Contextualising UK moorland burning studies: geographical versus potential sponsorship-bias effects on research conclusions

Abstract

AbstractIt has recently been claimed that geographical variability resulted in false conclusions from some studies examining the impacts of prescribed moorland burning, including the Effects of Moorland Burning on the Ecohydrology of River basins (EMBER) project. We provide multiple lines of evidence to contradict these claims and show that the EMBER results are reliable.A systematic review of the literature also confirms that EMBER conclusions were not out of line with the majority of other published UK studies on responses to prescribed burning ofSphagnumgrowth/abundance, soil properties, hydrological change, or peat exposure and erosion.We suggest that sponsorship-bias is associated with some recent research conclusions related to moorland burning. Thus, it is of grave concern when sponsorship or other potential conflicts of interest are not declared on publications related to moorland burning.We show that sponsorship and other conflicts of interest were not declared on a recent publication that criticised the EMBER project, thereby entirely undermining that critical assessment.Policy implications:The EMBER findings are robust. Our study suggests that publications on moorland burning that have been funded by pro-burning groups should be treated with extreme caution by the policy community. Publications that have been shown to have failed to declare conflicts of interest from the outset, when first submitted to a journal, should be disregarded by the policy community because peer reviewers and editors may have been unable to evaluate those pieces of work properly.