ultimately be fruitless, because all of SS's material is verifiable with deeper current research; someone's just used SS because they provide a more easily digestable overview. But their own nature as an advocy group of a different sort might make them non-ideal as a source. One potential solution here is moving the competing advocacy-related claims into a subsection for them, with some analysis; it seems unlikely to me that secondary literature somewhere has not already examined the claims made by these two organizations and many more. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 23:29, 26 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@SMcCandlish: You say that "One potential solution here is moving the competing advocacy-related claims into a subsection for them, with some analysis; it seems unlikely to me that secondary literature somewhere has not already examined the claims made by these two organizations and many more" - and I can only agree with that. An advocacy section would be helpful, and so would be any references to literature that addresses the respective position of either organisation.^[2]

We also need a history of research section which will outline what the past and current state of research actually is. You say that "we evaluate sources by how well they align with the current state of the research as a whole". But the "current scientific consensus among researchers on the topic"^[3] has first to be described on Wikipedia in a thorough and exhaustive manner before you can compare things against it. Otherwise it will remain open to dispute what we are comparing against.

Haste is not the way to go. I should point out that you have jumped to conclusions too quickly in writing that "A single defunct advocacy organisation's opinion, based on a "study" that only involved 5 cats is clearly undue." The 1979 article has nothing to do - that I know of - with either the position of RSPB or with "cat-advocacy". The RPSB does not cite that article. There is no ground for claiming that it is an "advocacy-oriented source" other than the fact that some editors (i.e. you) don't accept it, and the only link between the 1979 article and RSPB or "cat advocacy" is that I have used this article and I have said that I regard the article as biased. My use of the 1979 article, however, does not retroactively make it a "cat-defense" [sic] partisan piece. I would suggest that perhaps the 1979 article pre-dates the entire controversy, but that will only be known once we have a well-sourced advocacy section, and ideally also a history of research section here.

I find your use of a highly subjective concept of modern science (i.e. anything after what date? 2000?) as a rhetorical tool of abuse objectionable. It mirrors that of Geogene above. I also object to childish misrepresentations of what I have said: "only agreement of sources with VampaVampa's viewpoint can matter", "VampaVampa's attack on the science as "just estimates"..." - are you unable to engage in discussion without caricaturing your adversary? I have never said estimates were illegitimate or unscientific; what I said is that estimates are not the Holy Grail of science, and that qualitative research also has its value.

I must ask a question on tone: when you say "how we do things here", who exactly are you speaking for? What entitles you to say I am an outsider to Wikipedia? Have I gatecrashed a private party here?

There are some statements you have made that puzzle me and that I should like to know more in depth about. You have claimed "all of SS's material is verifiable with deeper current research". I am not sure where your confidence for that comes from (is there a published source for this?), but I would like to see the verification done. And on the other side of the coin, you mention the "sourcing that editors B, C, etc. have pointed out serious problems with" - but where is the evidence for this? All you have done is make unsourced claims in this section of the talk page.

In summary, to accept your self-proclaimed authority on all these points, I need evidence please. Like I already said, that should hopefully encourage us to improve and expand the article. VampaVampa (talk) 01:50, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Re: We also need a history of research section which will outline what the past and current state of research actually is Not unless current secondary sources exist that cover that history. Cobbleing together old primary sources like you did with Songbird Survival's website is original research. Geogene (talk) 03:03, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) I have no "self-proclaimed authority" of any kind; I simply know from long practice how to write encyclopedic content properly and how our core content policies and related guidelines are actually applied in practice. I.e., don't confuse experience with aristocracy. Analysis of sources against current real-world scholarly consensus is something Wikipedia editors do, collectively and generally via talk pages, with all the available reliable source material; it is not in any way dependent upon what happens to be presently written in our own article (which is not itself a reliable source, as a matter of policy). It could not be any other way, because what is written in our article is itself also a product of that same editorial consensus process of examining the state of the available source material and what it is collectively telling us (i.e. what the real-world consensus is that our "job" is to summarize).

"We also need a history of research section which will outline what the past and current state of research actually is" might be reasonable, if this is something that secondary sources have written about. Some articles do lend themselves to a "history of scholarship" sort of section, though I'm not certain this really is one. But the assumption that we can't assess a source you want to use (to override all the newer source material) until we have such a section within our own article is completely backwards.

'what you call "modern (i.e. most recent) scientific consensus" did not yet exist': Well of course it didn't, in the sense of "what the present scientific assessment of this particular question is" (the process of formulating and over time adjusting such a scientific consensus certainly did exist then, and much much earlier). Papers written in the 1970s could not magically predict the future about what papers in the 2020s would say; they could only do the best job they could at the time with the data and methods then available. Their conclusions are not somehow immune to being revised, even completely overturned, by later research, especially on a question in which the observable facts are themselves changing over time. I'm not the one here with strange ideas about how science develops. It simply does not happen that half-a-century-old material, that you want to use and which contradicts current research, is more reliable than the current research. How science actually works is that old research is surprassed by newer research (absent serious problems like a "researcher" faking their data, but this is usually detected and corrected soon enough; peer review and reproduction of results happen for a reason, and there's no evidence of anything like that happening within this subject anyway).

