As influenced by Richard Feynman's antidote to his idea of "cargo cult sciences" and based on what I was taught at my "Gymnasium" (grammar school) before the curriculum was converted to allign with the Bologna reforms at universities, part of my research thus naturally includes taking a closer look at my resources and the people and organizations providing those. While I would not go around and claim that I'm good at spotting flaws in (formal logical) systems fast, I would not deny if someone calls me highly skeptical of most things in life and may describe me as a person "rarely taking things at face value". On the other hand, the moment I first took a closer look at "Tagfalter – Die Schmetterlinge Deutschlands" by Settele et al. and read each description of a random set of butterflies properly, I quickly noticed that something is not just "off" on a superficial level that may have explained the true reasoning behind the exclusion of alpine butterflies.
In a very similar vein, I also began to notice several issues in one of the online databases I use to determine which species I may or may not observe within my study areas at a given time. The database is managed by a single individual and happens to be the same guy responsible for Thuringia's "red list of butterflies". As Gerd Kuna was the first out of the two researchers I wanted to know more about, this is the one I will get into first.
Gerd Kuna, as explained above, is the sole head behind both the red list and the database provided on "tagfalter-thueringen.de". The website itself, meanwhile, is managed by the Workgroup of Bavarian Entomologists Society.
The database saw an extreme drop in observations across all butterfly species. Due to the lack of assisting interpretation text for any stat provided on "Tagfalter in Thüringen" and the drastic differences between each graph's axes that partially are unreadable, any visitor easily may assume that 2023 was a catastrophic year for butterflies in Thuringia. The data provided by this database is in stark contrast with my observations from the same year, which pretty much saw plenty of species recovering from the drought in 2022.
I then began to notice the little amount of recent and historic data outside of southern Thuringia and one transect close to Jena. As this, parallel to each transect being 5x5 kilometers in size and thus in stark contrast to the majority of monitoring guides requiring a transect to be no longer than one kilometer and as wide as 1.5 meters to each side of the transect path, I began to search for archived documents published prior to the German reunification that already have been digitized. Indeed, my growing suspicions were confirmed and Kuna did omit a large chunk of data published prior to the start of his career for no obvious reason(s).
My search thus switched to Kuna himself, once again relying on the same search engines (Startpage and DuckDuckGo to get started, zobodat.at and The Internet Archive for papers). Surprisingly, there is no information available on Kuna's career history nor anything regarding his possible associations with universities or NGO's. No Wikipedia entry, no homepage or personal blog – his online activity is restricted to the database and an account on iNaturalist, where his profile states that he mainly uses iNaturalist to port iNat's older data to his own database, only doing some peer review on iNat "in the evenings" and barely providing own observations. Additionally, he redirects any personal contact to his database email and, in a quite passive-aggressive tone, claims that if his port is taking too long to some people, "then those may as well enter themself" (sic!). There also appears to be a very intransparent relationship between him and the Bavarian group hosting his database, with no indication hinting either to Kuna being an official member of this organization or simply him maintaining a professional relationship beyond purely technical matters wihout being a member.
Just after this discovery, I found Kuna's first ever paper that dates back to 1992 and cover his observations from 1988 to 1991, being his first work on determining how endangered each butterfly species in Thuringia is. It is divided into two parts; only the second covers his sources for the claims he makes. I read it and was, quite frankly, shocked at how his methods are little different from that of the "Krefeld study" I criticized just a few weeks ago. Not only does he have a "main area" like I do (e.g. studying in his home environment in the Arnstadt region), he also takes irregular trips to other places largely situated in southern and western Thuringia. He claim to have taken just 150 field trips within four years, most of which are limited to Arnstadt and a random selection of locations situated in southern and western Thuringia (from a place close to the Bavarian border and the Rhön forest). While he does include a mention of the Kyffhäuser in notheastern Thuringia (the only location on the other side of the Thuringian Basin), he explicitly states that any observations from this location are EXCLUDED from his red list. This means that his red list of endangered butterflies in Thuringia, despite its name, only applying to areas close to the Thuringian Forest. The title of his list does not match the rest of the content and thus is grossly misleading.¹
On top of this, he refers to data from 1960 to 1970 as "catastrophic for butterfly populations" in Thuringia, contrasting those with documents from around 1900. Strangely, his literature section includes no reference to any papers from both periods, with his literature list starting at 1927. After 1940 there is a huge gap that goes way beyond the periods of both World War II and the following division of Nazi Germany, with his next pick being from 1973. Said pick also only focuses on "Plebicula amanda" and merely recites parts of a work from 1792, possibly just being a general description of this species. His list then jumps to 1982, yet this section of East German papers almost exclusively covers Plebicula amanda, as well as Rhopalocera and Hesperiidae. Only two entry point to an analysis of the possible endangerment of all "Tagfalter" in the German Democratic Republic published in 1988 and 1990, respectively.
