The Contemplative Mammoth
Commentary
When the language distracts from the science: Reviewing, NES, and NoNES
Training in academia is often trial-by-fire, and learning how to review manuscripts is no exception. Because you’re technically not allowed to share manuscripts you’re reviewing with others, it can be especially tricky to learn how to do them (I do know some PI’s who share manuscripts with their grad students as a formal training exercise). … Continue reading
Taking responsibility for our academic community: a response to sexism in the ESA’s list-serv
You’re enjoying your morning tea, browsing through the daily digest of your main society’s list-serv. Let’s say you’re an ecologist, like me, and so that society is the Ecological Society of America*, and the list-serv is Ecolog-L. Let’s also say that, like me, you’re an early career scientist, a recent graduate student, and your eye … Continue reading
An unruly calculus: doing, funding, and communicating science
I recently returned from ScienceOnline, a meeting for journalists, scientists, artists, teachers, and others who discuss (and do!) science on the internet. This was my second time at the conference and, like last year, I came home with a mind full of ideas about effective outreach, open science, and teaching innovations. I tweeted something to … Continue reading
ScienceOnline Interviews: Melanie Tannenbaum, Social Psychologist
Last year, I crowd-funded my attendance to ScienceOnline2012, an un-conference for people communicating about– and doing– science on the internet. In exchange, I offered to interview one attendee for every $100 I raised. In the lead-up to ScienceOnline2013, I’ll be sharing those interviews. Based on feedback from Twitter, I decided to interview student attendees in … Continue reading
Crowd-sourcing the 50 most pressing questions in pal(a)eoecology
Last month, I spent a couple of days in Oxford with a group of paleoecologists of many nationalities, timescales, and taxonomic foci, as we frantically narrowed down a list of more than nine hundred crowd-sourced questions to fifty. Our mission: to determine the most pressing, five-year-horizon-scanning questions in the field of paleoecology (or palaeoecology, as my … Continue reading
Retractions and academic misconduct: Coming soon to a discipline near you?
The subject of retractions has been gaining a lot of steam in the media recently, with several recent studies (outlined nicely in this New York Times article) showing that retractions are on the rise, and misconduct and falsifying data are one of the most common reasons. Yesterday on Twitter, I noted that, while the language … Continue reading
Building a Shadow CV
I often look at the CV’s of researchers whose careers I admire to get a sense of their trajectory, and to build a rough road map of goals and objectives. How many papers do I want to put out in order to be as competitive as possible for a particular kind of job? How much … Continue reading
Inside NSF-DEB’s New Pre-Proposals: A Panelist’s Perspective
Today’s post is by Dr. John W. (Jack) Williams, a paleoecologist and climate scientist in the Geography department at the University of Wisconsin. Jack is the Bryson Professor of Climate, People & Environment, and the Director of the Center for Climatic Research. You can follow him on Twitter as @IceAgeEcologist. Hi everyone. At Jacquelyn’s invitation, I’m writing a … Continue reading
How I cured my imposter syndrome
This post is part of the Diversity in Science Blog Carnival on Imposter Syndrome, hosted by Scicurious over at Neurotic Physiology. When I started graduate school at the University of Wisconsin, I felt like an imposter. I thought that all of my fellow grad students were more together, had more basic science training (I never … Continue reading
Social Darwinism, the survival of the fittest, and the intersection of science and politics: A BlogHer guest post
The wonderful folks at BlogHer asked me to write a guest post on Social Darwinism, after President Obama’s speech last week where he evoked the phrase to critique the GOP budget. “Given the long history of racist stereotypes about poverty, and the fact that the public has a lot of misconceptions about evolution, the continued use — … Continue reading
