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Numbers flap has minor implications for global extinctions

Statistical technique inflates predictions of species disappearances, two ecologists charge

By Susan Milius

- More than 2 years ago

Two ecologists have poked a hornet’s nest by contending that a long-overlooked flaw in one form of analysis has inflated estimates of looming species extinctions.

LOST Carolina parakeets are one of several bird species that have gone extinct in the eastern United States in a complicated relationship of extinction numbers and habitat shrinkage that ecologists are still debating.