[Pollinator] Quotes and misquotes

[Matthew Shepherd (Xerces Society)]

The editor's letter in the recent Let's Live magazine has some pithy and memorable quotes:

“[Harvard naturalist] Edward O. Wilson has stated that without pollinators, humans would only live a few months,” says Stephen Buchmann, author of The Bee Tree (Cinco Puntos Press, 2007) and Letters From the Hive (Bantam, 2005). “Albert Einstein gave us four years without pollinators.”

The trouble is neither of those are actually correct. :)

Steve knows I'm posting this; I've already discussed it with him. In fact, he encouraged me to write this email. The editor apparently took written materials from Steve and cobbled together some quotes. Steve didn't see it before it was published.

My concern is that we as pollinator advocates should be careful to avoid repeating these things. They are short and very quotable, and leave an impression in people's minds. We're all searching for such things, something that will make it easy to get our message across. But, it doesn't take long before a misquote becomes a "truth" simply by it being used again and again, particularly if it appears in print -- and especially if it can be attributed to a respected and well-known person such as Steve.

For the record, what E. O. Wilson wrote was "So important are insects and other land dwelling arthropods, that if all were to disappear, humanity probably could not last more than a few months." (The Diversity of Life, p. 133). This is quite different from only pollinators disappearing.

The Einstein quote has been debunked by various people, including some on the beekeepers listserv who consulted the Einstein archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and on the urban legends web site, Snopes (http://www.snopes.com/quotes/einstein/bees.asp).

If you're unsure about the power and speed with which bad information can spread, just think of the cell phone stories associated with CCD. That began as one article in a British newspaper that picked up a conference presentation in Germany. Within a week or so, it had spread across the world and it seemed everyone was talking about cell phones and honey bees. Friends and neighbors of mine who hadn't mentioned CCD to me before began asking me about whether they should be using their cell phones! The trouble was the original research didn't look at cell phones -- it used the base units of household cordless phones.

Matthew
______________________________________________________
The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation
The Xerces Society is an international nonprofit organization that 
protects the diversity of life through invertebrate conservation. To 
join the Society, make a contribution, or read about our work, 
please visit www.xerces.org.

Matthew Shepherd
Director, Pollinator Conservation Program
4828 SE Hawthorne Boulevard, Portland, OR 97215, USA
Tel: 503-232 6639 Cell: 503-807 1577 Fax: 503-233 6794
Email: mdshepherd at xerces.org 
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