"who exactly are you speaking for?": The entire editorial community who wrote, understand, and follow our sourcing policies and who are here to write an encyclopedia properly. I never said you were "an outsider to Wikipedia", but you will quickly enough cast yourself in the role of one if you continue to push viewpoints that are contrary to scientific consensus, in pursuit of a pro-cats advocacy viewpoint, and accusing Wikipoedia (i.e. its editorial community, or maybe you mean the specific editors you are in conflict with right now), and the entire scientific community the former relies on, as being "biased". If you feel you have "gatecrashed a private party" when confronted with WP policies and editing practices and what the modern source material is concluding, then that is an issue coming directly and entirely from you, not from me or anyone else here.

You have arrived here espousing a belief that cats are not problematic, or that they are less problematic, that particular material from the 1970s and a bit later that seems to support your viewpoint is the truth, that modern research that comes to conclusions you don't like is somehow faulty and biased, and that our own article is biased (i.e. written with an intent to deceive by pushing a particular viewpoint). But you cannot (or at least have not) demonstrated anything to support these notions at all. Bible-thumping surpassed 1970s papers and a dead pro-cat advocacy organization as if they prove you are right is circular reasoning, of the same sort as this tedious pattern: A: "The Great Flood really happened. The Bible says so clearly." B: "Modern science does not agree with you or the Bible." A: "You and the science are biased and wrong, because the Bible says it happened." You can't prove the current science is wrong without showing how it is wrong with newer and better science; retreating to earlier answers you like better but which the modern science has overridden is not scholarship, it's faith-based advocacy. Cf. also WP:NOT#ADVOCACY, WP:TRUTH, WP:GREATWRONGS, WP:ACTIVISM, WP:ADVOCACY. This is a common probelmatic issue across innumerable topics, and the community is well aware of it and well equipped to deal with it.

Article content requires citations; talk page discussions do not. No one needs to cite sources anew to raise issues with your dependence on two-generation-old materials; we have a guideline against using old science for a reason, and it applies to this subject like any other. It is no one's job here to do your good-enough-to-use-in-an-article research for you. To get you started, see the "cat predation" search results at scholar.archive.org and scholar.google.com (both constrained to year-2000-and-later material), and work from there. If you throw in the word "review" you can cause systematic and other literature reviews (scientific secondary sources that are of more value than primary research papers) to bubble somewhat up toward the top. If there are any at all that support your viewpoint, they are utterly dwarfed by those that do not. Here are a few to get you started: [28] [29], [30], [31], [32], [33], and especially [34] (which addresses the very "proof of impact" pro-cat advocacy you are promoting here). If you need full-text access to some, you might qualify for a The Wikipedia Library account which is apt to provide it.

You seem to be under an impression along the lines "If I have to show that my ancient sources are still not only reliable but so reliable that they overturn all the current scholarship, then you lot have to prove that current scholarship is itself valid." That's not how this works. The current scholarship (from reputable journals and other reliable sources) is presumptively valid, and the old material it has surpassed and contradicted is presumptively outdated and no longer reliable. WP simply could not exist if it tried to operate the basis that you'd apparently like it to, with outmoded misunderstandings being given equal or even better treatment as source material than present-day best understandings. "there is a very strong possibility that the newer studies simply ignored the old research": No, there is not a "very strong possibility" of this; it's FUD you invented out of nowhere. If researchers on this subject were ignoring prior research (either pointedly with an agenda, or randomly due to rank incompetence), they would not have passed peer review and even if they did, they would be called on it rapidly, especially in a subject in which there are up-in-arms advocacy voices (even among academics able to get papers published in the same sorts of journals) desperately trying to prove them wrong, and character-assassinating researchers who don't agree with their cat-promotional and kumbaya "every animal is precious" activism against feral predator culling (see huge thread above this one). I'm not going to expend another two days or so on detailed source analysis again, like I did last time, simply to address your demands (cf. WP:SATISFY). You have the overwhelming burden of proof here that your 50-year-old papers and defunct advocacy group are somehow more reliable sources than the current and overwhelming scientific conclusion that feral and indoor-outdoor pet cats are together ecologically very problematic (especially in combination with other invasive species like rats, foxes, dogs, weasels, etc.). There ain't no "study" of a grand total of 5 cats that can possibly dispel this. Much more statistically significant examinations dispel your "the cats aren't a real problem" idea completely (start with, e.g. [35] and at scholar.google.com, [36], and especially [37] which directly addresses the denialism you are bring here. And there's a lot more, including various modern primary research (e.g. [38]) that appears not to have been shown faulty by anyone and is inceasingly part of the analaysis, especially when it comes to sublethal population supression effects like the predator-fear factor, which combine with direct predation. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 03:58, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Geogene: "Not unless current secondary sources exist that cover that history." You have not shown anywhere that they do. "Cobbleing together old primary sources like you did with Songbird Survival's website is original research." I refer you again to what original research is - saying what is not in the source.

