By Erin McKinney
Ever been called out by a peer reviewed journal?
That’s what happened when a PhD behavioral researcher took a swing at some Naomi Rose pseudoscience.
In 2009, Rose published a document under the supervision of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), outrageously stating that only 5% of published studies on whales and dolphins were conducted in marine parks. Rose and her two coauthors went on to claim that United States zoological facilities weren’t contributing anything of value to cetacean science.
Dr. Heather Hill, author of dozens of scientific publications in human and animal psychology, took on the challenge, with an in-depth statistical analysis of cetacean science.
Her conclusion? Naomi Rose was not telling the truth.
After reviewing thousands of published papers, Dr. Hill and her student coauthor, performed statistical tests on sets of journals, to quantify type of research, species studied, and where the research was done.
Dr. Hill found that 29% of the sample’s papers were published using exclusively zoological data, with 3% using both zoological and wild samples.
32% of published studies used zoological data? That’s a far cry from Naomi’s 5%. And Dr. Hill calls the activist out on it.
“(Zoological research)…is nowhere as sparse as suggested by Rose and her colleagues (2009), who concluded that research with captive populations was extremely rare (about 5%).” Dr. Hill wrote, “It is not as meager as implicated by the most current report on the case against captivity.”
Savage, but not uncalled for. Naomi Rose frequently demands her critics produce peer reviewed proof of their claims. When she tried to abuse the system herself with bogus data, it came right back to bite her.
Some would call it karma. Anyone got some burn cream?
Source: Hill, Heather, and Monica Lackups. “Journal Publication Trends Regarding Cetaceans Found in Both Wild and Captive Environments: What Do We Study and Where Do We Publish?” Journal of Comparative Psychology 32 (2010): 414-534. Web.