The Contemplative Mammoth
cultural representations of scientists
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
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
My Academic Independence Day
This is a quick update to say: I defend my dissertation tomorrow! I have a lot of thoughts about this, most of which I am unable to articulate because I am literally eating, breathing, and dreaming my dissertation, which means I’m finding it difficult to articulate anything that isn’t about late-glacial novel ecosystems, bison, dung … 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
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
How can scientists actively engage with the media?
I’ve been following a number of scientist-journalist discussions in the last year in various places, including ScienceOnline2012, in the blogosphere, and on Twitter. Increasingly, I’ve come to suspect that there is often a profound lack of understanding of the respective professional cultures of scientists and journalists, which has important relevance to the ways in which this discussion … Continue reading
Womanspace: Responses to Rybicki’s display of male privilege on NPG
Shame on Ed Rybicki for writing Womanspace, and shame on Nature Publishing Group editor Henry Gee for giving it the seal of approval (and following it up with a glib “I’m amazed we haven’t had any outraged comments about this story.”). Shame on Nature for silencing the voices of dissenters by apparently freezing the comments– … Continue reading