@SMcCandlish: You claim that "what is written in our article is itself also a product of that same editorial consensus process of examining the state of the available source material and what it is collectively telling us (i.e. what the real-world consensus is that our "job" is to summarize)". What is the evidence for this "editorial consensus" and who is it between, yourself and Geogene? It is one thing for you to claim that you have summarised a scientific consensus and another for it to be actually the case. The verification that you have summarised it correctly can only happen on Wikipedia, and since as you rightly say talk page is not the place to use extensive citations, the only place it can be verified through is the article page. Which is why the only way to resolve our dispute is to expand the article so that it becomes clear through systematic references to literature that the scientific consensus has been accurately and reliably represented. Otherwise you are asking me to put unreasonable and unfounded faith in the assertion that every edit you, SMcCandlish, make, magically corresponds to the current scientific consensus that for the time being remains largely in your head. The fact that you can cite some recent literature by linking to it outside the article does not yet mean that you are right. The place to demonstrate your knowledge of the current research is in the article, for I cannot access your neural circuits or your personal notes. I also draw your attention to the fact that no single scientific article ever directly represents the scientific consensus and that new science is being done as we speak hence the state of consensus is always in flux. I do not say this to undermine confidence in scientific research at all, but to emphasise that we need to stick to the actual information in those papers, not to an imaginary consensus (as if science lacked internal disagreements).

I will ask you again to refrain from attributing things to me based on your assumptions (e.g. "kumbaya "every animal is precious" activism"). I take it that these attributions correspond to a broader dispute concerning cat predation whose details largely elude me, because they are not in the article, and I think they should be. I also find it ridiculous that you have accepted my sarcastic suggestion of the year 2000 as a cut-off point for modern science (please follow this wikilink because you use notions that you do not understand). I have seen absolutely no ground to argue 2000 represented a watershed in zoology - have you?

As to your reasoning about how science works, I find it on the whole unpersuasive in that you keep invoking your own idea about the "scientific consensus" that has to be demonstrated beyond doubt. Your notion of what the "scientific consensus" entails may be right, or it may be wrong (in varying extents on particular points) - it is a verifiable matter. I repeat, the scientific consensus is not an authority to be brandished about, and a selection of links to literature is not in itself enough to back that up. Zoology has a lesser capacity to make rapid breakthroughs than physics, chemistry or medicine because what it studies is animal adaptations, and evolution does take time (species invasions of isolated habitats are an exceptional case that shouldn't be exaggerated out of proportion). I am now going to read the articles you have pointed me to, as well as other literature, and incorporate this into any further edits. I would ask you to kindly refrain from wholesale edit reverting of my contributions and bear with me as I study the literature, and would welcome it if you helped me keep my contributions as accurate and informative as possible, in line with Wikipedia guidelines.

Finally, you have made a lot of hay out of my offhand comment in the description of my edit, but that comment in no way impacts on what is in the article. It was a suggestion for further improvement that someone else might then carefully examine and take up or not. It was my hasty impression that I formed at a brief glance, since the article to my mind (which is in no way a proven fact and is not part of my contribution as such) shows an undue reliance on a group of researchers from Exeter who have a link to Songbird Survival, and on research concerning island habitats which is a special case of cat predation, by no means applicable to the entire temperate zone or the world. Let me remind you that my edit description comment did not allege the existence of an "anti-cat lobby" but only suggested that there are exaggerations in recent research, which is a reasonable claim that an academic might make in disputing another's findings. If you have any first-hand experience of how "modern" academia works, in particular in the UK, then you will know of issues like overproduction of lower-quality publications to meet REF ranking criteria, the haste in writing and reviewing papers resulting from financial pressures, and so on. An idealised image of scientific research is not a viable argument in a dispute about the state of our knowledge. The only evidence is what is actually written in the paper, or in another reliable source, and that is what I am going to be concerned with from now on. VampaVampa (talk) 15:55, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@VampaVampa: I've started a thread about citing Songbird Survival's old website at the No Original Research Noticeboard [39]. Geogene (talk) 17:25, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And VV is simply not paying attention to what they are reading. E.g., the "kumbaya 'every animal is precious'" material is about particular writers in some of the source material, and that was quite clear in what I wrote, but VV has assumed it is about VV in particular. In point of fact, I got that language (though am paraphrasing it) from one of the published essays analyzed in the section above this, where I also analyzed in detail the ties of most of those writers to animal welfare groups and their oppositional stance to ecologists, precisely on an 'every animal is precious' basis. [sigh]. I'm not going to pore over VV's continued attempts to "argue Wikipedia into capitulation". It's a text-walling waste of time that necessitates more text-walling in rebuttal (because it takes more effort and material to rebut nonsense than to create it – Brandolini's law); meanwhile VV can be predicted to simply ignore any such rebuttal and continue advancing their original argument as if not rebutted already, which is all they've been doing here (as well as striking "I'm so wounded" poses). We have policies, they don't bend to suit whims and preferences, and the community knows how to intepret and apply them. Multiple editors object to VV's source choices as unreliable and/or claims made on potentially usable sources being OR in VV's case, so they cannot be used by VV in this manner if at all unless a consensus emerges to do so. We have noticeboards at which to address this stuff if it continues. NORN above is one of them, and the other, if it comes to it, is WP:RSN. Given that we already have a clear guideline against using old science to try to contradict new science, we already know exactly how an RSN will go if one is opened about VV's 1970s papers. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 02:49, 28 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Re: And VV is simply not paying attention to what they are reading. I agree with that. For example, a reply in a side argument on their talk page: Likewise, time of publication is not a criterion for judging scientific contributions. Did the relativity theory change Newton's account of gravitation because of its date or because of its critical input? The relevant (WP:OLDSOURCES) argument here would be that the Principia itself wouldn't be usable as a source in Wikipedia for much of anything, and that's would be particularly appropriate there because Principia is famously difficult to understand -- possibly by design. This is also not the right venue to have an argument on whether the RS Guideline that OLDSOURCES is a part of needs to be revised. I don't want to sink a lot of time into arguing the history of science or epistemology on article talkpages, my intent here is merely to point out relevant guidelines and how they apply to the disputed content, in a brief manner if possible.

