Talk:Decline in insect populations/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Bias

I really don't like the Francisco Sánchez-Bayo study because it is biased. It starts out with the statement "Biodiversity of insects is threatened worldwide" and goes on to do its best to demonstrate the accuracy of this statement. It uses peacocky words such as "shocking", "worryingly" and "dreadful state of insect biodiversity". It mentions the limitations in data availability but goes on to draw worldwide conclusions. I wanted to ask the authors about the statement "Moreover, every year about 1% of insect species are added to the list, with such biodiversity declines resulting in an annual 2.5% loss of biomass worldwide (Fig 2)." but could not find how to contact them. I wanted to ask what list they were referring to, and where the 2.5% figure comes from (Figure 2 is unhelpful in this respect). Without an understanding of the basis for the figure I propose removing it from the article. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 09:59, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

You may be correct about bias, though that seems to be a minority view. I skimmed hundreds of reactions via twitter and science journalism, and most entomologists and ecologists seem to agree with the Sánchez-Bayo & Wyckhuys review. I suspect they wrote the summarising statement at the top only after reviewing the 73 studies & doing the math which allowed them to make the credible extrapolation to the threatening worldwide trend.

Not sure the emotionally charged words like "shocking" etc are peacock in this context. In my view such language is appropriate considering the rapid rate of decline and the consequences to human life. The list they refer to is the IUCN Red List. If you want to hear that direct from the authors, if you click Sánchez-Bayo's name from near the top of the review's science direct page , it should give you several emails for him.

The 2.5% figure is derived from several sources, most especially from studies that measured biomass declines for insects in specific regions over the course of several decades. (In some cases this captured flying insects of all species present in a locality, in other cases also canopy & ground insects. The 3 most important biomass studies took place in the UK (Shortall et al., 2009) , Germany (Hallmann et al., 2017 ) and Puerto Rica ( Lister and Garcia, 2018). They seem to have made good use of ANOVA techniques etc, though I agree the review was somewhat imprecise in advising on how they did the math, and even in qualifying what they meant by 2.5% . (Considering the raw data, 2.5% only makes sense as an average if it's a steady linear decline, something that never happens in nature, it's much more likely there an ongoing ~5.6% exponential decline.)

Hopefully you'll get a helpful answer from good Sánchez-Bayo. Alternatively, there may be a revised version of the review coming out next month. FeydHuxtable (talk) 12:11, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

• The Sanchez-Bayo / Wyckhuys paper is a systematic review by experts in the field published in a respectable peer-reviewed journal. It is the first such review and, being quite recent, represents the best information that we have on the topic. It is not our job to critique or comment on it – that would be original research or editorialising. We should just report its conclusions and the reaction to it in other reliable sources. I oppose any attempt to remove or diminish its part in this article. Andrew D. (talk) 17:44, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

We can't engage in OR, but it is our job to gather critiques by other scientists, which do reflect some of Cwmhiraeth concerns, including peacock language or "smoking gun" language that frequently gets criticized in this nuanced topic (I've lost track of how many bee researchers I've heard complaining about that very issue). Even being new doesn't mean it can override the criticisms and nuances of previous recent secondary sources, which is why editors have been repeatedly cautioned about needing to use this study extremely carefully and not carte blanche like this.

It's clear you oppose removal, but that's not how WP:ONUS works. Without rehashing the WP:POVFORK issues, our rough status quo is what has been established over at Insect and described here. We can't circumvent that content discussion because you created this new page though. We're still at the point where multiple editors have brought up problems with use of this study across pages, so there is a point we need to get back to trying to fix that again instead of letting people blanket revert it back in. I have a few ideas I'm working on while incorporating some of the good recent changes, but it's also slow trying to sort through the constant blanket reverts to pick out the stuff that does have some consensus. Kingofaces43 (talk) 19:56, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

I contacted Francisco Sanchez-Bayo and had a reply to my questions. I could copy his responses here, or would that be a copyright infringement? Cwmhiraeth (talk) 18:41, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

You should have their permission from a privacy standpoint to copy email messages, but the closer-at-hand problem is we can't really use their responses for anything here either in the content development end of things. Kingofaces43 (talk) 19:15, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

Cwmhiraeth, it would be very interesting to see his responses, but you would have to obtain his permission. SarahSV ^(talk) 20:47, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

• I saw an interview with Sanchez-Bayo in which he explained his methodology. I don't have it to hand but appears that the study started as a review of the drivers of decline, which is why they looked specifically for declines, but that they then supplemented their database search with other ways of locating relevant papeers to get a general overview. I'll have another look for it. Andrew D. (talk) 19:10, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

• As expected, it didn't take too long for scientists to start speaking up about the major flaws in the review. We already have the sourced Sanders content, but we also have:

1. “Insectageddon”: A call for more robust data and rigorous analyses
2. Alarmist by bad design: Strongly popularized unsubstantiated claims undermine credibility of conservation science
3. Global insect decline: Comments on Sánchez-Bayo and Wyckhuys (2019)

That last one is even more critical than the others. Normally a study has to be pretty out of line to get that much attention (scientists just usually ignore poor studies and not cite them). Mirroring the other sources, we have comments like Methodologically limiting the initial searches to “declin*” biased the study, and any attempt to generate an average rate of decline for all insects. There are many studies that have reported no significant changes in insect numbers or endangerment. . ., so we're dealing with major WP:DUE issues in using the findings of the review. Like all the mainstream commentary so far, they all point out the need for more good quality data, but point out this study is riddled with issues where claims about rate of extinction shouldn't be used. Kingofaces43 (talk) 03:09, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Kingofaces43, re: Wagner (number 3 above), I added it to the article just before you posted here. There is now a paragraph based to a large extent on his letter. Number one (Thomas) was added to the article yesterday, I believe. SarahSV ^(talk) 03:31, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

See below. I pointed it out on 27 March and FeydHuxtable added it to the article. SarahSV ^(talk) 03:34, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

On similar high impact topics like glboal warming, its easy to find multiple low tier sources that argue against reviews in line with the mainstream consensus. They prove nothing, and we normally largely ignore them on Wikipedia. In this case, some of the criticism is admittedly from credible scientists, and like SV says we've already been incorporating it into the article. It would be WP:undue to include every single criticism, especially as so far we've only cited a tiny fraction of the source that agree the worldwide decline is a major problem.

I'd be cautious about using a source that makes claims on there being many studies "that have reported no significant changes in insect numbers". I'm only aware of 6 such studies, all of very limited scope, none of which cast doubt on the overwhelming consensus that worldwide insect decline is a problem. The Sánchez-Bayo review conceded there are rare examples of population increase even in the abstract of their reivew. Scientists have been warning about the imminent mass extinction threat to insects and other animals for decades, a survey showed 70% of biologists believed that even late 20th century. The evidence for mass extinction since then has massively strengthened, especially with regards to insects.

If there are any studies that cast doubt on the global insect decline, please list the individually. Vague mentions of "many studies" are not helpful. FeydHuxtable (talk) 07:30, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

That's WP:OR with you as an anonymous editor against a sourced expert in the field. No one is saying anything about denying insect declines are a problem, so it's not helpful to continue hyperbolizing the content issues as that. Please focus on the specific issues at hand. We don't go around removing valid scientific criticism by incorrectly interjecting WP:FRINGE like you're doing referencing climate change. To follow your analogy, if a climate change paper were criticized in this same manner for methodology underestimating temperature change, the paper would just be treated as poorly designed with whatever conclusions related to that being invalid. The other good papers in the subject get used instead. These are the venues where such criticism occurs, and the sources make it very clear there are serious issues that require more weight as sources start to speak up more. Kingofaces43 (talk) 17:41, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Again, WP:OR "does not apply to talk pages", as it clearly says if you follow your own link. Please stop wasting our time with your feeble wikilaywering and nonsense arguments against the mainstream science. It's beginning to become disruptive. FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:01, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

That is not a blanket excuse to to write up unsourced personal essays about the sources though. The policy is still very clear about novel synthesis when it comes to content, and the type of criticism you're giving here requires sourcing. When that piece of the policy you mention has come up for discussion, editors said to point to WP:FORUM to prevent gaming of OR, and that is quite clear on this too. Your personal feelings as an anonymous editor cannot override sourced opinions of experts. If you want your critique of that publication to even be considered for use here, you either need to publish it on a blog as an expert in the field or ideally in a journal publication of some sort. Kingofaces43 (talk) 18:33, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

Adding on a fourth new source in direct journal commentary now: Worldwide insect declines: An important message, but interpret with caution Kingofaces43 (talk) 02:55, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

Windshield phenomenon – questionable info needs to be removed

Using the following sources re the the article states: " Critics have said that more aerodynamic car design may explain the change."[2][40] We use two sources. The sources contain only one line about changes in car design:

"It has also been suggested that cars have changed shape over time, and are now far more aerodynamic, meaning fewer insects are hit." ~ The Telegraph

"Some people argue that cars today are more aerodynamic and therefore less deadly to insects." ~ Science

I believe that it is misleading to take this one sentence from either article and make the claim here, especially since all three entomologists at the Science article refute that suggestion. I think we should remove the "critics have said..." sentence unless, of course, someone can find RS to back this claim up. Gandydancer (talk) 00:20, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

I've changed that for now to "It has been said that more aerodynamic car design may explain the change." I'm inclined to think we should remove it, unless we can find out who exactly is saying it. SarahSV ^(talk) 05:34, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Here's a named source: All of these things make an impact, but John Rawlins, head of Invertebrate Zoology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History believes that vehicle design has a lot to do with it. Boxy cars of yesteryear have become more and more aerodynamic with each decade. Bugs used to hit vehicles head on, now slip into the airstream and fly right over them. He believes that the diversity may be diminished, but the density is the same. We just hit smaller insects SmartSE (talk) 07:19, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

