When forests burn
Russell Sadler
It isn’t often an academic dean gets up in public and apologizes for participating in an effort to suppress the work of a graduate student because it conflicts directly with a study done by other faculty members. But that’s exactly what Oregon State University College of Forestry Dean Hal Salwasser did.
"I profoundly regret the negative debate that recent events have generated," he wrote in a letter to the college. Salwasser went further and said he should have congratulated the graduate student, Daniel Donato, for having his research published in the journal Science.
Donato and five OSU and U.S. Forest Service scientists concluded that logging in the Biscuit Burn in Southern Oregon damaged seedlings growing back on their own and littered the forest floor with tinder the could fuel future forest fires.
They argued that “can be counterproductive to goals of forest regeneration and fuel reduction.”
The Donato study conflicts directly with an earlier study conducted by OSU academic heavyweights John Sessions and Mike Newton that concluded salvage logging and reforestation after the Biscuit Burn could regenerate the forest faster than more natural methods.
The Donato study was politically inconvenient because the Bush administration and Congressman Greg Walden (R-Oregon) are using the Sessions-Newton study as the basis for Walden’s latest amendments to the “Healthy Forests Act” of 2003.
Salwasser joined other OSU faculty members in pressuring Science not to publish the Donato findings. The editors at Science sent the Donato paper though their peer review process and said they had no reason not to publish the article. It appeared in the January 20, 2006 issue.
Political inconveniences aside, we laymen have walked into the cafeteria of ideas in the middle of an academic food fight of major importance. Over the years as OSU’s College of Forestry has grown in size it has added more than traditional foresters to its faculty. OSU added engineers and ecologists. Forest engineers, like most civil engineers, like to tinker with the established order. Ecologists are trained as observers of whole natural systems and are more inclined to watch nature take its course.
Foresters trained in Oregon particularly, get their orthodoxy from the history of the Tillamook Burn. This legendary forest fire erupted in August 1933 in the Coast Range between Tillamook and Forest Grove and burned about 240,000 acres.
More seriously the Burn caught fire again and again, every six years until 1951 -- it was called the six-year jinx -- despite the best efforts of foresters to fireproof the original burn. The problem was finally solved, after many missteps, by aggressively logging all standing burned timber, toppling snags, sweeping the forest floor of all fuels and aggressively hand planting seedlings.
This practice became the only way to treat burned-over forests. You hear the echoes in the Sessions-Newton report.
Ecologists and younger foresters have a different experience. They study the Warner Creek Fire in 1991 in the Willamette National Forest where aggressive salvage logging was specifically limited because of the steep slopes. Studies show a more diverse forest regenerating without salvage logging and aggressive hand planting of commercial tree species.
So who’s right?
It’s fair to say the jury isn’t in yet. The Donato study alone doesn’t prove the thesis that salvage logging is worse for forest regeneration than a decision to leave the area unlogged.
Indeed supporters of the Sessions-Newton study say they will write a critique for Science magazine and try to discredit Donato’s work. Donato deserves more respect than that.
Donato’s work is reminiscent of another scientist who systematically debunked the prevailing orthodoxy of forest management -- Dr. Jerry Franklin.
Franklin, who is now finishing a distinguished career at the University of Washington College of Natural Resources, spent more than 40 years studying old growth forests, primarily in the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest in the Willamette National Forest east of Eugene.
When Franklin began his research, it was an article of faith with foresters -- old growth forests had ceased to grow. Old growth was “dead, dying and decadent,” biological deserts that had to be logged to make room for “vigorous young forests,” just brimming with biological diversity.
Franklin and his many colleagues learned reality was just the opposite. It was newly sterilized and replanted clearcuts that were the biological deserts, while the old growth forest was the most biologically diverse part of the forest. Franklin has never been forgiven by some of his colleagues for disproving the prevailing orthodoxy. Franklin’s findings are the foundation of today’s forest ecosystem management.