I believe this discussion here and on NORN has shown that a local consensus currently exists against VV's recent subsection rewrite. This post offers another chance to flush out some other opposition, but, without that, then per WP:SATISFY and WP:ONUS, I'm likely to revert VV's change again soon, and if VV reverts again, I'll probably report that as edit warring. I'm not against bringing the different problematic aspects of that single >7000 byte diff to various noticeboards, but procedurally I'm not sure the apparent majority against is required to do that, or that the disputed revision should remain indefinitely. Geogene (talk) 19:57, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Geogene: There has been no external input into the dispute that you launched from anyone but the people involved, i.e. yourself and SMcCandlish. That is not any sort of wider consensus and none of your charges have been evidenced, and you attempt to excuse yourself with having no time to address counterarguments to resolve the issue in your favour in a kangaroo court. You cannot be a judge in your own case and neither can someone else who has a history of supporting the same viewpoint against any evidence to the contrary.

If you decide to take one-sided action by reverting my edit I will bring this to a suitable mediation or arbitration process, since you blatantly disregard the fact that there is a current disagreement in science regarding the claims about cats being "always and especially harmful to native wildlife everywhere", as one source puts it (Lynn et al. 2020), without considering ecological context or total prey population numbers. This is not to mention many other criticisms or to discuss other work critical of the same claims (e.g. Grayson et al. 2007, Fitzgerald and Turner 2000, Turner 2022), which I am reluctant to do, because you have shown a tendency above to ignore any arguments that do not support your view and instead to engage in unwarranted and aggressive rhetoric seeking to discredit my contribution.

As to my edit, it is obviously not presently giving a balanced overview of the situation and scholarship in the UK. It was not intended to be the final edit on the matter, and there is no obligation on Wikipedia for every edit to attempt to be the last word on the subject. What it is, is a clear improvement over the same passage in the preceding edit, which had been dominated by NGO-sourced comment and journalistic information.

To restate: there is currently a debate in science about the conclusion that cats are a major threat to wildlife and biodiversity (regardless of the fact that cats are prolific and opportunistic hunters or that they can threaten endemic species in certain habitats, principally on small oceanic islands), whereas you pretend that this debate has either never existed or has already been resolved in favour of the side you happen to support. That this is driven by a non-scientific campaigning agenda is clear from your remarks above that science happens to support Songbird Survival's positions and that RSPB is a "dead" organisation. You do not care about science, or else you would be open to my proposal to start a systematic state of research section in this article. VampaVampa (talk) 23:06, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

So the first of those sources, Lynn, was extensively discussed in the thread about this one [40] Why do people keep bringing the same papers back into the discussion? Isn't it because there are so few papers out there that are pro-outdoor cats? Isn't that evidence that those views are fringe? Next we have Grayson 2007, an old source which predates the landmark Loss paper from Nature, published in either 2012 or 13 that appears to have set the tone for cat predation studies since. Nevertheless, Grayson et al. acknowledge that cat predation is a significant problem in the mainstream POV: Many Australian and international studies confirm that pet cats kill large numbers of wildlife (e.g. Paton 1994; Churcher & Lawton 1987; Barratt 1998; Gillies & Clout 2003; Woods et al. 2004; Lepczyk et al. 2003a, b). Grayson et al. may not agree with those papers, but here they appear to recognize it as a majority viewpoint. Fitzgerald and Turner is an OLDSOURCE from the year 2000 that, from the Google Books search you linked to, doesn't even appear to devote more than a couple of paragraphs to cat predation. Turner 2022 is a fringe opinion piece in a Frontiers Media journal that appears to question whether cats are a even an invasive species: Quite often domestic cats are considered by conservationists to be an invasive species. The cat itself is mostly responsible for its domestication (“self- domestication,” albeit with some help from ancient peoples) and the expansion of its geographic range from the Fertile Crescent area to the East, North and South. and mocks conservation biologists Further, people arguing against cats usually assume one of two vantage points: either that of (prey) animal protection and welfare ("the poor prey animals") when they themselves are motivated by "the poor, poor cats". Geogene (talk) 01:02, 30 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Geogene: Nobody is interested in your personal opinion about these sources. And there are a good deal more.

That Loss, Will and Marra 2013 "appears to have set the tone for cat predation studies since" is a highly contentious claim that you are unlikely to find a source for.

