Experts make mistakes - and work quickly to correct them

Even experts make mistakes every now and then. What's amazing in this story is that a mistake appeared in an authoritative online resource - and went unnoticed by scientific colleagues, bird enthusiasts, webmasters across the country and even newspaper editors - for several years.

Unnoticed and unchallenged. Until it was put before Daily Herald readers.

On Nov. 7, we printed photos of an unusual hummingbird for our area, the rufous hummingbird. It's different from this area's more common ruby-throated hummingbird because of its rust-colored, shading on its chest and base of its tail. It's not often seen in this area because it lives primarily on the West Coast, migrating from as far as Alaska to Mexico.

And it's in that amazing feat that the mistake occurred.

We reported that the bird has the longest migratory journey of any bird on the planet for its body size. As an example, we said the bird, usually 3 to 4 inches long, travels up to 3,900 miles, which is true. We said that is equivalent to 784,500 body lengths - not true. If that number seems amazing, consider that the actual number should be closer to 78.4 million body lengths.

Facts for the story were collected by one of our amazing wildlife photographers, George LeClaire. Those facts were checked by an editor (that's me) via the All About Birds Web site, hosted by the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, considered a world authority on birds and the same site LeClaire used to gather the information.

Trouble is, I didn't get out my calculator to do the math. Some of our more diligent readers did. We heard from several, one a self-proclaimed math curmudgeon who routinely checks the math in our stories, and one a father who just didn't think the numbers seemed right. His third-grader's teacher used the article in class as a lesson, and even they didn't catch the math error either, he said.

Hugh Powell, staff writer for the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and editor of the All About Birds online guide, was traveling when we reached him last week about the mistake. Diligent about accuracy, he promised to clear it up as soon as he returned, and he stayed true to his word.

He talked to the original author of the online site to sort it out.

"It looks like it was a simple conversion error as we went from kilometers to miles to inches - a rather embarrassing mistake that has gone uncorrected for several years now!" he wrote back.

Of course complicating matters for math curmudgeons everywhere is that all the numbers are ranges. The 3,900-mile range is representative and every bird won't necessarily fly that far. Also, birds vary in size.

Our original story compared the rufous hummingbird's journey to that of the Arctic tern, which is about 13 inches long and migrates about 11,000 miles. That computes to 46 million to 64 million (or so) body lengths, not enough to beat out the one-tenth of an ounce rufous hummingbird.

Cornell has since fixed the error on its Web site (birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds) and Powell is so appreciative of the astute Daily Herald readers he wants to personally thank them.

"We strive to be the most useful and accurate source of information about birds on the Web," he wrote. "Thanks to you and your sharp-eyed reader for bringing this to our attention."

<div class="infoBox"> <h1>More Coverage</h1> <div class="infoBoxContent"> <div class="infoArea"> <h2>The original story</h2> <ul class="links"> <li><a href="/story/?id=248558">Yes, Virginia, there are still hummingbirds around <span class="date">[11/6/08]</span></a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div>