Talk:Cat predation on wildlife

Addition of old sources and misuse of primary sources

This edit [1] by user:VampaVampa is undue emphasis on scientific papers from the 1970s that seem to contradict later work, which goes against the RS guideline at WP:OLDSOURCES. It also contains some weird WP:OR editorializing about Songbird Survival's website content from 20 years ago: The advocacy group SongBird Survival, a limited company which achieved charitable status in 2001 and funds research into the causes of declining songbird populations, noted on its website in 2006 that "cats are frequently singled out as the primary reason for the disappearance of Britain's songbirds" and described the claim as unjustified. It decried the absence of numbers for cat predation on birds from the 1997 survey by the Mammal Society, and drew a comparison between the figure of 55 million birds killed annually by UK's suggested 9–10 million cats, derived from an estimate by Cats Protection, and the 100 million birds preyed on by the 100,000-strong UK population of sparrowhawks each year. It suggested that the hunting instinct of cats "could be dulled by their reduced need to catch their own food" and by human-sourced amusement, while noting that the total 2002 value of the UK cat product and service market approximated £1.5bn. sourced only to the Internet Archive and looks like it has the effect of watering down or discrediting the modern viewpoint on cat predation. It also presents an undue emphasis on RSPB's fringe scientific view that cat predation is not a significant issue and states in Wikivoice that, The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds points out that there is no scientific evidence for predation by cats to negatively affect bird populations in the country. Geogene (talk) 17:37, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

Some additional commentary I posted on VampaVampa's talk page that I'm reposting here: An observational study of five free-roaming farm cats carried out over 360 hours during the winter of 1978–79 in Cornwall.... A WP:PRIMARY study of five cats over two weeks? In addition to being old, this is too small a sample group to take seriously. The selection of prey species was reported as consistent with contemporary findings from New Zealand (1971–73), which concluded that birds were a minor food source for cats except in novel island habitats is wrong, see the landmark 2013 paper in Nature [2]. The considerably lower degree of effort put in by inefficient hunters suggested that provision of "farm food reduced the need to hunt" is also wrong, some modern studies have found that feeding cats increases their hunting [3]. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds points out that there is no scientific evidence for predation by cats to negatively affect bird populations in the country. is wrong because literature review I just mentioned said that the negative effects of cats on wildlife is global in scope. Geogene (talk) 04:44, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

@Geogene: You have cited the guidelines on the age of sources and on original research to justify reverting my contribution. However, there is nothing in those guidelines that (a) prevents the use of older sources as such, (b) suggests that a prior version of a website as preserved by the Internet Archive is not a "reliable, published source". To claim either of these things is quite absurd.

What WP:OLDSOURCES says is that "older sources may be inaccurate" (emphasis mine). That does not justify the assumption that they are automatically inaccurate. They may be, and that has to be determined with precision. If you, Geogene, know that there are newer findings that contradict older research, then it would be great if you could improve the article by demonstrating that. However, that older research is obsolete cannot be inferred from the fact that newer sources do not agree with it. It is important to remember that studies which do not use the same method (do not control for certain variables etc.) may arrive at different findings. Thus, it would have to be shown that the newer studies knew of the older research (as it is a researcher's duty to do a review of the state of the field) and showed explicitly in what way it was flawed. Then and only then can the older studies be regarded as superseded. Failing that, there is a very strong possibility that the newer studies simply ignored the old research, or that the two have followed different paths and that the differences have not been reconciled persuasively. Every claim on Wikipedia has to be sourced and that also applies to saying that research is superseded. You cannot automatically infer that from the publication date, or else a 2024 study saying the Earth is flat would be somehow more valid than a perfectly sound astronomy paper published in 1970.

Incidentally and by way of example, the 2013 Nature paper you have pointed me to cites five sources for its claim that "The exceptionally high estimate of mammal mortality from cat predation is supported by individual US studies that illustrate high annual predation rates by individual un-owned cats in excess of 200 mammals per year". One of these five sources is from 2014, but the other four are from 1940, 1951, 1952 and 1953. Should I conclude that the paper is based on obsolete work? It is absurd to judge a paper by its date, period - it can be called obsolete only once it is shown to be so. And it shows an absurd level of bias to suggest that a study from 1979 is not "modern".

The way to approach the matter is clearly to start a full literature review and add further sources to the article. The second article you have pointed me to is not even currently cited. Instead of deleting information you could well focus on adding information that corrects the point of view that you allege is wrong. I would encourage you to share your knowledge of the newer literature and explain its conclusions in the article, and to do that without automatically assuming that they are more correct because they are newer.

Moving on to your other accusation, original research occurs when one makes a claim which is not in the cited source, i.e. when one presents an unfounded interpretation. But retrieving and checking the sources, then reporting their content in an accurate way, without making any additional arguments that are not in the source, is not "original research". To find in the source what you have not expected to be there is not "original research", it is keeping to the facts over and above your starting assumptions. It would have been "original research" if I had made an explicit allegation about Songbird Survival and the academic research it sponsors. You are confusing motivations or agendas (everybody has one) with the content of the article. What I personally think or suspect about Songbird Survival's possible relationship with the pet industry before or after consulting the evidence, or whether I like them or dislike them is immaterial, because the article has to be based on facts. What I have done is to reconstruct and document the views of Songbird Survival on the subject of cat predation as they had developed, which sheds light on the history of research into the subject. I started off with the Internet Archive because there was a dead link in the section. That is not original research. You may well argue that an account of the evolution of Songbird Survival's views and arguments belongs in the Songbird Survival article - but which Songbird Survival stance is the real one? You are free to question my motives as I am to question yours, whatever, but the rules are for making sure we report everything that is relevant to the article and that we do it accurately. Instead of acting as an editor, you have chosen to question my sources and the obvious absurdity in your accusation is that IA is a perfectly legitimate source used extensively on Wikipedia and there is no need to impugn my motives for using it to access information. I am not sure if you want to say that the initial positions of Songbird Survival have been superseded because they constitute "older research"? I have said what is in the source, and added nothing extra. I have inevitably made my subjective selection of information to include from the source, which you may say is too detailed, or not relevant, but how is it less relevant than what had already been there?

In the version you reverted the article to, the UK section is led by a generic single-sentence comment by David Attenborough, which as it stands (i.e. without further sources on why he said what he said) is nothing but his personal opinion, just one that happens to be published. That is hardly more relevant than the position of Songbird Survival in 2006. The statements of Songbird Survival on their website, however, are also not backed by any reliable published sources. They are statements of opinion, similar to the position of the RSPB, although the RSPB leaflet at least cites some scientific literature. That is why I went back to the 1979 article that was accessible to me, to see what scientists had been saying before the controversy between RSPB and Songbird Survival began. It is something of a contradiction here that Songbird Survival had been making claims about the absence of research of sufficient quality when such studies had in fact existed and continued to use this argument as late as 2016 without bothering to cite any actual science.

You question the value of the 1979 article by ridiculing the fact it was based on a study of five cats over two weeks. Now, the intensity of qualitative research means it cannot be done on a huge scale without incurring massive costs. It is an approach which offers certain very clear advantages over its number-crunching alternatives. For one, it offers actual numbers obtained from field research, not statistical extrapolations. For another, we learn what ecosystem (what prey was available, environmental pressures etc.) the figures were obtained in. By contrast, the 2013 study in Nature is merely based on global estimates. It admits that "there was a relatively small sample of US studies that estimated predation rates" (emphasis mine: the studies sampled were themselves also not based on actual numbers) and that therefore the information had to be collated from various studies covering the temperate zone all around the world. Note that this means that there is still today in the United States a paucity of studies like the 1979 one, which you want to throw out altogether as obsolete.

In summary, while you may wish to dispute this or that point or phrasing in my contribution, I cannot see a valid justification for you to delete it as a whole and restore a brief paragraph citing journalistic articles alone, some of them with a biased viewpoint that promotes the agenda of a lobbying organisation. The way to go is expand, not delete. Name-dropping David Attenborough is not a way to establish what is or is not a fringe theory - if the RPSB position is "fringe", you must demonstrate that with a reliable, published source which actually gives such evidence. As ever. From the fact we have to discuss this at such length, and that there are controversies within the field that have not been resolved in the article, it should be clear that a decent literature overview is badly needed. VampaVampa (talk) 21:09, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

That is a wall of text that I'm not going to read in its entirety, but that doesn't appear to be based in policy or guidelines. But I am going to comment on your initial edit summary [4] NB. the article as a whole is biased in favour of the recent research trend to exaggerate cat predation where you acknowledge that you're adding out of date information to try to shift the POV to a more pro-outdoor cat point of view, and away from the current scientific mainstream, which you apparently disagree with. Geogene (talk) 21:53, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

To cite WP:NPOV against my contribution you need to prove that 1970s science which has not been demonstrably superseded is WP:FRINGE. The same applies to preferring the viewpoint of one organisation (SongBird Survival) over another (RSPB). There is no section in the article that explains how "older research" has been replaced by newer research, or what the scientific paradigm shift has consisted in. If your WP:WIKILAWYER strategy is to ignore what I say and instead cherrypick from my contribution, please note that WP:WALLOFTEXT also says: "Not every matter can be addressed with a one-liner".

I would appreciate if you could be clear as to what you are actually contesting in my contribution, because in summary of the above:

(a) WP:OLDSOURCES does not automatically invalidate older research (i.e. that research has to be dismantled in a verifiable way)

(b) there is nothing in my contribution that is not in the source. VampaVampa (talk) 22:12, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Roughly 50-year-old primary research papers that are contradictory of modern scientific consensus are not a "may be inaccurate" situation but an are one. A single defunct advocacy organisation's opinion, based on a "study" that only involved 5 cats is clearly undue. The fact that doing statistically meaningful studies is expensive and difficult is irrelevant; it is not a free pass for extrapolating from statistically worthless data into a generalized claim. the article as a whole is biased in favour of the recent research trend to exaggerate cat predation is a clear declaration of trying to advance a "cat-defense" advocacy position against current scientific consensus among researchers on the topic and dismiss them all as a conspiratorial bias-farm, and that's pretty much the definition of WP:FRINGE editing.

VampaVampa is grossly misunderstanding how we do things here. E.g. someone publishing 2024 articles claiming the earth is flat would not consistitute valid research, because it would not affect in any way the overwhelming scientific consensus that the earth is round (technically, an oblate spheroid). VampaVampa is trying to set up a situation in which source age is meaningless, and only agreement of sources with VampaVampa's viewpoint can matter. VampaVampa's attack on the science as "just estimates" is exactly the same as creationists' attempts to pooh-pooh evolution as "just a theory"; it's a misunderstanding of what "theory" and "estimate" mean and how science actually works. A principle in science that has become broadly accepted because it closely fits the data and can be used accurately to predict results becomes a theory (versus just a hypothesis, which is what the ignorant mean when they misuse the word "theory"), and all of the conclusions that science comes to based on testing data models against particular theories are estimates. Science's actual goal is the production of practically usable estimates that survive repeated testing with sound theories and properly gathered data.

If VampaVampa wants to raise an issue with Songbird Survival as a source, they are welcome to present evidence that SS's data, conclusions, etc., are contradictory to the state of current research consensus. VampaVampa has not done that, but just issued an opinion that they don't trust SS and how SS arrived at its conclusions, and "therefore" VV is free to make use of old and advocacy-oriented source claims that no other editors accept. WP does not work that way. Editor A does not get to impose sourcing that editors B, C, etc. have pointed out serious problems with, simply because Editor A doesn't like (but can't demonstrate anything wrong with) sources that B, C, etc. accept. This is not an "everyone gets to use a source they like better" system. We evaluate sources by how well they align with the current state of the research as a whole.

Anyway, if this doesn't resolve itself pretty quickly, the thing to do is open a WP:RSN discussion about VampaVampa's cat-advocacy source and 1970s papers and how they do not align with present-day research. VV, in turn, is welcome to also present a case against SS as a source. That would probably ultimately be fruitless, because all of SS's material is verifiable with deeper current research; someone's just used SS because they provide a more easily digestable overview. But their own nature as an advocy group of a different sort might make them non-ideal as a source. One potential solution here is moving the competing advocacy-related claims into a subsection for them, with some analysis; it seems unlikely to me that secondary literature somewhere has not already examined the claims made by these two organizations and many more.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:29, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: You say that "One potential solution here is moving the competing advocacy-related claims into a subsection for them, with some analysis; it seems unlikely to me that secondary literature somewhere has not already examined the claims made by these two organizations and many more" - and I can only agree with that. An advocacy section would be helpful, and so would be any references to literature that addresses the respective position of either organisation.

We also need a history of research section which will outline what the past and current state of research actually is. You say that "we evaluate sources by how well they align with the current state of the research as a whole". But the "current scientific consensus among researchers on the topic" has first to be described on Wikipedia in a thorough and exhaustive manner before you can compare things against it. Otherwise it will remain open to dispute what we are comparing against.