It is has been cited several times in blogs over the years in 'sceptical' responses, the earliest citation I have found is a story published June 4, 2006 "Splatter-gories: Those bugs on your windshield can tell volumes about our environment" Virginia Linn Pittsburgh Post-Gazette web archive cygnis insignis 14:51, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

• Dr. Rawlins speculates that the change in vehicle design -- from the boxy Ford Fairlanes with upright windshields to the more aerodynamic teardrop cars introduced in the '70s -- partly accounts for the decrease in splats on the windshield. "The bug gets into the laminar airflow and goes across the vehicle. It never has contact with the vehicle." – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 2006

However it seems that Rawlins is wrong when he says more aerodynamic cars were introduced in the '70s. According to this article it wasn't till 1986 when the Ford Taurus was introduced. [[1]] Gandydancer (talk) 16:12, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

The blog is not a good source. We can use the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but it's one entomologist giving an opinion to a newspaper 13 years ago. If there's anything in this, there should be more recent RS. SarahSV ^(talk) 19:34, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

On what basis? It is the blog of a natural history museum and it would only be used to remove the wooliness of "critics". Worth pointing out that it is the same academic as in the newspaper article. There is another mention of the concept here. The current wording is perhaps a little strong, but we should mention in some way that this has been raised as a possible confounding factor. Hopefully the renewed interest in this will mean we can be more definitive at some point. SmartSE (talk) 20:11, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

On what basis? The link to the 2006 news story mentions the same academic because that is how I found it. Unless Rawlins 'speculation' in the quote from the journalist was converted to "belief" (the citation to a blog) in some later announcement, I am seeing nothing more than a repeated notion with no substance. The Revisited author repeats the notion as speculation, perhaps a testable hypothesis. As conjecture, it has some indication of notability. cygnis insignis 20:38, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

@Cygnis insignis: Sorry should have been clearer, I was referring to replying to The blog is not a good source. SmartSE (talk) 20:48, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

The blog only provides a name, not a citation and not an assertion that is easily verified. I'm guessing when I present that news story as the source of what I see inserted as a contrary point in various posts as received wisdom. I thought that was what you were reply to, I agree the blog is not a good source, the host and author are merely airing some science news in a chatty way and nothing more, and only a clue to what might be demonstrated as a good source. The blog is fine, so is the blogger (very fine! as an off-topic comment). cygnis insignis 21:10, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Smartse, it's a low-quality source and a WP:BLPSPS violation: "Never use self-published sources—including but not limited to books, zines, websites, blogs, and tweets—as sources of material about a living person, unless written or published by the subject of the article." The news story is a better source. SarahSV ^(talk) 22:19, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Rawlins also says that land next to highways has become more manicured and therefore less attractive to insects. He must be a city boy - other than the freeways that has not been true anywhere that I have lived. In Maine, where I now live, the woods, etc., come right up to the highway except for the freeways (of which we have few :=) ). I still think that we should not use this writer. Gandydancer (talk) 02:43, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

He said "high-speed highways", so I'll add that to make it more specific. SarahSV ^(talk) 02:55, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

He should have done a road test himself before making such an easily tested claim - just jump into a boxy SUV and take a drive on a country road. Presto, instant scientific testing of his theory. Gandydancer (talk) 14:01, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

At the least, it is the type of "blog" that we can use as opposed to personal blogs by non-experts. When you have a post by someone like a scientist on their university or work website, that's something that can be used with attribution. While mentioned above, BLPSPS does not apply to this. WP:SPS does though, Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications. Kingofaces43 (talk) 03:01, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

An odd clause, and superfluous to scientific literature. It reads like the 'expert' is an individual author, publisher, and producer, or that the second expert 'produced' another expert's self published work via self publication. Or not? In any case, the blogger (and expert) has not produced the source of the speculation or beliefs of Rawlins and I don't see the relevance. If Rawlins has published on this then the blog is redundant, and that goes for anything else that is 'produced' in the blog, it is merely a clue to better sources within verifiable and academic publications. cygnis insignis 04:39, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

• The details of the windshield phenomenon are best left to that page, which we should just summarise here. There's clearly a need for more research on the matter. I was quite impressed by the scale of the RSPB's Big Bug Count in 2004 and am surprised that they don't seem to have repeated this yet, so that we can compare the results over time. But, in Denmark, there's an active project to use cars to measure insect numbers – see The Insect Mobile. As the results from such studies come in, we'll get a better idea of what is actually happening. Andrew D. (talk) 12:25, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

RfC pre-discussion

I'll be posting a draft of the RfC shortly, so all discussion should go here on if we're good to go with it in terms of the competing versions. More to come in a bit. Kingofaces43 (talk) 04:14, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

So below I set it up so there's version A and version B. There's qualifier text in the beginning saying being version A or version B says nothing about which is a status quo to avoid concerns over which version goes "first" in the list. Everything up to this point is meant to just be what the actual edits are with a bare bones description of the difference between the two. Any commentary related to an option being "better" belongs in a comment section that will be added once we make sure people are good with the actual edits they want presented. I still have to do some checking on versions B's, but I wanted to get the general format up over the weekend to get a few comments before doing anything else. To avoid losing track of changes, if someone has changes they want to their preferred version, it would be better to suggest them here and I can do them in batches.

Also, there are a number of edits outside of the Sanchez-Bayo study content that were part of previous disputes. It would be nice to whittle some of those off to make it easier on RfC respondents, so this can be a last call for if anyone is fine with the version B changes or have a better change (better to tackle in a new section maybe if that's the case). Once we're at a point both versions are worded as wanted, the comment section will be where any justification takes place. Kingofaces43 (talk) 04:36, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to produce this King. I'm good with it, though suggest we delay for at least a day to see if others have any objections. (It would be easy to find fault with the frame, but this seems an extremely challenging issue to draft in full compliance with WP:RFCST. I'm not sure if large numbers of editors are going to want to engage with all the detail, but at least it seems laid out with excellent neutrality & specificity.) FeydHuxtable (talk) 07:29, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

I feel strongly that it would serve our readers best to link to this article (not insect biodiversity ) from the lede of insect. As there are already a large number of items, perhaps we don't need to address this explicitly. I would hope that assuming approach A gets majority support, it can be acceptable to restore this version to the lede of the top level insect article. FeydHuxtable (talk) 08:09, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

On linking at insect, that's already done in the biodiversity section. In general, it's probably better to wait until we've solidified content here at this page before discussing the others. There is a point we're trying to do too much at once, so it's probably better to focus on this article first as step one, and then a second step after the RfC to figure out the other articles. Kingofaces43 (talk) 16:42, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

• The proposal seems too long and complex when RfCs are supposed to be "short and simple" per WP:RFCBRIEF. The proposal is 10 separate questions and it would be better to take each one separately. Trying to frame these as just two versions, A and B, is not sensible because 10 choices will give us 1024 possible outcomes and we will soon run out of letters. As an RfC typically takes 30 days, the article will develop in the meantime and so a particular mix of choices may then become difficult to implement in the then current version (which we might call version C).

WP:RFCBEFORE tells us what to do before starting this

Before using the RfC process to get opinions from outside editors, it's often faster and more effective to thoroughly discuss the matter with any other parties on the related talk page. Editors are normally expected to make a reasonable attempt at working out their disputes before seeking help from others. If you are able to come to a consensus or have your questions answered through discussion with other editors, then there is no need to start an RfC.

We haven't done enough of this yet and so we need more specific discussion per WP:BRD, before we start any RfC.

For example, one specific issue is about the decline of entomology – that fewer people are studying entomology and becoming academic or professional entomologists. The complaint is that the current source for this is inadequate. We should then discuss this issue in a separate section of the talk page to thrash it out and we haven't done this yet. If the sourcing seems inadequate, then we can look for more sources and then see how matters stand. For example, here's another source which I just found for this: Taxonomic chauvinism threatens the future of entomology. I will add this to the article and so immediately the context for that question will change.

So we should first discuss each of these issues separately and in detail. Some will be resolved easily while others may be more intractable. It would then be better to have separate RfCs about each particular remaining matter rather than trying to settle everything in one big package. I'm in the UK where Brexit currently demonstrates what happens when you start a long and elaborate process without a good consensus and plan of action. Let's keep it simple, please. Andrew D. (talk) 08:17, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Andrew D. (talk) 08:17, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

I'm not so sure Colonel. In my view, the start of the long & complex process was when you chose to create this article. From that point, it was close to inevitable there was going to be complex discussion. (Not saying your choice wasn't the right one of course, the article as it stands is extremely valuable, so long as it can be kept reasonably NPOV. ) This RfC could largely mark the end of the process, not the beginning. That assumes we get a definitive result, which is not certain, but we take a chance either way. And I suspect many would say the intense discussion we've had these past few weeks easily satisfies RFCBEFORE.

Considering the slow pace at which Approach B editors have begun converging their thinking with the mainstream, it could take many months to fully resolve matters, if you insist on tackling each issue one by one. On the other hand, this topic does indeed warrant in depth attention, so perhaps your suggestion is best. As you know, effective efforts to slow bug decline depend on the individual actions of millions of farmers, other landowners, and regular people. So public awareness is more important than with most science topics. As the best sources are saying, the consequences of failing to halt diversity loss could be civilisation ending; at best we might adapt, but still with huge economic & emotional cost (numerous studies are already finding diversity loss is one of the factors behind the global rise in mental illness.) And there is the fact that literally thousands of generations would be effected, what can be destroyed in a few decades may take millions of years to restore.

