ShootHub Podcast - lead shot latest with BASC's Terry Behan

[Conor O'Gorman]

37 minutes ago, Konor said:

he would state “as a qualified gunsmith” to give some credibility to his statements. I expect Old farrier would expect Terry to have gunsmith qualifications so that he was reassured that he was not taking the advice of a layman unqualified to give a professional opinion

Did you not allude earlier in this thread that we should not place faith in qualified scientists because they are not free from bias and that placing your faith in their beliefs is a bit too trusting and can be prone to manipulation and political pressure in order to support an agenda.

Yet now you completely change your tune as regards a 'qualified gunsmith'. I think you perhaps twist and turn everything to your own agenda and I think the more you post the more evident it becomes.
 

[Konor]

20 minutes ago, Conor O'Gorman said:

you think posting ad nauseum on PW is going to change the evidence on the impact of lead shot on birds worldwide

Evidence and figures that should be at your fingertips but you are still not able to quote them. Surely a Google should pull them up.

Incompetence ,unprofessional ill prepared or perhaps may I politely suggest they don’t exist. You have had ample opportunity to quote them but nada.??? 

[Weihrauch17]

23 minutes ago, Conor O'Gorman said:

What a lazy idiotic comment. Is that the best you can do? However, it is indicative of the mentality of the handful.

Frantic posting? Were you not the one who said that when the posts come quick and heavy the truth emerges? Well perhaps the uncomfortable truth is that if you think posting ad nauseum on PW is going to change the evidence on the impact of lead shot on birds worldwide I politely suggest that you have lost all sense of perspective and perhaps that 'monster' of social media, as you put it, has consumed you. 

Like posting ad nauseum on PW. How bizarre.

What Company cars do BASC run at the expense of their members?

[Konor]

1 minute ago, Conor O'Gorman said:

Did you not allude earlier in this thread that we should not place faith in qualified scientists because they are not free from bias and that placing your faith in their beliefs is a bit too trusting and can be prone to manipulation and political pressure in order to support an agenda.

Yet now you completely change your tune as regards a 'qualified gunsmith'. I think you perhaps twist and turn everything to your own agenda and I think the more you post the more evident it becomes.
 

Hahaha you find equivalence in the assertion that scientists are not free from bias or political pressure with the validity of a gunsmiths advice compared to a shooting enthusiast . Really Conor . And twist and turn to your own agenda ,can you not see the glaring irony in that statement 

6 minutes ago, Conor O'Gorman said:

Did you not allude earlier in this thread that we should not place faith in qualified scientists because they are not free from bias and that placing your faith in their beliefs is a bit too trusting and can be prone to manipulation and political pressure in order to support an agenda.

Yet now you completely change your tune as regards a 'qualified gunsmith'. I think you perhaps twist and turn everything to your own agenda and I think the more you post the more evident it becomes.
 

You’re just not up to it Conor. I claim a technical knockout, hopefully no lasting repercussions. I think you’re going to have to move down a weight or get in a bit more training/coaching.

[stockybasher]

5 minutes ago, Konor said:

Hahaha you find equivalence in the assertion that scientists are not free from bias or political pressure with the validity of a gunsmiths advice compared to a shooting enthusiast . Really Conor . And twist and turn to your own agenda ,can you not see the glaring irony in that statement 

 

[Conor O'Gorman]

1 minute ago, Weihrauch17 said:

What Company cars do BASC run at the expense of their members?

Yes, let's go off piste on this thread for one of the handful when the facts overwhelm them. Staff who carry loads of kit tend to have pick-ups, others normal middle of the range saloon cars. So, have you listened to the podcast yet?

12 minutes ago, Konor said:

Evidence and figures that should be at your fingertips but you are still not able to quote them.

Evidence and figures are at your fingertips and yet you seem unable to read them.

9 minutes ago, Konor said:

You’re just not up to it Conor. I claim a technical knockout, hopefully no lasting repercussions. I think you’re going to have to move down a weight or get in a bit more training/coaching.

Thanks coach.

[clangerman]

34 minutes ago, Conor O'Gorman said:

What a lazy idiotic comment. Is that the best you can do? However, it is indicative of the mentality of the handful.

 

remind us again how YOU complained about other people being personal lol 

[Weihrauch17]

15 minutes ago, Conor O'Gorman said:

Yes, let's go off piste on this thread for one of the handful when the facts overwhelm them. Staff who carry loads of kit tend to have pick-ups, others normal middle of the range saloon cars. So, have you listened to the podcast yet?

Evidence and figures are at your fingertips and yet you seem unable to read them.

Why not small vans to carry kit, pick ups cost a fortune use more fuel and surely you don't need the 4 x 4 of a Pick Up for company tasks going to shows etc?  No I haven't listened to your biased borefest after reading Gordon's analysis of it.  Do staff get company cars that are not used on company business if so why.  I worked at Rolls Royce for 32 years but supplied my own car to get to work for all of those years.