Haste is not the way to go. I should point out that you have jumped to conclusions too quickly in writing that "A single defunct advocacy organisation's opinion, based on a "study" that only involved 5 cats is clearly undue." The 1979 article has nothing to do - that I know of - with either the position of RSPB or with "cat-advocacy". The RPSB does not cite that article. There is no ground for claiming that it is an "advocacy-oriented source" other than the fact that some editors (i.e. you) don't accept it, and the only link between the 1979 article and RSPB or "cat advocacy" is that I have used this article and I have said that I regard the article as biased. My use of the 1979 article, however, does not retroactively make it a "cat-defense" [sic] partisan piece. I would suggest that perhaps the 1979 article pre-dates the entire controversy, but that will only be known once we have a well-sourced advocacy section, and ideally also a history of research section here.

I find your use of a highly subjective concept of modern science (i.e. anything after what date? 2000?) as a rhetorical tool of abuse objectionable. It mirrors that of Geogene above. I also object to childish misrepresentations of what I have said: "only agreement of sources with VampaVampa's viewpoint can matter", "VampaVampa's attack on the science as "just estimates"..." - are you unable to engage in discussion without caricaturing your adversary? I have never said estimates were illegitimate or unscientific; what I said is that estimates are not the Holy Grail of science, and that qualitative research also has its value.

I must ask a question on tone: when you say "how we do things here", who exactly are you speaking for? What entitles you to say I am an outsider to Wikipedia? Have I gatecrashed a private party here?

There are some statements you have made that puzzle me and that I should like to know more in depth about. You have claimed "all of SS's material is verifiable with deeper current research". I am not sure where your confidence for that comes from (is there a published source for this?), but I would like to see the verification done. And on the other side of the coin, you mention the "sourcing that editors B, C, etc. have pointed out serious problems with" - but where is the evidence for this? All you have done is make unsourced claims in this section of the talk page.

In summary, to accept your self-proclaimed authority on all these points, I need evidence please. Like I already said, that should hopefully encourage us to improve and expand the article. VampaVampa (talk) 01:50, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

Re: We also need a history of research section which will outline what the past and current state of research actually is Not unless current secondary sources exist that cover that history. Cobbleing together old primary sources like you did with Songbird Survival's website is original research. Geogene (talk) 03:03, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I have no "self-proclaimed authority" of any kind; I simply know from long practice how to write encyclopedic content properly and how our core content policies and related guidelines are actually applied in practice. I.e., don't confuse experience with aristocracy. Analysis of sources against current real-world scholarly consensus is something Wikipedia editors do, collectively and generally via talk pages, with all the available reliable source material; it is not in any way dependent upon what happens to be presently written in our own article (which is not itself a reliable source, as a matter of policy). It could not be any other way, because what is written in our article is itself also a product of that same editorial consensus process of examining the state of the available source material and what it is collectively telling us (i.e. what the real-world consensus is that our "job" is to summarize).

"We also need a history of research section which will outline what the past and current state of research actually is" might be reasonable, if this is something that secondary sources have written about. Some articles do lend themselves to a "history of scholarship" sort of section, though I'm not certain this really is one. But the assumption that we can't assess a source you want to use (to override all the newer source material) until we have such a section within our own article is completely backwards.

'what you call "modern (i.e. most recent) scientific consensus" did not yet exist': Well of course it didn't, in the sense of "what the present scientific assessment of this particular question is" (the process of formulating and over time adjusting such a scientific consensus certainly did exist then, and much much earlier). Papers written in the 1970s could not magically predict the future about what papers in the 2020s would say; they could only do the best job they could at the time with the data and methods then available. Their conclusions are not somehow immune to being revised, even completely overturned, by later research, especially on a question in which the observable facts are themselves changing over time. I'm not the one here with strange ideas about how science develops. It simply does not happen that half-a-century-old material, that you want to use and which contradicts current research, is more reliable than the current research. How science actually works is that old research is surprassed by newer research (absent serious problems like a "researcher" faking their data, but this is usually detected and corrected soon enough; peer review and reproduction of results happen for a reason, and there's no evidence of anything like that happening within this subject anyway).

"who exactly are you speaking for?": The entire editorial community who wrote, understand, and follow our sourcing policies and who are here to write an encyclopedia properly. I never said you were "an outsider to Wikipedia", but you will quickly enough cast yourself in the role of one if you continue to push viewpoints that are contrary to scientific consensus, in pursuit of a pro-cats advocacy viewpoint, and accusing Wikipoedia (i.e. its editorial community, or maybe you mean the specific editors you are in conflict with right now), and the entire scientific community the former relies on, as being "biased". If you feel you have "gatecrashed a private party" when confronted with WP policies and editing practices and what the modern source material is concluding, then that is an issue coming directly and entirely from you, not from me or anyone else here.

You have arrived here espousing a belief that cats are not problematic, or that they are less problematic, that particular material from the 1970s and a bit later that seems to support your viewpoint is the truth, that modern research that comes to conclusions you don't like is somehow faulty and biased, and that our own article is biased (i.e. written with an intent to deceive by pushing a particular viewpoint). But you cannot (or at least have not) demonstrated anything to support these notions at all. Bible-thumping surpassed 1970s papers and a dead pro-cat advocacy organization as if they prove you are right is circular reasoning, of the same sort as this tedious pattern: A: "The Great Flood really happened. The Bible says so clearly." B: "Modern science does not agree with you or the Bible." A: "You and the science are biased and wrong, because the Bible says it happened." You can't prove the current science is wrong without showing how it is wrong with newer and better science; retreating to earlier answers you like better but which the modern science has overridden is not scholarship, it's faith-based advocacy. Cf. also WP:NOT#ADVOCACY, WP:TRUTH, WP:GREATWRONGS, WP:ACTIVISM, WP:ADVOCACY. This is a common probelmatic issue across innumerable topics, and the community is well aware of it and well equipped to deal with it.

Article content requires citations; talk page discussions do not. No one needs to cite sources anew to raise issues with your dependence on two-generation-old materials; we have a guideline against using old science for a reason, and it applies to this subject like any other. It is no one's job here to do your good-enough-to-use-in-an-article research for you. To get you started, see the "cat predation" search results at scholar.archive.org and scholar.google.com (both constrained to year-2000-and-later material), and work from there. If you throw in the word "review" you can cause systematic and other literature reviews (scientific secondary sources that are of more value than primary research papers) to bubble somewhat up toward the top. If there are any at all that support your viewpoint, they are utterly dwarfed by those that do not. Here are a few to get you started: [5] [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], and especially [11] (which addresses the very "proof of impact" pro-cat advocacy you are promoting here). If you need full-text access to some, you might qualify for a The Wikipedia Library account which is apt to provide it.

You seem to be under an impression along the lines "If I have to show that my ancient sources are still not only reliable but so reliable that they overturn all the current scholarship, then you lot have to prove that current scholarship is itself valid." That's not how this works. The current scholarship (from reputable journals and other reliable sources) is presumptively valid, and the old material it has surpassed and contradicted is presumptively outdated and no longer reliable. WP simply could not exist if it tried to operate the basis that you'd apparently like it to, with outmoded misunderstandings being given equal or even better treatment as source material than present-day best understandings. "there is a very strong possibility that the newer studies simply ignored the old research": No, there is not a "very strong possibility" of this; it's FUD you invented out of nowhere. If researchers on this subject were ignoring prior research (either pointedly with an agenda, or randomly due to rank incompetence), they would not have passed peer review and even if they did, they would be called on it rapidly, especially in a subject in which there are up-in-arms advocacy voices (even among academics able to get papers published in the same sorts of journals) desperately trying to prove them wrong, and character-assassinating researchers who don't agree with their cat-promotional and kumbaya "every animal is precious" activism against feral predator culling (see huge thread above this one). I'm not going to expend another two days or so on detailed source analysis again, like I did last time, simply to address your demands (cf. WP:SATISFY). You have the overwhelming burden of proof here that your 50-year-old papers and defunct advocacy group are somehow more reliable sources than the current and overwhelming scientific conclusion that feral and indoor-outdoor pet cats are together ecologically very problematic (especially in combination with other invasive species like rats, foxes, dogs, weasels, etc.). There ain't no "study" of a grand total of 5 cats that can possibly dispel this. Much more statistically significant examinations dispel your "the cats aren't a real problem" idea completely (start with, e.g. [12] and at scholar.google.com, [13], and especially [14] which directly addresses the denialism you are bring here. And there's a lot more, including various modern primary research (e.g. [15]) that appears not to have been shown faulty by anyone and is inceasingly part of the analaysis, especially when it comes to sublethal population supression effects like the predator-fear factor, which combine with direct predation.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:58, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

@Geogene: "Not unless current secondary sources exist that cover that history." You have not shown anywhere that they do. "Cobbleing together old primary sources like you did with Songbird Survival's website is original research." I refer you again to what original research is - saying what is not in the source.

@SMcCandlish: You claim that "what is written in our article is itself also a product of that same editorial consensus process of examining the state of the available source material and what it is collectively telling us (i.e. what the real-world consensus is that our "job" is to summarize)". What is the evidence for this "editorial consensus" and who is it between, yourself and Geogene? It is one thing for you to claim that you have summarised a scientific consensus and another for it to be actually the case. The verification that you have summarised it correctly can only happen on Wikipedia, and since as you rightly say talk page is not the place to use extensive citations, the only place it can be verified through is the article page. Which is why the only way to resolve our dispute is to expand the article so that it becomes clear through systematic references to literature that the scientific consensus has been accurately and reliably represented. Otherwise you are asking me to put unreasonable and unfounded faith in the assertion that every edit you, SMcCandlish, make, magically corresponds to the current scientific consensus that for the time being remains largely in your head. The fact that you can cite some recent literature by linking to it outside the article does not yet mean that you are right. The place to demonstrate your knowledge of the current research is in the article, for I cannot access your neural circuits or your personal notes. I also draw your attention to the fact that no single scientific article ever directly represents the scientific consensus and that new science is being done as we speak hence the state of consensus is always in flux. I do not say this to undermine confidence in scientific research at all, but to emphasise that we need to stick to the actual information in those papers, not to an imaginary consensus (as if science lacked internal disagreements).

I will ask you again to refrain from attributing things to me based on your assumptions (e.g. "kumbaya "every animal is precious" activism"). I take it that these attributions correspond to a broader dispute concerning cat predation whose details largely elude me, because they are not in the article, and I think they should be. I also find it ridiculous that you have accepted my sarcastic suggestion of the year 2000 as a cut-off point for modern science (please follow this wikilink because you use notions that you do not understand). I have seen absolutely no ground to argue 2000 represented a watershed in zoology - have you?

As to your reasoning about how science works, I find it on the whole unpersuasive in that you keep invoking your own idea about the "scientific consensus" that has to be demonstrated beyond doubt. Your notion of what the "scientific consensus" entails may be right, or it may be wrong (in varying extents on particular points) - it is a verifiable matter. I repeat, the scientific consensus is not an authority to be brandished about, and a selection of links to literature is not in itself enough to back that up. Zoology has a lesser capacity to make rapid breakthroughs than physics, chemistry or medicine because what it studies is animal adaptations, and evolution does take time (species invasions of isolated habitats are an exceptional case that shouldn't be exaggerated out of proportion). I am now going to read the articles you have pointed me to, as well as other literature, and incorporate this into any further edits. I would ask you to kindly refrain from wholesale edit reverting of my contributions and bear with me as I study the literature, and would welcome it if you helped me keep my contributions as accurate and informative as possible, in line with Wikipedia guidelines.

