Once again I am blogging my honest opinions on ragwort and people spreading hysteria. Today is Christmas day, which I am spending with my family but I actually wrote almost all of this some days ago. I've been a bit under the weather for a few days. Nothing serious, as we all feel the need to say these days, but I was a bit feverish for a while after my booster vaccination. This is worth getting despite that and I urge you all to get vaccinated.
Just in case you haven't encountered me before I work with conservation organisations debunking the nonsense over ragwort, not just because the plant is one of our most ecologically important in its own right but the unwarrented fuss and hysteria has deleterious effects on all grassland conservtion. A while ago before this dreaded plague came to dominate the lives of everyone I was at a conservation event and a very senior and highly respected conservationist introduced me to someone as "Britain;s leading expert on the ragwort issue."
Some months ago there were two episodes of BBC Farming Today that covered ragwort. The first featured a load of nonsense from an equine charity. It was the usual nonsense. Unsurprisingly there were complaints about it. This led to the first piece of bias. In the past they have used Matt Shardlow CEO of Buglife who will not hesitate to debunk the nonsense. Instead, they used an academic in response to the propagandist who , it seems was unaware of the nature of the propaganda.
Over the years there have been a lot of problems with the media generally repeating nonsense. The BBC is a problem, and they will at all costs it seems avoid ever conceding, despite the evidence, that they got things wrong.
One of the issues is a lack of scientific literacy and critical thinking. The British Horse Society will publish one of their rigged surveys drawing a silly conclusion and the BBC will repeat it. Getting them to admit they got it wrong is hard. On this occasion I think anyone reasonable will think they have been caught out at lying.
It involves a clueless person, a member of the public who stubbornly refused to admit she was wrong despite being told so with good evidence.
One of the basic problems here is that she lacks what the scientists who study it call metacognition, this is a scientists word and very typically half Greek and half Latin but it is really quite easy to understand. It means thinking about thinking or knowing about knowing. She lacks the ability to know how to know if something is correct.
She sent this tweet to the BBC.
Fuming listening to all the talk about ragwort being important for bio diversity. It’s lethal to mammals causing a slow death through liver failure and isn’t even a native plant. It was brought to this country by the Victorians. I take great pleasure killing it.
This is just appalling bigotry. It isn't even correct! As anyone who knows their botany knows ragwort is native to the UK.
How would you know this to be true? Well, there are rules of thinking that people with good metacognitive skills can use. You can look it up in a book or ask an expert. These are effectively the same thing, if the book is written by an expert. How do we know that the person is an expert?. Well we have to be a little careful here because even if the person is a professor, as I've shown, a professor can say the craziest things if they go outside their field, but how about a professor of plant taxonomy who is an expert botanist? Surely that is exactly the person to ask. One such person is a Professor Clive Stace, a man in his eighties who used to be Professor of Plant Taxonomy at Leicester University. You don't need to ask him personally because he has written a book. It is called New Flora of the British Isles, but it is known to botanists as "Stace". It is the botanists' bible. As its own blurb correctly says,
"Since its first publication in 1991, New Flora of the British Isles has
become established as the standard work on the identification of the
wild vascular plants of the British Isles."
Stace of course says that ragwort is native.
The really shocking thing is that the BBC broadcast this extreme and inaccurate tweet on Farming Today!
There is a video featuring the character Jonathan Pie which is relevant here. Pie is a fictional political correspondent created and portrayed by English actor and comedian Tom Walker. He appears in a series of comedic online videos in which he rants angrily about politics. His rants are staged to appear as if they are the reporter speaking off camera before or after he speaks for a live broadcast. In one of his videos Pie describes Twitter as a god send, journalism for toddlers. Instead of doing a vox pop in the street you put something on twitter and you can chose exactly what you want. It sounds awfully like this is what they did.
What is worse is we know for certain that the BBC had been told it was wrong before they broadcast it!
Saying that ragwort isn't native is a common myth, the BBC have said it before and I am ready to answer people with the relevant piece of Stace which is what I did. I replied to Carolyn Hutchins telling her and the BBC that she was wrong.
The foolish arrogance of Carolyn Hutchins is mid blowing. She is given an answer and told it is from the standard text, but it can't be right because, it seems, she is special and can't be wrong. This is confirmed by the abuse she poured out a lot of which I'm not going to repeat. It is really frustrating that she should then be broadcast.
Of course I complained to the BBC that they should correct this. They have been very reluctant to even acknowledge they were wrong.
The real issue here is not so much the erroneous view originating on twitter, but that it was given an airing on the radio. This is an entirely different platform which, having editorial guidance, seeks to have greater trust and credibility. A statement of fact, known to be wrong, was given an airing on national radio.
The bottom line here is there is incontrovertible proof that the programme broadcast a harmful untruth about one of our most ecologically valuable wildflowers and that they knew this to be incorrect. I know this because I told them so before the broadcast was aired, as we can all see.
Eventually, after a bit of persistent complaining I got a rather poor response from the BBC, They put a comment on a website saying "the plant is considered native". In fact there is no question at all that the plant is native.
There is just one thing to add. In one of her tweets Carolyn Hutchins cites as an expert that she listens to . This is, and regular readers will have no surprise, Professor Derek Knottenbelt.
For anyone new to this blog, I have a section of my main website which debunks his claims. They range from the plain wrong or silly, to the abolutely bonkers. He claims the plant is a problem in South Africa for example, where the plant has never been recorded. For those who have not done so please see this page as an example.
Professor Derek Knottenbelt Country Illustrated magazine (ragwortfacts.com) I take issue with
SEVENTEEN of his claims, providing evidence and proper scientific references.
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