Edited April 26 by Weihrauch17

[Old farrier]

1 hour ago, Konor said:

I guess that if you don’t know the answer is no I’m sure he would at some point he would state “as a qualified gunsmith” to give some credibility to his statements. I expect Old farrier would expect Terry to have gunsmith qualifications so that he was reassured that he was not taking the advice of a layman unqualified to give a professional opinion

But you are unable to present them

I want someone qualified to actually do the work 

someone who has actually bored and regulated a shotgun to produce a desired pattern 

im pretty sure gunman on here could do it he has credibility

however there appears to be a acute shortage of people who have any experience in doing it to get appropriate patterns with steel 

30 minutes ago, Conor O'Gorman said:

Did you not allude earlier in this thread that we should not place faith in qualified scientists because they are not free from bias and that placing your faith in their beliefs is a bit too trusting and can be prone to manipulation and political pressure in order to support an agenda.

Yet now you completely change your tune as regards a 'qualified gunsmith'. I think you perhaps twist and turn everything to your own agenda and I think the more you post the more evident it becomes.
 

Name the scientist and then it’s possible to check credibility 

[Conor O'Gorman]

5 minutes ago, Weihrauch17 said:

Why not small vans to carry kit, pick ups cost a fortune use more fuel and surely you don't need the 4 x 4 of a Pick Up for company tasks going to shows etc?  No I haven't listened to your biased borefest after reading Gordon's analysis of it. 

Thanks, perhaps you can drop a line to our finance team to advise further as a fellow BASC member? If savings can be made all intel is useful. Please let us know the outcome. As regards podcast noted that you accept advice from others such as Gordon on the podcast without needing to listen yourself. With that in mind do you therefore accept GWCT advice on lead shot impact on birds without needing to read the evidence yourself?

[Weihrauch17]

1 minute ago, Conor O'Gorman said:

Thanks, perhaps you can drop a line to our finance team to advise further as a fellow BASC member? If savings can be made all intel is useful. Please let us know the outcome. As regards podcast noted that you accept advice from others such as Gordon on the podcast without needing to listen yourself. With that in mind do you therefore accept GWCT advice on lead shot impact on birds without needing to read the evidence yourself?

No they didn't do their own research relevant to inland areas of the UK.

[Conor O'Gorman]

14 minutes ago, clangerman said:

remind us again how YOU complained about other people being personal lol 

Did you recently say 'show me the bodies'? I think I shared some videos with you and you went a wee bit quiet? What say you to that?

[Weihrauch17]

2 minutes ago, Conor O'Gorman said:

Did you recently say 'show me the bodies'? I think I shared some videos with you and you went a wee bit quiet? What say you to that?

Conor your appalling attitude does BASC absolutely no favours at all.

[Conor O'Gorman]

3 minutes ago, Weihrauch17 said:

No they didn't do their own research relevant to inland areas of the UK.

Sorry, I thought you had a query and advice about BASC company cars. I repeat for the avoidance of doubt - please email our finance team to advise further as a fellow BASC member. If savings can be made all intel is useful. Please let us know the outcome. 
 

[Weihrauch17]

2 minutes ago, Conor O'Gorman said:

Sorry, I thought you had a query and advice about BASC company cars. I repeat for the avoidance of doubt - please email our finance team to advise further as a fellow BASC member. If savings can be made all intel is useful. Please let us know the outcome. 
 

No I answered your question about the GWCT as requested.  Tossing it off in pick ups is not a good spend of members money.

Edited April 26 by Weihrauch17

[Conor O'Gorman]

2 minutes ago, Weihrauch17 said:

Conor your appalling attitude does BASC absolutely no favours at all.

You have nothing constructive to say about the impact of lead shot on birds so instead you resort to ad hominem arguments about company cars at BASC. It does you, the handful, no favours at all.

3 minutes ago, Weihrauch17 said:

No I answered your question about the GWCT as requested.  Tossing it off in pick ups is not a good spend of members money.

You have nothing constructive to say about the impact of lead shot on birds so instead you resort to ad hominem arguments about company cars at BASC. It does you, the handful, no favours at all.

[Weihrauch17]

3 minutes ago, Conor O'Gorman said:

You have nothing constructive to say about the impact of lead shot on birds so instead you resort to ad hominem arguments about company cars at BASC. It does you, the handful, no favours at all.

You have nothing constructive to say about the impact of lead shot on birds so instead you resort to ad hominem arguments about company cars at BASC. It does you, the handful, no favours at all.

There is no impact of lead shot on birds to any great degree we have used it for hundreds of years with no ill effect except to those shot with it.  I am not part of a handful just myself!

[Konor]

50 minutes ago, Conor O'Gorman said:

Evidence and figures are at your fingertips and yet you seem unable to read them.