Finally, you have made a lot of hay out of my offhand comment in the description of my edit, but that comment in no way impacts on what is in the article. It was a suggestion for further improvement that someone else might then carefully examine and take up or not. It was my hasty impression that I formed at a brief glance, since the article to my mind (which is in no way a proven fact and is not part of my contribution as such) shows an undue reliance on a group of researchers from Exeter who have a link to Songbird Survival, and on research concerning island habitats which is a special case of cat predation, by no means applicable to the entire temperate zone or the world. Let me remind you that my edit description comment did not allege the existence of an "anti-cat lobby" but only suggested that there are exaggerations in recent research, which is a reasonable claim that an academic might make in disputing another's findings. If you have any first-hand experience of how "modern" academia works, in particular in the UK, then you will know of issues like overproduction of lower-quality publications to meet REF ranking criteria, the haste in writing and reviewing papers resulting from financial pressures, and so on. An idealised image of scientific research is not a viable argument in a dispute about the state of our knowledge. The only evidence is what is actually written in the paper, or in another reliable source, and that is what I am going to be concerned with from now on. VampaVampa (talk) 15:55, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

@VampaVampa: I've started a thread about citing Songbird Survival's old website at the No Original Research Noticeboard [16]. Geogene (talk) 17:25, 27 May 2024 (UTC)

And VV is simply not paying attention to what they are reading. E.g., the "kumbaya 'every animal is precious'" material is about particular writers in some of the source material, and that was quite clear in what I wrote, but VV has assumed it is about VV in particular. In point of fact, I got that language (though am paraphrasing it) from one of the published essays analyzed in the section above this, where I also analyzed in detail the ties of most of those writers to animal welfare groups and their oppositional stance to ecologists, precisely on an 'every animal is precious' basis. [sigh]. I'm not going to pore over VV's continued attempts to "argue Wikipedia into capitulation". It's a text-walling waste of time that necessitates more text-walling in rebuttal (because it takes more effort and material to rebut nonsense than to create it – Brandolini's law); meanwhile VV can be predicted to simply ignore any such rebuttal and continue advancing their original argument as if not rebutted already, which is all they've been doing here (as well as striking "I'm so wounded" poses). We have policies, they don't bend to suit whims and preferences, and the community knows how to intepret and apply them. Multiple editors object to VV's source choices as unreliable and/or claims made on potentially usable sources being OR in VV's case, so they cannot be used by VV in this manner if at all unless a consensus emerges to do so. We have noticeboards at which to address this stuff if it continues. NORN above is one of them, and the other, if it comes to it, is WP:RSN. Given that we already have a clear guideline against using old science to try to contradict new science, we already know exactly how an RSN will go if one is opened about VV's 1970s papers.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:49, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Re: And VV is simply not paying attention to what they are reading. I agree with that. For example, a reply in a side argument on their talk page: Likewise, time of publication is not a criterion for judging scientific contributions. Did the relativity theory change Newton's account of gravitation because of its date or because of its critical input? The relevant (WP:OLDSOURCES) argument here would be that the Principia itself wouldn't be usable as a source in Wikipedia for much of anything, and that's would be particularly appropriate there because Principia is famously difficult to understand -- possibly by design. This is also not the right venue to have an argument on whether the RS Guideline that OLDSOURCES is a part of needs to be revised. I don't want to sink a lot of time into arguing the history of science or epistemology on article talkpages, my intent here is merely to point out relevant guidelines and how they apply to the disputed content, in a brief manner if possible.

I believe this discussion here and on NORN has shown that a local consensus currently exists against VV's recent subsection rewrite. This post offers another chance to flush out some other opposition, but, without that, then per WP:SATISFY and WP:ONUS, I'm likely to revert VV's change again soon, and if VV reverts again, I'll probably report that as edit warring. I'm not against bringing the different problematic aspects of that single >7000 byte diff to various noticeboards, but procedurally I'm not sure the apparent majority against is required to do that, or that the disputed revision should remain indefinitely. Geogene (talk) 19:57, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

@Geogene: There has been no external input into the dispute that you launched from anyone but the people involved, i.e. yourself and SMcCandlish. That is not any sort of wider consensus and none of your charges have been evidenced, and you attempt to excuse yourself with having no time to address counterarguments to resolve the issue in your favour in a kangaroo court. You cannot be a judge in your own case and neither can someone else who has a history of supporting the same viewpoint against any evidence to the contrary.

If you decide to take one-sided action by reverting my edit I will bring this to a suitable mediation or arbitration process, since you blatantly disregard the fact that there is a current disagreement in science regarding the claims about cats being "always and especially harmful to native wildlife everywhere", as one source puts it (Lynn et al. 2020), without considering ecological context or total prey population numbers. This is not to mention many other criticisms or to discuss other work critical of the same claims (e.g. Grayson et al. 2007, Fitzgerald and Turner 2000, Turner 2022), which I am reluctant to do, because you have shown a tendency above to ignore any arguments that do not support your view and instead to engage in unwarranted and aggressive rhetoric seeking to discredit my contribution.

As to my edit, it is obviously not presently giving a balanced overview of the situation and scholarship in the UK. It was not intended to be the final edit on the matter, and there is no obligation on Wikipedia for every edit to attempt to be the last word on the subject. What it is, is a clear improvement over the same passage in the preceding edit, which had been dominated by NGO-sourced comment and journalistic information.

To restate: there is currently a debate in science about the conclusion that cats are a major threat to wildlife and biodiversity (regardless of the fact that cats are prolific and opportunistic hunters or that they can threaten endemic species in certain habitats, principally on small oceanic islands), whereas you pretend that this debate has either never existed or has already been resolved in favour of the side you happen to support. That this is driven by a non-scientific campaigning agenda is clear from your remarks above that science happens to support Songbird Survival's positions and that RSPB is a "dead" organisation. You do not care about science, or else you would be open to my proposal to start a systematic state of research section in this article. VampaVampa (talk) 23:06, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

So the first of those sources, Lynn, was extensively discussed in the thread about this one [17] Why do people keep bringing the same papers back into the discussion? Isn't it because there are so few papers out there that are pro-outdoor cats? Isn't that evidence that those views are fringe? Next we have Grayson 2007, an old source which predates the landmark Loss paper from Nature, published in either 2012 or 13 that appears to have set the tone for cat predation studies since. Nevertheless, Grayson et al. acknowledge that cat predation is a significant problem in the mainstream POV: Many Australian and international studies confirm that pet cats kill large numbers of wildlife (e.g. Paton 1994; Churcher & Lawton 1987; Barratt 1998; Gillies & Clout 2003; Woods et al. 2004; Lepczyk et al. 2003a, b). Grayson et al. may not agree with those papers, but here they appear to recognize it as a majority viewpoint. Fitzgerald and Turner is an OLDSOURCE from the year 2000 that, from the Google Books search you linked to, doesn't even appear to devote more than a couple of paragraphs to cat predation. Turner 2022 is a fringe opinion piece in a Frontiers Media journal that appears to question whether cats are a even an invasive species: Quite often domestic cats are considered by conservationists to be an invasive species. The cat itself is mostly responsible for its domestication (“self- domestication,” albeit with some help from ancient peoples) and the expansion of its geographic range from the Fertile Crescent area to the East, North and South. and mocks conservation biologists Further, people arguing against cats usually assume one of two vantage points: either that of (prey) animal protection and welfare ("the poor prey animals") when they themselves are motivated by "the poor, poor cats". Geogene (talk) 01:02, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

@Geogene: Nobody is interested in your personal opinion about these sources. And there are a good deal more.

That Loss, Will and Marra 2013 "appears to have set the tone for cat predation studies since" is a highly contentious claim that you are unlikely to find a source for.

There is no reason I should spend time arguing against what would be original research if it was added to the article. VampaVampa (talk) 15:59, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

My take: what we have in section Cat predation on wildlife#United Kingdom at this point gives a reasonable overview of what controversy there is. Adding lots of quotes and details, especially when presented in a manner that suggests that these currently constitute serious challenges within the wider field (which they do not - the modern overall scientific consensus is clear and continues to be firmed up), is not useful and feels misleading. I am really getting the feeling that the addition of this material is not intended to give an overview of the development of opinion in the field, but to advocate for a minority position and to throw doubt on the larger consensus. That is not within our ambit. - On the side, the 2021 Current Biology study re effects of diet on hunting behaviour looks like it could usefully be mentioned in the article (using more neutral phrasing), but it does not belong in the UK section. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 09:16, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

I should stress that my edit was not meant to be a final balanced overview of the UK section, but merely an improvement over the version to which you have linked above. One of the problems with this version is that it opens by name-dropping David Attenborough who did not offer an argument but merely a brief remark on the subject, and another, more significant to me, is that it never relates what the conflicting views of RSPB or SS actually are in any detail. Now much of this could be moved to the articles for the respective organisations, and I grant that my version is not immune to challenges about its neutrality or balance; the problem throughout this discussion has been that of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. VampaVampa (talk) 16:47, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Frankly I don't like leading with the Attenborough quote up front either. That does feel like shoving a celeb out front to provide an "official" take on the issue, which it is not. If retained, I think this quote should be moved to the back of the section, as an illustration of opinion. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 16:54, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Or delete it as NOTNEWS. Geogene (talk) 16:56, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

That in principle sounds like a good idea. It was displayed on Songbird Survival's website and therefore may have its place in the controversy, from the advocacy angle at least. That is why in my edit I placed it in its proper context, within a paragraph covering Songbird Survival's views. VampaVampa (talk) 17:07, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

I haven't been able to bring myself to read all the walls of text above (WP:TLDR), but I understand VampaVampa wants to include some studies from the 1970s whose conclusions differ from more recent ones. They seem to assert that the new studies must be shown to supersede the old ones before they can be used. I concur that the newer studies should be preferred. We neither have to show why Boyle's 17th century work on the Luminiferous aether is faulty nor point out where a new paper on Photons supersedes Boyle's work in order to use the new paper. The newer studies better represent the current state of scholarship, and should be preferred over old ones. EducatedRedneck (talk) 11:07, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

I am not sure why you think that 1970s/early 1980s zoology should be compared with 17th physics. If there has been a true scientific revolution in zoology since that time, then I am yet to see not only any evidence of it, but any attempt to describe what it consisted in (beyond extensive data gathering or gadgets like point-of-view cameras, and some assumptions about what previous studies may have missed).

I should also clarify that I did not include the 1981 study (with 1978-9 data) as a privileged point of reference of any sort, but only because I had already read it before and knew it included data relevant to this article, which had previously offered very little in the way of actual figures to gauge the scale of the phenomenon. It goes without saying that if further studies were to be cited then the paragraph about the 1981 study would need to be reduced to a sentence or two at most, or even to a passing reference if a larger study based on similar methodology was to be introduced.

The problem with the newer literature is demonstrably that it can cite old research only in passing to support uncontestable broader points, while ignoring the actual conclusions. So the old research is treated as valid enough to be cited and its proper findings ignored simultaneously. Examples are citations of Errington 1936 (yes, 1936) and Nilsson 1940 by Loss et al. 2013, or citation of Coman and Brunner 1972 in Twardek et al. 2017. VampaVampa (talk) 17:05, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

The idea is to use sufficiently recent secondary sources, such as ones from 2013 and 2017 you linked above. Why would you need to use very old sources if there are so many new ones? There is no sense if the conclusions by new and old sources are the same. But if they are different, it is generally the case that the new sources are correct/better on the subject. It does not mean that old sources are forbidden, just that they are less reliable and therefore not recommended (assuming there are numerous recent sources as in this case). My very best wishes (talk) 17:25, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

It is rather more complicated than you suggest. A majority of the old sources appear to be in agreement with what is said to be the "minority" view today, or what Geogene and SMcCandlish have sought to discredit as fringe advocacy. It calls for a clarification of how the supposed paradigm shift has occurred, and what it consisted of methodologically. And if some scientists (i.e. the minority) continue to oppose the new majority, then we cannot simply assume - as Geogene and SMcCandlish would have it - that they are being incorrigible obscurantists, or have a dirty pro-cat agenda. No need to privilege the old sources, but they are useful as well, and importantly the new majority do cite them, if only for the sake of citation. VampaVampa (talk) 18:57, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

I was not comparing 1970s zoology with 17th century physics. I was using a metaphor, using a clear example to hopefully shed light on a more subtle one.

The problem with the newer literature is demonstrably that it can cite old research only in passing I fail to see how this is a problem. The point of Wikipedia is to summarize the scholarly consensus. That consensus is evolving. 50 years is more than long enough to assume, if two sources disagree, that the scholarly consensus has changed. If, as you say, some scientists... continue to oppose the new majority then I'm sure there will be recent papers that say so. At the very least, I'd expect failed replications of "cats harm wildlife" papers to exist. As MVBW says above, Why would you need to use very old sources if there are so many new ones?

VampaVampa, are you able to look for newer sources? It seems clear the community is not willing to accept a 1970s study, but you make the good point that there may be more contemporary sources which say essentially the same thing. If you can find those sources, (and they seem both reliable and not contrary to an overwhelming majority; see WP:FRINGE) it would be worth including those per WP:NPOV. If there's a literature review that note such a modern disagreement, for instance, I would think that would mandate at least a sentence or two in this article to address the disagreement. EducatedRedneck (talk) 20:25, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Let us be clear about what the dispute is about. The basic facts that cats (1) are prolific predators, (2) are able to hunt large numbers of wild prey (in absolute numbers, not necessarily relative to total population) and (3) are capable of bringing endemic species to extinction in small island contexts are not disputed by any serious scholarship. The dispute is instead about the validity of the extreme alarmist thesis that cats (especially "feral") are the primary threat to wildlife and biodiversity globally. If you look through the thread above and on NORN, you will find references to a number of 21st century studies which disagree with such an extreme conclusion. The statement that "cats harm wildlife" is ambiguous - does it mean that they hunt wildlife, or that they threaten it with extinction? First is obviously true, second is restricted to exceptional conditions and otherwise strongly disputed. Science, like Wikipedia, is not a democracy - the consensus is achieved through argument and there simply has not been the burden of proof for the extreme thesis, or else Geogene and SMcCandlish would be sticking it in my face.

How do you imagine that it is possible for the rejection of the (century-old) extreme thesis to have been mainstream in the 1970s-80s, but now for it to have become a "fringe theory" without an obvious public recognition of it? Those terms should not be used carelessly. If there had been a "settled dispute, e.g. that the Sun revolves around the Earth", then we would have had an exhaustive article about it long ago - yet we cannot reach consensus to build one... Why do you think that is?