Daniel Donato and his colleagues just may be in the process of doing to salvage logging what Jerry Franklin did to clearcutting. Donato will get his chance as long as OSU’s College of Forestry is administered by people like Hal Salwasser who are willing to let science go where science will go and are not afraid to get up in public and admit they are wrong from time to time.
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Feb 5, '06
we laymen have walked into the cafeteria of ideas in the middle of an academic food fight of major importance.
If one looks at the primary funding sources for OSU's School of Forestry you will find a lot of money from the forest products industry with more than an intellectual interest in the outcome of this academic food fight. In fact, you will find a paucity of sources without ties to the industry. That includes even government grants since political support for funding forest research comes largely from the forest products industry, not environmentalists. So if you do research that consistently bites that hand, you are not going to be a successful academic.
That reality, rather than academic debate, explains the somewhat outrageous response to publication of a colleague's research at OSU. The apology is in appreciated, but we ought not ignore the pressures that lead to the incident when evaluating other OSU research on forest practices.
11:58 a.m.
Feb 5, '06
Ross, I can be more precise than that.
As much as 10 percent of OSUs College of Forestry budget comes from a severance tax levied on Oregon's timber industry and as you would expect, the industry thinks it owns the College in return.
Gifts and grants are considerable, but they are usually limited to specific projects.
I have long favored using revenue from this severance tax that goes to OSU to fight forest fires and replace the money with general funds. But that is not popular with the Legislature's Republicans, nor would it solve the problem. Sen. Ted Ferllioli, a former industry executive and lobbyist, and the legislators from Douglas County regularly use the entire state budget process to exert the timber industry's influence on the Department of Forestry, the Department of Fish and Wildlife as well as OSU. So getting rid of dedicated funds is unlikely to relieve insider pressure quite the way this sort of exposure can relieve the pressure.
This incident is an embarrassment. Only time will tell the extent of the damage to repputtation of OSU and the College of Forestry and whether it can be repaired.
Feb 5, '06
Gifts and grants are considerable, but they are usually limited to specific projects.
Isn't that the problem? I am not that familiar with OSU's finances in particular. But most academic research is funded from specific grants. So while you have a public university, the research it does is largely privately funded and those funders determine who on the faculty will have resources and who won't. Indirectly, under the public or perish standard, they determine who is on the faculty and who isn't.
Only time will tell the extent of the damage to repputtation of OSU and the College of Forestry and whether it can be repaired.
Reputation in whose eyes? I think from the forest products industry's perspective OSU reacted quite well. They did their best to discredit the research and then apologized. I suspect that anyone who wants to use that research in a public debate will find it is now tainted as a result.
It will be interesting to see if Science magazine rejects a rebuttal from OSU researchers who engaged in an unprofessional public trashing of their colleague's research. I doubt they will.
Feb 5, '06
supporters of the Sessions-Newton study say they will write a critique for Science magazine and try to discredit Donato’s work. Donato deserves more respect than that.
Um, in a way, that's not true. In science, that is respect. Every study is treated the same way -- one expects criticism, and it can get pretty vigorous. I don't have all the background here -- I don't, for instance, know how these "supporters" phrased their intent: "try to discredit" sounds like politics, but "attempt, with supporting data, to falsify" is standard science.
Can you provide any links to background -- how did faculty try to prevent Donato's study being published? In what forum did they raise their objections, and on what basis did they claim the work should not be published? I missed this whole thing somehow, and it's an astonishing story as presented here.
Feb 5, '06
Um, in a way, that's not true. In science, that is respect.
I agree. And I want to be clear I was not suggesting Science should not publish any contrary opinions or critiques of the research. But I think these OSU faculty's attempt to deny one of their colleagues an opportunity to publish the results of his research demonstrates more than academic interest in the results.
Link to most recent Oregonian article.
