Volta

Inappropriate use of statistical methods leads to unsupported conclusions about risk of plague to an imperiled chipmunk: A critique of Goldberg et al. (2022)

Plague is a zoonotic disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis that can cause endangerment or extinction of wildlife populations. A recent study by Goldberg et al. (2022) sought to determine if plague was circulating within the small mammal communities associated with the Peñasco least chipmunk, which has been proposed for listing as endangered on the Endangered Species Act. We identified substantial problems with the statistical approaches used by Goldberg et al., including testing more models than the data can support and failing to recognize models with uninformative parameters. Contrary to their findings, our reexamination of their analyses and results suggests little evidence for plague in this system and that prophylactic measures to prevent plague do not warrant the risks …

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