I haven't had the time to read everything but recent sources who reject the extreme thesis include Hughes et al. 2019 and Lilith et al. 2006, implicitly Bruce et al. 2019 and Lueps 2003. Nielsen et al. 2021 is relevant. Baker et al. 2008 discuss various caveats. The extreme thesis itself does damage to a nuanced discussion through polarisation, many authors do not engage with it at all.

Old literature has an additional relevance - it shows that the extreme thesis existed already in early 20th century and before WW2, and scientists like Errington who examined it found it to be rooted in popular belief. That alone should make one cautious about its re-emergence in scientific guise. VampaVampa (talk) 22:28, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

It seems like we're getting somewhere now; good, and thank you for your responses! I'll come back to this in a moment.

First, I will say that I have little interest in the content of this article; I saw the dispute on WP:ANI, took a look, and found some statements made about the scientific process that seemed to me to be incorrect, and so weighed in. My interest here is methodological, not about cat predation itself. My comments were similarly addressed only to the methodology. My apologies if they seemed to stray into cat predation.

You write above asking how an old thesis could become fringe without a paper that rejects it. Here you seem to be begging the question; the recent studies that are cited do reject it. The null hypothesis was "cats have no impact on native populations", they perform a study, and find that they reject the null. That's the way science should work, and how it worked here. They don't have to reject every paper that proposed the old thesis, just the thesis itself. Similarly, the scientific process is supposed to separate the hypothesis being tested from experimenter biases. Our job on Wikipedia isn't to determine which sources reflect the truth, it's only to summarize the current understanding as reflected in scholarly literature.

What you've written above seems to me to be a great place to have a discussion. The sources in your proposed revision seemed to strongly suggest that cats have a negligible impact on bird populations. Hughes et al. seems to go directly against that stance, claiming cats had the greatest [negative] impact on local birds. The other papers aren't too convincing; Lilith et al. seems to be an opinion poll, Leups is in German which I can't read, Bruce seems more interested in risk to the cat than impact on fauna populations, Nielsen seems to be about cat population density and doesn't mention birds at all, and the Baker link won't load for me. So I'm sure you can see why the "negligible impact" narrative has been met with skepticism.

What you've written just above, however, seems like something worth exploring the sources for. That cats can harm bird populations, but that we need to more carefully define "harm". Where we should be focusing our efforts, I think, is on the "Consequences of reintroduction" section, which makes the bold claim you reject that cats are "devastating", and cites it to a New York Times article. It then follows up with a quote from 1984 to give the impression of scientific consensus. We Wikipedians can do better than that.

My suggestion is that everyone here leave this section and the old sources, start a new section looking to revamp the Consequences part of the article, and rework it pointing to recent scholarship, giving it the nuanced care it deserves. Use the Hughes study to characterize it as a negative impact, large relative to other invasive species. Find other studies that might put it in context for the wider population, or endangered populations. Heck, for the endangered ones, I'm sure there's a paper somewhere that notes that the cats' predation is a relatively small factor, but that it can make a big difference if the species is already in some way threatened. Does this sound like progress to you? I hope so, because that sounds like building a consensus and improving an article to me. EducatedRedneck (talk) 23:43, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

@EducatedRedneck: You seem to be referring to the sentence, Pet cats introduced to such islands have had a devastating impact on these islands' biodiversity. That's the one cited to the New York Times and a book from 1984. But is it something you find to be seriously in question? Note that VV just wrote above that they agree that, [cats] are capable of bringing endemic species to extinction in small island contexts are not disputed by any serious scholarship. That's such a pedestrian claim that I'm not surprised the sourcing for it isn't the greatest. Geogene (talk) 00:34, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

@EducatedRedneck: What you say sounds very encouraging, but I think you have misunderstood two crucial points along the way, and I disagree with you on two more.

Misunderstanding 1. "The null hypothesis was "cats have no impact on native populations", they perform a study, and find that they reject the null.". By no impact, of course, we mean here no long-term impact on the ability of the population to reproduce itself. This is not a hypothesis that has been proven wrong for everywhere on the planet, only for a number of concrete locations under specific conditions. No ecosystem can act as a stand-in for "everywhere". The falsity of the extreme view consists in hoping that if it can be proven for sufficiently many places, an uneducated public will start believing that it applies everywhere. This is what is at stake in the debate - an unwarranted generalisation.

Misunderstanding 2. ""cats had the greatest [negative] impact" on local birds". You have misconstrued the source here. It says: "Prior to their eradication in 2003, cats had the greatest impact on sooty terns" - relative to rats and mynas, which the source is comparing them with. Nowhere it is stated that cats had the greatest impact on local birds as opposed to non-local birds (which may not exist on Ascension Island at all!). I am sorry but where did you derive this nativist agenda from?

Disagreement 1. "The other papers aren't too convincing..." This is the very troubling way in which Geogene and SMcCandlish have been proceeding above - disqualifying sources before they are even used. I am not asking you to study those sources and extract information from them; I would expect you, however, to trust information that would be correctly derived from them, without raising unnecessary a priori objections. To your remark that I should "see why the "negligible impact" narrative has been met with skepticism", I could respond that such haste in dismissing sources gives ground for me to be skeptical of a superficial resolution being imposed here.

Disagreement 2. I object to the proposition that older sources be left out of the article on principle. What arbitrary date should we adopt for that? 2010? 2000? 1990? 1980? Why?

I hope my answer is clear enough to be addressed for its argument and not treated as combative; I am really tired of the unnecessary polarisation of the matter, yet ironically there is one polarity that I am determined to uphold: either we seek the truth with an open mind (by reading and understanding the existing literature, which surely no one here has completely digested yet) or we seek to impose a point of view from the start. Keeping an open mind is not prohibited on Wikipedia; it is in no way the same thing as "original research". VampaVampa (talk) 00:36, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

@Geogene I think what gives me pause is that the source calling cats "devastating" seems to imply, to a layperson such as me, that cats are the sole cause for a local mass extinction. I don't question the follow-on They have been implicated in the extinction of several species and local extinctions, as its limit in scope is clear. That said, I admit I skimmed the passage. If I misunderstood, please disregard my malformed thought.

@VampaVampa Misunderstanding 1: I understand what you're saying, and that's precisely why I object to the two older sources. As-written, it gave the impression of no impact at all in the UK, when there seems to be more recent literature to the contrary.

Misunderstanding 2: That's not a misunderstanding at all. My understanding of what the source says matches yours. The source found significant predation. That opens the door to suggest that an impact may exist. (It does not confirm one, but it does suggest one.)

You saying I am sorry but where did you derive this nativist agenda from? strikes me as a personal attack. I have no agenda. As I said, I really don't care about the topic of this article. My only goal here is to get all us editors pointed in the same direction so we can improve the encyclopedia together. I do not care what direction that ends up being. Your statement seems to be designed to make this academic discussion to be one about personal views and biases, and I can't see how that helps the discussion. I'd like you to strike it.

Disagreement 1: This was not at all an a priori dismissal of sources. I examined them in the context of your claim that they rejected the thesis. I found that none of them present findings to that effect. If you meant that they briefly mention that they don't accept the thesis, okay, they can do that, but if it's not something they support in their paper, then it's not a peer-reviewed claim. If you were pointing to passing mentions by multiple authors to show that it is a widely held view, that seems to constitute WP:SYNTH.

Disagreement 2: Nobody is suggesting older sources be left out on principle. What is being said is that, if there are current sources as well, the current sources be used instead. Especially when the current and dated sources disagree.

Finally, I want to point something out. We are not here to seek the truth. As that essay states, we are here to present reflections of current published knowledge (bolding mine).

I'm hoping we can find a way forward where everyone can (perhaps grudgingly) admit that whatever consensus we build is accurate. Treating it as "us" versus "them" is exhausting. If we're not all trying to work together, then I have better areas to spend my time. EducatedRedneck (talk) 01:15, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

While I was initially ready to stand by my reaction to your answer, I will now admit having overreacted - there was no need to suggest an "agenda" in these terms, and I am sorry for doubting your good faith. I think there is nonetheless a difference in how we view the matter - but since it appears to be ideological, we probably need to find a way forward despite its presence. In my view it comes down to whether we believe that ecosystems should or in fact can be returned to how things were before the invasion of "foreign" species. (To my mind Hughes et al. suggest that if rats replaced the eradicated cats as a threat to terns, then were rats to be eradicated a new predator would most likely appear in their stead.) Such differences are unlikely to be resolved by a discussion such as this (and similar differences are doubtlessly at work in my dispute with Geogene and SMcCandlish), so I do agree we need to try to work past them, all the while being aware that we are going to continue to disagree on some level. So the "us" vs "them" is inevitably there but we need to avoid directly attacking each other. My exasperation stemmed from the fact that in suggesting your solution you overlooked that you may be eradicating my capacity to seriously disagree with you. And that's the thing I meant with "truth", not any original interpretation or activism - verifiability is all I stand by. But I did overreact.

I also basically said a stupidity because mynas are the non-native birds in the paper we clashed over - even if predation on them is not being examined, because they're in the "predator" group. That still does not change my "ideological" disagreement with you, and originally with Geogene and SMcCandlish.

I am happy to strike the comment above if you require this as a statement of good intentions from my side. Otherwise I feel that it may be time for the RfC, because we are not going to achieve much of substance in this thread. You have persuaded me that RfC may be a viable way forward and I hope somewhat to have strengthened my case that the existence of fundamental disagreements means that various editors will clash and that not "wikilawyering" but sourced information is the way to resolve this.

That means that I have to acknowledge that I equally overreacted to having procedural charges invoked against my edit by Geogene and SMcCandlish. I did it from a place of a threatened beginner who feels they're being ganged up on by experienced users. But perhaps that situation doesn't apply any more. VampaVampa (talk) 03:12, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Prior to making RfC, please phrase it concisely and clearly here. I am still not sure what exactly you disagree about. My very best wishes (talk) 04:56, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

I will do so in due course. VampaVampa (talk) 05:21, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

I think Elmidae, EducatedRedneck and Geogene are correct here. And of course feral cats are a serious threat for wild life in many places, but especially for endemic species in places like New Zealand or Galapagos Islands [18]. Feral cats are invasive species.My very best wishes (talk) 15:44, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

References

Arbitrary Break

@VampaVampa In my wikibreak, I've been thinking about this disagreement, and trying to figure out where I'm misunderstanding. I have a thought, and I'd like to run it by you to see if I'm on the right track, or barking up the wrong tree.

An objection I could see has to do with the relevancy of sources. I feel like you've been trying to point out that a source has two axes for appropriateness: recency, which I've been focused on, and applicability, which I've neglected. You made the point that a study on isolated islands does not, by default, apply to every location in the world. The UK may have factors that would lead to a different result if the study were somehow repeated there.

My feeling is that you agree that, all else being equal, recent sources should be preferred over older ones. However, a source directly studying the topic (impact of cats on birds in the UK) should be preferred over one that requires inference (study of cats on birds in isolated islands). This would mean that whether to use an old, specific source (1970s UK study) as compared to using a generalized source (current island study in the main summary, but little detail in the UK section) is an editorial judgement call, not a clear-cut case of policy.

Am I coming closer to understanding you? I feel like I've been talking past you, which means I haven't been very productive in this discussion, and I'd like to understand where you're coming from. EducatedRedneck (talk) 12:20, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the reply. Yes, I do think research should be specific to the local conditions (different wildlife, different history and parameters of cat presence) and that it should be included where such research exists. That would be the purpose of having country sections in the article. And in general I tend to assume that more information is better. In this case, one research article cited, even if outdated, is better than none, and nothing prevents the addition of recent research. I do not see any grounds for keeping the article in its present state, when there is a substantial literature (yes, mostly dating from after 2000) yet to be summarised. I could agree that the prevalent consensus should be described before including any scholarship critical of it or any older literature that may come with limitations or complicate the picture. VampaVampa (talk) 13:01, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

I do not think it will be possible to avoid the broader debate, beyond that one specific edit. It has been claimed that cat predation is a primary and global threat to wildlife, and that criticism or skepticism of this notion amounts to denialism. However, the criticism is not to be dismissed out of hand just because the proponents of the thesis think it is motivated by special interests. One could cite the similar case of the Holodomor genocide question, where criticism of the application of genocide and of the intentionality of the famine could also easily be construed as denialism (along the lines of Armenian genocide denial or Holocaust denial). However, to quote the article, "while scholars are in consensus that the cause of the famine was man-made" (similar to the uncontroversial thesis that cat predation is significant in absolute numbers and has caused extinctions), there is no direct evidence that (a) the Ukrainian famine was a genocide and (b) it was deliberately orchestrated by Stalin and the Soviet leadership and serious scholars have refused to recognise the extreme thesis about genocide. Despite the fact that there is no genuine scholarly consensus for the recently developed genocide thesis, 34 countries and the EU have recognised the famine as a genocide. So one does need to be cautious with new trends in scholarship as well. VampaVampa (talk) 16:34, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm glad I was understanding properly! There's merit to your argument that specificity is also important. So let's see if we can find more current sources for the UK specifically.