"Sessions and eight other scientists asked Science in a Jan. 17 letter not to print Donato's report until it answered their criticisms -- or to publish their concerns alongside. That failed and instead ignited debate at the College of Forestry, one of the nation's top forestry schools, over what some saw as an attempt to suppress research in a premier scientific journal."
January 20th Associated Press Story
" A group of professors at Oregon State's College of Forestry unsuccessfully tried to get the prestigious journal Science to hold off on publishing a study that concluded that leaving forests alone is the best way to help them recover from wildfires.
Editor Donald Kennedy, the former president of Stanford, said those who dispute the findings can respond to the study once it is published instead of using what he called censorship. The study was scheduled for Friday's edition of the journal. "
Feb 5, '06
Actually B. Hooker, you have misrepresented what is really out of the ordinary with what Sessions and Boyle actually did here. In fact what they did arguably should be grounds for discipinary action by OSU. In today's GT story about the matter Barbara Bond has roughly outlined the issue, and I invite you to read her comment in the second column of page A7.
Specifically, Donato's paper went through the proper peer review by Science for publication. At that point it is exceedingly extraordinary for a scientist to ask that an editor offer them privileged space in the journal to rebut the paper --- and in essence the peer review. The process has extensive and proper mechanisms for dealing with precisely this situation. What makes this possibly punishable is that Boyle, apparently with at least the consent of Sessions who apparently has not distanced himself publicly from Boyle's statement, has boldly asserted to the public that:
'"to condemn this request, unusual as it was, who know the ecology and the management systems involved in the Biscuit fire salvage logging could be construed as an infringement on the academic freedom of Sessions et. al.," Boyle said'
To lay persons it may not be clear just how astounding this claim that they have suffered an infringement of their academic freedom really is. The key question is whether Sessions and Boyle are sufficiently informed to know how untenable their statement is (we must at least entertain the possibly that they are not), or if they are in effect attempting to mislead the public for their own purposes. As already noted, and alluded to by Kennedy, there are recognized and accepted processes in place in the peer review process for handling precisely this kind of dispute. From all the publicly available facts, Sessions and Boyle apparently tried to do damage to the process and then went on the offensive to justify their actions. A statement by Sessions is particularly troubling in this regard:
'"It is unfortunate that the letter to Science magazine received widespread media attention. The letter was a request (apparently this is a generous characterization) by nine university and forest scientists, who are familiar with the subject area and geographic area, (a rather heavy-handed assertion of supposed authority that in fact is irrelevant to this challenge to the norms and provisions of the peer-review process) to clarify and strengthen (an unusual choice of words when their apparent goal was to challenge the central hypothesis of the work) a paper that had obviously received inadequate peer review by Science magazine (a direct attack on the process) before it became part of the scientific record," Sessions wrote in an email to the Gazette-Times.'
This unusually aggressive attempt to discredit the peer-review process is a very serious matter in academia. Under the standard terms of tenure and emeritus status, there are legal bases for OSU to unilaterally terminate one's relationship to OSU if one brings disrepute on the intellectual integrity of OSU by improperly attacking the peer review process and then goes on to make misleading attempts to justify that attack. Particularly if it is done in a way which implicates the university. We in the public don't have enough of the facts to be certain, but undeniably there is the appearance that something very serious happened here.
As outsiders looking in, from Salwasser's and Borgess's statements alone we cannot tell if the process contemplated by the Dean or the Faculty Senate are designed to explore the issues and assess appropriate sanctions where supported by the facts. Or if they will just be not untypical academic exercises designed in large part to minimize the political damage. From the publicly known facts, there is at least reason to skeptically raise an eyebrow at comments about this primarily being "a teachable moment" or "a learning experience". We can only hope that the press engages outside expertise familiar with university politics in general, and OSU politics in particular, to understand the very significant nuances that academic faculty and grad students well understand of what is really going on in this next phase of the matter.
