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From:
James Fischer <[log in to unmask]>
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Date:
Fri, 1 Jun 2001 20:13:19 -0400
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Dr. Wenner (himself) said:

> A recent set of exchanges on BEE-L centered on some rather mild comments
> by Barry Birkey, followed by many rather testy responses by James Fischer.
> I understand why Fischer is upset.....

Thanks for taking the time to enlighten me, and perhaps a few
others who are reading this thread.

While I was disappointed that Mr. Birkey had not read basic texts on
the subject, I certainly was not "upset".  I am also not upset over the
unfortunate use of adjectives like "testy".

As to what is "fact" and what is not, I can only point to the literature,
which is assumed to stand on its own merit.

As for "voting", scientists "vote" all the time, at least on methodology.
Some call it "peer review".

If you say that "waggle dances" with durations of less than a second
exist, I'll openly admit to never noticing them.  But let's accept that a
waggle dance IS done for distances that close as a "given", and continue...

As to "accuracy", if one were to agree with Seeley's statement that each 100 meters
of distance is represented by roughly 75 milliseconds (0.075 seconds) of waggle,
I think anyone could understand how hard it would be to accurately measure the
length of a waggle dance when the food source is only 1000 meters away.

        0.075 / 100 * 1000  = 0.75 seconds

So, an error of 400 yards in 1000 yards could be nothing more than an inability to
measure such short "waggles" accurately.  1000 yds ~ 1km, which implies a
1 second "waggle".  Human reaction time is what?  About 1/3rd of a second?
(What's a bee's reaction time?  Faster than a human's, but what?)

...but if Dr. Wenner says that the "waggle dance" is used to communicate about
distances as short as 150 yards (roughly 150 meters), this means that we are talking
about waggles that last for roughly 1/10th of a second.

        0.075 / 100 * 150 = 0.11 seconds

Aside from a high-speed video/film camera with a built-in timer having 0.001
second resolution, I  can't imagine how anyone could even attempt to detect
and measure such waggles with any accuracy.

So, the phenomena being measured is at the very edge of perception.

No big surprise that one can have a significant error when one is
measuring tiny intervals of time.  I don't really think it matters if
the error is on the part of the bees or the grad students doing the
measuring.

Heck, all I have is a stopwatch, so I'll continue to overlook all but the
longer waggles.  I'll even likely continue never even noticing the waggles
that last less than a second.

Anyway, the longer waggles are excuses for longer walks with the dogs.   :)

One last item:

> I am sure that if Fischer sat down with me over a beer,
> he would find I was not the oddball he has portrayed me to be.

I don't know where I "portrayed" anyone as anything, but I certainly
want you to have an apology if you took any offense to anything I
said.  I mean no harm to anyone.

Let me rephrase my objections in light of your reply:

a)  I still think that the conclusions of the paper cited were misleading.

b)  Any test of "accuracy" need to measure distances large enough
     to swamp out any measurement error.

c)  "20 seconds out" is simply too close to the hive for any valid
     measurement, even when using extraordinary equipment.

d)  Any test not designed to swamp out error will be misleading.

If you say the dances were "waggle dances", I'll take you on your
word.  But I'm not going to even try to measure an interval that
brief, and I submit that any attempt to do so is doomed to have the
"signal" lost in noise.


        jim

        Farmageddon

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