Sourcing description

Woods et al. (2003) reports, Fitzgerald (1988) and Fitzgerald & Turner (2000) asserted that on continental landmasses, wildlife had co-evolved with cats for hundreds of generations and that any species that were susceptible to predation would be ‘long extinct’. (N.b.: I have not read the cited sources, only this author's portrayal of them.) That's a bit stale, but Calver, et al. (2011) advocates for the application of the precautionary principle, stating a belief but making it clear there's not compelling evidence one way or the other. They note, applying the precautionary principle may prove effective in reducing wildlife loss to pet cats while awaiting definitive studies of whether or not pet cats are a real threat to wildlife populations.

@Geogene, I'm unfamiliar with this subject area, so I may have some sampling bias in my sources. (Google scholar search for "cat impact on wildlife populations uk"). You seem to be more familiar with this literature than me. Are the two sources in the collapse consistent with the bulk of the literature?

I'm hoping we can all agree on some basic facts before we get going again. I know that previously I was trying to stress a point that wasn't actually in dispute, which was not productive. In particular, I'm hoping we can all agree that:

• Our role as editors is merely to summarize what the preponderance of reliable sources say
• Cats predate wildlife (This statement is agnostic on the impacts on wildlife populations.)
• The literature is consistent in maintaining that cat predation can do great harm to island ecosystems
• It is useful to have current sources
• It is useful to have sources specific to the topic at hand (e.g., when discussing dog biology, sources describing canis familiaris are preferable to those describing canines in general.)
• There may be a tradeoff required between how current a sources is vs. how specific it is. (This statement is agnostic as to what the optimal tradeoff is.)

Does all this sound reasonable? EducatedRedneck (talk) 23:39, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Re, the statement on continental landmasses, wildlife had co-evolved with cats for hundreds of generations and that any species that were susceptible to predation would be 'long extinct' is a fringe viewpoint. The mainstream viewpoint is that cats are an invasive species with no native range, and are subsidized by humans (keywords: subsidized predator, hyper-predation) which means that cat populations attain unnatural densities that far exceed those of natural predators that must subsist only on the prey available to them. [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24].

Regarding, Cats predate wildlife (This statement is agnostic on the impacts on wildlife populations.) Yes. But, the topic and scope of this article is Cat predation on wildlife. Things like this 2013 paper that concluded, Our findings suggest that free-ranging cats cause substantially greater wildlife mortality than previously thought and are likely the single greatest source of anthropogenic mortality for US birds and mammals. Scientifically sound conservation and policy intervention is needed to reduce this impact. [25] are within scope, it feels a little like the burden of proof is being pushed in my direction to "prove" that wildlife populations are impacted. Where is the sourcing that says that "the greatest single cause of bird mortality" or whatever the exact wording I just quoted was, is not going to impact the bird population? Clearly the authors mean it to be understood (by their policy recommendation) that this would obviously have an effect on bird populations. Geogene (talk) 00:55, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

(Additional commentary on Fitzgerald) Since I posted the above yesterday, I've identified a source that commented on Fitzgerald directly (Winter, 2004) [26] His statement ignores the fact that the status of a species can change over time. Sixteen years later, after additional habitat loss and new scientific studies, scientists now list invasive species, including cats, as the second most serious threat to declining and rare wildlife.14,15 This reinforces what I've already said here about Fitzgerald being an WP:OLDSOURCE. Geogene (talk) 21:30, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

@Geogene My apologies; I hadn't intended to shift the burden of proof onto you, but upon further reflection, that is indeed what I'm doing. This is because I'm unfamiliar with the subject, and my amateur searching hasn't revealed the academic consensus you claim, and the existing sources seem to be very specific to environments dissimilar to the UK. But before I get too far into it, do the bullet points above sound reasonable for starters? I do note that your response to the "cats predate wildlife" point doesn't seem to disagree with it, just reasserts your conclusion that it impacts populations. While I don't think VampaVampa nor I take the conclusion as a given, I want to be sure that we can start from the same series of facts. EducatedRedneck (talk) 21:49, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't disagree with the bullet points as presented. Here is a paper specifically on mainland environments, including the UK, which says, On mainlands (continents and large islands, such as those constituting New Zealand and the UK), cat impacts on vertebrate populations remain the subject of heated debate. Rigorous quantitative studies clearly show that cats kill a huge number of vertebrates on mainlands (Blancher 2013; Loss et al. 2013). Nevertheless, conclusively determining population impacts is complicated by the challenge of disentangling the effects of cats from other natural and human drivers of population trajectory and identifying whether various mortality sources are compensatory or additive (Panel 1). Because of these complications, feral cat advocacy groups and other organizations often argue that evidence for cat impacts on mainland vertebrates is lacking (Alley Cat Allies 2017; RSPB 2017). [27] Note the context for who is debating -- scientists on the one side, and "cat advocates and other organizations", meaning the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which as the article points out has been criticized for their views on this. The paper then reviews the literature and concludes More than a dozen observational studies, as well as experimental research, provide unequivocal evidence that cats are capable of affecting multiple population-level processes among mainland vertebrates. In addition to predation, cats affect vertebrate populations through disease and fear-related effects, and they reduce population sizes, suppress vertebrate population sizes below their respective carrying capacities, and alter demographic processes such as source–sink dynamics. Geogene (talk) 22:24, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

@Geogene First, thank you for being willing to continue the discussion and educate a layperson like me on the topic. I really appreciate you taking the time to not just respond, but give such thoughtful, well-sourced responses, too!

Secondly, that is an outstanding source! Goodness I love me a good lit review. </nerdRant> I'd like to wait a bit to let this discussion reach its conclusion, but I'd guess that everyone here would agree that this is a paper that synthesizes (as we cannot!) a wide breadth of literature, and does so for the mainland environs. I kind of want to add it to the lede. We already have it in the "Ecology of Fear" section (which I didn't look at before) but I feel like that citation could just as easily be tacked on at the end of the lede paragraph to complement the citation for island ecosystems.

I also note that this paper is cited 170 times in the literature according to Google Scholar. I had the though of, "How do I know this isn't a minority view as well?" but seem to have answered my own question. Furthermore, one of the papers that cited this one, Loss, et al. (2022), says This review also supports past studies in illustrating that cats negatively affect wildlife populations.

VampaVampa below mentions having some sources, which could be useful to look through. After all, perhaps there are also lit reviews (or even a series of studies) that look specifically at the UK. But unless there's something pretty compelling, the lit review Geogene found seems like the sort of broad summary of the literature that defines what we report. EducatedRedneck (talk) 23:31, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

I would actually agree to adding the first two sentences of the quotation, which are not disputed by any literature I have seen so far, to the lead of the article.

It is only the third sentence which is problematic and represents the authors' attempt to discredit their critics as mere policy advocates, even though they acknowledge that they themselves want to proceed to policy-making and leave scientific challenges unaddressed. VampaVampa (talk) 01:27, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

For the most part I would second this, but I'm not so sure about that classification of mainlands. The important difference that makes islands more vulnerable is that their populations evolved in isolation, with no need to adapt to similar predators. That applies to both Australia and New Zealand, but not the the UK. This study [28] is on invasive mammalian predators in general, though does include cats, and says that "If Australia is reclassified as an island, insular endemic mammals experience more severe predator impacts than continental species." Iamnotabunny (talk) 21:54, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

On mainlands (continents and large islands, such as those constituting New Zealand and the UK), cat impacts on vertebrate populations remain the subject of heated debate. Rigorous quantitative studies clearly show that cats kill a huge number of vertebrates on mainlands (Blancher 2013; Loss et al. 2013). Nevertheless, conclusively determining population impacts is complicated by the challenge of disentangling the effects of cats from other natural and human drivers of population trajectory and identifying whether various mortality sources are compensatory or additive This is actually a fair summary of the state of research, but it is followed by a partisan statement misrepresenting scholars who do not want to skip the aforementioned challenges and proceed to policy recommendations as policy advocates. As proposed below, one must not conflate science with policy.

The second quotation is simply less conclusive than it seems. It merely shows that cats are capable of affecting multiple population-level processes without quantifying this potential capacity. This is again what is disputed in literature, the actuality of the problem, rather than its potentiality. Same goes for "illustrating that cats negatively affect wildlife populations" - illustrating with examples is not the same as proving that something is always or generally the case. Because we are talking about different countries and ecosystems, this is a vital point of disagreement.

As for the critic of Fitzgerald, Winter 2004, she fails to make use of the updated 2000 version of Fitzgerald's chapter, which at 24 pages of double-column text likely remains one of the most extensive treatments of cat predation and impact on prey populations. What "updated" means is that fresh literature as of 2000 was incorporated. 2000 is no longer new when it comes to numbers - this is why I insisted on including numbers below in my response to EducatedRedneck. Especially domestic cat populations can grow substantially, changing their impact on environment (e.g. there was 30% growth in France between 2000-2014). But Fitzgerald and Turner 2000 may not have been superseded in their broad zoological (not just conservation biology) scope - the broad mechanisms of predation they analyse still apply unless challenged. On a different point, Winter acknowledges that habitat loss is the primary factor that appears to have had decisive influence on the secondary impact of cats. As one author (Barcott 2013) put it in reporting on the conflict between bird and cat advocacy groups, Industrial and residential development is carving the [North American] continent into islands of wildlife habitat. Birds are increasingly left with isolated patches of forest and seashore, surrounded by hostile territory. The feral cats under the San Luis Pass bridge are important only because the piping plovers have nowhere else to go. In other words, the fragmentation of bird habitats has been converting them into "islands" - which would explain the indirect relevance of island studies to some other habitats that have been destroyed by humans (not cats) in the first place. VampaVampa (talk) 00:54, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

And Barcott 2013 is a re-publication of Barcott 2007 [29], a commentary on old science which pre-dates more recent papers such as [30]. But even Barcott went on to say, In the past decade, at least a dozen studies published in top scientific journals like Biological Conservation, Journal of Zoology and Mammal Review have chronicled the problem of cat predation of small mammals and birds. The takeaway is clear: cats are a growing environmental concern because they are driving down some native bird populations — on islands, to be sure, but also in ecologically sensitive continental areas. Acknowledging that over the prior decade (1997-2007) science was turning against outdoor cats. I think WP:OLDSOURCES is relevant here too. Geogene (talk) 18:10, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

If we can, I think it might be useful to get away from the age of the sources. I believe VampaVampa agrees that, all else being equal, newer sources should be preferred. My impression is that the crux of the matter lies in the specificity part of things. So the easy first pass is probably to find a source, specific to the UK (or continental populations), that makes a statement on cat predation impacting populations. If we find such a source, then we can discuss weighing recency vs. specificity. If we don't have such a source, the age is immaterial. I suggest starting with this because it's a very objective measure that requires evidence but little interpretation: does the source say the thing? I hope that by focusing on this, we can avoid going in circles.

I'll also note, on the topic of what Barcott says, that whether there are other impacts doesn't change the question in my mind. On islands, species populations are small, so cat predation (even if small in magnitude relative to other populations) can impact the population. On continents, it sounds like Barcott is saying that where habitats have become small, then cat predation can impact the population. Granted that in urban areas it's an artificially reduced habitat, but the claim isn't that cat predation can negative impact populations in pristine wilderness, it's that they can impact populations in the world as it is. If we want to make a different claim, we should also modify the article text to make that clear. EducatedRedneck (talk) 19:37, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't understand the emphasis on wildlife populations, because I don't believe that the article currently makes any claim that cats are affecting wildlife populations on continents. (Am I wrong about that? Is there any such unsourced claim in the article?) It does present well-sourced claims about predation rates, and I have the impression that some might like to "counterbalance" that well sourced info with WP:UNDUE emphasis on doubts related to the difficulty in proving that one specific anthropogenic cause is greater than several others in causing population declines. The title (and scope) of the article is Cat predation on wildlife. Rates of cat predation on wildlife as found in reliable sources is within scope, regardless of whether it impacts populations at all, and even if no specific claims are made about whether wildlife populations are impacted by cats. If VV or others want to make a positive assertion in Wikivoice to the effect that cats have no impact on wildlife population numbers despite what seem like alarming rates of predation then the burden is on them to find sources for that, not on me. Also, if we're talking about whether or not cats influence wildlife populations on continents, then it would be better to not use sources from 17 years ago to make claims about the state of the science in 2024, since those same sources acknowledged that in 2007 much of the literature on this subject was still new then Geogene (talk) 20:09, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm confused. You wrote, I don't understand the emphasis on wildlife populations then note that The title (and scope) of the article is Cat predation on wildlife. Did you mean to write "...emphasis on continental wildlife populations"? I don't think the article specifically states it impacts wildlife on continents. It does state that it impacts wildlife. As an invasive species and predator, cats do considerable ecological damage. Note the lack of any qualifier. That seems to me to claim that cats have these impacts in general, not specifically and only on islands. Am I misunderstanding?

