September 7, 2010, The Star printed an article titled “Birds dying in oilsands at 30 times the rate reported, says study”. The study which the article was based upon was published in The Wilson Journal of Ornithology only 7 days prior. That isn’t a lot of time for a tale to develop, or facts to become strewn or the size of the fish Billy caught to grow from 8inches to 80. However it becomes apparent like any other news agency, The Star, can also pick and choose which bits to pull from the primary source in order to develop their report.
I would like to first draw your attention to the title of the article, specifically at the end of the caption where the words “says study” are recorded. I, like many readers, see those 2 words and immediately my interest is sparked because a study must surely mean it’s true, right?. However thanks to this assignment which has involved locating and contrasting the original study, or primary source, to that of The Stars’, the secondary source, I have come to see what the true value of those 2 words are when recorded in a secondary source’s headlines and/or captions. It truly is unfortunate that the news, with which most people go to in order stay up to date with the world, is often a misleading account with the overall detail, and value lacking in comparison to that of the primary context.
The Star’s account starts in quick and gets to their main point which they have formulated the rest of the report around, and that is that there needs to be a more credible scientific monitoring system put into place, not just leaving it up to the oil companies. Already the articles target is revealed and that is the companies working in the Alberta Oil Sands; and the weapon of choice, some tidbits of research from the study conducted by Kevin Timoney.
To start I will bring up something which became a pet-peeve of mine during the reading of this article, and it is how The Star constantly says things that are simply vague and lack general information as to where or how such things came about. For example “combined with other studies” and “adjusted for the increased size”. Which studies? Are they relevant and up to date? And how was the adjustment made? By simply adding a value? By guessing?
Within the actual study these things are told to us in greater detail, and the entire picture is made clear. In fact in the study, Timoney says that the studies he combined his survey results with are quite possibly out of date, from the 80’s, and are only used because no new study or research has shown that deterrent efforts (so birds don’t land in the oil polluted ponds – tailing ponds) have increased or changed. Yet, he still notes, both the province and oil companies clearly say that efforts have increased and technologies have been upgraded. The only reason he chose to use the older reports is because he is basing all his study off of his own independent work as well as other works of independent study (he doesn’t want to use what the government releases – only what people who are not “connected” have found)
As for that adjustment made to calculate the mortality rates due to tailing ponds, because of the increased size since previous studies, again from the 80’s, Timoney simply calculated mortality rates for a small, a medium and a larger pond and multiplied the area of these ponds to represent the whole 120.6 square kilometers of tailing ponds. Again, he states in his study that the ponds he used to make these estimates could lead to results that are way off because some ponds could be more, for lack of a better word, deadly to birds than others.
Another major issue with the article is that within it, it is reported that birds are dying at least 30 times the rate suggested by government and industry. This is not true. Looking at the study, you clearly see the number that this stat was calculated from is the LOWEST reported mortality rate, however not the overall or even the average. There are multiple companies, and multiple tailing ponds with which numbers are generated from. In the study Timoney takes all the numbers and gets an average, and then compares that to his estimates from his extrapolated data. It comes out to being a greater rate still at around 12times greater, but 30 times greater as The Star reports is a big stretch, and again based on the LOWEST reported number from ONE company.
Lastly Timoney gives credit to all the areas of possible error, and hand in hand with my previous point, his annual mortality numbers are between 458 – 1630 birds, and he states that given the migration pattern for the given year, even the weather as when it is bad birds tend to land (more likely to get oil covered) all affect the actual value. But again The Star chooses to leave this out and simply picks the biggest number, compares it to the smallest reported by the oil companies and reports it. In fact the number they base their stats on is 1,973deaths which is the 14 year median, not even Timoney’s calculated annual mortality rate.
Sure there are things that are reported in The Star’s article that are true and representative of the study, however its clear the major points, the numbers they choose, the lack of detail, and the way they present their “facts” are completely off the mark from the primary context of the study. It’s misleading and it’s done with an agenda in mind. Nowhere in the actual study does Timoney attack the oil companies saying they aren’t doing a good enough job, is it implied? Sure, but the efforts of his study were to simply discover accurate values for the number of birds dying. The Star on the other hand, and as I stated at the beginning, took some tidbits of information from the study, selected a target – the oil companies, and wrote a piece making them look like the enemy. Science in my mind, and especially this study, isn’t carried out to label people as “bad” or “good” but to get somewhere in terms of understanding, and a foundation of accepted beliefs. News, in I bet everyone’s mind, is carried out to make money for the paper, the editor, and the reporter. What better way to do so than to pick a hot topic – oil sands, environment – slap on a “says study” and print it. The paper didn’t even have the link to the primary text, I had to find it! That speaks volumes to me.
Primary Source - http://www.thestar.com/news/sciencetech/environment/article/857638--birds-dying-in-oilsands-at-30-times-the-rate-reported-says-study Reported September 7 2010
Secondary Source – Not located on internet but in library. September issue of The Wilson Journal of Ornithology. Printed September 1, 2010.
Taylor Workman
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