You print them I’ll read them Conor. You are basing your whole case on them and yet are unable to produce them. Bizarre in the extreme but I suppose just another day in the office to you.

54 minutes ago, Conor O'Gorman said:

Thanks coach.

Sorry Conor I only take on those with potential and from your recent posts you’re looking a bit washed up. An early night is the best advice I can give you. It won’t look any better in the morning though.

[Old farrier]

2 hours ago, Conor O'Gorman said:

I don't know. Best to ask him about his qualifications after you listen to the podcast. What do you mean by qualified? Which qualification would you trust in a gunsmith having a different view and experience to your own?

His views and experience are irrelevant

what is relevant is his experience in boring and regurgitating shotguns 

 

[Konor]

45 minutes ago, Conor O'Gorman said:

With that in mind do you therefore accept GWCT advice on lead shot impact on birds without needing to read the evidence yourself?

If GWCT failed to publish the evidence of course not ,why would I. What GWCT has said is that there is no data to confirm the extent of lead poisoning in inland non wetland areas. You have been unable to produce such data from any source so far yet you assure everyone that data exists. Do I trust you when you state that data exists? No not without producing it ,why on earth would I.

As your whole premise relies on the existence of such data and that that data demonstrates significant harm to wildlife in an inland environment. Then your inability to produce such data casts doubt on all your claims along with your credibility.

I don’t think it’s unfair to state that and that this whole mess has been brought upon yourself needlessly. It’s not a small handful it’s the majority of posters and with little if any posts of support for yourself

Edited April 26 by Konor

[Gordon R]

Conor O'Gorman - I would be grateful if you would stop peddling the "listen to the Podcast" rubbish. Other posters have listened to it, so claiming they rely on my critique is just silly. 

I was charitable and tried to be even handed in my post. For the record, it was amateurish, patronising and contained almost zero facts. Terry hadn't heard of barrel damage, which given his massive experience, was a bit surprising.

His wellies, Carribean nonsense and replacing lead pipe on your own property were low points, but tell me which bits were better. The more you encourage people to listen to it, I suspect more will feel let down.

[Konor]

56 minutes ago, Old farrier said:

I want someone qualified to actually do the work 

someone who has actually bored and regulated a shotgun to produce a desired pattern 

im pretty sure gunman on here could do it he has credibility

however there appears to be a acute shortage of people who have any experience in doing it to get appropriate patterns with steel 

Teague can bore out your barrels and pattern them individually for steel shot. The cost of regulating the pattern rather than just easing the chokes by measurement I think is around £125/per barrel. I’m sure a local qualified gunsmith could do it cheaper but you would have to be confident in their ability.I suppose it depends on the value of your gun in sterling or emotionally if you consider it is worth the expense.

[clangerman]

57 minutes ago, Conor O'Gorman said:

Did you recently say 'show me the bodies'? I think I shared some videos with you and you went a wee bit quiet? What say you to that?

save the diversion we are talking here about your double standards of complaining then making personal remarks yourself now dodge that one! 

[McSpredder]

13 hours ago, Konor said:

I don’t share your optimism regarding the altruism of scientists or that they are free from bias. Placing your faith in the belief that scientific research is beyond questioning as it searches for the “truth” is a bit too trusting. It can be just as prone to manipulation and political pressure in order to support an agenda. I think the average scientist would concede that is true.

I totally agree with Konor on this point.

One might have hoped that scientific reports would be free from any falsification of data, deceptive selective reporting of findings and omission of conflicting data, wilful suppression and/or distortion of data, manipulation of experiments to obtain biased results, deceptive statistical or analytical manipulations, etc.   (Just a few phrases from the BMJ's policy on scientific misconduct)

I am not convinced that publications issued by UK ornithologists, LAG members and the HSE meet those standards.

 

Professors Rhys Green and Debbie Pain told the Oxford Lead Symposium how their calculations were based on the quantities of “gamebird meat” eaten by 87 individuals during the National Diene and Nutrition Survey (NDNS), together with the numbers of consumers in different age groups.   They presented their data as though all the meat came from birds that had been shot.   They did not disclose that the NDNS definition of “gamebird meat” includes farmed duck and geese, even though they had studied and cited two papers warning that in the NDNS data “we were not able to tell if the game birds were Pb-shot or had been farmed” (Taylor et al, 2013) and “Duck accounts for 70% of this average annual consumption of 250 g but it is not specified if this duck is wild or farmed” (FSAS, 2012)

The truth is that Green & Pain did not have the slightest idea which of those 87 individuals had eaten any meat from wild-shot birds.   Their analysis is worth no more than if they had drawn numbers out of a hat.

