Book.."Night Parrot" Review by Mick Brasher

 

A Review of the book,

“NIGHT PARROT”

By Mick Brasher.

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I must say at the outset how much I enjoyed reading and learning about the bird and its history through the 19^th and 20^th centuries. The research Olsen has put together with numerous illustrations was both interesting and informative.  I expect I will re-read those chapters more than once in the future.

Soon enough though it became apparent she was reverting to the pattern of her all writings whenever Young’s name comes up.  Ever since her book on the Paradise Parrot, she seems to have developed an obsessive antipathy towards him, despite the fact that they have never met.

For what Young achieved, he should have been the hero of her book.  He had done what no others had been able to do, and made a discovery lauded by the international birding community. Any author worth her or his salt would have interviewed him at length to bring out the background of where he searched, what techniques he used and how his efforts finally succeeded. This last section could have been drawn out to retell the significant points of progress in the search, and the eventual excitement of its climax. However she could not even bring herself to talk to him. All he received were two e-mails. As of interest, I noticed in her acknowledgements on page viii that “Jaselyn O’Sullivan acted as an intermediary with John Young”, which suggests that Olsen could not even bring herself to prepare and send those emails!

In early parts of the book, she spent a lot of effort documenting in some detail the expeditions mounted in failed attempts to re-locate/discover the bird. Then from page 250 onwards, there is plenty of detail about Steve Murphy, whom she venerates. He   had apparently been searching for the bird too for many years but with only a Cockatiel’s tail feather to show for it. Despite being prepared to put in endless time with him, she was unable to seek any real input or details from Young.

There was another avenue which she could have pursued in respect to his field work and the eventual discovery of the bird. She recorded that he was accompanied over the final years by John Stewart. Stewart is a retired school teacher who lives in north Queensland, and would have been almost as valuable source as Young. She did not bother to contact him to seek clarification on issues she had with Young’s account, but preferred to draw unsupported conclusions in her quest to denigrate him.

So from the time of Young’s discovery of the bird, the book is littered with endless attempts to denigrate him. For example

P254 “Young was known for having made claims in the past that included finding a Red Goshawk nest well out of the species’ usual geographic range…. and Paradise parrots with eggs in 1970’s”

He had never spoken to her, so she is presenting hearsay evidence as fact. It appears she refers back to an article in the Australian newspaper. It’s in the paper, so it must be true? Very scientific. Her associated claims regarding unbelievable owl survey numbers have recently been absolutely shredded in Lloyd Nielsen’s paper of 13 July

P 257 “ Those who viewed the images at Young’s invitation-only screening at the Queensland Museum had no doubt, nor did others who saw the photographs when they were eventually published. Up close, in good light, the parrots were unmistakable…..

However few ornithologists believed in the details of Young’s story. There was something amiss.

What was amiss had nothing to do with whether Young had confirmed his discovery. She went on to nit-pick on how long he said he had been searching for the bird.  How petty. Note to her use of the term “few ornithologists”. What put ornithologists in particular in a position to dispute the extent of his field work I do not know.

“It was highly unlikely that a wild uncontained bird would stay around long enough to be filmed so precisely and from such an angle in torchlight”

This is a lead-up to her later claims that the bird had been trapped by Young. Where she got her scientific information on the likely behavior of a Night Parrot being dazzled by torchlight for the first time in its life, she has not referenced

P 258 Unbelievably, close inspection of the published Night Parrot photograph revealed that it too had been digitally altered

 Back on P 252, she records that the self-appointed National Night Parrot network decided that any claimed sighting of the bird would stand or fall on” : a photograph that has no digital tampering of any sort; something palpable and unequivocal like a truly distinctive feather….”  . I don’t recall this being widely published at the time, maybe because they believed that as they were the experts, only a person under their auspices would have the scientific knowledge to locate one. Young didn’t produce a photo for their benefit. He was seeking recognition from the nation’s repository of science in the Museums, rather than their Night Parrot network or Birdlife Australia, of which he was not a member.  It’s a pity really that the Network didn’t consider the possibility that a non-scientist could produce unchallengeable video evidence of a bird they had been incapable of even sighting.

P 258 “Murphy also noticed that at least some of Young’s photos were digitally labeled as having been taken at five in the afternoon, which indicated that Young had held the bird since the previous night”

I must be missing something here. The only Young photos that I have seen were taken at night, as a flash has clearly been used to pick up the subject. But Olsen prefers to be guided by the digital label, which shows   5 in the afternoon. That must have been a particularly early sunset in western Queensland. Anyway, from that she deduces that he must have somehow trapped the bird and held it since the previous night. This is important to her, as Young had stated elsewhere that he had never handled one of the parrots, so she was again trying to discredit him. She wrote elsewhere that she could tell just by looking at one of his photos that the bird had been handled (maybe another case of Blind Freddy?). Of course there is a much simpler explanation –Young did not maintain the date and time within his camera. If she was really interested for an explanation, she could simply have asked Murphy to query Young about it. But that might only allow facts to get in the way of another sniping attack.

P 265“Murphy …… recorded that he and Young needed to work together collegially, with a sense of trust”

On their first night out together “Murphy secretly copied the parrot’s recorded call onto a USB stick recorder”

So much for collegiality and trust. This seems to me to be prima facie evidence of theft of intellectual property.

This is not an exhaustive list of Olsen’s statements and inferences that litter the final chapter of her book. The tenor of her antipathy towards Young is revealed in innumerable asides and slights which attempt to diminish him in the eyes of the reader. She is clearly incapable of producing any degree of balance on matters which involve him. Any aspect of her research or investigation which has raised issues of the type she has criticized and then built upon should, as a matter of natural justice, have been referred to Young to give him the opportunity to respond.  Police officers conducting an investigation have to examine and weigh up all the evidence, not just facts that support one conclusion.   There are at least two sides to every story, and balance is not possible until both are heard. Ironically, Olsen has said as much…

P 254 “..it is well known that humans are highly suggestible : we can convince ourselves  …  that we have seen something when we have not.”

It is a great pity that she lost awareness of her own point while researching her book. But this she clearly did, and continues to do in later papers. This raises the question of the extent to which the CSIRO oversaw the integrity of what they published. If as it appears that oversight was negligible or non-existent, to what extent has it damaged its own standards of scientific integrity by lending its name to the publication of “Night Parrot”.

Finally, the obsession that Olsen has with attacking Young, a man she has never even spoken to, raises concerns of its own. She seems driven to seek out or create opportunities to denigrate him in public wherever possible.  She does not limit herself to matters of fact, and the discipline of her scientific background, so evident in the early chapters of her book, is overcome by her long-standing bias against him. Because this has been going on for so long now, it may be time for her to seek help to gain control of her obsessive behavior and direct her future publications to more worthwhile and productive pursuits to the benefit her ornithological community.

But what would I know --  I don’t have a scientific bone in my body – Blind Freddy can see that

Mick Brasher.