So, said rancher spends $150,000 to have a Ph D and his grad assistant run out and do a study and it supports the formerly "unsupported" opinion he brought to you earlier and suddenly he is going to hear a different tune from you? I don't think so.
I think you tipped your hand earlier when someone came up with "more than conversational information" and you responded with this quote which nicely reflects the "researchers/no money out of my pocket" approach to the so called "discussion".
".. .. .. If you ask a wildlife biologist from the same university he will pull out 32 scientific studies stating otherwise. If you read the scientific papers that are in print now, you can easily see that the vast majority of the studies do not support his statements. .. .. .."
So, now the bar has been raised to where one has to have 33 university studies (times $150,000 or so each) to be officially "worth listening to" regardless of whether one was "right" in the first place or not! It must be nice to have a government teat to nurse upon and the essenitially unlimited resources of the government to draw upon while engaging in such scholarly discourse. Those who actually make a living for themselves by means of their own enterprize have no such luxury; however, that fact alone does not put them in the wrong.
Similarly, it doesn't make the ones with the forklift report right either. You give me the thesis and let me judiciously "prepare the data for input" into the statisical model and we'll nail it just fine. Peer review? In an incestuous little community of greenie "scientific" forums, conferences, and publishing houses (Auk, Peregrine, Condor, etc --- notice a pattern/theme in the names?) uh huh, you scatch my back I'll scratch yours and we'll all keep applying for those grants -- gotta think about Christmas coming up.
Don't get me completely wrong, in the hard sciences the scientific method is pretty much gospel. In the softer sciences, sociology and game biology for example the conclusions are not near as "bullet proof". Some might roll over and accept it as the word from God, not me, I've seen too much of what goes on behind the scenes and inside that little community -- no thanks. Just try to track down the sources quoted and "oh he don't work here anymore, he is over at the US Fish and Game --- well isn't that cozy!
Good luck in sorting out the truth folks,
EKM