Susan J. Crockford

Susan Janet Crockford (born 1954) is a Canadian contract scientist who runs a small business identifying bones and other items in scat of wildlife.[1] She is a blogger who writes about zoology and climate science, specializing in Holocene mammals. From 2004 to 2019 she was an adjunct professor in Anthropology at the University of Victoria.[2] She is known for her novel blog posts on polar bear biology, which oppose the scientific consensus[3] that polar bears are threatened by ongoing climate change.[4]

Susan J. Crockford
Born
Susan Janet Crockford

1954 (age 66–67)
NationalityCanadian
Education
Known forBlogging about polar bears
Scientific career
Fields
InstitutionsUniversity of Victoria
ThesisAnimal Domestication and Vertebrate Speciation: A Paradigm for the Origin of Species (2004)
Doctoral advisorQuentin Mackie
Websitesusancrockford.com

Early life and education

Crockford first gained her interest in the Arctic in elementary school, when she read about Inuit life and Arctic fauna.[5] Her scientific interest in the Arctic was stoked when she received her first Alaskan Malamute at age eleven.[5]

Crockford received her Bachelor of Science in Zoology at the University of British Columbia in 1976 and her doctorate in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Victoria in 2004.[4] She chose to focus on speciation in mammals, with a focus on thyroid function.[5] Her theories about the role of thyroid function on evolution have not been widely accepted. Lars Olof Bjorn noted several questionable issues about Crockford's theories including "Recently, an article (Crockford 2009) was published in Integrative and Comparative Biololgy that requires comment. Below in italics are the relevant passages from the article, each followed by my comment. ‘‘Iodine is known to be crucial for life in many uni- cellular organisms (including evolutionarily ancient cyanobacteria) ...’’ Comment: No reference is given and it is questionable whether iodine is an essential element for cyanobacteria.[6]

Career
A 33,000 year old canid skull from Siberia analyzed by Pacific Identifications.

Business

In 1988, Crockford, along with colleagues Rebecca Wigen and Gay Frederick, founded the contracting company Pacific Identifications Inc. in Victoria.[7] The company specializes in offering bone and shell analysis of skeletal elements of fish, mammals and birds from western North America and maintains a prominent library of reference animal remains.[7] Since the start of her career, she has worked primarily through paid contracts for specific work on a variety of topics.[5]

Books

In 2006, she published the book Rhythms of Life: Thyroid Hormone and the Origin of Species, explaining the effect of thyroid hormone secretion upon evolutionary change.[8] She hypothesized that the thyroid is the key to controlling species-specific growth and for maintaining homeostatic conditions for individuals.[8] The species-specific flow of hormones would therefore be the root cause of why—for example—a chimpanzee would develop into a chimpanzee while in its mother's womb, instead of a human, despite possessing 99% of the same genes.[8] The most controversial portion of her book was the challenge to the idea that humans alone domesticated animals. She argued species adapted to fulfill the ecological niche provided by becoming the companions of humans or by living within their communities.[8]

Dogs

Crockford has studied the evolutionary history of dogs, especially in regards to their domestication and speciation. In 2007, she was called upon as the scientific consultant for the PBS documentary, Dogs that Changed the World, focused upon the domestication of dogs.[9] In the two-part documentary, she was called upon multiple times to give insight into the process of domestication and the emergence of dogs as a separate species from wolves.[9] She has also written several peer-reviewed papers on this topic.[5]

Polar bears
Crockford blogs about polar bears.

She has not published peer-reviewed papers on polar bears and as noted in Harvey et al. (2018) "Notably, as of this writing, Crockford has neither conducted any original research nor published any articles in the peer-reviewed literature on the effects of sea ice on the population dynamics of polar bears. However, she has published notes and “briefings through a conservative think tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation."[10] Crockford is a source of disagreement with the published literature by polar bear scientists, notably Steven Amstrup and Ian Stirling, regarding polar bears' current status and level of endangerment. Crockford suggests that the decline in the polar bear population was in fact caused by unusually thick spring ice that year, a recurring trend every decade for the past century, which led to a shortage of their preferred prey, ringed seals.[11] Either the subsequent seal shortage or declining ice levels was the cause of an approximately 40% decrease in polar bear numbers in the Beaufort Sea area.[12] She charges that this study, which only used data up to 2010, despite being available until 2013, used cherry picked results due to an undisclosed conflict of interest to cause the species to be categorized as "Threatened" in the International Union for Conservation of Nature's 2015 Red List. A response to her op-ed was written by Amstrup and Andrew Derocher, to which she replied on her blog.[13][14]