As for the rest, I'm generally in agreement; if we want to assert no impact, we'll need sourcing to say so. I do think one point has been missed, however; cat predation rates alone don't demonstrate a population-level impact. Cats are unlikely to hurt urban rat populations even though they take vast numbers of rats as prey. As discussed above, even a small rate of predation in an ecologically sensitive area can have a large impact on the population. And the article does assert, in the lead, a population-level effect. (Which is sourced, but explains why we're discussing populations here.) Does that make sense?

That said, the numbers are still useful data, and I think they belong in the article. I also think they're not being disputed by anyone here. EducatedRedneck (talk) 20:41, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Thank you both for the helpful discussion above. Firstly, I should say that cats are a growing environmental concern because they are driving down some native bird populations — on islands, to be sure, but also in ecologically sensitive continental areas appears to be a wholly uncontroversial statement as it is adequately qualified and evidenced through studies. Barcott is not really a scientific source, but an essay, and its original contribution consists of interviews with activists, but he makes the perceptive observation about the parallel between islands and fragmented mainland habitats. There are some scientific studies about the impact of cats on the edges of restricted wildlife conservation areas (Kays and DeWan 2004, Seymour et al. 2020).

Incidentally, Kays and DeWan 2004 write in their conclusion: The ecological impact of a cat population is a difficult metric to quantify, yet probably the most important when evaluating the conservation risks associated with their management. ... Unfortunately, biologists have rarely sampled both cat and prey populations in such a way that direct effects on prey populations can be shown (e.g. house cats reduce scrub breeding birds: Crooks & Soule, 1999; cat colonies reduce grassland birds: Hawkins, 1998). Such studies must be a priority for future research, in conjunction with population estimates and hunting and ranging data from specific types of cats, if conservation biologists are to accurately advise land managers and public advocacy groups.

The article as it is now tends to highlight the contexts in which the potential impact of cats on biodiversity is high (islands, bird hunting) - which appears to derive from the existence of detailed studies for these contexts, and from the general concern about "what seem like alarming rates of [cat] predation" (my emphasis) that dominates the current consensus between Geogene and SMcCandlish. It would be important to distill all important concrete findings from literature, together with their caveats which I agree must not be overstated, just honestly acknowledged as in the quotations above. I suppose it is in the interest of wildlife conservation to be as specific as one can about the impact of cats, because then the efforts can be directed adequately.

I don't think the blanket statement that "cats have no impact on wildlife population numbers" would ever be in order, but neither would the opposite generalisation - that is my point all along. There is no proof for either blanket statement and likely never will be. It is known that in some contexts they do (islands, Australasian ecosystems whose fauna evolved without the presence of such predators) and that in others they are likely to do (nature reserves). A new study has appeared but is still in preprint so we won't be able to use it for now - it is based on statistical modelling of predation pressure on specific bird species for the United States and its conclusions appear to support both the cautious and the precautionary approach: It would therefore seem that the domestic cat would tend to predate less vulnerable species on a continental scale, but it should be remembered that these factors do not consider the more local vulnerability of the populations that the cat could impact. In other words, the impact appears to be dependent on locality. This seems to resonate with a point that Turner 2022 (the co-author with Fitzgerald of the 2000 chapter and a prominent critic of the alarmists) has made about the various scales of measuring biodiversity and the threats to it.

I am still reviewing the literature, but in the UK context for instance McDonald et al. 2015 write, Despite observational evidence that cats kill large numbers of native animals, we are still unable to infer the direct impact of cat predation on wildlife. Such studies would require detailed surveys of both prey and cat populations, and manipulating cat populations experimentally is logistically challenging, requiring cat exclusion zones (p. 2751). This is 9 years old but I think at least one can see from this that the scientific work is ongoing and the matter is probably far from settled. Modesty in claims would therefore appear sensible.

As a side note, same goes for claims about the efficacy of TNR, which is another can of worms - one must consider what the threshold of "efficacy" is assumed by its scientific critics and its scientific advocates.

I think it is a long way ahead but I look forward to our collaboration. VampaVampa (talk) 10:04, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

We've gotten very far into the weeds, here. I don't have time to read an essay for every response, so perhaps we should go back to basics: what change do you propose in the article? Since you've noted below you have no particular attachment to the Panaman (1981) source, what are you proposing in its stead? EducatedRedneck (talk) 19:40, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

I'll keep this response short. 1) I don't think anyone here is conflating science with policy. Some articles make recommendations. I disregard those. I'm looking for a source that says "cat predation can(not) cause harm to a population". 2) the broad mechanisms of predation they analyse still apply unless challenged If we have sources that say this, then sure. But we are not permitted to apply parts of one source to others. That's WP:SYNTH. 3) Let's be specific about our claims. Which study are you saying should be included? Panamam (1981)? EducatedRedneck (talk) 20:03, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks.

• (1) Agreed, that does not seem to be the case with the article. That cats can cause harm to populations in specific contexts is not in doubt and already stated in the article. What I would suggest is that the article should cover studies on the mainland environments (as you already proposed), and perhaps also the existing debate around the magnitude of cat threat globally, insofar as some authors have engaged in it.
• (2) All I mean here that Fitzgerald and Turner 2000 remains a valuable source for claims which have not been later shown to be wrong. They give a brief if now very dated review of previous literature.
• (3) I don't have any special attachment to Panaman 1981, but if Churcher and Lawton 1987 are often cited as a key study, then I would not completely exclude Panaman. An adequate summary of Churcher and Lawton would be good to have, along with their reception. As already said, Fitzgerald and Turner 2000 deserve to be cited - the dates of citations in most current studies frequently go back 20 years or more. An example of a very recent UK study that may be due for inclusion is Dunford et al. 2024 which does not quantify predation but offers findings about cat ranging with implications for wildlife impact. As for population-level impacts in continental Europe, Weggler and Leu 2001 is a rare three-year study from Switzerland (in German but should be easy to machine-translate if you don't know the language), not sure if this approach has been replicated elsewhere.

VampaVampa (talk) 11:31, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

For Europe, I would highlight e.g. Badenas-Perez 2023 which is a review of literature and argues against generalising about cat impact on biodiversity and against assuming without evidence that cat predation impacts populations - which is close to my position in the present dispute. The study of Millan 2010 on Majorca is also notable as it shows that there can exist a pressure to control feral cats (in this case due to a mixture of conservation concerns and hunting interests) even where evidence of their impact on endemic or endangered species is missing, and that such impact is not always present even in island contexts (Majorca has almost no native and few endemic species, mostly in coastal areas). Millan claims there are no scientific data to support that the feral cat is causing relevant losses in protected bird or in game populations in Majorcan countryside. The mesopredator release effect that he warns against has been debated in other contexts though. VampaVampa (talk) 12:20, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

1. I don't see the article taking an explicit stance. Nowhere does it seem to say in wikivoice what policy should be.
2. I disagree; if more recent literature reviews have a different conclusion, and if they're similar in all other respects (e.g., specificity) then the newer source should be preferred.
3. Dunford talks about cat ranges. We cannot infer anything about predation per WP:SYNTH. Similarly, Millan seems to discuss what feral cats on an island eat, but gives no data for impact on wildlife populations. Badenas-Perez appears to be a perspectives piece, sort of like an opinion piece in a newspaper. I would not consider that reliable. I did not examine Churcher and Lawton due to its age, nor Weggler and Leu because I don't speak German and don't trust machine translators, especially where precise wording (c.f., "predation hurts bird colonies" versus "predation hurts bird populations") is important.

EducatedRedneck (talk) 19:38, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

@Geogene: Just a note to say that if I wanted to apply your own (and SMcCandlish's) way of working, I would make a lot of fuss out of the fact that the author, Linda Winter, was affiliated at the time of writing with American Bird Conservancy, which is an advocacy group for bird conservation. But that's not how I do things - a scientific paper in a peer-reviewed journal is what it is, and I am not going to cast aspersions on the author's credibility because of their affiliations to the point of discounting whatever they say. There is a potential conflict of interest, but that's it, it does not mean that the paper is entirely invalid. I stand by the principle that we stick to the contents of scientific publications and the merit of the arguments advanced in them. VampaVampa (talk) 01:01, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

I would like to suggest some further proposals for working things out:

• It is useful to establish what the sources are actually saying and the qualifications they make.
• It is useful to note where the sources agree or disagree with each other, and how broad a selection of previous work they make.
• It is useful to take note of the essential numerical data (numbers of owned/unowned free-ranging cats and their dynamics, numbers of prey by taxa or by species if endangered, numbers of total prey population), their reported level of certainty and source (e.g. research-based, taken from NGOs...).
• The editors hold off judgment (except for obvious errors) and report findings accurately in order to bring the consensus out from the available material. Because of the dispute, it seems important not to gloss over inconvenient facts or departures from the general pattern - whether that be the evidence that cats are bringing wildlife into danger of extinction, or that they do not.

As to Geogene's concern, I think there is no burden of proof on an editor because the editor is not responsible for making arguments - the source has to say it and other sources should agree. If they disagree, then it is also possible to note disagreement without prior judgment.

A 2016 study denouncing denialism concerning invasive species impact argues that one should avoid "conflating debates about policy responses with debates about the supporting science". That seems a reasonable principle to me. For the definition of invasive species, the most readily available resource is probably the Wikipedia article on this concept.

I have found some 500 publications that may be relevant, of which likely about a half tackle cat predation directly. A further selection should be possible to make because of inevitable repetition (some countries like Australia and NZ are already well studied). I think a big old table will be useful. VampaVampa (talk) 01:50, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure the points you listed are first principles we can start from. The first one seems to just mirror, "Our job is to report what WP:RS say", which I'll grant, but the rest is going into editorial judgement. I can think of plenty of situations where numerical data distracts from, rather than enhances, presenting basic information. ("The sky is blue" is preferable to this graph.) Similarly, I would expect us to NOT compare and contrast sources if one viewpoint is indeed minority (e.g., there's no discussion of modern day flat-earthers in the Earth article.)

I'd also like to try to maintain as neutral a tone as we can. The Holodomor and genocide examples above, for instance, seems more likely to provoke an emotional reaction than an epiphany, and the "inconvenient facts" statement makes me feel like someone thinks I have a preconceived bias and am trying to cherry pick to support it. I don't think that's how it was intended, but I know that I had an emotional reaction to it which wasn't helping me build a consensus.

As for the table, that would be good, I think. Especially if the table can include a relevant quote for ease of reference; it'd make it easier to identify whether a viewpoint is common or rare in the literature.EducatedRedneck (talk) 21:49, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

@EducatedRedneck: You do not accept my second proposed point, but that point corresponds with the WP:NPOV guidelines which say that minority viewpoints represented in reliable sources must be given space in proportion to their representation in those sources. You do not know whether they are fringe, that would be an editorial judgment to make. Yet you have already suggested that they are fringe above (by referencing flat earth). Significant minority views with prominent adherents deserve representation as per guidelines.

I referred to the Holodomor-as-genocide example because it illustrates the importance of not jumping to conclusions about what is denialism. I do not understand why you have an emotional reaction to it. The dispute over the impact of cat predation and the associated policy proposals is equally fraught with emotions (as noted in key literature, e.g. Marra and Santella 2016, Wald and Peterson 2020 etc.). If you cannot overcome an emotional attitude, that seems to suggest that you feel you cannot act as a neutral mediator.

The statement about inconvenient facts was intended to mutually bind the parties to the dispute, Geogene and myself. It clearly referenced editors, and I understood you were acting as a mediator.

Geogene has responded to your proposal by immediately presenting evidence, and only mentioned in their latest comment from two hours ago (22:24, 11 June 2024) that they don't disagree with the bullet points, while continuing to adduce evidence pre-emptively. It would be respectful to wait with arguing one's case until we have first agreed on the rules of engagement here. It could seem from your enthusiastic and eagerly approving response to Geogene (23:31, 11 June 2024: "really appreciate", "thank you for being willing to ... educate ... me", "outstanding source!", "goodness I love me", "answered my own question") that you have little time for me to present evidence and wish to start resolving the dispute already. You have even expressed the intention of changing the lede at this point. You acknowledge that I have "some sources", which seems to be downplaying the fact that I have mentioned retrieving a substantial amount of literature (500+ papers) before concluding that what Geogene has presented will define what we report. That is what is called jumping the gun.

I have already said above (03:12, 3 June 2024) and also in the ANI thread that I think you and I disagree fundamentally in our attitude to the disputed matter, and that your position, however inadvertently, puts you in Geogene's camp. I think it would be reasonable to conclude from your comment above that you are for whatever reasons disposed to be more open to whatever Geogene says. That is a serious obstacle for me to work with you as a mediator, and I am afraid I will have to ask for someone else to come forward, or open an RfC without help. VampaVampa (talk) 00:32, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

@VampaVampa I'm finding it difficult to respond to you, as what I'm hearing are accusations of bias against me and a "me-versus-them" battleground mentality. If my response is somewhat testy, please forgive me.

