On Thursday I predicted that pundits would make the rediscovery of the Ivory-billed woodpecker an opportunity to criticise predictions that humans are causing mass extinctions–while conveniently ignoring evidence that goes against their claims. Today I came across the first case I know of, which appears a short Week-in-Review piece about the woodpeckers in the New York Times. (You have to scroll down a bit to the article.)

First, a conservation biologist is quoted saying that most things that scientists think are extinct are extinct. The article then ends with this:

Budiansky’s name may be familiar to you, especially if you followed the link to a paper by Stuart Pimm I provided in the last post. In the early 1990s,