There is no reason I should spend time arguing against what would be original research if it was added to the article. VampaVampa (talk) 15:59, 30 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My take: what we have in section Cat predation on wildlife#United Kingdom at this point gives a reasonable overview of what controversy there is. Adding lots of quotes and details, especially when presented in a manner that suggests that these currently constitute serious challenges within the wider field (which they do not - the modern overall scientific consensus is clear and continues to be firmed up), is not useful and feels misleading. I am really getting the feeling that the addition of this material is not intended to give an overview of the development of opinion in the field, but to advocate for a minority position and to throw doubt on the larger consensus. That is not within our ambit. - On the side, the 2021 Current Biology study re effects of diet on hunting behaviour looks like it could usefully be mentioned in the article (using more neutral phrasing), but it does not belong in the UK section. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 09:16, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I should stress that my edit was not meant to be a final balanced overview of the UK section, but merely an improvement over the version to which you have linked above. One of the problems with this version is that it opens by name-dropping David Attenborough who did not offer an argument but merely a brief remark on the subject, and another, more significant to me, is that it never relates what the conflicting views of RSPB or SS actually are in any detail. Now much of this could be moved to the articles for the respective organisations, and I grant that my version is not immune to challenges about its neutrality or balance; the problem throughout this discussion has been that of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. VampaVampa (talk) 16:47, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Frankly I don't like leading with the Attenborough quote up front either. That does feel like shoving a celeb out front to provide an "official" take on the issue, which it is not. If retained, I think this quote should be moved to the back of the section, as an illustration of opinion. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 16:54, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Or delete it as NOTNEWS. Geogene (talk) 16:56, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That in principle sounds like a good idea. It was displayed on Songbird Survival's website and therefore may have its place in the controversy, from the advocacy angle at least. That is why in my edit I placed it in its proper context, within a paragraph covering Songbird Survival's views. VampaVampa (talk) 17:07, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't been able to bring myself to read all the walls of text above (WP:TLDR), but I understand VampaVampa wants to include some studies from the 1970s whose conclusions differ from more recent ones. They seem to assert that the new studies must be shown to supersede the old ones before they can be used. I concur that the newer studies should be preferred. We neither have to show why Boyle's 17th century work on the Luminiferous aether is faulty nor point out where a new paper on Photons supersedes Boyle's work in order to use the new paper. The newer studies better represent the current state of scholarship, and should be preferred over old ones. EducatedRedneck (talk) 11:07, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I am not sure why you think that 1970s/early 1980s zoology should be compared with 17th physics. If there has been a true scientific revolution in zoology since that time, then I am yet to see not only any evidence of it, but any attempt to describe what it consisted in (beyond extensive data gathering or gadgets like point-of-view cameras, and some assumptions about what previous studies may have missed).

I should also clarify that I did not include the 1981 study (with 1978-9 data) as a privileged point of reference of any sort, but only because I had already read it before and knew it included data relevant to this article, which had previously offered very little in the way of actual figures to gauge the scale of the phenomenon. It goes without saying that if further studies were to be cited then the paragraph about the 1981 study would need to be reduced to a sentence or two at most, or even to a passing reference if a larger study based on similar methodology was to be introduced.

The problem with the newer literature is demonstrably that it can cite old research only in passing to support uncontestable broader points, while ignoring the actual conclusions. So the old research is treated as valid enough to be cited and its proper findings ignored simultaneously. Examples are citations of Errington 1936 (yes, 1936) and Nilsson 1940 by Loss et al. 2013, or citation of Coman and Brunner 1972 in Twardek et al. 2017. VampaVampa (talk) 17:05, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The idea is to use sufficiently recent secondary sources, such as ones from 2013 and 2017 you linked above. Why would you need to use very old sources if there are so many new ones? There is no sense if the conclusions by new and old sources are the same. But if they are different, it is generally the case that the new sources are correct/better on the subject. It does not mean that old sources are forbidden, just that they are less reliable and therefore not recommended (assuming there are numerous recent sources as in this case). My very best wishes (talk) 17:25, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It is rather more complicated than you suggest. A majority of the old sources appear to be in agreement with what is said to be the "minority" view today, or what Geogene and SMcCandlish have sought to discredit as fringe advocacy. It calls for a clarification of how the supposed paradigm shift has occurred, and what it consisted of methodologically. And if some scientists (i.e. the minority) continue to oppose the new majority, then we cannot simply assume - as Geogene and SMcCandlish would have it - that they are being incorrigible obscurantists, or have a dirty pro-cat agenda. No need to privilege the old sources, but they are useful as well, and importantly the new majority do cite them, if only for the sake of citation. VampaVampa (talk) 18:57, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I was not comparing 1970s zoology with 17th century physics. I was using a metaphor, using a clear example to hopefully shed light on a more subtle one.

The problem with the newer literature is demonstrably that it can cite old research only in passing I fail to see how this is a problem. The point of Wikipedia is to summarize the scholarly consensus. That consensus is evolving. 50 years is more than long enough to assume, if two sources disagree, that the scholarly consensus has changed. If, as you say, some scientists... continue to oppose the new majority then I'm sure there will be recent papers that say so. At the very least, I'd expect failed replications of "cats harm wildlife" papers to exist. As MVBW says above, Why would you need to use very old sources if there are so many new ones?