All that said, I still see it as worth trying to settle matters in one go; at least then there is a chance of us being able to move on to other things. While the outcome of King's frame does indeed have many permutations, I’d be fairly confident the overall result would support a NPOV, useful article for our readers. FeydHuxtable (talk) 09:10, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

• I remain fairly confident that the proposed draft would be a trainwreck as, apart from anything else, it fails WP:RFCBRIEF on technical grounds. It may help to provide an example of a successfully executed RfC. I composed this myself and the question which was put was just nine words long. This is what is meant by "short and simple". Andrew D. (talk) 11:11, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

That was good of you to provide such a clear example of "short and simple". I fear though there's a apples & pears type relationship between the two RfCs. That said, if others are happy to tackle the various issues one at a time, perhaps it will work out for the best. FeydHuxtable (talk) 11:37, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

You can see other current examples listed at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Maths, science, and technology. There's one case there for which an A/B approach has been used. This is still much simpler than the draft proposal here but notice that discussion has already spawned versions C and D so comments now say things like "It is impossible to come to a conclusion at this point. A new RfC should be set up." That's what happens when you don't keep it simple. Andrew D. (talk) 12:08, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

A well made point. Perhaps I'm over keen to reach a resolution on this matter. FeydHuxtable (talk) 12:13, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps so... I found it to be "bewildering", is the word that came to mind. Agree that it would be a train wreck as suggested by Andrew. At any rate, in all of my years here I've never seen anything like it. Gandydancer (talk) 14:45, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

There's always WP:GMORFC for an example of something much more dense than this, but this approach isolates individual edits much better than that. If we can whittle it down, it will help a lot, but this draft is the starting point on things that have been repeatedly disputed, so we needed to start somewhere. Kingofaces43 (talk) 16:42, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Just a general comment on the above (specific replies in a bit), but with respect to We haven't done enough of this yet and so we need more specific discussion per WP:BRD, before we start any RfC., that is a result of edits building up and multiple requests for them to be addressed on the talk page. If there are things that can actually be handled without the RfC in a different section (namely the non Sanchez-Bayo stuff), those can be removed to shorten the list. That's part of the RFCBEFORE process for this.

If someone doesn't like all of A or B, they would just be able to say they prefer A except for edit x,y,z with their justification. I don't think we can have just an A and B diff because all the edits will make respondents eyes glaze over. It needs to be done piecemeal.

I would rather hold off on this until at least later next week to see if there's anything we can whittle out of this first. Andrew brought up the Time source and a replacement. That's good, and we'd be able to remove that one. If there other examples of something like that outside Sanchez-Bayo, let's see if that can be done first. Also just a note that I'm away for the weekend at this point, so I won't be responding to anything until Monday. Kingofaces43 (talk) 16:15, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Break

FeydHuxtable, you sound quite supportive of this RfC, but I agree with Andrew D. and Gandydancer that this is unlikely to help, for three reasons.

First, it's premature to try to lock down so many parts of a new article that's still under development. If it were a single issue (add an infobox, include a certain point), then okay, but how would this work for multiple paragraphs? Would no one be allowed to change them, even copy-edit them, and for how long? Second, how would uninvolved commentators work out what the significant differences are? Third, the final point about how to use primary sources is not neutral as written; it does not take into account the need to write about studies because they've become notable; and, most importantly, local consensus cannot override the sourcing policies and guidelines.

In my view, instead of an RfC, we should discuss each issue on talk, as Andrew said, focusing entirely on content: e.g. should we retain or remove the Zoological Society; explain the reasoning; discuss. We could set up a section for each point, with no time pressure, and make sure each section stays on topic. If we can't reach consensus, those sections will be there for future RfC participants to read so that they understand the background. SarahSV ^(talk) 18:05, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

That makes sense SV. I had already been convinced my initial enthusiasm for the RfC was excessive. It's just I can't believe how much talk page discussion this topic seems to need. With 'Edit 2', the drafting editor seemed to have a good point. In every other case, what they want to do seems to range from sub optimal to absurd. As the drafter isn't exactly the quickest to take on board others concerns for this topic, it seems we could be here for many months if we need to discuss each issue one by one. That said, better to go slow & steady than cause a trainwreck. And at least there is a bright side; if you are going to stay here with us, then by the end I may know you well enough to call you 'Slim' like your friends do. FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:47, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

Feyd, please assume you have permission to start "slimming"! As for the discussion, if we make sure each section sticks entirely to focusing on content, it shouldn't be too bad. We can at least whittle the issues down to the sticking points, and if they're intractable, then we can hold an RfC. But in my view we're weeks away from that. One thing I would request is not to refer to consensus formed elsewhere; this is a new article, so our focus should be on what makes sense here to the editors involved in this page. SarahSV ^(talk) 19:26, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

No argument from me, Slim. :-) FeydHuxtable (talk) 19:48, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

There have been multiple requests for editors to justify edits 1-7 for weeks now without specific response, so that's why the RfC was the next step. If anyone actually has consensus-based reasoning for not dropping the A versions in 1-7 after all this time, that should have been done long ago, but I also said I'm open to whittling those edits down in the RfC if editors do wish to discuss them briefly. That said, those that want those versions have been given plenty of time, so I don't think we're going to be looking at a few weeks before the RfC launches either. We're at the point outside input is needed, and outside of involved comments if they get read, respondents will decide for themselves.

As for how commentators will work out significant differences, I posted a Difference: portion of each where relevant, so that question was already answered. If anyone here wants to justify one or the other version beyond that plain description, it's for the comments section.

For the final question on primary sources, how is that not neutral? I wrote it very plainly for what people have been wanting to do. There is no policy saying primary sources must be used (quite the opposite actually), and I think we're all well aware that secondary sources are preferred in science topics while primary sources are extremely cautioned against (and not something to reach for outright). It ultimately comes down to local consensus as to whether a primary source can become an exception to that in these subjects, and that's something to hash out in the RfC. That said, a previous RfC on a similar question is pretty informative and had no such policy issues Note too, a claim regarding a WP:PRIMARY source and its proper use, in regard to its WP:WEIGHT, requires a "consensus to include" per WP:ONUS...[2] Kingofaces43 (talk) 02:17, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

• The reference to WP:SCIRS is not acceptable because that is an essay with no standing. The actual Wikipedia policy is WP:PSTS and a local RfC like this can't overturn policy. For a good example of this policy in action, see the now famous image of the M87 black hole (right) which recently appeared on the front page of many newspapers and on Wikipedia's main page too. That is a primary source at the cutting edge of science and yet the community is quite content to publish it prominently. Andrew D. (talk) 22:08, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

• I struck edits 2 and 5 so far, but I did go back and add the original sources that were agreed upon for that edit 5 text even before this discussion. Not sure why Sanchez-Bayo was used in place of some of those, but removing sources should be discussed before doing so. For edit 3, that still seems like low-hanging fruit for going ahead with version B since one of the main cautions is that species trends are variable by location. Is there actually any opposition to that change for edit 3? Likewise, edit 6 also seems like low-hanging fruit to remove the acronyms to remove SDG jargon while linking the the relevant article anyways. Still figuring out what to do witih edits 1 & 4 with the recent changes, but there's potential to significantly whittle this down to mostly be on the 2019 review. Kingofaces43 (talk) 21:44, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

I don't see edit 3 as an improvement, but if no one else objects I guess you could go ahead and whittle that one off, just for the sake of compromise.

I strongly object to version B for edit 6. For me, it's the non specific "insect as solutions..." that sounds like jargon/management/sales speak. Adding 'SDG' makes the information we're conveying to the reader much more meaningful. FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:50, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

On 6, that insects as solutions bit is in both versions, and I'm not overly fond of it either. SDG is unneeded WP:JARGON that isn't meaningful though, so that's why the article is linked with descriptive text in B as our piping guidelines suggest. I'm still not seeing any reasoning provided here why removing the jargon is problematic, and there's no reason to go with initialisms here either. That might be a different case if an article was frequently mentioning specific numbers on that list, but that's not going on here. One potential change to B (leaving the first sentence alone would be They list 100 studies and other references showing how insects can assist with meeting the sustainability goals set by United Nations General Assembly. They argue the best approach may be for the global-policy making community to transition from viewing insects as not only beneficial to the environment, but to using insects to find solutions for sustainability issues. or something to that effect. It gets rid of unneeded quoting too. Kingofaces43 (talk) 21:28, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

I'm having difficulty following what's being discussed here. There is consensus not to hold that RfC. In any event, it has mostly been superseded by edits, a process that's likely to continue given that this is a new article. As for primary sources, local consensus can't override policy. See WP:LOCALCONSENSUS (which is policy): "Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale."

