A Primer on Natural Resource ScienceIn wildlife, fisheries, forestry, and range management departments around the country, natural resource scientists and their students advance understanding of the natural world largely through the collection and analysis of data. These students learn how to acquire data in the field and analyze them using modeling and other statistical methods. What they do not learn, contends author Fred S. Guthery, is what science means as an intellectual pursuit and where natural resource science fits in the scientific tradition. He argues that without education about the nature and philosophy of science, the wildlife field has become enamored with its methodologies at the expense of gaining real knowledge, leading to what some have characterized as “a crisis in how wildlife science is pursued.” With A Primer on Natural Resource Science, Guthery intends to put learning about the nature of science into the natural resource scientist’s university curriculum. In the first part of the book, “Perspectives,” Guthery describes the principles of the scientific endeavor, discussing the nature of reasoning, of facts, of creativity and critical thinking. In the second part, “Practice,” he presents the “mechanics” of science, explaining the roles of experiment, observation, models, and statistics. He also demystifies the essential activity of publishing, telling students and researchers why they must do it and how to do it successfully. Throughout the book, Guthery uses his long experience and the body of his own research to relate the philosophical underpinnings of science to the realities of field biology. By providing real-life examples in the practice of natural resource science, Guthery offers practical, occasionally painful, and sometimes humorous lessons on the human urge to know about nature through science. |
Contents
The Nature of Science | 3 |
Hypotheses | 14 |
Induction Deduction and Retroduction | 23 |
The Nature of Facts | 36 |
Being Humans | 46 |
Creativity | 55 |
Critical Thinking | 65 |
Practice | 79 |
Statistics | 100 |
Model Selection | 113 |
Interpreting SingleVariable Models | 125 |
Interpreting Multivariable Models | 137 |
Means Ends and Shoulds | 148 |
Publishing | 157 |
Epilogue | 169 |
Literature Cited | 171 |
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Common terms and phrases
abundance Akaike best analysis animals apply assumption best model bias biological cause chapter coefficient compensatory confirmation bias constant correlated creativity deduction density descriptive diversity ecology edge effects equation estimate example experimental science facts false field function global model Guthery H-D method habitat harvest human ideas implies increases independent variables induction interaction interpretation Journal of Wildlife knowledge linear logic logistic regression Lusk manuscript masked bobwhites mathematics means mind model selection natural history natural resource science natural resource scientists nest NHST northern bobwhites null hypothesis observational science Ockham's Razor P-value paper parameters patterns Perspectives polynomial population practice predation predictions probability problem quail r-selected referees and editors rejected relative research hypotheses retroduction Romesburg sample scientific sense seral stage snowshoe hares species statistical tests stream gradient survival testable theory thought experiment tion usable space Wildlife Management Wildlife Society York