David my comment was not personal to you, but you appear to take it as such. I am commenting on the need for a larger comprehensive perspective on this subject that you admit you don't have. And, with a subject of this complexity I simply do not think you have raised the general consciousness of this subject.

And, as your reaction shows, to both the overprivileged position of the scientific method in our discourse and our (as a culture)s disturbing trend to not want to think for itself.

You as many people make the mistake of having a false bias against and misunderstanding of what science and scientific approaches are. In this way your article actually sets back our openness to the best way we humans have of progressing our knowledge of the the world. It is a complete misunderstanding you espouse of what science is and how knowledge is gained.

I have the right to disagree with your methods, opinions, speculations, conclusions. I don't agree that better brains should be demeaned and I am glad of having a doctorate in research so I can accurately understand the true strengths and limits of science.

Perhaps the best aspect of this site is that science is not generally demeaned nor misunderstood here. Your position is nor rare but not an accurate one of the merits of science and the necessity of using all those tools with regards to this subject.

Bernard, you've made your stance on my article repeatedly clear. What you have yet to do is discuss the details of and evidence for this opinion.

I repeat: until you do so I find it hard to take your commitment to what you say is to you a serious subject, seriously.

What Scientific methods of inquiry might tell us is whether knowing the bear's way of perceiving, sensing, and behaving might reduce the risk or at least tell us to avoid certain situations if we are able to do so. In a crude analogy, it is like how we humans choose to live with pit bulls. Although maligned it is accurate to state that scientific research with dogs shows pit bulls have a lower threshold of what constitutes danger to the domain, dramatically more strength and jaw power than many dogs, and a tendency to not let go. Yet many humans choose to live with them even with infants knowing that one slip may be serious wounds or fatal ones. We have learned scientifically to understand dogs to a certain extent that allows for creating a balanced, calm, submissive animals that may not attack us if we are seen by them as the leader of a pack or dominant over them.

However, dogs and not wolves and trying to adapt these methods is perilous with certain pit bulls, let alone wolves. If we follow this line of logic, grizzly bears do not have 10,000 years of human selection to make them sensitive to human cues.

They have enormous strength, how they see the world and makes choices about it is a matter of current and necessary further research. Suffice it to say, we are lower on the food chain when in their territory, and if we do not know how they see a given moment and we do something which triggers or does not dissuade, the bear's ways of seeing things may result in our last moment on earth alive.

As you say, it is possible that even after further research we may find that their behavior is random, or at least so complex as to not reduce risk and dangerousness to a level that choosing to simply not invade their territory is the choice or not. However, it is too soon to know if this is true or that we have yet to understand them sufficiently.


As noted scientist Stephen Jay Gould once said:
"Perhaps randomness is not merely an adequate description for complex causes that we cannot specify. Perhaps the world really works this way, and many events are uncaused in any conventional sense of the word. Perhaps our gut feeling that it cannot be so reflects only our hopes and prejudices, our desperate striving to make sense of a complex and confusing world, and not the ways of nature. The world is full of signals that we don't perceive. Tiny creatures live in a different world of unfamiliar forces. Many animals of our scale greatly exceed our range of perception for sensations familiar to us. […] What an imperceptive lot we are."

David all I am saying here is thee is a need to innovate, imagine, and create inspired research on the grizzly to discover more about them. We may find them unpredictable or so complex they might as well be unpredictable. Or we may find dramatic and important answers to traveling in their presence. For the moment though lets remember that much needs to be done. Until then, like being a pit bull person, one rolls the dice and decides if it is worth dying for.

Yes science can be misused as can any method. As Gould also said: "Orthodoxy can be as stubborn in science as in religion. I do not know how to shake it except by vigorous imagination that inspires unconventional work and contains within itself an elevated potential for inspired error. As the great Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto wrote: “Give me a fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself.” Not to mention a man namedThomas Henry Huxley who, when not in the throes of grief or the wars of parson hunting, argued that “irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.”

Science starts with observation and documentation.

