Wildland fires are a serious problem affecting almost every continent. Means of preventing fires or reducing the risk of fire and cyclical fire regimes are a current focus of research. Public entities are negatively impacted by growing costs of fire prevention and fighting. Loss of human and other animal life is increasing while development and recreation in wildlands is making fire risk higher. Prescribed burns and mechanical removal techniques have been promoted by a number of forest scientists and public policy entities. Here we address these means and argue they are not producing the proposed risk reductions and are not cost effective. How the public debate on prevention and fighting fire is as important as ideas concerning human factors that promote wildfire. We discuss how these ideas and factors related to scientific evidence.