• You wrote that WP:NPOV says say that minority viewpoints represented in reliable sources must be given space in proportion to their representation in those sources (emphasis mine). Yes. That is exactly why I cannot agree to your second point. A widely held minority viewpoint should be discussed. An almost unique one should not. This makes no comment on how widely held your thesis is, only that, as a first principle, it is not universal.
• I do not understand why you have an emotional reaction to [the genocide comparison]. If you don't understand why someone would have an emotional reaction to genocide, I'm very alarmed.
• You have even expressed the intention of changing the lede at this point. You mean, where I said I'd like to wait a bit to let this discussion reach its conclusion? Where what I was thinking was only adding the citation to the end of a sentence as-written? I'm really struggling to view this whole paragraph as anything other than "If you're not with me, you're against me". I've already told you I don't care about the topic, just applying the scientific methodology that was drilled into me for four years in grad school. If it's a difference in "objective worldview", I don't know what to tell you other than that I'm only acting in accordance with my training as a scientist. That statement feels like it's trying to cast me as having a bias, which hasn't been identified to me.
• I'm not acting as any formal mediator, just someone who likes it when people come together and reach compromises. But if you think the only way forward is opening an RFC, then by all means, go ahead. Just ensure that it's phrased neutrally and succinctly. Then we can get wider comment and be shot of this whole dispute. EducatedRedneck (talk) 11:04, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

I welcome your response and I don't have any substantial issues with it this time - I understand you may feel I am being combative, but that is not my general attitude - my reaction depends on what is being said and how it is being said, and it is due to the history of this dispute (I have always insisted against hasty pronouncements and it can seem at times from the way Geogene proceeds that time and careful examination of evidence is not working in their favour). I hope that we can keep the discussion about science and relevant literature going on above, and move to an RfC if and when it is time for that (e.g. once we have refined the disagreement between Geogene and myself, assuming it persists, which I think it will despite everything).

This makes no comment on how widely held your thesis is, only that, as a first principle, it is not universal. That is fine, and you may want to assume due to WP:ONUS that for the time being Geogene is right in asserting that the critics of whatever consensus they claim to be representing are "profringe" or "fringe", but it is the purpose of our discussion to verify that assertion through examining the literature. My claim is that either (1) there is no substantial disagreement about science but only about the accompanying rhetoric (of which the most recognised example is Marra and Santella's Cat Wars) and the policy recommendations (esp. the extreme suggestion that all outdoor cats that cannot be rehomed must be killed within a short timeframe), (2) there is a debate relating to certain interpretations of evidence and methodology used in gathering data (i.e. not the scientific facts but the conclusions and the premises), with a vocal minority of prominent critics supported by legitimate publications and a large contingent of scientists who do not engage in the debate directly but can be influenced by it or ignore it altogether by sticking to facts.

I was aware you said you'd "like to wait a bit" but that one sentence went against everything else you said. Anyway, I would want to leave this behind and focus on discussing the literature if we can.

As for the alleged genocide, you're quite right, but what I meant was that one needs to be able to discuss such topics on Wikipedia dispassionately and that to me there is a similar potential for emotional reactions around this article, when some authors have called for a wholesale eradication of outdoor cats, a position that is not explicitly supported by scientific findings, as Geogene seems to admit above. VampaVampa (talk) 08:46, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

my reaction depends on what is being said and how it is being said This goes both ways. You may wish to consider what's more likely to accomplish your goal: saying what you feel as you feel it, or carefully tempering your responses to avoid alienating other editors.

I also am confused about what you're trying to say. You write there is a debate relating to certain interpretations of evidence and methodology used in gathering data (i.e. not the scientific facts but the conclusions and the premises) Typically the conclusions are alleged to be the scientific facts. This discussion has become entirely too esoteric. Rather than trying to reinvent an epistemology course, perhaps we should stick with concrete proposed changes.

I was aware you said you'd "like to wait a bit" but that one sentence went against everything else you said. No, it did not. You inferred an intent, which was mistaken. This is why WP:AGF is a guideline. I expressed enthusiasm for high quality sourcing, speculated about a change to make after this discussion concluded, and mentioned a concern I have which I then settled. Nothing in there states an intent to make a change imminently.

when some authors have called for a wholesale eradication of outdoor cats I didn't see that in the discussion above. Now, I might have missed it, but it makes me wonder if you're fighting a strawman rather than engaging with the people actually before you. EducatedRedneck (talk) 19:26, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

@VampaVampa: and @EducatedRedneck:: Am I correct in my guess that the proposals VampaVampa put forward were meant to apply to the talk page, while EducatedRedneck's objections were to using those proposals for article content itself? Iamnotabunny (talk) 22:31, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Huh. That may be the source of the disagreement. Yes, I'm think strictly in terms of what we'll put in the article, with those principles serving only to guide the talk page discussion to that end. EducatedRedneck (talk) 19:57, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I was thinking about how we could conduct the discussion in the most productive way here on the talk page. Sorry if I misunderstood, @EducatedRedneck. VampaVampa (talk) 10:42, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Rewrite of lede, using a website as a source

I would like to point out that this edit [31] by user:Iamnotabunny is WP:PROFRINGE and closed with: However, on mainlands and areas where the native species co-evolved with similar predators, studies do not show a negative population-wide impact from cats.

References

. No idea who the "National Feline Research Council" are or why we would repeat their claims in Wikivoice, but they sound like a pro-outdoor-cat partisan NGO possibly akin to the National Canine Research Council. Geogene (talk) 15:13, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

I should point out in turn that while the statement quoted above would need a better source to be objective, there was no apparent conflict between it and the other content in the article. The only source of dissonance was your unevidenced assumptions (you stated in the description of your edit that the quoted statement "is false") about the impact of cat predation globally, a matter not currently discussed in the article.

"No idea", "sound like" - are you basing your categorical judgments on guesses? VampaVampa (talk) 16:14, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

"More than a dozen observational studies, as well as experimental research, provide unequivocal evidence that cats are capable of affecting multiple population-level processes among mainland vertebrates." [32] Geogene (talk) 17:07, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

That's better, thanks. It will be good to include a discussion of this in the article. VampaVampa (talk) 17:15, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

• Also, regarding this edit summary, [33] I'll take out that sentence until I have more sources, but the rest is still an improvement As I stated in my revert edit summary, your rewrite still makes it seem as if cats are only relevant in island environments. And, since this article is controversial, and since I've already reverted you once earlier, perhaps it would be best to discuss these large changes one item at a time instead of revert warring it back in after I opened this talk page section. Geogene (talk) 20:13, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Geogene You indicated that you did not like the source. I am still willing to argue that it is reliable, however, I took your complaint into account and adjusted accordingly. There were a lot of ways you could have moved forward, such as adding in info about the impact of cats on mainlands that you felt that was being left out. Calling my one (1) partial revert "revert warring" is hypocritical given your edit history. Iamnotabunny (talk) 21:28, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Iamnotabunny I don't think random websites with pro-fringe viewpoints are usable as reliable sources. You also deleted a lot of sourced content in these re-writes [34], [35], and you didn't mention you were doing that in your edit summaries. For example, you deleted There are methods to help mitigate the environmental impact imposed by feral cats through different forms of population management. Reducing cats' impact on the environment is limited by perceptions society has towards cats because humans have a relationship with cats as pets. and also A 2013 systematic review in Nature Communications of data from 17 studies found that feral and domestic cats are estimated to kill billions of birds in the United States every year. And added other wording to try to frame cat predation as only an issue in certain parts of the world: Cat predation on island ecosystems such as Australia and New Zealand has severe and well-documented ecological impacts. Australia is not an island ecosystem, by the way. (Add by edit: come to think of it, New Zealand is not considered an island ecosystem, either [36].) Your version of the lead is less of a summary of an article, and more of a statement that cats only harm species on islands, which is not accurate and does not summarize the article as it currently stands.

As for my edit history, if you don't like it, you are already aware of the relevant ANI thread to discuss that. I believe I mentioned that on your talk page the other

You could read WP:BRD first. Bold, Revert, Discuss. Geogene (talk) 22:04, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Geogene The purpose of the lede is to summarize the article. As such, facts should only be presented in the lede if they are an important part of the summary, and everything in the lede should also be present in the article body (except for stubs, where the lede is often the whole thing). Given that the article is currently in flux, we should wait until things settle down, then make sure the lede accurately summarizes the facts presented.

Yes, we should discuss what counts as an island ecosystem and what does not, as well as which areas are more vulnerable to cat predation and which are less. See my comment on this at Talk:Cat_predation_on_wildlife#Arbitrary_Break. now repeated below for convenience.

What part of WP:RS do you propose disqualifies the National Feline Research Council? Nevermind, I see you already answered this.

The rest, I am having trouble replying to as, even if perhaps it was not meant as one, when I read it it feels like one personal attack after another. It was not my intention to say that cats have literally 0 effect outside of islands. It would be nice if we could move forward with civility, assuming good faith and focusing the discussion on facts, sources, and article content. Iamnotabunny (talk) 17:42, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

I am not being uncivil to you, instead of making unfounded allegations here, get a consensus at the open AN/I thread. Geogene (talk) 18:27, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

I am glad to hear that it wasn't intentional. Sometimes it is hard for me to figure out the tone of text. I think I have judged you badly, and would like to apologize for that. Iamnotabunny (talk) 21:22, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Islands and Mainlands

I think we have consensus that whatever effect cats have on populations living on large continents, the effect they have on ecologically naive island species is much greater. Given that, we need to figure out which areas are which and how to describe them. In most cases this can be described as "islands" versus "mainlands". However, while most continents and large islands have ecosystems typical of mainlands, Australia and New Zealand are ecologically naive despite their large sizes because they have not had many species exchanges with the other continents since the breakup of Gondwana. This study Doherty et al 2016 is on invasive mammalian predators in general, though does include cats, and says that "If Australia is reclassified as an island, insular endemic mammals experience more severe predator impacts than continental species."

So my questions for the rest of you:

1. Do we agree that the division we should discuss in the article is "small islands + Australia and New Zealand" versus everywhere else?

2. What's a good way to word the division that you support, regardless of whether it's that one or a different one?

Iamnotabunny (talk) 18:11, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Geogene, thank you for linking Loss & Marra 2017. I was unable to find the full text of that when I came across it before. It appears to me that Loss & Marra's choice to classify Australia and New Zealand as mainlands was driven by their desire to prove that cat predation has population-level effects on mainlands. The strongest evidence they cite for that involves the silvereye in New Zealand and the long-haired rat in Australia ("the most compelling evidence to date"). This supports what I said above. Iamnotabunny (talk) 00:06, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

The source says what it says--that Australia and New Zealand count as mainlands. Why do you want to go against that? Geogene (talk) 00:17, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

If you read closely, you will notice that's not what I said. Iamnotabunny (talk) 00:21, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps we can take some language from Doherty et al 2016: "Species most at risk from [invasive] predators have high evolutionary distinctiveness and inhabit insular environments." Iamnotabunny (talk) 00:52, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

If the intention of that would be to use a primary source from 2016 to water down the impact of cats on mainland fauna from more recent secondary sources, then no. Geogene (talk) 01:02, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Cat Impact on Wildlife Populations

The three above threads all touch on this topic, but either lack clarity or address a different issue. All seem to agree that the mainstream view is that cats negatively impact wildlife populations. There has been debate on whether the viewpoint of "it is uncertain to what degree cats negatively impact wildlife populations" is WP:FRINGE or simply a WP:DUE minority view.

I propose the following criteria as sufficient for one or two sourced sentences stating this opposing view. The view is suitable for inclusion if the following can be found:

• An arbitrary number (say, 3) sources
• That are literature reviews
• That are published in reputable journals
• That are published in the last 20 years
• That identify, as a conclusion, that debate or dissent exists regarding the impact of cats on wildlife populations

I believe if three such high quality sources could be identified, it would demonstrate that there's enough scientific dissent that the viewpoint is not fringe. If many such sources are found, we can reevaluate the level of weight that is due. I hope this proposal will be seen favorably by all. Those who view the "uncertain impact" viewpoint as fringe may rest that such literature reviews could not be found for a fringe theory. Those who believe the "uncertain impact" viewpoint is simply a minority one can likewise be reassured that all they have to do is obtain the evidence they believe exists.

If any of the details above are unacceptable, alternative parameters are welcome. I hope this can bring us out of this uncomfortable quagmire. EducatedRedneck (talk) 23:54, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Well, three literature reviews is admittedly arbitrary. But otherwise the problem of the scientific consensus over the last 20 years is soundly posed and can be answered in a much more direct way.

As already quoted above, Loss and Marra 2017 acknowledge explicitly that at their time of writing - 7 years ago, i.e. two thirds of the way into the period under discussion - debate and uncertainty prevailed regarding population-level impacts of cat predation on wildlife: The cat management debate often revolves around the degree to which cats cause wildlife mortality and whether that mortality reduces wildlife population sizes. Overwhelming evidence for such impacts on islands has led to many successful cat eradications, with subsequent recovery of persisting species (Nogales et al. 2004). On mainlands (continents and large islands, such as those constituting New Zealand and the UK), cat impacts on vertebrate populations remain the subject of heated debate (p. 503). I see no reason not to take their word for it.