Thanks for your words Bernard. I particularly agree with your penultimate paragraph.

Satellite tracking collars are one development which might provide more data. A Griz in my area was recently recorded swimming seven miles across a lake to reach new habitat, not something considered especially typical before.

As I've made clear, I tend to come down on the side which your Gould quotation espouses; that biological systems are sufficiently complex that presuming science will ever provide anything approaching definitive understanding is quite arrogant. You no doubt see this over reach as the perversion of the scientific method which it is.

"Science starts with observation and documentation".

I agree, and then there's the long and difficult task of interpreting the data. But solid study of the grizzly has been going on for some time now, championed by the Craighead brothers in the 1970s, and more recently by Stephen Herrero and numerous others. There are also many good efforts being put forth by the Park Service and state wildlife teams. All agencies are hobbled in their efforts by limited budgets, public criticism, and seasonal challenges. Slowly we are learning more about these magnificient creatures. Still, there is so much more to learn, and it is not easy to put it all together.

The "soft sciences" don't lend themselves well to precise conclusions, only well thought-out generalities. I was trained in the field of dentistry. The medical sciences do try to adhere to scientific methods, but quite often the final chosen approach to treating an illness is through the "best practices" approach--i.e. we avoid doing what seems to not work, and we lean toward what the statisticians determine does. Pretty soft, but it's the best that we can do with the current knowledge we have. Biologists and psychologists are likewise operating in a state of relative scientific "softness." (it's easier to be exact in the "hard" sciences of math, physics, and chemistry).

Herein lies one of the problems regarding formulation of definitive guidelines relating to grizzly safety. To gain a perfect understanding of how to get along with the griz population, we have to fully understand the biology, psychology, and sociology ( bear-to-bear, and also bear-to-human) of that species. Those being what I've called soft sciences, it will take us a long time to learn what we hope to finally know. I, for one, am happy to learn anything I can about this animal now. Since I often hike in griz country, I can't afford to wait until the final treatise is written. Every valid tidbit, every obscure study, and every documented anecdote is another brick in the wall of my knowledge of this magnificant creature.

Right Gary. To give an example, the Kendall et all 2008 study of the grizz population in Glacier estimated around 240 bears, but the 95% confidence interval was 202-304. How can biologists improve that last number without being unethically invasive (ie radio collaring a huge number of bears)? Not an easy question to answer.

Ahhhh science. Particles were recently observed moving faster than the speed of light. Bad day for lots of scientists. Science isn't a study of nature, its only a study of human perception. Transcending human perception is a start, but in the end, there's no real answers....only more questions. Such is the nature of a fractal....it is without resolution.

Bad day for a lot of scientists....I can't see how. If this observation stands than I say it is a very exciting day for many many physicists. Maybe you mean the world of general relavtivity is now turned upside down? That is a theory that has and will continue to describe macro scale physical phenomena very well. Just as Newtonian Mechanics continues to.

The practical applications borne out of science over recorded history are amazing, as is the level of understanding we have gained of the world we live in.

So what if science leads to more questions....I say it leads to better questions and definately answers....just depends on how good we are at using them -- say this certainly applies to bear safety.

David, thanks for writing this article. It's always good to be reminded of the points you covered.
The humility part is my biggest "issue", even though I have had many encounters, I think I'm in control and can handle what may come. I have never carried anything, guns, pepper or bells. But I think I am softening.

Last week I was fishing on a remote river on the lost coast of Alaska and had a too close encounter with a three year old Coastal Brown bear(grizzly) than I would have liked. The bear was working us for most of the day. It even false charged my nephew (he was the smallest of our group). When it made its stand, I started yelling and slapped my fly rod on the water, startling the bear and it turned and ran off into the bush (only to appear later down river). This all happened 50 feet in front of me. I think he was just trying to get his fishing spot back, but you never know. After it was over I thought it was really cool- I had seen stuff like that on TV but this happened right in front of me. I guess I got a little science research done!

Edited by bestbuilder on 09/27/2011 22:51:57 MDT.