VampaVampa, are you able to look for newer sources? It seems clear the community is not willing to accept a 1970s study, but you make the good point that there may be more contemporary sources which say essentially the same thing. If you can find those sources, (and they seem both reliable and not contrary to an overwhelming majority; see WP:FRINGE) it would be worth including those per WP:NPOV. If there's a literature review that note such a modern disagreement, for instance, I would think that would mandate at least a sentence or two in this article to address the disagreement. EducatedRedneck (talk) 20:25, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Let us be clear about what the dispute is about. The basic facts that cats (1) are prolific predators, (2) are able to hunt large numbers of wild prey (in absolute numbers, not necessarily relative to total population) and (3) are capable of bringing endemic species to extinction in small island contexts are not disputed by any serious scholarship. The dispute is instead about the validity of the extreme alarmist thesis that cats (especially "feral") are the primary threat to wildlife and biodiversity globally. If you look through the thread above and on NORN, you will find references to a number of 21st century studies which disagree with such an extreme conclusion. The statement that "cats harm wildlife" is ambiguous - does it mean that they hunt wildlife, or that they threaten it with extinction? First is obviously true, second is restricted to exceptional conditions and otherwise strongly disputed. Science, like Wikipedia, is not a democracy - the consensus is achieved through argument and there simply has not been the burden of proof for the extreme thesis, or else Geogene and SMcCandlish would be sticking it in my face.

How do you imagine that it is possible for the rejection of the (century-old) extreme thesis to have been mainstream in the 1970s-80s, but now for it to have become a "fringe theory" without an obvious public recognition of it? Those terms should not be used carelessly. If there had been a "settled dispute, e.g. that the Sun revolves around the Earth", then we would have had an exhaustive article about it long ago - yet we cannot reach consensus to build one... Why do you think that is?

I haven't had the time to read everything but recent sources who reject the extreme thesis include Hughes et al. 2019 and Lilith et al. 2006, implicitly Bruce et al. 2019 and Lueps 2003. Nielsen et al. 2021 is relevant. Baker et al. 2008 discuss various caveats. The extreme thesis itself does damage to a nuanced discussion through polarisation, many authors do not engage with it at all.

Old literature has an additional relevance - it shows that the extreme thesis existed already in early 20th century and before WW2, and scientists like Errington who examined it found it to be rooted in popular belief. That alone should make one cautious about its re-emergence in scientific guise. VampaVampa (talk) 22:28, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It seems like we're getting somewhere now; good, and thank you for your responses! I'll come back to this in a moment.

First, I will say that I have little interest in the content of this article; I saw the dispute on WP:ANI, took a look, and found some statements made about the scientific process that seemed to me to be incorrect, and so weighed in. My interest here is methodological, not about cat predation itself. My comments were similarly addressed only to the methodology. My apologies if they seemed to stray into cat predation.

You write above asking how an old thesis could become fringe without a paper that rejects it. Here you seem to be begging the question; the recent studies that are cited do reject it. The null hypothesis was "cats have no impact on native populations", they perform a study, and find that they reject the null. That's the way science should work, and how it worked here. They don't have to reject every paper that proposed the old thesis, just the thesis itself. Similarly, the scientific process is supposed to separate the hypothesis being tested from experimenter biases. Our job on Wikipedia isn't to determine which sources reflect the truth, it's only to summarize the current understanding as reflected in scholarly literature.

What you've written above seems to me to be a great place to have a discussion. The sources in your proposed revision seemed to strongly suggest that cats have a negligible impact on bird populations. Hughes et al. seems to go directly against that stance, claiming cats had the greatest [negative] impact on local birds. The other papers aren't too convincing; Lilith et al. seems to be an opinion poll, Leups is in German which I can't read, Bruce seems more interested in risk to the cat than impact on fauna populations, Nielsen seems to be about cat population density and doesn't mention birds at all, and the Baker link won't load for me. So I'm sure you can see why the "negligible impact" narrative has been met with skepticism.

What you've written just above, however, seems like something worth exploring the sources for. That cats can harm bird populations, but that we need to more carefully define "harm". Where we should be focusing our efforts, I think, is on the "Consequences of reintroduction" section, which makes the bold claim you reject that cats are "devastating", and cites it to a New York Times article. It then follows up with a quote from 1984 to give the impression of scientific consensus. We Wikipedians can do better than that.

My suggestion is that everyone here leave this section and the old sources, start a new section looking to revamp the Consequences part of the article, and rework it pointing to recent scholarship, giving it the nuanced care it deserves. Use the Hughes study to characterize it as a negative impact, large relative to other invasive species. Find other studies that might put it in context for the wider population, or endangered populations. Heck, for the endangered ones, I'm sure there's a paper somewhere that notes that the cats' predation is a relatively small factor, but that it can make a big difference if the species is already in some way threatened. Does this sound like progress to you? I hope so, because that sounds like building a consensus and improving an article to me. EducatedRedneck (talk) 23:43, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@EducatedRedneck: You seem to be referring to the sentence, Pet cats introduced to such islands have had a devastating impact on these islands' biodiversity. That's the one cited to the New York Times and a book from 1984. But is it something you find to be seriously in question? Note that VV just wrote above that they agree that, [cats] are capable of bringing endemic species to extinction in small island contexts are not disputed by any serious scholarship. That's such a pedestrian claim that I'm not surprised the sourcing for it isn't the greatest. Geogene (talk) 00:34, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@EducatedRedneck: What you say sounds very encouraging, but I think you have misunderstood two crucial points along the way, and I disagree with you on two more.

Misunderstanding 1. "The null hypothesis was "cats have no impact on native populations", they perform a study, and find that they reject the null.". By no impact, of course, we mean here no long-term impact on the ability of the population to reproduce itself. This is not a hypothesis that has been proven wrong for everywhere on the planet, only for a number of concrete locations under specific conditions. No ecosystem can act as a stand-in for "everywhere". The falsity of the extreme view consists in hoping that if it can be proven for sufficiently many places, an uneducated public will start believing that it applies everywhere. This is what is at stake in the debate - an unwarranted generalisation.