Controversy

Crockford is a signatory of the International Conference on Climate Change's 2008 Manhattan Declaration,[15] which states that "Carbon dioxide and other 'greenhouse gas' emissions from human activity...appear to have only a very small impact on global climate," and "Global cooling has presented serious problems for human society and the environment throughout history while global warming has generally been highly beneficial." Between at least 2011 and 2013, she received payment from The Heartland Institute, in the form of $750 per month, which Crockford states was to provide summaries of published papers that might not have been covered by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fifth Assessment Report. This payment has been construed as an undisclosed conflict of interest, by blogs such as Desmog Blog. Her response to such claims was a disclosure of the job description, how much she was paid, and the duration of the contract.

Although nearly all polar bear scientists disagree with Crockford's claims, her blog has been cited by websites that either deny or are skeptical of climate change, with over 80% citing it as their primary source of information on polar bears.[16] Critics point out that none of Crockford's claims regarding the effects of climate change on polar bears has undergone peer review, nor has she ever published any peer-reviewed articles whose main focus is polar bears.

After 15 years as an adjunct professor, University of Victoria did not renew her unpaid position in May 2019, for unstated reasons.[17] It was clear from a peer-reviewed paper that her point of view on polar bears was unsupported by the best available science. [18]

References
  1. http://www.pacificid.com
  2. https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/climate-denier-blogs-ignore-science-1.4424956
  3. "The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
  4. "Desmog Blog". Desmog Blog. Retrieved 2018-06-10.
  5. "On being a polar bear expert, among other things". polarbearscience. 2015-03-12. Retrieved 2018-06-10.
  6. Integrative and Comparative Biology, volume 50, number 1, pp. 138–140
  7. "Pacific IDentifications". www.pacificid.com. Retrieved 2018-06-10.
  8. Crockford, Susan (2006). Rhythms of Life: Thyroid Hormone and the Origin of Species. Victoria, British Columbia: Trafford Publishing. ISBN 978-1412061247.
  9. "Dogs That Changed The World | About | Nature | PBS". Nature. 2011-09-12. Retrieved 2018-06-10.
  10. Harvey, Jeffrey A; van den Berg, Daphne; Ellers, Jacintha; Kampen, Remko; Crowther, Thomas W; Roessingh, Peter; Verheggen, Bart; Nuijten, Rascha J M; Post, Eric (2017-11-29). "Internet Blogs, Polar Bears, and Climate-Change Denial by Proxy". BioScience. 68 (4): 281–287. doi:10.1093/biosci/bix133. ISSN 0006-3568. PMC 5894087. PMID 29662248
  11. Crockford, Susan (2015-01-15). "Faux Polar Bear Figures". Financial Post. Retrieved 2018-06-10.
  12. Boehrer, Katherine (2014-11-18). "These Polar Bears Had A Tough Decade". Huffington Post. Retrieved 2018-06-11.
  13. "Financial Post publishes misleading opinion that misrepresents science of polar bears' plight". Climate Feedback. 2018-03-02. Retrieved 2018-06-25.
  14. "Amstrup & colleages can't refute my critique of their 2007 polar bear survival model, Part 1". polarbearscience. 2018-03-12. Retrieved 2018-06-25.
  15. "QUALIFIED ENDORSERS NOT AT CONFERENCE". www.climatescienceinternational.org.
  16. Harvey, Jeffrey A; van den Berg, Daphne; Ellers, Jacintha; Kampen, Remko; Crowther, Thomas W; Roessingh, Peter; Verheggen, Bart; Nuijten, Rascha J M; Post, Eric (2017-11-29). "Internet Blogs, Polar Bears, and Climate-Change Denial by Proxy". BioScience. 68 (4): 281–287. doi:10.1093/biosci/bix133. ISSN 0006-3568. PMC 5894087. PMID 29662248.
  17. "Was this zoologist punished for telling school kids politically incorrect facts about polar bears? | Financial Post". 2019-10-16.
  18. https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/climate-denier-blogs-ignore-science-1.4424956
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