But which primary sources are we discussing? I can't see any primary source in the article unsupported by secondary sources or being used to support analysis. I wonder whether this discussion is taking place because WP:PRIMARY has been misunderstood. If someone could point to the primary sources in question, that would be much appreciated. SarahSV ^(talk) 22:31, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

Most of what you bring up was already addressed in my first reply to you in this section here that you still haven't responded to. On primary sources there is no policy being overridden by avoiding them, and we've had problems with editors reaching for primary and newspaper type sources first instead of academic secondary sources, so that's why we're looking at bringing up how to handle primary sources in the RfC. One example is this study that is just linked to a Guardian article in the text, as well where other newspaper sources have been peppered into the article citing insect Armageddon, etc. Those kind of low-quality sources are supposed to avoided, especially when there's so much secondary coverage of the subject. Kingofaces43 (talk) 23:55, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

The phrase "ecological Armageddon" comes from Dave Goulson, a British ecologist. "We've had problems": who has had these problems at this article? "[W]e're looking at bringing up how to handle primary sources in the RfC": to whom does "we" refer? You seem to be the only person who wants this RfC, and the way it's written is misleading and confusing. The study you link to is supported by a Guardian article. The confusion may be arising because insect decline has become a current-affairs issue, so this article lists some of the studies discussed by professors of ecology, science editors, and similar. SarahSV ^(talk) 00:57, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

You've already been answered multiple times on why those of us here (i.e., we) are looking at an RfC here. There's been plenty of discussion about "Insect Apocalypse" and those headlines/articles not being appropriate or hyperbolized, so I don't think we need to rehash that again either. Also, The study you link to is supported by a Guardian article. is one such problem as I just pointed out in my last reply. Newspapers are not appropriate secondary sources for scientific content, and I think you've been around enough to know how the community deals with that and scientific content guidance as newspapers are notorious for not being reliable with science content. Either way, the current approach here is to work on the content I've been asking editors to discuss for some time. Some of that is finally being worked out while setting up the RfC, so if that's working without needing to start it for those items, it's something. Kingofaces43 (talk) 01:50, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

I have, as you say, "been around enough to know". When a government produces a study that newspapers discuss, Wikipedia can discuss it too. If there's a policy or guideline that seems to suggest otherwise, please tell us which one. SarahSV ^(talk) 02:19, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

Edit 1

Due to recent edits, I went and updated the edit 1 text in the draft [3][4]. There are still problems in the A version in that it still includes the London study focusing on vertebrates, and what was added about pollinators is covered elsewhere. There was a lot of quoting I removed when updating version B and paraphrased everything down. The parenthetical [203 insect species in five orders] wasn't really accurate as those aren't the only orders on the list (the fig. just shows the top 5). The UK range decline content is tricky to accurately portray (and really more primary research content than a review) going by the figure because there are ranges of minor declines (0-10%) and up to >40%. Mentions of specifics like number of species to not make it seem like it was an exhaustive survey are needed there from the methods. Version B should be pretty straightforward at this point, so if others are good with that, it should ideally be one we can cross off the list ahead of time. Kingofaces43 (talk) 01:34, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

Edit 7

I've also gone ahead and updated edit 7.[5] That one is close to crossing off the list now with the remaining version B changes. We need to be careful about saying long-term surveys since not all were long-term. Otherwise, B is just condensing unneeded text and adding a bit from the review. Kingofaces43 (talk) 21:17, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

Seeing nothing here after a few days, it looks like we've reached the point that no new edits are going to happen. I've started up the RfC since everyone has had ample time to comment in the pre-discussion. Kingofaces43 (talk) 19:45, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

Data schema(ta) from Dirzo et al. Fig. 1A?

Can someone who can access the data sets at [6] please post a description of the data for the figure 1A graph on page 402 of [7]? I would like to know the column labels and the number of rows in the table(s) used to make that graph, please. I'd also like to know opinions on whether a public domain re-rendering of that graph is suitable for this and related articles. EllenCT (talk) 01:19, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

In principle it is something that irks me, rendering of visual interpretations of data and facts ought to be as closely scrutinised as other content, if not more so for possible distraction from (rather than representation of) the proper content. Is that what is happening? What is the relevance of 'public domain'? cygnis insignis 01:37, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

Normally we are allowed to cut and paste charts and graphs, but this one is decorated with "original works of authorship" beyond simple unoriginal graphic depictions of the data, that being the drawings of bugs. EllenCT (talk) 02:47, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

The supplemental data document is here but sadly it has detail on all of the charts and graphs except Fig. 1A! I'm still interested in whether we should re-do the graph without the pictures of bugs on it for use here. EllenCT (talk) 06:33, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

I already pulled that data up a bit ago, but there's no mention of IUCN data in those files for insects. Even if their were, that's getting to a point it's a level of digging into original data that editors should not be doing. It's better to let the sources summarize things for us as much as they do. Kingofaces43 (talk) 18:33, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

@Kingofaces43: where is the data? I don't want to dig into it, I want to render the graph without the elements of original authorship (drawings of bugs). EllenCT (talk) 20:26, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

There is no insect data specific to the IUCN in the supplemental data as I mentioned in my last post. The most that exists is the mention in the main paper that is a little bit vague if you only look at the figure caption. As I said before though, that graph wouldn't really be appropriate here since it's only for a small handful (~200) of species Kingofaces43 (talk) 20:35, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

Citation formats

Does anyone mind if I switch from {{citation}} to {{cite news}}, {{cite journal}}, etc? I've already switched a few, in part because {{citation}} was producing news story titles in italics, and I'm not sure how to fix that. But switching has left the article with inconsistent punctuation. If there's a preference for {{citation}}, I don't mind, and I'm happy to change them all back, but it will mean figuring out how to deal with the italics issue. SarahSV ^(talk) 03:07, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

• I usually use the {{citation}} template because it seems simpler to have a general purpose template than a different one for each type of media. Many sources are now available in multiple formats and so it gets confusing using the media-specific ones when you're accessing a book via an-e-Reader or a journal article via an online pre-print. Anyway, according to its documentation, "If the correct parameters are used, this template produces output identical to that of the Cite templates", so maybe it's just a matter of tweaking the parameters to get a particular stylistic effect. Andrew D. (talk) 18:11, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Okay, that's fine. I'll stick with that one. I started using citation templates relatively recently, and I've become used to seeing periods after each element, whereas {{citation}} uses commas. But it doesn't matter; it's just a matter of making it consistent, so I'll go back and restore {{citation}} for the few that I changed, and I'll look around to see how to remove the italics. SarahSV ^(talk) 18:21, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
  • I've been trying to work with {{citation}}, but there are problems. First, it's not in the drop-down menu, so most editors won't use it. Second, it sometimes italicizes title= for newspaper articles and websites and sometimes italicizes publisher= (e.g. BBC News). It can be fiddly to avoid this. Third, there's no closing period, unless we add postscript=. SarahSV ^(talk) 01:12, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
• At this point, the references in the reference list instead of text is the established format, but we really should be sticking to the drop-down citation templates as that's what other people will be using in the future (cite journal, cite web, etc.). Kingofaces43 (talk) 21:36, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

• I have just added some details of a new report from the Swiss Academy of Natural Sciences. This is a Word document on their website with an accompanying press-release and coverage by the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation. The report is described in French as a Fiche d’information and in German as a Faktenblatt. I'm not sure what specific template might be used for this but, by using the generic {{citation}} template, I don't have to worry how to classify it – I just fill in the usual bits of bibliographic information – authors, date, title, URL, &c. – and leave it to the template to format it. My main concern is where to put it in the article – in the evidence section or elsewhere. I have put it at the end, for now, along with ESA FAQ and the open letter by UK entomologists, calling for action. The section title of "Conservation measures" doesn't seem quite right for such group statements though. Andrew D. (talk) 11:36, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

Return to a dedicated Conservation measures section?

The article's benefited from some excellent streamlining & structural improvements, though there's one change I'd like to reverse. Does anyone have any objection if I restore the dedicated Conservation section, and move the 'reception' related information back to other sections? I can see pluses to the new organisation, but having a dedicated Conservation section has advantages too. E.g. it avoids a possible scope conflict ( It seems best to have the scope for 'Conservation measures' to be "Insect decline" as a whole. Whereas the scope for 'Reception' seems to be just the studies.) I'd expect there to be quite a bit of reader interest in conservation measures, and it's nice to have plenty of space to cover the whole range in one section, from supranational efforts like SGS, to the national, to things that regular folk can do as individuals. FeydHuxtable (talk) 10:33, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

@FeydHuxtable: I'd have no objection to that. SarahSV ^(talk) 17:03, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

I started the section about conservation measures, having seen a similar section in the article decline_in_amphibian_populations#Conservation_measures. That article is a reasonable model to follow because it is rated as a GA. So, I favour still having a separate section for this. Andrew D. (talk) 17:33, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

Cool, I've gone ahead and restored the seperate section. @Slim I won't raise further concerns if you re-reverse any of the changes I just made. Personally I especially like the bit that ties in with the SDGs, though I accept you have a point that many would regard it as weak. Thanks again for all the help you've given to this article. FeydHuxtable (talk) 17:58, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

That looks good. I've added some headings because the evidence section was long, and it should be easier to read this way, but as with any of my changes, feel free to undo. SarahSV ^(talk) 18:13, 15 April 2019 (UTC)

Looking at this again, we have material in the conservation section that isn't really about that, so I may split it into two sections. If anyone objects, please undo. SarahSV ^(talk) 23:58, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Entomologists in decline

So in place of the first sentence in Decline_in_insect_populations#Limitations using Time as a source only for medical entomologists, it was brought up we do have source discussing general entomology.[8] I'm thinking something along the lines of In the UK, the number of training opportunities in entomology, such as entomology departments or degrees, and insect taxonomists have been decreasing, especially compared to the relative number of insects species compared to other smaller animal groups. That's just a sentiment I'm tossing out there, but if we're good on some idea of a replacement along those lines, I'll remove that edit from the RfC. If we want a more general worldwide comment on entomologists, we might need a different source, but the ESA might have something. Kingofaces43 (talk) 16:31, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Opportunities for taxonomic training are declining, but number of entomology departments isn't a good indicator. At least in the US, the trend has been to reorganize biology departments by scale of the phenomena studied rather than by type of organism. Entomology and botany departments are going away, but the insect and plant taxonomists end up together in an Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department. And the people studying Drosophila or Arabidopsis end up in a Molecular and Cellular Biology department. Plantdrew (talk) 16:59, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