Green & Pain estimated that the total consumption of all wild-shot birds in UK would be in the range 4,940 ‑ 9,880 tonnes per year, while DEFRA monthly statistics show that UK production of farmed duck for the period 2012-2018 averaged 29,900 tonnes per year.   ADAS (2012) reported that UK production of duck meat in 2011 was 33,000 tonnes and had remained reasonably static in the previous four years, and that UK imported an additional 6,000 tonnes of duck meat in 2009.   Wild-shot birds probably accounted for only a small proportion of all meat in the NDNS category “Game Birds”.   The quantity of farmed duck meat was probably 3.5 – 7.0 times as much as the total of all wild-shot game.   If the numbers of consumers in the NDNS data were in the same ratio, it would suggest that only 12 – 24 of those 87 individuals had eaten any wild-shot game.

Statistical analysis was based on absurdly small sample numbers.   Risks to very young children were calculated using NDNS data for only three individuals under the age of 5 years, and modellers did not know whether any of those three had actually eaten meat from wild-shot birds.  

All this should have been blindingly obvious to any competent scientist.   It s not clear whether the LAG members supported this piece of work in full knowledge of all its obvious deficiencies, or whether they gave their whole-hearted approval without even bothering to read the background documents.

 

Green & Pain (2015) asserted that their estimates of game consumption “are likely to be representative of the situation for any time of year because proportions of people eating gamebird meat have previously been found to be similar within and outside the shooting season”, taking their information from an earlier paper, also based on the NDNS data, saying “There was no effect of shooting seasonality on game bird consumption.” (Taylor et al, 2013).

Apparently none of these highly qualified academics realised that seasonal variations in wild-shot game would be masked by the steady supply of very much larger quantities of farmed birds.

 

Green & Pain artificially inflated the risk calculations by assuming that people who ate gamebird meat would consume portions more than twice the size indicated by NDNS records and by the Food Standards Agency.   They claimed “We followed EFSA CONTAM (2010) in assuming that an average meat meal for adults contained 0.2 kg of meal.” (Green & Pain, 2012) and “If it is assumed that a typical game meal includes 200 g of meat (EFSA 2010)” and “EFSA (2010) assumed that an adult portion of game meat was 200 g” (Green & Pain, 2015).   In truth, the EFSA (2010) report does not contain any suggestion that 200 g would be a typical or normal or average meat portion, as anybody who has actually read the document will know.  

The reasons why Green & Pain chose to insert all those untrue statements into their published papers is unexplained.   It would seem that LAG member Professor Levy must have supported this use of incorrect information, because the authors note “We thank Professor Len Levy for his guidance and advice during the preparation of this paper”.

 

All dietary information that conflicts with the modellers’ calculations has been suppressed, with no reason given.   Green & Pain (2012,2015) achieved their headline results by assuming that a 2.5 year old would eat more meat in a single meal than the average UK adult consumes in a whole day, and that portions for the little toddler would be four times as large as had actually been recorded in the NDNS data.   The modellers’ assumptions, endorsed by LAG members, were wildly different from the portion size information published by the National Health Service, UK Health Security Agency and British Dietetic Association.  

The consultation document states explicitly the “Data which have been assessed by ECHA and/or LAG as reliable are considered to be of a sufficient standard for inclusion without duplicative detailed review and analysis by the Agency”, so it would appear that HSE staff have now chosen to reject the information from health and nutrition professionals, and to rely instead on an unverified model compiled by ornithologists.

 

Modellers, LAG members and HSE staff, acting contrary to all normal standards of scientific behaviour, have chosen to suppress all information about actual cases of lead exposure among children in UK.   That information was readily available, having been obtained by health professionals and published in reports from the Surveillance of Elevated Blood-Lead in Children (SLiC), the Lead Poisoning in Children Surveillance System (LPIC) and the Lead Exposure in Children Surveillance System (LEICSS).    

It is notable that those surveillance studies did not report any cases of lead exposure related to game meat consumption.     Lead exposure in children was generally associated with areas of deprivation and poor quality housing, whereas high-level consumers of game meat are likely to be “people with higher income and higher position in society” (FSAS, 2012).

 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

In the 2022 version of the HSE dossier, papers authored by either Green or Pain, or issued from the LAG (of which they were key members) were referenced a total of 151 times.   It appears that Green & Pain are also being employed by HSE to pass judgement on their own work.

My remarks here only concern what I regard as the abysmal quality of the "scientific" evidence relating to human health topics.   I cannot offer any opinion on the quaility of publications by Green, Pain or other LAG membes on wildlife or environmental topics, but hope that somebody else will be looking at them very closely indeed.

[Konor]

4 hours ago, Conor O'Gorman said:

Nothing wrong with being wrong when one admits one is wrong

I agree Conor. You just have to take that first step in acknowledging that the figures you are relying on as the basis for your stance don’t actually exist. The evidence relies on projections and probability and estimates that cannot be or have not been quantified.

Edited April 26 by Konor