Misunderstanding 2. ""cats had the greatest [negative] impact" on local birds". You have misconstrued the source here. It says: "Prior to their eradication in 2003, cats had the greatest impact on sooty terns" - relative to rats and mynas, which the source is comparing them with. Nowhere it is stated that cats had the greatest impact on local birds as opposed to non-local birds (which may not exist on Ascension Island at all!). I am sorry but where did you derive this nativist agenda from?

Disagreement 1. "The other papers aren't too convincing..." This is the very troubling way in which Geogene and SMcCandlish have been proceeding above - disqualifying sources before they are even used. I am not asking you to study those sources and extract information from them; I would expect you, however, to trust information that would be correctly derived from them, without raising unnecessary a priori objections. To your remark that I should "see why the "negligible impact" narrative has been met with skepticism", I could respond that such haste in dismissing sources gives ground for me to be skeptical of a superficial resolution being imposed here.

Disagreement 2. I object to the proposition that older sources be left out of the article on principle. What arbitrary date should we adopt for that? 2010? 2000? 1990? 1980? Why?

I hope my answer is clear enough to be addressed for its argument and not treated as combative; I am really tired of the unnecessary polarisation of the matter, yet ironically there is one polarity that I am determined to uphold: either we seek the truth with an open mind (by reading and understanding the existing literature, which surely no one here has completely digested yet) or we seek to impose a point of view from the start. Keeping an open mind is not prohibited on Wikipedia; it is in no way the same thing as "original research". VampaVampa (talk) 00:36, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Geogene I think what gives me pause is that the source calling cats "devastating" seems to imply, to a layperson such as me, that cats are the sole cause for a local mass extinction. I don't question the follow-on They have been implicated in the extinction of several species and local extinctions, as its limit in scope is clear. That said, I admit I skimmed the passage. If I misunderstood, please disregard my malformed thought.

@VampaVampa Misunderstanding 1: I understand what you're saying, and that's precisely why I object to the two older sources. As-written, it gave the impression of no impact at all in the UK, when there seems to be more recent literature to the contrary.

Misunderstanding 2: That's not a misunderstanding at all. My understanding of what the source says matches yours. The source found significant predation. That opens the door to suggest that an impact may exist. (It does not confirm one, but it does suggest one.)

You saying I am sorry but where did you derive this nativist agenda from? strikes me as a personal attack. I have no agenda. As I said, I really don't care about the topic of this article. My only goal here is to get all us editors pointed in the same direction so we can improve the encyclopedia together. I do not care what direction that ends up being. Your statement seems to be designed to make this academic discussion to be one about personal views and biases, and I can't see how that helps the discussion. I'd like you to strike it.

Disagreement 1: This was not at all an a priori dismissal of sources. I examined them in the context of your claim that they rejected the thesis. I found that none of them present findings to that effect. If you meant that they briefly mention that they don't accept the thesis, okay, they can do that, but if it's not something they support in their paper, then it's not a peer-reviewed claim. If you were pointing to passing mentions by multiple authors to show that it is a widely held view, that seems to constitute WP:SYNTH.

Disagreement 2: Nobody is suggesting older sources be left out on principle. What is being said is that, if there are current sources as well, the current sources be used instead. Especially when the current and dated sources disagree.

Finally, I want to point something out. We are not here to seek the truth. As that essay states, we are here to present reflections of current published knowledge (bolding mine).

I'm hoping we can find a way forward where everyone can (perhaps grudgingly) admit that whatever consensus we build is accurate. Treating it as "us" versus "them" is exhausting. If we're not all trying to work together, then I have better areas to spend my time. EducatedRedneck (talk) 01:15, 1 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

While I was initially ready to stand by my reaction to your answer, I will now admit having overreacted - there was no need to suggest an "agenda" in these terms, and I am sorry for doubting your good faith. I think there is nonetheless a difference in how we view the matter - but since it appears to be ideological, we probably need to find a way forward despite its presence. In my view it comes down to whether we believe that ecosystems should or in fact can be returned to how things were before (the invasion of "foreign" species). (To my mind Hughes et al. suggest that if rats replaced the eradicated cats as a threat to terns, then were rats to be eradicated a new predator would most likely appear in their stead.) Such differences are unlikely to be resolved by a discussion such as this (and similar differences are doubtlessly at work in my dispute with Geogene and SMcCandlish), so I do agree we need to try to work past them, all the while being aware that we are going to continue to disagree on some level. So the "us" vs "them" is inevitably there but we need to avoid directly attacking each other. My exasperation stemmed from the fact that in suggesting your solution you overlooked that you may be eradicating my capacity to seriously disagree with you. And that's the thing I meant with "truth", not any original interpretation or activism - verifiability is all I stand by. But I did overreact.

I also basically said a stupidity because mynas are the non-native birds in the paper we clashed over - even if predation on them is not being examined, because they're in the "predator" group. That still does not change my "ideological" disagreement with you, and originally with Geogene and SMcCandlish.