That makes sense. I went ahead and removed the Time source, hopefully keeping the gist of the key information for our readers. This gets round the problem you raised as this way we don't need to introduce the new text or a new source. I think that takes care of 'Edit 2' from the RfC, as long as on one else objects. I suspect none of the other RfC points will be so easy to resolve. (and perhaps Im speaking to soon even on this one.) FeydHuxtable (talk) 17:29, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

• This source is full of data and trends: How Do Entomologists Consume and Produce Their Science?. It seems that there are lots of papers being published still but that they are mostly low impact. Andrew D. (talk) 23:00, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

This section is appalling and contains WP:SYNTH. It appears this section is all based on one source, The Atlantic. I read the Atlantic article and couldn't find the text that supported the section. Can someone advise where it is at? Also it clear that this article has big WP:TE issues and maybe a criticism section would allow those who seek to vent to fill it up. I am tempted to just blank this subsection unless more sources besides the Atlantic can be found to that connect the number of people to the number of bugs. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 03:20, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

I haven't looked to see what this concern is, yet, but removed the addition of the subsection (pending agreement, citations, and substantive facts). cygnis insignis 06:03, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

"The basic business of documenting insect diversity has been comparatively neglected, a situation made worse by the decline of taxonomists—species-spotting scientists who, ironically, have undergone their own mass extinction." from The Atlantic, with a ref to a blog https://www.wired.com/2011/01/extinction-of-taxonomists/ I am not seeing a concern with the text, section, or the sources. cygnis insignis 06:10, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

I agree that it's pretty standard SYNTH and tried to deal with that earlier with not much luck. I've at least removed the bits on general biology courses and kill jars that go on a tangent.[9]. As discussed before though, the Atlantic isn't really a great source for discussing changes in research focuses. Usually you'd want to reach for professional societies like the Entomological Society of America to give better context. Kingofaces43 (talk) 03:56, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

• I have reverted the removal of sourced content and expanded the section, citing additional sources. If people think there is syhthesis then they need to say exactly what the synthetic proposition is as a vague wave is not enough to enable us to address the supposed issue. Note also that juxtaposition is not synthesis.

FWIW, here's some topical anecdotes too. I was beating the bounds of the local parish at the weekend and overheard one of the walkers saying that an acquaintance who was a cited expert in bumblebee decline had failed to keep their position and so was now running a café instead. And it's interesting to note that the designer of Pokémon collected insects as a child and this seems to be how a lot of entomologists get started. But now there are fewer insects and more gadgets. "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man", eh? I was absorbed by the Children's Encyclopædia at that age and so here I am now.

Andrew D. (talk) 16:54, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

Use of sources for insect declines

Input is needed on how to present information related to decline in insect populations, particularly due weight specific to insects in sources reliable for scientific content. 19:43, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

Each of the items below are edits that were disputed in edits or talk discussion needing more outside input with the question of how to handle the Sánchez-Bayo & Wyckhuys study being the core of the dispute. Edits below are set up so if desired, comments can address support for versions A or B as a whole, piecemeal or general support for ideas that should get across irrespective of version. Edits are linked to the article section they would occur. Versions A are the current state of the article on April 16 with no implications of being a status quo or not, and versions B are changes compared to A. There is also one question to direct the use of primary research articles and newspapers in the insect decline topic.

Edit 1 (Sánchez-Bayo & Wyckhuys)[10]

• Version A: Several entomologists agreed that the data on insect declines are too piecemeal and unrepresentative of the general population to support some of the hyperbolic extrapolations.
• Version B (remove A and add at the end of the same paragraph):

In assessing the study methodology, an editorial in Global Change Biology stated, "An unbiased review of the literature would still find declines, but estimates based on this 'unidirectional' methodology are not credible. Komonen et al. considered the study "alarmist by bad design" due to unsubstantiated claims and methodological issues that undermined credible conservation science. They stated what were called extinctions in the study represented species loss in specific sites or regions, and should not have extrapolated as extinction at a larger geographic scale. They also listed that IUCN Red List categories were misused as insects with no data on a decline trend were classified as having a 30% decline by the study authors. Simmons et al. also had concerns the review's search terms, geographic biases, calculations of extinction rates, and inaccurate assessment of drivers of population change stating while it was "a useful review of insect population declines in North America and Europe, it should not be used as evidence of global insect population trends and threats."

• Difference: B Removes content based on newspaper sources citing unnamed entomologists and adds journal commentaries addressing the study instead.

Edit 2

• Version A: (no mention of Entomological Society of America statement on insect declines)
• Version B: (at end of section) A March 2019 statement by the Entomological Society of America said there is not yet sufficient data to predict an imminent mass extinction of insects and that some of the extrapolated predictions might "have been extended well past the limits of the data or have been otherwise over-hyped". For some insect groups such as some butterflies, bees, and beetles, declines in abundance and diversity have been documented in European studies. Other areas have shown increases in some insect species, although trends in most regions are currently unknown. It is difficult to assess long-term trends in insect abundance or diversity because historical measurements are generally not known for many species. Robust data to assess at-risk areas or species is especially lacking for arctic and tropical regions and a majority of the southern hemisphere.
• Difference: B adds a statement from the Entomological Society of America source already cited for conservation measures.

Question 1: Should primary and newspaper sources generally be avoided in this topic? (specific details in comments.)

References

Kingofaces43 (talk) 19:42, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

Comments

• Support version B on all edits and Yes on avoiding primary sources:

• Edit 1: The listed sources are currently used in the article, but the article currently does not reflect the strong criticism these publications had months after the publication of the Sánchez-Bayo study (a rather quick turnaround time in terms of scientific publications). The WP:DUE concern here is that statements like this have been repeatedly pruned back reducing the effect of just how poorly received the study design was in the literature. This is also why direct quoting was more important here because of the specific emphasis the authors used, such as the last sentence in B.
• Edit 2: Statements from scientific organizations are typically a higher-tier quality than individual reviews, and the ESA is about has high quality as you can get in terms of entomological science societies. The article was recently rearranged in the process of writing this RfC, so while the history section is the best fit for this overview content, they section name may need to change. The WP:DUE aspect to get across here is that insect declines are a major concern, but that there is also hyperbole in some studies or news media accounts that needs to be tempered (similar to news reporting and late-breaking health studies).
• Edit 3: The source doesn’t support that the 75% of pollinators needed for food crops are in strong decline, so B condenses the quoting to better paraphrase the source in a more concise manner without reducing meaning. The supplementary data for the UK sentence also indicates that A significantly takes the content out of text implying all insect orders rather than the four that were looked at in volunteer surveys (which are often prone to inherent biases and a red flag that usually needs to be pointed out).
• Edit 4: B removes the SDG WP:JARGON that isn’t needed in this article and already gets explained in the same wikilink if someone wants info on what the UN did. It also condenses the quoting to paraphrase the source. No strong preference on listing things like biological control in A, but the source discusses a bit more to pick out than just that, and detailing that isn’t extremely relevant to this article while it could be at the piped article.
• Question 1: Yes. This is a heavily published subject where editors should not be immediately reaching for primary journal articles or newspapers whether we're following policy like WP:PSTS or guidance specific to scientific topics like WP:SCIRS. If I go on Web of Science and search insect declines (the same methodology as the Sánchez-Bayo study above), I already get 54 review articles to pull from and even more looking at terms like insect biodiversity. Newspapers have also been heavily criticized in this subject for hyperbole and general unreliability, especially when it comes to newspapers like The Guardian or other “Insect Apocalypse” headlines.[11][12][13] The includes the ESA statement above and more sources with text below detailing the problems since some are paywalled:

Extended content

[14] Given the headline statements in the original articles, it was not surprising that the media reported the apocalypse with some enthusiasm! Hyping‐up the situation based on incomplete and potentially biased data may generate necessary short‐term attention, but it could ultimately backfire if it subsequently turns out that some of the claims have been exaggerated. [15] The final problematic issue with the paper is its strong language. Like noted by The Guardian, the conclusions of the paper were set out in unusually forceful terms for a peer-reviewed scientific paper. The text is rich in non-scientific intensifiers such as dramatic, compelling, extensive, shocking, drastic, dreadful, devastating, and others. This language is clearly reflected by the media with direct quotes, and with what media often does, by adding on to the already intensifier rich text. Exaggerated news made by the media itself are bad as they are, but similar exaggerations in the original scientific papers should not be acceptable. The current case has already seen corrections and withdrawals in the print media as well as in social media [16] A recent paper claiming evidence of global insect declines achieved huge media attention, including claims of “insectaggedon” and a “collapse of nature.” Here, we argue that while many insects are declining in many places around the world, the study has important limitations that should be highlighted. Particularly given the high‐profile of this issue, results should be interpreted carefully and communicated with sensitivity to public perception. [17] My primary reason for writing is a concern that many readers (in-cluding policy makers) will only peruse the paper's abstract and not understand biases inherent in a study that searches and reports only declines . . .