Feb 5, '06
As a layman, I am left with nearly complete ignorance of the scientific truth. 1) Was the Science peer review process unbiased and of high quality? 2) Was Donato claim effectively supported by the evidence of his research? 3) Did his academic superiors have adequate opportunity to engage in the peer review process? 4) Is Science politically neutral in this debate?
The mere existence of conflict seems both normal and desirable. It is the form and content of conflict that seems at issue in this instance.
Feb 6, '06
Your questions are fair enough and OSU owes it to the people of Oregon to provide the answers as a result of it's investigations. However, the public statements by the Dean and the chair of the Faculty Senate strongly suggested that this is not their intent going forward.
Science already has defended it position as effectively being: 1) yes 2) the specific theory Donato advanced was supported, 3) ("academic superiors" is an inappropriate concept with regard to peer review so Science wouldn't address that) the process worked as the process should, and 4) yes, but Sessions and Boyle demonstrably are not.
It suffices to say that you are right on the mark that the real issue here is the approach Sessions and Boyle have taken. And why OSU's official response to this point is still troubling.
Feb 6, '06
Two additional points for those who would like more insight into the matter.
Although the article is not available online, the abstract is publicly available at:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/311/5759/352
Having now read the article, I feel the abstract is a reasonable summary of the key claims as they are expressed there. The article itself is a so-called "Brevia" with all supplementary materials online that anyone can judge for themselves. You'll note that the article actually has six authors. Three (Donato, Campbell, Law) are with the OSU Department of Forest Service, two (Fontaine, Robinson) are with the OSU Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, and one (Kauffman) is with the USDA Forest Service in Hilo Hi.
Second, and this is in response to Marvinlee's question about "academic superiors" As noted, half of the authors are with the Department of Forest Science. Sessions is with the Department of Forest Engineering and Boyle is with the Department of Forestry. Strictly speaking, Sessions and Boyle are in different fields, and arguably in a different research tradition, than at least five of the authors.
Feb 6, '06
Actually, askquestions1st, I didn't misrepresent anything. I made it perfectly clear that I needed more information, and what at least part of that information was. Words mean things, and you should be more careful with yours. I appreciate the background information, but I could have done without the ill-considered accusation.
(Thanks, Ross W, for information without snark.)
That said, given the background above, it does seem that Sessions/Boyle are well out of line. It's not unheard-of to send a letter asking for "privileged space" (good phrase!), but it's very unusual and needs a good deal more justification than has apparently been offered. The belligerence of the Sessions/Boyle responses to date is particularly odd, and the idea that they suffered some injury to their academic freedom is laughable.
Feb 6, '06
B. Hooker - no snark was intended, so I apologize for what apparently was a poor choice of words. I didn't mean that your presentation had with any negative intent, only that it illustrated that there is a lot more to this than the lay public has been led to believe. You are right on point with your last observations about Sessions/Boyle. Which is why this whole incident is so striking: It seems possible from this incident that the right wing attack strategy has found it's way into the scientific community with the very foundation --- peer review --- as a main target. A relatively disturbing turn of events for the future.
Feb 7, '06
To begin, bang-up post, Russell.
The one piece of information that I haven't seen much in circulation was the letter Sessions/Boyle sent to Science. I can never get the damn thing to "live" as a link, so I'll try to just copy the url and hope that works (it's a pdf file, but it appeared again as advertised when I entered this address - http://www.oregonlive.com/pdfs/news/sessions_letter.pdf - into my navigation bar).
I've pulled together a couple of posts on this (LINK and LINK). I started somewhere near Russell's position: neutral on the science, but with big, BIG questions about what Sessions and Boyle are up to. The questions are deepening somewhat with word in this morning's paper that the Bureau of Land Management is talking about freezing funding on what seem like some seriously dubious grounds. I'm not at all versed in what OSU agreed to do to get their cash from BLM and maybe those rules justify this move....but I'm not seeing it.
11:09 a.m.
Feb 7, '06
talking about? The impression I got from the article today was that they'd gone ahead and done it.
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