Read and react, I know you will hate this article on free range vs

[Windy Ridge]

It's the same sort of BS that was said about the lives of slaves vs the lives of free people: Slaves (they argued) were well taken care of and had good lives in comparison to free laborers in the north. Bah.

We should confine a group of those "researchers" to cages in which they can hardly stand or turn around... and we can comfort them by saying it would be a lot less stressful to them to be free. Yup. That's very convincing.

 

[patandchickens]

I don't see why some folks are getting all exercised about the study itself. We don't even know hardly anything about it, as the study does not seem to have been published yet; however, from what info is given, it seems extremely unlikely to ACTUALLY mean what many people here and in the media are claiming it does, anyhow!

A one hormone (in eggs, at that!) measure is not a very satisfactory measure of anything's overall well-adjustedness. But MORE IMPORTANTLY, if you look at what the p.r. does and doesn't say, it seems that the study only looked at *industrial* methods of chicken husbandry. Large scale industrial so-called free-ranging has as much to do with what people on this forum do as a marshmallow Easter 'peep' has to do with an actual live chick :> For heavens' sakes, without seeing the actual research paper we don't even know how comprehensively the work should apply to the range of commercial 'free-range' practices that exist out there!

The problem here is a) the public announcement of a conclusion w/o accompanying release of study information, which is regrettably not uncommon these days but which should be campaigned against; and b) some almost certainly unwarranted conclusions that are being touted as fact.

I am sorry to sound cranky, but having been a biologist for a number of years before moving up here and getting married and having belated kids (and having been, back when I had a career, just as cranky about this sort of thing with my students

), I just have to say this:

---Don't take things you hear at face value, especially if they seem surprising.

---Take a minute to look at as much of the original source as you can find. Google (etc) is your friend

See what is really being reported as well as the methods by which that information was obtained.

---Distinguish between facts (e.g. 'chickens from condition A showed x average amount of whatever; chickens from condition B showed y amount'), which cannot generally be argued with, versus the researcher's own interpretations/conclusions (''thus chickens experience no more stress in cages than free') versus further wild extrapolations in the media.

---Then, now that you know more about the 'facts' and the methods by which they were obtained, you can decide for yourself how much of the interpretations, conclusions and extrapolations seem to be justified.

Running around in a swivet with hands in the air over media reports is NOT helpful -- not to people themselves, and not to the larger goal of getting people to quit releasing misleading or incomplete information in this way in the first place.

Sitting down and shutting up now,

Pat

 

[Queen of the Lilliputians]

Amen, Pat. Amen.


Meghan

 

[Rosalind]

Pat, I completely agree about how the media reports science. It's deplorable.

However, what I am sure you also have seen a lot of--when a paper is weak and deeply flawed, and would otherwise collect mild interest from the Nowherezistan Journal of Armpit Scienceology and no one else, the authors feel they can remedy this state of affairs by making a big public deal of it.

And what I personally have seen an awful lot of, is that these same authors tend to have something shady about their science. They are not collegial about sharing work or collaborating, and if you dig deep enough you find that in fact the work is not their own--they cobbled together relatively inconclusive data collected by a post-doc or grad student, fiddled with it, and tried to make a paper out of it because their (pick one: tenure, funding, lab space in the new building) was in jeopardy. In the nastiest cases, the researchers DO have good data, but they pulled a Rosalind Franklin/Jim Watson act.

Call me an elitist geek, but nowadays I feel completely justified in criticizing these sorts of press release non-reports without having seen the paper. Chances are, the paper is a terrible waste of trees and bandwidth, too.

 

[DuckLady]

I wrote the following letter to this email address
[email protected]

Hello.
I read with much amusement your article of yesterday titled "Research: Free Range Chickens are not happier".
It is obvious that your so-called research is incomplete. Does your researcher even own chickens? I hope more research is done before this is published as conclusive. Though if more careful research is done, you may have to publish a retraction. Please take the following as one chicken owner's view. I am sure you will receive more views which should help in your research.

If you take a hen who has been caged all her life and set her out on a pasture, she will stress at first, only because it is not familiar to her. Given time, she will come to love the freedom to scratch in real dirt instead of the accumulated excrement of her fellow inmates.
However, if a hen is raised on pasture or is allowed to enjoy it, she will be happier, healthier and will live a better quality of life.

But egg companies don't care about that, right? The main aim is the bottom line, so as with anything else, it is easy to twist research to the best interests of the person writing the check for the research.

Anyway, thanks for the laugh this morning. Being stressed after being tossed into the holiday season like a caged hen to a grass field, it was good to find a news article that was more of a light frothy novel instead of real news.

For more opinions, please see
https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=26574​

 

[patandchickens]

Hi Rosalind,

Aside from thinking that there is a lot more plain ole incompetence, not-caring, and self-delusion ("I know what's true, so I'll construct a study that comes out that way") out there than the 'shadiness' you cite, I am with you all the way on the problem.

I just think that the main criticisms of an unpublished media release should be like:

"Why are you claiming this without showing us your data and methods? We are not going to listen to you, silly person. Go away until you are prepared to announce things responsibly in a way that respects peoples' intelligence and independence <puts fingers in ears and hums loudly til that occurs>"

Sure, when it's clear from advance reports that there is going to be a major disconnect between what was done and what's being claimed (as in this case, what with the business about 1 stress hormone in eggs being a measure of overall happiness of hens, and the apparent restriction to extant commercial flock practices), I think it's perfectly reasonable to mention that too, as you have done.

But to me the big thing is to get everyone, all of us 'public', to question and think, and secondarily to campaign against press releases in advance of peer-reviewed complete publication.

Missing some aspects of academia but definitely not others

,

Pat

 

[SpottedCrow]

Very good, Terrie.

 

[herechickchick]

I am all for Scientific research but this is crazy! Cure Cancer or something else more significant. Does this guy have nothing else to do.

 

[DrakeMaiden]

My read on this is:

1. They studied STRESS HORMONE LEVELS and then implied that stress hormone levels predict QUALITY OF LIFE. Yes, if you are exposed to predation this will increase stress hormones. Presence of stress hormones say nothing about quality of life. Stress is unavoidable in life. The conclusions are moot.

2. Did they study CONTENTMENT HORMONES? No. I think if we had a measure of serotonin in both cage and free-range birds, then that will tell us more about quality of life. Low serotonin will correlate with depressed birds.

 

[silkiechicken]

I agree with the statements that the article is one sided and unfounded. Where is this article! No citations and sure sounds like publicity to me.