I am happy to strike the comment above if you require this as a statement of good intentions from my side. Otherwise I feel that it may be time for the RfC, because we are not going to achieve much of substance in this thread. You have persuaded me that RfC may be a viable way forward and I hope somewhat to have strengthened my case that the existence of fundamental disagreements means that various editors will clash and that not "wikilawyering" but sourced information is the way to resolve this.

That means that I have to acknowledge that I equally overreacted to having procedural charges invoked against my edit by Geogene and SMcCandlish. I did it from a place of a threatened beginner who feels they're being ganged up on by experienced users. But perhaps that situation doesn't apply any more. VampaVampa (talk) 03:12, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think Elmidae, EducatedRedneck and Geogene are correct here. And of course feral cats are a serious threat for wild life in many places, but especially for endemic species in places like New Zealand or Galapagos Islands [41]. Feral cats are invasive species.My very best wishes (talk) 15:44, 31 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Acting to Save Songbirds: CATS – Love them or hate them!, SongBird Survival, archived from the original on 20 June 2006
^ The additional difficulty is that SS has changed its position on whether cats are the primary source of threat to songbirds since 2006, which does not help in comparing its stance against research (did the state of research in 2006 not yet suggest cats were a major threat?).
^ I should note you have a strange and ahistorical idea of how science develops. You write of "50-year-old primary research papers that are contradictory of modern [sic] scientific consensus" (my emphasis), but please note that when those 50-year-old papers were being written, what you call "modern (i.e. most recent) scientific consensus" did not yet exist. It is the later papers that have either successfully refuted the earlier consensus or happen to contradict it. Such a refutation will have left an unmistakable trail of literature, so we need to cite it to dispel any doubts.

[1] Acting to Save Songbirds: CATS – Love them or hate them!, SongBird Survival, archived from the original on 20 June 2006

[2] The additional difficulty is that SS has changed its position on whether cats are the primary source of threat to songbirds since 2006, which does not help in comparing its stance against research (did the state of research in 2006 not yet suggest cats were a major threat?).

[3] I should note you have a strange and ahistorical idea of how science develops. You write of "50-year-old primary research papers that are contradictory of modern [sic] scientific consensus" (my emphasis), but please note that when those 50-year-old papers were being written, what you call "modern (i.e. most recent) scientific consensus" did not yet exist. It is the later papers that have either successfully refuted the earlier consensus or happen to contradict it. Such a refutation will have left an unmistakable trail of literature, so we need to cite it to dispel any doubts.

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 ::::::::While I was initially ready to stand by my reaction to your answer, I will now admit having overreacted - there was no need to suggest an "agenda" in these terms, and I am sorry for doubting your good faith. I think there is nonetheless a difference in how we view the matter - but since it appears to be ideological, we probably need to find a way forward despite its presence. In my view it comes down to whether we believe that ecosystems should or in fact can be returned to how things were before (the invasion of "foreign" species). (To my mind Hughes et al. suggest that if rats replaced the eradicated cats as a threat to terns, then were rats to be eradicated a new predator would most likely appear in their stead.) Such differences are unlikely to be resolved by a discussion such as this (and similar differences are doubtlessly at work in my dispute with Geogene and SMcCandlish), so I do agree we need to try to work past them, all the while being aware that we are going to continue to disagree on some level. So the "us" vs "them" is inevitably there but we need to avoid directly attacking each other. My exasperation stemmed from the fact that in suggesting your solution you overlooked that you may be eradicating my capacity to seriously disagree with you. And that's the thing I meant with "truth", not any original interpretation or activism - verifiability is all I stand by. But I did overreact.
 ::::::::I also basically said a stupidity because mynas are the non-native birds in the paper we clashed over - even if predation on them is not being examined, because they're in the "predator" group. That still does not change my "ideological" disagreement with you, and originally with Geogene and SMcCandlish.
-::::::::I am happy to strike the comment above if you require this as a statement of good intentions from my side. Otherwise I feel that it may be time for the RfC, because we are not going to achieve much of substance in this thread. You have persuaded me that RfC may be a viable way forward and I hope somewhat to have strengthened my case that the existence of fundamental disagreements means that various editors will clash and that not procedures but sourced information is the way to resolve this. [[User:VampaVampa|VampaVampa]] ([[User talk:VampaVampa|talk]]) 03:12, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
+::::::::I am happy to strike the comment above if you require this as a statement of good intentions from my side. Otherwise I feel that it may be time for the RfC, because we are not going to achieve much of substance in this thread. You have persuaded me that RfC may be a viable way forward and I hope somewhat to have strengthened my case that the existence of fundamental disagreements means that various editors will clash and that not "wikilawyering" but sourced information is the way to resolve this.
+::::::::That means that I have to acknowledge that I equally overreacted to having procedural charges invoked against my edit by Geogene and SMcCandlish. I did it from a place of a threatened beginner who feels they're being ganged up on by experienced users. But perhaps that situation doesn't apply any more. [[User:VampaVampa|VampaVampa]] ([[User talk:VampaVampa|talk]]) 03:12, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
 :I think Elmidae, EducatedRedneck and Geogene are correct here. And of course feral cats are a serious threat for wild life in many places, but especially for [[endemic species]] in places like New Zealand or Galapagos Islands [https://www.galapagos.org/newsroom/feral-cats-in-galapagos/]. Feral cats are [[invasive species]].[[User:My very best wishes|My very best wishes]] ([[User talk:My very best wishes|talk]]) 15:44, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
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