The topic basically falls into an area where popular press sources are subject even for lay summaries, and more on that from another ecologist.[18]

Overall, this would mean waiting with mentioning primary studies like this until secondary academic sources like reviews summarize them for us as is normally done for scientific topics, especially those in controversial areas. This would also reduce the occurrence of the current state of the article namedropping scientist X said Y in a newspaper and stick to secondary reliable sources for this content as cautioned about in Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources_(science)#Popular_press. WP:PSTS is clear to reach for secondary sources (newspapers fall under WP:NOTGOODSOURCE for scientific content even if secondary), and primary sources need to be used with extreme care, and this isn't a topic where they can be used carte blanche. Secondary comments from qualified scientists are needed to assess the validity of primary research in this subject. Kingofaces43 (talk) 19:43, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

• Object to RFC as biased - all of the options given appear to be two different statements of the proposer's POV which is opposed to that of the peer reviewed research reviews. EllenCT (talk) 20:30, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

Instead of commenting on my personal POV or motivations (when I've been saying focus on the secondary sources this whole time), are you opposed to the version A's now too? Editors were given plenty of time to comment at Talk:Decline_in_insect_populations#RfC_draft_text RfC draft with no such objections. The version A text pulled directly from the article which I voiced issues with is what others have wanted, not me. If you think there are problems with both versions, then this is the place to outline that. Kingofaces43 (talk) 17:19, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

• Fail The RfC does not conform to WP:RFCBRIEF – "Statement should be neutral and brief" – but it's 18K! See also WP:BLUDGEON. Andrew D. (talk) 10:01, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

A large amount of content was under dispute and couldn't be resolved (though we did prune this down quite a bit in the RfC drafting). That's why we're having an RfC with concise edits to discuss now though. There aren't diffs to present easily, so the actual text is included, and without those proposed edits, it's just a few sentences of intro per WP:RFCBRIEF. I've asked for editors to gain consensus on the talk page for version A text for awhile now, so this is their opportunity to do so just as it is for version B's. Kingofaces43 (talk) 17:19, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

Agree bludgeon. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 00:49, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

• Comment. Just a note that as of posting this message, I've removed two edits to deal with at a later date in order to keep the discussion focused on more the core. Kingofaces43 (talk) 23:51, 17 April 2019 (UTC)
• DYK The article was listed in Did you know? on the main page yesterday. This generated a spike in readership – about 3800 views. There were a few edits by this fresh audience – a cleanup tag was removed as unjustified and the article was uprated from start class to B class. So, it appears that this large number of editors and readers is generally content with the state of development of the article. Of course, there is still more to do but appears that progress is satisfactory. Well done, everyone. Andrew D. (talk) 10:47, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
• Support B The subject is not yet mature, so there is no point to trying for definitive article content or too great punctilio. It is extremely important,so we must remain alert for new and reliable material and aware that partisan and hysterical news coverage and preliminary research will remain the order of the day for some years, so yes, the news media and primary sources need to be treated with caution. JonRichfield (talk) 06:28, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
• Remove newspapers Increasingly they have been participants rather than coverers in situations such as this. And I would like to compliment a the attempt at a well-worded well-explained RFC. Unfortunately it is so bundled and complex that few participants will spend the hour of study here that this would take in order to make a well-informed comment. North8000 (talk) 21:00, 10 May 2019 (UTC)
• Fail This article is the subject of WP:TE with those on two sides of this debate edit warring (I am not sure it is two sides equally). The purpose of this RfC is to ask the opinion of uninvolved editors, but this issue is far too framed for anyone to understand it when just dropping by. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 00:37, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

Confused article

What exactly are we talking about here? Insect loss in biodiversity due to extinction or distribution contraction in specific species? Or actual loss in biomass i.e. total abundance of insects? This article is confusing these two concepts. The first is rather uncontroversial, and is what the Sánchez-Bayo review was about, although his conclusion were rather controversial. The second is a different ball game and only a single dataset (Krefeld) compellingly shows this. I was initially under the impression it was about the latter. Regards, Leo 86.83.56.115 (talk) 17:53, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

If you want to remove references, you should discuss the reasons why on the talk page, and wait for input from other editors. Edit summaries are not sufficient. If you think existing references are incorrect, you need to provide a citation that supports this position.Dialectric (talk) 23:52, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

No standing, eh, why? Not in a position? I've done it hundreds of times before... worked fine. If I signed in, would I be in a position? I could, but rarely bother. Are you in a position? Because you just removed a reference! You want to discuss? Sure. How about answering the above question. What exactly are we discussing here? Biodiversity or biomass?

Then let's go over some of my edits.

1. The WP article states "the total biomass of insects is estimated to be decreasing by about 2.5%" this is calculated from the reference "75 percent within ... area in Germany over ... 27 years". So we are misleading the reader here.

2. The WP article quotes "biomass losses between 98% and 78% for ground-foraging and canopy-dwelling arthropods over a 36-year period, with respective annual losses between 2.7% and 2.2%". This cannot be found anywhere in the reference.

3. About the Swiss study I removed about the insect species on the local Red List. The WP article states "60 percent decline in insect-eating birds since 1990"; but this is nowhere in the study, which actually says "De plus, ce recul produit des effets en cascade, tels que la diminution des populations d’oiseaux insectivores dans les zones agricoles, par exemple."

But before we go any further, the first question is most important.

Cheers, Leo 86.83.56.115 (talk) 00:50, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Generally removing cited content is a no-no. You are free to edit without using a signed in account, but editors are generally suspicious of anonymous editors. Your subsequent discussion on this talk page is the correct approach. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 00:54, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Right, I generally write obscure taxonomy stuff on WP, first time such an article. I'll sign in tomorrow. You guys should look at content, not method. "subsequent discussion", actually this has been sitting here all day. Anyway, discuss, people!86.83.56.115 (talk) 01:07, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Both content and method are important. Removing references without discussing rationale on the talk page is a content issue. This applies to registered users as well.Dialectric (talk) 01:42, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

So, now I'm all signed in and proper. Dialectric & Jtbob, in a year or more of editing, I have seriously never heard of this rule. It seems rather ... well, decelerating and silly, actually, but whatever. What about the Be Bold thing I see everywhere? If people want to discuss stuff, I am happy to, but talk pages are so dead these days in most cases. To judge by most talk pages, people have generally stopped talking since 2011. This page was very popular right after the alarmist articles about "insectapocalyps" were published in the popular media in March, but that has died down significantly now.

No one would like to discuss the article? How long do you guys want me to wait? Dialectric, as far I as gather, your criticism of my work is not about content, it is about conduct/method, no? In order to force some discussion on the issue I will post a link to this at the talk pages of Insects & Ecology.

Let me suggest a constructive compromise, in order to preserve my edits/improvements (if you will), I will revert Dialectric's revert, and then re-add the references you deem need discussion before removal, by c&ping from a previous version.

Let me also be bold. Judging from the history and how the references are distributed, this article was originally constructed from the confused messaging in the popular media, and that the scientific studies were later added. Let us presume, of the three optional answers to my question I stated here originally, this is about loss of biomass. It is the Krefeld study which is so compelling, shocking and worthy of further research. That is basically what the introduction to this article states, and what the section on anecdotal evidence is trying to prove. That being the case, we can do away with all the extraneous stuff, as I was busy with by removing studies unrelated to this issue. There are already articles on WP about the holocene extinction, the IUCN red list, etc... If this article is just about how there are now about 70 species of insects on the IUCN Red List, then we can do away with large parts of this article about the so-called "insectapocalyps". But if this article is really about how the popular media in early 2019 promoted the millenarianal conceit that the sky is falling because of an alarmist review of a handful of relatively unrelated studies... Somewhat like the Y2K phenomenon or how Jews steal babies for evil rituals. Then this article needs serious work, and is beyond my expertise.

Cheers, Leo Leo Breman (talk) 12:16, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for logging in, and for moving to discuss the changes in more detail. For your first question, the article could reasonably be about both Insect loss in biodiversity and actual loss in insect biomass. Unless we have a better article for either of these, this is the best place for content about both forms of decline. If the wording is currently mixing the two concepts in ways that make the article unclear, that could be solved by breaking out the content into clearly titled sections rather than removing content. Even if biomass decline is controvertial, it should still be covered in the article, with references showing the controversy.Dialectric (talk) 14:22, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Looking at your changes from the top, changing "Possible causes of the decline have been identified as habitat destruction, including intensive agriculture" to "Possible causes of the decline have been identified as habitat loss, including changes in agricultural techniques" is not a clear improvement. The abstract and the article specifically refer to intensive agriculture, not just " changes in agricultural techniques". Our intensive agriculture article makes clear that 'most commercial agriculture is intensive'. habitat destruction and habitat loss are closely related, and sometimes used interchangeably, as the wikilinked article showed. Wikipedia's habitat loss is a redirect to habitat destruction.Dialectric (talk) 14:42, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

• The article is about an apparent decline in insect abundance. This will be reflected by a variety of measures: diversity, numbers, mass, visibility, knock-on effects, and so on. As it seems that the evidence is currently quite limited, we don't have the luxury of dispensing with much of it, as Leo suggests. We should not be removing content about relevant studies unless and until we find that we have a surfeit. Andrew D. (talk) 15:25, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Cool. You believe this article should be about both subjects -wait, no, you're saying it could. Personally, I find this article should be about the controversial stuff, decrease in biomass. That certain insect species may be rare or extinct is rather mundane, and redundant. That could be a paragraph anywhere... let me suggest vulnerable species, Red List, insect. I mean, should lobsters, clams, nematodes, you name it, all get a separate Wikipedia article because a number may be red listed? Decline in nematode populations, Decline in tapeworm populations, Decline in starfish populations, ad absurdum. I think that confusing the two issues is a disservice to those less current in the subject or terminology. It's also very misleading -practically all of the ~200 assessed insects in the Red List are those island endemics from NZ (esp. wetas) & dragonflies from Hawaii & Okinawa. It's highly disingenuous to try to extrapolate any kind of general data on continental insect populations from that, and complete nonsense to try and claim that because some 70 bugs from islands are rare human civilisation will likely collapse before your children get to university.

The meat in this story is the controversial stuff: the Krefeld data set & the "insectapocalyps" as portrayed in the media. Instead of wholesale deletion of the unrelated text on red listing of species, let me chuck that information into a separate section somewhere. Then, should more people agree with me, it can be deleted later, should more people want to read about how a few of the few Hawaiian dragonflies the IUCN managed to scrounge up the funds for are rare, it can be expanded or whatever. Yes?

