How to Stay True to Our Science: Three Principles to Guide Our Behavior (Report‪)‬

The ivory-billed woodpecker (Campephilus principalis) was last known to exist in 1944. Unexpectedly, in 2004, it was purportedly seen near Brinkley, Arkansas. This claim resulted in a scientific expedition that produced an inconclusive video that was used to confirm the bird's reemergence from extinction, an article in Science magazine extolling the excitement that the bird was indeed back, and a worldwide fascination towards a species supposedly extinct but now here again. Yet, despite over 5 years of searching at a cost of over $10 million, there remains no physical proof that the woodpecker is in fact alive (Radford, 2009). At a 2004 Florida conference about treatment for Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), a medical doctor spoke to a group of parents about electromagnetic fields and their impact on autism. The doctor asked one parent if she used cell phones, to which the parent replied in the affirmative. With a grand wave of the hand, the doctor pronounced, "throw them out!" advocating for the unproven belief that the electrical energy emanating from cellular phones was somehow either responsible for or negatively impacting the symptoms of this neurological disorder.