Because he states that his research only began when he moved to Arnstadt in 1988 and his writing style differing drastically from that commonly used in GDR journals and magazines, there are only two explanations for said differences: Kuna either started off as an East German hobbyist with no connection whatsoever to either state-approved research nor East German grassroots movements pushing for a higher focus on environmental matters OR, which would be the worst option especially from the perspective of many former East Germans, he is a West German that migrated to the GDR right before "the fall of the Berlin Wall" because he was largely unsuccessful in the "old states". Given that he keeps anything about himself prior to 1988 a secret, the latter, sadly, may be just as likely as the first. It also doesn't speak in his favor that he often talks about his research and himself in third person, which is highly uncharacteristic for "native" East German works².
But even without knowing what his true motivations for his research may be, taking this paper and comparing it to the public database, even recent observations overwhemingly are originating from southern Thuringia and Jena, with Kuna only ever visiting northern locations during random years. Since no one raised any criticisms regarding his methods back in the 90's, he likely still considers his observations from southern Thuringia as applicable to the entire state.
Curiously, there is only one newspaper article that actually show his face. "InSüdthüringen" reported about the "17th fish fest" in Ilmenau on the 7th of October, 2013. The report starts with a photo showing Gerd Kuna holding a mushroom, with the image description stating that Kuna is a "mushroom consultant". Towards the end of the report, he is implied to be part of a group of "mushroom experts for the Ilm district".
Virtually nothing is known about Gerd Kuna, yet his work is directly sponsored by and published via the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation, which reports directly to the German Environment Ministry. While his financial situation remains just as unclear and mysterious as his past and present research activities, he at least is being paid for the work on his red list. Other than that, he does not seem to be the most social researcher, in fact he largely avoids research communities, and also demonstrates a lack of knowledge regarding the "scientific method" and statistics. His obvious bias towards southern Thuringia, which he does not state as such and rather just casually mentions his exclusions of locations north from his home district, effectively treating them as mere side-notes not worthy of receiving much attention, disqualifies him as a genuine expert on the Thuringian butterfly composition.
The only positive aspect of his research is his database not only publicizing his inidvidual observations but also his red list classifications, which, alongside the interpretation, are kept behind a paywall by the German government. Nevertheless, this is what exposes Kuna's sloppy approach to his research. I am the last person to be against amateur research – I am an amateur researcher with no formal qualifications besides having experienced a Thuringian grammar school from within for six years, graduating with the "Realschulabschluss-vergleichbarem BLF-Abschluss" (a certificate that's equal to Germany's general secondary school diploma and may be, quality-wise, comparable to an American high-school diploma), and prior to my school adjusting itself to the Bologna reforms. My index page hightlights most limitations and I'm still in the midst of adding further clarifications but at the very least I (already) make it clear when and why I am breaking certain scientific rules and what bias my data represents. Kuna lacks this amount of scientific integrity propagated by researchers such as the famous physicist Richard Feynman, who certainly would consider Kuna's works as an example for his "cargo cult science" idea.
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"Tagfalter in Thüringen" database
Homepage of the "Arbeitsgemeinschaft Bayerischer Entomologen e.V."
2024-05-03 - Some Angry Thoughts on the "famous" Krefeld Study
"Schuppiges Gewimmel am Großen Teich" – InSüdthüringen (07.10.2013)
¹ The landscape of Germany's "Mittelgebirge", despite a significant amount of its area being covered by forests and agricultural fields, consists of many, relatively small "mosaics" of various biotope types ranging from bogs to "Auen" (wet meadows), fallows and steppe-like areas. My main study area, for example, includes a three different biotopes that, when combined and inluding inaccessible spots, make up just a little less than one hectare. The "Bog Hill", whilst dominated by hay meadows and conventional fields, hosts an abandoned orchard, a fallow, a stream and two to three springs hidden behind large amounts of bushes and trees.
² While state-sponsored East German works more often than not were submitted as works by "author collectives", a lot of works especially from the 1980's also included the exact names of each author and contributor. Still, both have in common that they use a much more cautious articulation style and avoid loaded language entirely. They also tend to include sections highlighting possible data limitations and, perhaps humorous to some, abstracts written in both German and broken English – a result of English being the second foreign language an East German may or may not have been exposed to in school and/or university mostly during the era of Erich Honecker.