Reply #2: no one knows whether there's even an "it" yet and this is HORRIBLE science journalism....

[mike_c]

The headline suggests that a combination of environmental chemicals or pesticides is responsible for honeybee decline when in fact that possibility is as yet an untested hypothesis. It's like if I said "I'm going to do an experiment to test the hypothesis that monkeys fly out of my ass whenever I fall down" and some science "journalist" prints "Gravity might cause monkeys to fly out of your ass!"

First, the general phenomenon is dubious. Monkeys don't actually fly out of my butt, so the hypothesis is baseless from the beginning. Likewise, there is little consensus among entomologists that honeybee decline is a real phenomenon, or if it is, that it differs from other periodic declines-- and recoveries-- that we've seen for many years, things with names like colony wasting disease and dwindle disease.

Second, the mere fact that a hypothesis is being tested should NEVER be taken to mean anything other than that someone wants to test it. It should certainly NOT be considered evidence of likelihood. Its a test to determine likelihood-- if I have regular prostate antigen tests, that does not imply that I have prostate cancer. Likewise, testing for pesticide effects is no evidence that pesticide effects are likely-- only that someone is curious about it, is eliminating possible causes systematically, or that previous knowledge about the matter is ambiguous and not useful for drawing conclusions.