In answer to you question about the terminology changes. I changed habitat destruction to habitat loss, as that is the terminology used in at least three of the studies. About the use of the term "intensive agriculture", yes, this is a bit more of an issue. Full disclosure, I am trained as an agronomist & botanist. Also I noted on your talk page you have done some work there, I checked the page, found it to pass muster. A number, if not most, the studies quoted here use the term "intensive agriculture". The problem I have with this is that the opposite "extensive agriculture" (i.e. cattle ranching, camel/sheep/goat herding or the montado system of cork forestry) was never used in the areas of study. The agricultural systems of the Ruhr in Germany have always been intensive, so there is no shift. I think the authors of studies themselves are confusing terminology and properly mean modernisation/industrialisation. So as not to confuse readers further I changed it. A field of rye is always "intensive", weather one uses a scythe or a combine, but what has had such effects on insect species diversity is the introduction of modern efficiency-boosting technologies= most important the modern winnowing plates, but also the use of the tractor, importation of feedstuffs/fertilizer, etc... All this has made the farm far more efficient and higher yielding, but it means the weeds which once turned fields blue or red are no longer available for insects. There are other processes of course, like the stopping of traditional overgrazing in the low nutrient heathlands, which are converting back to forest. Nuance is needed here. What do you suggest?Leo Breman (talk) 15:49, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Hi Andrew, well that's not entirely true. Say all butterflies die in a field, but the field is over-run by locusts, then biomass may stay the same, but biodiversity contracts. There are of course thousands of insect species which are experiencing their golden age due to humans; think cat fleas, invasive moth species, a number of house pests.... Leo Breman (talk) 15:55, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

A population decline is a decrease in the number of individuals. With that comes a decrease in biomass. Based on the title of this article, the content should primarily be about decrease in number of individuals/biomass. A population which declines to the point of extinction results in loss of biodiversity (locally or globally). Loss of insect biodiversity is appropriate to mention here, but would be best treated in depth in an article with a different title. Plantdrew (talk) 17:27, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Hi Drew, that was my impression as well. Andrew doesn't agree, so I have been trying to split this article into two sections. It's quite difficult. Dirzo uses the term defaunation unclearly combining both concepts, as a mirror of the word deforestation. Not sure what to think of that, seems rather non-standard and of limited use. And it means not considering humans and many domestic creatures as animals, of course -otherwise we should be living in an era of superfaunation!

Andrew, as well, in response to "evidence is currently quite limited", well I have to seriously disagree with that. There is ample evidence for loss of biodiversity. In the Dutch language alone there are easily a few hundred studies, primarily about butterflies. But there has been ample written about NZ wetas, caddisflies/stoneflies in Europe (the whole bioindicator stuff), dragonflies, monarch butterflies, Lord Howe Island phasmid, overcollection by butterfly/beetle/phasmid hunters/collectors. There's that butterfly in California that Trump's wall will destroy. The human body louse is now quite rare or extirpated throughout much of its range, and many other flea or lice species are extinct or rare. In the USA, the bedbug was almost destroyed, although recently populations are recovering. So very many studies on that end.

This is why I think the article should really only be about the loss of biomass, which is the controversy which draws people to this page. Confusing concepts does not help educate people. Cheers, Leo86.83.56.115 (talk) 19:14, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

You know, I'm too bored with this now. I'm returning to the much more exciting haunts of frog taxonomy, where I can type at full speed without looking over my shoulder. I did my best to improve this, rearranged the text into two sections, as suggested above by Andrew & Dialectric, removed much alarmist stuff & stuff that could not be found in the sources, and tried discussing the problems with y'all. I hope you can appreciate the effort. I'll check back in a few months, see what's up (I expect this is a current issue which will die down in due course). Dialectric, you can of course get back to me on intensive agriculture, or not, be bold yourself. Cheers, Leo — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.83.56.115 (talk) 19:35, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

• The fresh wave of edits made by 86.83.56.115 and Leo Breman have been reverted as they seem too hasty. Repeating controversial edits without consensus and using multiple accounts is unwise. Regarding frogs, please note that this article and its title were styled after an earlier article: decline in amphibian populations. And regarding defaunation, note that we have another page specifically about that concept: defaunation. Andrew D. (talk) 23:03, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Hi Andrew. That's a pretty dick move, guy, removing the entirety of my work without even going through it, answering the above points, or accepting what little consensus could be gained from the 4 relatively non-communicative people here. Your reasoning is that there is no consensus, while not discussing anything in order to achieve that! You must admit that's a bit obstinate and rude. I now see you're the dude who wrote this stuff, so I think you feel some entitlement to ownership of this article. Look, I'm not going to fight you on your baby here, but it's an ugly brute. I do urge you, however, to try to improve this, because the quality is terrible! I said I wasn't going to edit this anymore, and I meant it. You are always welcome, however, to edit whatever I'm working on! And, yesssss, I know about decline in amphibian populations (very interesting stuff) & defaunation (mwah) -I thought you might like to consider using that term instead of misusing the concepts discussed above. Cheers, Leo 86.83.56.115 (talk) 23:33, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

While some of Leo's edits were too bold for a controvertial article, and should be discussed before addition, he did point out a few citations where the source does not support the quote or the statement as written. These should be removed or tagged with 'verification needed' until that is resolved.Dialectric (talk) 18:21, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

The most recent example seems to be this edit whose summary was "Dirzo et al. 2014: removing fake quote which is not in the reference..." The supposedly fake quote removed was "30 to 60% of species per order have declining ranges". This quotation appears in the source, both in the abstract and in the caption for Fig. 1. (B). So this claim and edit was erroneous. I shall therefore remove the {{disputed}} banner tag as its validity is dubious and it's too vague to be useful. What's needed for such claims is an itemised list here on the talk page, not a flurry of half-baked edits. The issues listed can be checked and discussed to establish consensus and then actioned. Andrew D. (talk) 19:17, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Andrew, Leo already gave you that list even if there are things I would have removed myself too. They gave individual edit summaries. With that, please stop blanket reverting like this with no explanation (as we talked about elsewhere) so the rest of us can see what's going on. There is good guidance at WP:ROWN, especially WP:MASSR on this, but in short, if everyone would make sure to have actual explanations (e.g., focus on content issues rather than just saying no consensus) in at least grouped edit summaries if one can't do it in one edit, a lot of issues here would have been resolved quicker. Right now, I can't tell if all of Leo's edits were addressed or if legitimate parts were glossed over in the revert and forgotten like we've run into at this article before because of previous problems with blanket reverts. Kingofaces43 (talk) 00:08, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Leo, I commented briefly to you before, but to give a little more background on your core comment of focus, your best bet for focused content is at Insect#Diversity and it's daughter article there. That is originally where this general subject was supposed to developed with care. This article arose with WP:POVFORK issues when editors couldn't get traction for specific content at those articles. It's been difficult to clean up some of the issues here that have arisen due to blanket reverts/edit warring as has resurfaced again now as you pointed out, but that's about as much time as I have to delve into content related issues on this topic now.

Basically though, we are supposed to rely on secondary academic sources to summarize content for us (why I mentioned WP:OR before and why expert editors can't directly make declarations about research). That also means we generally aren't supposed to focus on specific primary articles studies like this article does (i.e. WP:NOTJOURNAL) or rely on newspaper-type sources, which is probably where some of your focus concerns come in. There is no rule however, that you needed to discuss removal of content, even if sourced, here first. WP:DUE and WP:ONUS are the relevant policies that go beyond just simply having something sourced. Your comments about accurate sourcing do need a look though, and part of that seems to be from excessive quoting like in your second bullet where another review citing the study in question is what was actually being quoted. MOS:QUOTE gives some guidance on avoiding excessive quotes, which I've tried to fix in the past, but didn't have any luck. Kingofaces43 (talk) 00:22, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

• The main point of this talk page section, "Confused article", is whether the article should be solely about insect biomass. If we are to get clarity on the resolution of such issues then it's best not to overload them with lots of tangential and procedural points. I don't believe there's consensus for Leo's position on this matter of biomass and so we're done, right? If there are other points which still seem to require attention then please start separate sections for them. Andrew D. (talk) 08:28, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Sorry guys, I haven't figured out how to follow pages yet. Yes, as Andrew says, my main point is the confusion of biomass with biodiversity. I think confusing these issues is misleading. Its unfortunate you found my edits "half-baked" Andrew, we can discuss them. To talk about the quotes, I go to the reference search with control + F, if I can't find the quote I assumed it's fake, because it had happened many times before in this article. In the last case you mention I checked again and see you are correct, it is in the diagram: I probably didn't pick it up because of that. But let me take another random example: "biomass losses between 98% and 78% for ground-foraging and canopy-dwelling arthropods over a 36-year period, with respective annual losses between 2.7% and 2.2%". I really don't see that, I can't even find the number 98%. I see I mentioned this above already. So perhaps I got too suspicious of the quotes in here regarding that last one, but I'm not 100% wrong. Also, I added criticism about that Lister article, and Lister's response to that, which you've now just taken away. That doesn't seem impartial Andrew! What's your agenda, eh? Thanks for the toad pic, btw. Cheers! Leo Breman (talk) 19:01, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

Hi Leo, Knowing the Colonel (Andrew D), he's probably busy organising London's ground level responses to the Covid situation, so I'll step in to address your concerns. You raise some excellent questions here, they're a big helping in spotlighting elements of the article for improvement. As this talk page is already a little long, I'll use collapsible sections to separate my reply according to your areas of concern.

