Chris Slade asks

> For those of us who have not met the term before please explain what you mean
> by "refereed research".  It sounds like good news but being a pedantic so and
> so I like to have unfamiliar terms defined.

Refereed research is research that is published after having had peer review.  It could be a thesis that is subject to review by a panel or it could be a manuscript that is published in a reputable journal which has an editorial panel which reviews or referees the paper.

 An example is the IBRA Journal of Apicultural Research.  You will offer see a statement such as "Received ......., accepted subject to revision ...., accepted for publication...."  Students who do degrees where a paper is published often have several reviews where suggestions are made to improve the content.

This way there is some scrutiny on what is written to make sure that it is "scientifically sound".

The opposite is opinion.  It may be in the form of a letter to the editor where an opinion is expressed.  A lot of the debate in this issue of competition is from people who are expressing an opinion.  There is no scientific evidence to back up the opinion and I can have an opposite opinion that is just as valid but again has no scientific basis.  The problem arises when these opinions are taken as scientific fact.

The classic is where in a paper the author says, "There was no statistical data to show that (such and such occurred) but it would seem that (such and such did occur)."  This then gets reported in the next opinion as "(Fred) in his paper (title) showed that (such and such did occur).  Now this is repeated by someone else and suddenly it has taken on "scientific proof" status when in fact the author admitted it did not.

So a lot of the contributions on this subject in the past day or so on Bee-L are opinions.  There is nothing wrong with informed opinions as long as they are not elevated to scientific status.  Informed opinions or anecdotal evidence are not scientific fact but they make a good basis to carry out a scientific experiment

Thanks to Barry Donovan for his contributions on the bumble bees.  Can Barry list the Buttermore and Rayment references please.  I thought of asking off list but then I thought there may be others who on Bee-L who would be interested also.

Trevor Weatherhead.
AUSTRALIA