{
  "abstract": "A recent analysis in Science links a photovoltaic policy-stringency index to citizen-science bird records aggregated to county-months and concludes that China’s solar-expansion policy reduced Shannon diversity by 2.10% per standard deviation of stringency. Reproducing that estimate exactly from the replication package and checking its inputs against record-level data from the same platform, we show that the outcome variable measures the observation process rather than bird communities: nearly half of the checklists carry no abundance information, corrupted counts enter the regression unfiltered, and birdwatching effort grew 171-fold while concentrating in accessible, economically developed counties, in step with policy stringency. Once total effort is modeled, the coefficient reverses sign and is null in all 18 effort-adjusted specifications; the preferred estimate,",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 4,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Chenchen Ding"
    },
    {
      "name": "Yang Liu"
    },
    {
      "name": "Zhengwang Zhang"
    },
    {
      "name": "Zhiheng Wang"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/b8gmgdkfqjb54.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.32942/x23x30",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "b8gmgdkfqjb54",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://ecoevorxiv.org/repository/view/14715/",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-NC-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY-NC 4.0",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "bepress",
      "Ecology and Evolutionary Biology"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "Life Sciences"
    ],
    [
      "bepress",
      "citizen science; observation effort; Shannon diversity; photovoltaic policy; negative controls; measurement validity"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "2303|Avian ecology and behavior"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7210262149",
  "pdf_url": "https://ecoevorxiv.org/repository/object/14715/download/25585/",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-09-07",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/b8gmgdkfqjb54.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:17:21Z",
      "native_id": "14715",
      "source": "ecoevorxiv",
      "url": "https://ecoevorxiv.org/repository/view/14715/"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "biology",
      "origin": "bepress:Ecology and Evolutionary Biology",
      "subfield": "ecology"
    },
    {
      "field": "biology",
      "origin": "bepress:Ecology and Evolutionary Biology",
      "subfield": "evolutionary-biology"
    }
  ],
  "title": "The reported decline in bird diversity tracks birdwatching effort, not birds",
  "title_text": "The reported decline in bird diversity tracks birdwatching effort, not birds",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:17:21Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/b8gmgdkfqjb54",
  "venue": "EcoEvoRxiv",
  "versions": []
}