Article scope: Biodiversity, & Biomass & Abundance

The scope of this article is Insect Decline - i.e. the reduction in insects across the time dimension. In common with sources, the articles uses 3 different metrics to describe this - namely Abundance, Biomass & Biodiversity. Similar to many of the studies and high level reviews, we use a mix of different metrics in the article. It would be an over simplification to say the Sánchez-Bayo review is all about diversity loss - granted it leads with diversity in the abstract, and in the body it mentions biodiversity about 3x as often as biomass. But as explained here the review actually extrapolates largely from biomass data to draw the diversity related conclusions. Like several other sources, Sánchez-Bayo is about all 3 facets of insect decline. I agree it would have been desirable to be clearer about these three metrics in the article. The thing is, until today the sources didn't fully spell out the difference, so per our WP:OR policy, editors were reluctant to do so ourselves. Happily, an excellent new insect decline meta study has just came out, which talks about the different metrics in some detail. So if you check back on our article in the next hour or so, it should explicitly discuss all three metrics. PS - over the last 5 years or so, folk have started to get IoT/AI tech working in a production scale in this field, with computer vision now able to identify species and thus track diversity loss more directly. We should start seeing such studies published quite soon. While this is a quite a bit further off, some are even working on implementations of the unsupervised Machine Learning approach, which would let AIs capture what's happening not just with known individual species, but to start classifying & recording the suspected millions of uncategorized bugs. This is still in development, maybe even decades away, but eventually we should have far more detailed info on insect biodiversity and its decline. For now, the decline story is mostly about abundance & biomass.

The 98% quote

The 98% quote comes from Sánchez-Bayo - while it's not disallowed to quote direct from individual studies, policy encourages us to reflect key findings via the medium of a review article. As per my original edit when I added the 98% quote, the Sánchez-Bayo ref was placed immediately after the quote. I guess it must have been moved during subsequent editing. I'm not sure if you have access to the full text of good Sánchez-Bayo's review, but you can verify the 98% quote from the extract here As a btw, you're correct that "98%" doesn't directly appear in the Garcia source itself. Depending on ones background though, Fig 4: A essentially screams 98% at the reader. (i.e. (473 + 470 - 13 - 8) / (473 + 470) = 921 / 943 = 98% ) Anyhow, thanks for flagging this concern, I'll adjust so the Sánchez-Bayo ref is again immediatly after the quote.

The agenda: a policy compliant article that reflects mainstream science and is informative & clear for our readers.

The long talk page possibly disguises the fact that all editors here, incuding your man King, are in a sense on the same side. I.e. preferring a non alarmist presentation of the science. I guess the opposite impression may have been created, so let me explain. I don't know SlimVirgin in real life, but she appears to be someone with an in depth multi disciplinary understanding, including areas like socilogy, politics and human behaviour. Certainly that's true of the Colonel - note for example that he was the creator of our Eco-anxiety article. So we're all conscious of the desirability to avoid alarming readers - not just as we'd not want to cause unnecessary distress, it would be self defeating even if we were coming from a environmentalist pov. Excessive alarmism can be paralysing. For this reason, we've always been careful to use more conservative language than was found not only in the popular press coverage, but in the science itself (The Sánchez-Bayo review, at least until today, being at the summit of the available scientific sources.) Speaking for myself, I'm coming from a mainstream$^{2}$ perspective. I.e. a mainstreamer's mainstream pov - so mainstream evem mainstream folks might call me mainstream. Addionally, editors like SV, the Colonel & myself believe in careful compliance with our editing policy. So there's a balance here - much as we might want to avoid an alarmist presentation, we can't countenance something like a blog by a junior scientist (no matter how talented she may be, or how much we personally agree with her) being given equal or more weight to rebut the findings of a high level review. If anything, we were already using our editorial disgression to lean as far as we could in the skeptical direction, without violating policy. But a certain other editor wasn't happy with that, hence some of the past contention. While editors here were largely arguing for a faithful, if un-dramatic, reflection of the Sánchez-Bayo key points, if you read past discussions carefully, we always had some concerns, especially regarding the vagueness on how they did the math. The new insect decline meta study does rather prove these doubts were well placed, as it finds a much lower rate of decline, while being grounded in a much wider data set, and apparently using much more rigorous methodology. (In fairness to King, the new study does even more prove his intuitions were correct, as he had the strongest doubts over the veracity of the more alarming trends. Still, at the time adherence to policy and the findings of mainstream science wouldn't allow a presentation with the degree of scepticism he seemed to want.) Anyhow, hopefully the new meta study will set every one's mind at rest. I don't mean to diss Sánchez-Bayo & Wyckhuys - their contribution is of huge significance. If humanity is able to reverse the Holocene extinction without our civilisation collapsing, then history should ensure their names and deeds are never forgoten. But the van Klink review is on a whole different level. Not just in terms of scale, but the analytical rigour, and their generosity in painstakingly explaining exactly how they reached their results. (The review has extremely detailed supplementary information on how they did their calcs, they made the raw data freely available on KNB , and put the code up on github. They've been using some of the latest, most powerful Bayesian techniques like INLA . Players like investment banks, the tech giants, & certain government departments have started using that extensively, it's central to many of the leading edge AIs, but I didn't expect to find it in use by entomologists. It's been so intriguing I've given their work my special attention and loaded up the gear onto my own rig. Can't find the slightest mistake. I'm not sure even the meticulous Colonel could have done a better job. It doesn't happy often in science that a review is greeted with near universal acclaim, but I'll eat my hat if this review gets even 10% of the criticism that was levelled at Sánchez-Bayo. With any luck, it will set a new gold standard of how to do this sort of meta study not just for entomologists, but for ecologists more generally. I hope this clarifies where editors have been coming from. Now the van Klink meta study is published, we can take the article back a little in a sceptical direction, at least regarding the pace of the decline.

I hope you're now satisfied that your concerns are addressed? Thanks again for the good questions and helping to improve the article. FeydHuxtable (talk) 20:01, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

References

Please update section "Crossley et al. 2020" with info on expert reactions

Please update section "Crossley et al. 2020" with info on expert reactions to the study such as these: https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-study-of-insect-numbers-in-the-us/

I'd suggest including these issues with the study's results for a more complete picture / section on the study:

This is a comprehensive piece of work. While there are no net effects, there are clearly taxa specific changes – for example, this work shows that mosquitoes are on the increase and butterflies are declining. The devil is detail here for insect distributions and abundances.

and

However, they do not distinguish species qualities properly. If, for example, a non-native invasive species increases in abundance, while a rare or threatened species decreases, the net trend will be zero. The authors acknowledge this and argued that some of their data were strongly dominated by single invasive species.

Once this has been done this section and section "van Klink et al. 2020" could be added in a shortened form to 2020 in science and 2020 in the environment and environmental sciences.

--Prototyperspective (talk) 14:44, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Hi, if no one else does this I might get round to it in a few weeks. That's a great source, the views of good professor Axel Hochkirch look especially worth including. If you can't wait, please go ahead and add yourself. While this article was a little controversal, hopefully that's all in the past now, so all editors should feel free to edit it direclty if they wish. FeydHuxtable (talk) 15:04, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Do you still intend to add information about it? --Prototyperspective (talk) 09:50, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

At this point, I'm not really sure what should be added. Usually when it comes to comments on a secondary source like Crossley, we want to reach for other peer-reviewed literature first that cite it, like this. That basically summarizes what we already have that there was roughly no net change, but variation within taxa.

There's also a larger issue we're running into here is WP:NOTJOURNAL. It's not really encyclopedic to list individual studies like this article does and try to add in commentary on each study. Some work had been done in the past to try to clean that up from a WP:DUE perspective and writing style, but it looks like it's shifted back. It's probably best to look at what recent reviews say about the subject overall to summarize as opposed to zeroing in on individual studies. Kingofaces43 (talk) 14:44, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Those are not individual studies but a meta-review and a study with results that conflict with current thinking and meta-review/s. The latter could be moved into a new section e.g. "Research indicating no decline to be exist" or similar. But I agree that, if possible the #Evidence section should be restructured to not inform about specific studies but in terms of their findings. A new subsection as suggested should also integrate this information with the rest of the section including via informing about potential explanations and meaning of it – e.g. the section probably shouldn't be titled "Conflicting evidence" as it may not be in conflict with the other evidence at all due to e.g. regional or qualitative (e.g. which arthropod species) differences. --Prototyperspective (talk) 15:17, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Yes, meta-analyses (which are themselves individual studies too) are the highest level of source we can reach for over individual primary peer-reviewed sources or even unrefereed comments by an expert. If we can get a few good overview sources, that might be our best route for rewriting the article.

For background though, we have to be wary about inserting WP:POV though like trying to split it into evidence "for" and "against". No one does that in the literature as far as I'm aware, which is why I've brought up POV concerns here in the past on this talk page in how some editors tried to address this subject. That's a type of narrative us entomologists have been critical of when dealing with common newspaper issues with science reporting (e.g., Insect Armageddon) while trying to juggle legitimate biodiversity issues with the challenges in many of the meta-analyses in their data structure that prevent broad generalizations. The latter happens in this subject frequently regardless of the type of particular conclusions certain authors may be putting forward.

That's just my caution though because much of the underlying material often requires a technical background to assess the weight of conclusions being discussed in these meta-analyses. It's not the easiest subject to try to tackle on Wikipedia because of that. That happens in almost any ecological topic though where the data are often inherently messy and not easy to distill properly for more lay sources. Kingofaces43 (talk) 16:39, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

I wrote if possible the #Evidence section should be restructured to not inform about specific studies but in terms of their findings (with in terms of their findings I meant in terms of content/meaning/topics/issues etc.) and even the section probably shouldn't be titled "Conflicting evidence" (emphasis added). You made some good, detailed and relevant points to this though; just wanted to clarify. --Prototyperspective (talk) 17:16, 24 October 2020 (UTC)