Despite broad scientific consensus that sustainable use of wildlife can enhance conservation efforts, ethical concerns have led some community groups to oppose use of wild animals. Voicing those concerns is legitimate, but underlying philosophical bias should not influence science-based analysis and interpretation. We argue that philosophical biases are common in the scientific literature on trade in wildlife. The critically important case of bias surrounding the use of reptile leathers for luxury fashion illustrates the problem. Based on analysis of official seizures of fashion products made from wildlife, a recent study inferred that criminal activity (as inferred by noncompliance with regulations) was common and increasing and, hence, that authorities needed to adopt more stringent restrictions on the trade. In fact, the conclusions of that study are artifacts of pseudoreplication (e.g., multiple counts of single violations) and biased sampling (e.g., focus on companies with high rates of error) and run directly opposite to actual patterns in the data. As a proportion of overall trade, rates of noncompliance are exceptionally low (<0.4%), are declining, and result primarily from paper-work errors rather than criminal intent (e.g., such errors are more frequent for goods shipped by government authorities than by the commercial fashion industry). The recommendation by the study authors to prohibit the international trade in wildlife-based fashion products is imperiling a sustainable trade that can benefit biodiversity and people's livelihoods by providing financial incentives for conservation of species and habitats. This example offers a warning of the dangers of basing research on the wildlife trade on ethical or philosophical positions rather than objective evaluations of evidence.

中文翻译：

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野生动物贸易文献中有缺陷的科学的危险

尽管广泛的科学共识认为野生动物的可持续利用可以加强保护工作，但道德问题导致一些社区团体反对使用野生动物。表达这些担忧是合理的，但潜在的哲学偏见不应影响基于科学的分析和解释。我们认为哲学偏见在关于野生动物贸易的科学文献中很常见。围绕在奢侈时尚中使用爬行动物皮革的极端重要的偏见案例说明了这个问题。根据对官方没收的野生动物时装产品的分析，最近的一项研究推断，犯罪活动（由不遵守法规推断）很常见并且越来越多，因此，当局需要对贸易采取更严格的限制。实际上，该研究的结论是伪复制（例如，单次违规的多次计数）和有偏见的抽样（例如，关注错误率高的公司）的产物，并且与数据中的实际模式直接相反。作为整体贸易的一部分，不合规率非常低 (<0.4%)，并且正在下降，并且主要是由于文书工作错误而不是犯罪意图造成的（例如，政府当局运送的货物比商业时装业）。研究作者提出的禁止以野生动物为基础的时尚产品的国际贸易的建议正在危及可持续贸易，而这种贸易可以通过为保护物种和栖息地提供财政激励来使生物多样性和人们的生计受益。