By Gail Hildreth Whitsett

As a scientist with advanced degrees in geology, biostratigraphy (paleoecology), and additional research at Princeton University’s Yellowstone Bighorn Research station, I am continually amazed at the inaccurate statements being represented as “science” by our governmental agencies.

The latest in a long series of factually incorrect, poorly researched and outright fictitious drivel is the now exposed fallacy of the Canadian Lynx study undertaken by the U.S. Forest Service.

A publicly funded study was instituted for the public good, by a biologist of the Wildlife Conservation Society. The very nature of this alliance suggests that the results of the study could never have been truly independent or unbiased from the beginning.

The Forest Service now acknowledges that its own biologists released totally baseless and completely false information without waiting for a final report. When this hired Wildlife Conservation “biologist” failed to supply the Forest Service with a final written report or substantiation of his findings, they finally canceled the contract with him. That is not sufficient punishment.

Information was put forth into the public domain under the guise of science which was a total and complete lie. There is no evidence whatsoever that the Canadian Lynx is present in Oregon national forests.

Almost 40 conservation groups used the incongruous and false lynx habitat findings to call for a halt to more than 50 federal timber sales, and numerous federal grazing permits are in the process of being denied, because of the Forest Service leadership’s lack of the basic tenets of the true and accepted scientific methodology.

The individual Forest Service personnel and the independent Wildlife Conservation Society biologist who released this premature and blatantly false information should be forced to pay reparations to the individuals who have had to undertake lengthy and expensive environmental impact statements due to this factually incorrect and incomplete study.

Science and the scientific method is in the process of being destroyed in our present society. What is taking its place is a system of fictionalized and highly politicized statements that are being represented as science.

Many of our universities are turning out graduates who do not understand the difference be-tween a hypothesis or theory (often referred to as theoretical science) and applied science. Our federal and state governments must rely on individuals who should be highly trained in applied science, but who often are incompetent and without understanding of basic research principles. Science must be repeatable, it must withstand peer review of the scientific community as a whole, and finally results must be statistically significant.

Until government agencies such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife, the U.S. Forest Service, the Marine Fisheries, the U.S. Park Service, and the Department of Interior have personnel in charge of recruiting analysts for these studies that can understand the difference between a theory and the reality of applied science, we will not have accurate and meaningful statistical data that can be systematically and objectively termed science.

Unfortunately, under the guise of “best available science” we will continue to be subjected to the political rhetoric of the environmental left and their socia-list/Marxist agendas of property rights takings through the flawed application of the Endangered Species Act