In that paper, Loss and Marra proposed a paradigm shift, which consisted of shifting the criteria of the debate (We ... argue that policy discussions should shift from requiring proof of impact to a precautionary approach, p. 503; We argue that discussion about cat population management should shift toward a weight of evidence approach used hand-in-hand with the precautionary principle, p. 507).

Whether their efforts in this respect were successful is a matter for further investigation (the paper has 171 citations, hardly a record-breaker in the field), but whatever one claims about the period after 2017, the authors of the proposed paradigm shift provide incontrovertible dated evidence that at least until 2017, in the language of Geogene and SMcCandlish, "fringe" views were the mainstream - there we have it from the horse's mouth.

Notably, the paradigm shift proposed by Loss and Marra seems not to be a scientific one. It is applied at once to policy discussions and the "cat management debate" (cf. We perceive [the argument that evidence of impact is lacking] as a major factor limiting public and political will toward initiating steps to reduce cat populations and revisiting policies like TNR, p. 503; The management debate would be greatly reshaped by considering the weight of evidence that cats do affect mainland vertebrate populations and assuming that these impacts are likely unless evidence is provided that conclusively suggests otherwise, p. 507), so, back to my point from Russell and Blackburn 2016 about not conflating science with policy, it is not clear whether there had been any major disagreements about results of scientific study and whether any shift in scientific findings had occurred.

My suggestion to resolve the present dispute would be to report the proposed paradigm shift accurately in the article for what it consisted of, then assess its reception. VampaVampa (talk) 15:01, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

We are not discussing policy. We are discussing what would satisfy the proposition that a viewpoint other than "cats negatively impact wildlife populations" is not WP:FRINGE. You said above that we must not conflate policy with science. Let us ensure we take your advice here as well. The discussion to date has been on science, not policy. If you would like to propose changing the article to reflect a shift in policy, that should be under a different section, as it is an entirely different proposition with different requirements.

This is a good example of why I've proposed the above criteria. We must be clear on what we propose, and what requirements we impose for inclusion. It is not our place to pick only certain passages from some sources and infer the state of the literature. This would be WP:SYNTH. The Loss and Marra source, in its abstract, states, In addition to predation, cats... suppress vertebrate population sizes below their respective carrying capacities, and alter demographic processes such as source–sink dynamics. I do not believe this qualifies as a source that goes against the mainstream view. EducatedRedneck (talk) 15:39, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

We are still on a talk page, making arguments to reach an understanding, so SYNTH does not apply, but I understand you have simply not been persuaded.

There would be nothing of synthesis, however, in adducing the above passage from Loss and Marra 2017 in the article as evidence for the existence of debate concerning the impact of cat predation on wildlife populations on mainlands in 2017. That's what the passage says. The only thing that is not immediately clear from it is - as you seem to be saying - whether that reported debate concerned policy or science. It can be confusing, because Loss and Marra mostly refer throughout the article to a "cat management debate". But in this passage it is patently not the case.

I am very glad to have your backing for separating science from policy. The difficulty in distinguishing the scientific claims in that article lies in the fact that they are intermingled with claims about policy, often within the same sentence. To come back to the first sentence above: The cat management debate often revolves around the degree to which cats cause wildlife mortality and whether that mortality reduces wildlife population sizes. The initial clause relates to policy, but both subordinate clauses relate to science. The next sentences continue to discuss science by referring to "such impacts" and the evidence for them - that can only refer to science, not policy. Loss and Marra say it is the impacts on mainlands that are debated, not what to do about them. So the debate that is mentioned is scientific.

The sentence you quoted from the abstract does not contradict the claim about the scientific debate being mainstream as of 2017. It is preceded by this sentence: More than a dozen observational studies, as well as experimental research, provide unequivocal evidence that cats are capable of affecting multiple population-level processes among mainland vertebrates. This clarifies the basis on which the next claim is made (cats ... suppress...) and that it actually refers to a potential ("are capable of") demonstrated in certain circumstances and not to a claim that the phenomena always apply. Loss and Marra are therefore being much more moderate in their scientific claims than your quotation out of context suggests. They never claim to have closed the scientific debate by scientific means, but only by proposing to lower the standard of evidence required to resolve the policy debate (no longer "requiring proof of impact" because of difficulties inherent in measuring those impacts, which they explain in Panel 1). That is my reading of the article but I am happy to be persuaded otherwise. VampaVampa (talk) 17:26, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

I am quite aware that SYNTH does not apply to talk pages. However, if you'll consult the original post, this section is about the criterion for a change of the article, a change which must be sourced and to which SYNTH applies. I see no point in debating sources we won't even use for the article. I'm flummoxed about what you're trying to do here. If you're not trying to find a source we can use to effect a change in the article, what are you trying to do? You don't seem like the type to talk just for talking's sake, so I'd seriously doubt that you're running afoul of WP:NOTAFORUM, but your motives remain a mystery to me.

In any case, this section is specifically about if and how to change the article. That means that article-level sourcing is required. If you want to talk about something else, I suggest you start a new section and clearly explain what it is you're trying to discuss, because despite exchanging thousands of bytes with you, I evidently am still unclear on what your objective is. EducatedRedneck (talk) 19:05, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

This: There has been debate on whether the viewpoint of "it is uncertain to what degree cats negatively impact wildlife populations" is WP:FRINGE or simply a WP:DUE minority view is a talk page matter, extrinsic to article content and introduced by the partisan claims of Geogene and SMcCandlish above. If this can be considered out of the way, I too would happily move on to discussing the article. VampaVampa (talk) 19:30, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

That is a single sentence for context. The operative part is I propose the following criteria as sufficient for one or two sourced sentences stating this opposing view. I trust that the purpose of this section has been clarified for you, and you will therefore stay on topic if you participate in this section. EducatedRedneck (talk) 19:53, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

OK, thank you for the clarification. I should clarify in turn that I am engaging with this exercise to establish the due proportions of views on the impact of cat predation on the status of populations (although I believe it would be far more productive to discuss individual claims, not broad views, because this dualism is where the battleground mentality you complained about comes from). I will not discuss the allegation (by GG and SMC) that any claims in my edit or related to the dispute are "fringe", because that is a personal attack in the same way that my charge of "vandalism" was at ANI. It should be enough to have a look at Category:Fringe theories or at the criteria on WP:FRINGE to see why that is. If I espoused "fringe" views, we would not be talking. I cannot help the fact that some published authors have used this as a rhetorical device to silence their critics, and it is certainly not sufficient that a view is not represented in what may be the single relevant literature review for it to become pseudoscience.

As far as I can tell, the feasibility of the exercise of finding 3 literature reviews depends on the proposed definition of a literature review, because there appear to be almost no free-standing review articles that cover impacts on population status and differentiate them clearly from other impacts. Two questions here, please:

• WP:RS/AC says that a review article that is used to clarify academic consensus is expected to directly state that all or most scientists or scholars hold that view. Otherwise, individual opinions should be identified as those of particular, named sources ... Stated simply, any statement in Wikipedia that academic consensus exists on a topic must be sourced rather than being based on the opinion or assessment of editors. In other words, a literature review for these purposes needs to report and attribute arguments (views) to authors, as opposed to citing publications to support its own interpretations of evidence. (It should probably also not ignore opposition arguments at the risk of being biased.) Would that be part of your understanding?
• Due to the paucity of global-scope review articles on the subject, can literature reviews that are subsections of an article and fulfil the condition above be used?

The proposal to potentially include "one or two sourced sentences" is not disagreeable in principle, but feels a bit rigid. I would say the relevance of any sentence expressing an opposing view will depend on what claims are made in the article, but that is a matter to discuss later. VampaVampa (talk) 00:02, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

To your first bullet: I think you're misunderstanding what it's saying. The policy is saying that the academic consensus may be phrased as a statement of fact, in wikivoice, and that identifying minority viewpoints must be done by identifying those who hold them, not as statements of fact or with weasel words such as "some scholars". It does not prescribe how review articles are conducted.

To the second bullet point, to make sure I understand, you're asking if the literature review sections of a research article can substitute for a review article. My knee-jerk reaction is "no". An author can, through unconscious bias or deliberate action, cherry pick sources to support their view. This is not sufficient to demonstrate significant dissent from the mainstream view.

I am hearing that 3 review articles may be too high a burden. Iamnotabunny above posted at least one review article which came to a conclusion on cat impact on wildlife populations, so at least one review article exists. I propose that we change the metric to "10% of review articles that voice a conclusion on cat impact on wildlife populations". So now you're only looking for one review article. I hope Geogene would agree that if 10% of review articles identify a particular viewpoint, it is minority but not fringe.

As for the sentence(s) to include, I agree that we can workshop what to put in once we've demonstrated the view is a matter of WP:DUE weight. EducatedRedneck (talk) 12:20, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

By the review Iamnotabunny posted above, do you mean Doherty et al. 2016? It is labelled as a "research article" and collates data, and while useful (Fig. 4 shows that very few species are threatened by all introduced predators in Europe, Africa and North America, and few in South America and Asia) it does not engage with the views of any authors. That is not a literature review, but a meta-analysis. Similarly, Loss et al. 2022 quantify study findings according to their own criteria rather than engaging with the claims in the literature (re: population impact, what negative effects on at least one response variable actually mean remains unknown because the response variables are not listed).

Please could you be clear what you propose to understand by review articles and indicate a good example, so that I know what you are asking me to look for.

A statement that all or most scientists or scholars hold a certain view requires reliable sourcing that directly says that all or most scientists or scholars hold that view does not prescribe how review articles are conducted but it does say what claims the reliable sourcing must contain for Wikipedia to establish academic consensus. I am unable to read this otherwise.

While review articles should be less likely to cherry pick, conducting a literature review in a biased way would also seriously affect the validity of the research article. I linked above to a Wikipedia article that warns against the potential bias in review articles. But if enough review articles can be found under clear criteria, it should be fine.

The bogeyman of fringe theory appears to persist. Per WP:DUE (based off of Wikipedia founder's own proposal), If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents, so I am not sure why we need to reinvent Wikipedia guidelines here. Off the top of my head, there are at least three prominent adherents of the view that cats do not constitute a primary threat to global wildlife survival who are recognised for their work in biological science: Philip Baker of the University of Reading (co-author e.g. of this 2005 paper with 330 citations), Roger Tabor, Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, and Dennis Turner of the University of Zurich (co-editor of Domestic Cat, 529 citations to the 2nd edition of 2000). I am linking to their recent expressions of views on the matter (2022 for Baker and Turner, 2013 for Tabor). This is per prominence, while the other outspoken critic of Loss, Marra et al. is Francisco Badenes Perez, with impeccable academic credentials and academic tenure at Spanish National Research Council held for 15 years. VampaVampa (talk) 20:23, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps I was mistaken about who posted it, but it was the Loss et al. article. I specified review articles for precisely the reason you stated; they are less likely to be biased. They also, per WP:RS/AC represent a broader sampling of scholarship.

Your rejection of my proposed criteria is noted. I am disinclined to debate what constitutes fringe with no intent to make a change to the article. I am unmoved by WP:AAJ. I am wearied by repeated WP:WALLOFTEXT. I would not expect a response from me to a post of yours greater than 2 kb in size. EducatedRedneck (talk) 21:35, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Oops, I was going to take a short break and think about this very carefully before replying, but I see things somewhat exploded while I was gone. So I'll drop in a couple notes on where my thoughts have been going:

• The word "fringe" brings to mind ideas such as flat Earth which have been through hundreds of years of debate and soundly rejected, or vaccine-autism link, which lacks a coherent causal explanation and also lacks supporting empirical data. In contrast, the idea that a predator can in some circumstances kill prey without posing a significant risk of the prey population going extinct seems ... obvious? In any case, this is clearly very different from the most central concept of a "fringe theory".
• The question that affects how the article should be written is "Is this a significant viewpoint published by reliable sources such that it should be included in proportion, or a view only held by a tiny minority that is safe to leave out?" For example, the view of animal personhood is significant enough to warrant a brief mention in the Animal rights article, while modern day belief in flat Earth does not warrant a mention on Earth.
• The suggestion to read literature reviews was a good idea, and one I am still working on. So far my impression is that conservation biologists, particularly Peter Marra and to a lesser extent Scott Loss, express much stronger claims based on much less data than other fields of science I am more used to, such as animal genetics.
• Wikipedia policy is carefully designed to make it easy for articles to say true things and hard for articles to say false things, without requiring that editors come to an agreement on which is which. Of course, such an agreement is helpful if it can be reached.

I'm going to try to stay out of this discussion until I finish reading more of the literature. In the meantime, please don't get mad at each other - everyone here has good intentions, and everyone here wants the article to be the best it can be. Iamnotabunny (talk) 17:40, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Principles of Ecology

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 29 August 2024 and 12 December 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): 04AAlexander, Lunarachel2, Pabuappa13 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Daisybell1224!, Artemis127, Shivani koirala, ItchySquirl.

— Assignment last updated by Artemis127 (talk) 17:46, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Peer review

Hi there! just wanted to give ya a heads-up that I did a review! It's looking good, keep it up. ItchySquirl (talk) 03:21, 30 October 2024 (UTC)