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Source: http://www.ecoevolab.com/author/ericaholdridge/?feed=rss2

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<title>Erica Holdridge – EcoEvoLab</title>
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<title>How To Be The Don Draper of Science</title>
<link>http://www.ecoevolab.com/marketing-for-scientists/</link>
<comments>http://www.ecoevolab.com/marketing-for-scientists/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Erica Holdridge]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Wed, 06 Jan 2016 01:09:07 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Blog Posts]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.ecoevolab.com/?p=1436</guid>
<description><![CDATA[What is the first word that comes to mind when you hear the word “marketing”? Probably not "science".]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[Let’s play a word association game. What is the first word that comes to mind when you hear the word “marketing”? If you’re like me, you may have said something like “advertisement”. You may have even said something along the lines of “dishonest”. I’m almost certain, however, that none of you said “science”. At first, it’s hard to see how marketing could have anything to do with science. As scientists, we’re told we need to be researchers, teachers, writers, and communicators but never marketing executives. After reading “Marketing for Scientists” by Marc J. Kuchner, I realized that if we learn to be marketing executives, we could better fulfill all those other roles too.
<div id="attachment_1437" class="wp-caption aligncenter" ><a href="http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/wordcloud.jpg"><img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" width="1024" height="768" class="wp-image-1437 " src="http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/wordcloud.jpg" alt="wordcloud" srcset="http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/wordcloud.jpg 1024w, http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/wordcloud-300x225.jpg 300w, http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/wordcloud-600x450.jpg 600w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>Word cloud generated with wordclouds.com using the “marketing” Wikipedia page for content.</div>
“Marketing for Scientists” came highly recommend to me by <a href="http://www.thermaladaptation.com/">Mike Angilletta</a> so, in spite of my reservations about marketing, I was excited to see what it was all about. Kuchner starts by giving a definition of marketing that really puts it all in perspective for me:
Marketing is the craft of seeing things from other people’s perspectives, understanding their wants and needs, and finding ways to meet them.1
For whatever reason, I found this definition disarming. Maybe marketing isn’t such a bad thing! But how can it be applied to scientists? We don’t have a product we’re trying to sell to consumers. Not in the tradition sense at least. But Kuchner goes on to explain that we do have products: our science and ourselves. When we’re trying to get that big grant, our product is our science and we want our consumer, the review panel, to eat that product up! When we’re on the job market, the product is ourselves and we do everything we can to make search committees see that they can’t live without us.
Now that you’re convinced that marketing is relevant to scientists (I know I certainly am), we need some marketing tools. Kuchner takes what he has learned about marketing through the music industry (That’s right. He’s an astrophysicist who writes and sells country songs in his free time.) and applies it to science. Are you building meaningful relationships or just “networking”? What is your brand? Who is your consumer – a funding agency, a government official, the general public? How do you use papers, talks, <a href="https://sivers.org/conferences">conferences</a>, and your website to get people excited about you and your science? Kuchner address all of this and then some. He gives examples of how these tools have worked for him and other scientists. There’s even a pretty spectacular breakdown of how you should fashion your next conference talk after Star Wars IV: A New Hope and if that’s not worth reading I don’t know what is.
If it seems like I’m raving about this book, it’s because I am. It’s targeted toward post-docs and other early career scientists but I feel ahead of the curve after reading it as a grad student. My favorite part of this book is that the advice isn’t exclusive to one particular career path – it could work just as well for an academic as it would for a government, non-profit, or private sector scientist. If you, like any reasonable consumer, are still asking “What’s in it for me?”, the short answer is more grant funding, more collaborators, and better science communication and the key is marketing.
 
1Kuchner, Marc J. Marketing for Scientists: How to Shine in Tough Times. Washington: Island Press, 2012.
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<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
</item>
<item>
<title>A Literal Rainy Day Fund</title>
<link>http://www.ecoevolab.com/rainy-day-fund/</link>
<comments>http://www.ecoevolab.com/rainy-day-fund/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Erica Holdridge]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 04 Jun 2015 19:26:43 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Blog Posts]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.ecoevolab.com/?p=1240</guid>
<description><![CDATA[China may have found a single solution to drought and flooding. And it comes with a number of other benefits!]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[It’s not news that there’s a great disparity hanging over the United States. No, I’m not talking about the <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/102324400">growing economic gap</a> (that’s a larger issue that I’m not willing or qualified to tackle). What I’m referring to is the juxtaposition displayed on almost every news outlet between California’s drought and the recent flooding in central Texas. While Californians clamor to conserve water through the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-32150064">worst drought in 1200 years</a>, Texas has been devastated by deadly flooding that <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/06/03/texas-floods-blanco/28424519/">destroyed homes</a> and <a href="http://kxan.com/2015/06/03/officials-focus-on-trees-damaged-in-central-texas-flooding/">natural habitats</a> alike. It’s hard not to wish there was some way to tip the scales and balance things out. But how?
China recently announced a new program they are calling the “Sponge City” project after noticing strikingly similar patterns to what the U.S. is currently dealing with. According to a <a href="http://www.esajournals.org/doi/full/10.1890/1540-9295-13.5.236">recent dispatch</a> in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment written by Ganlin Huang, 62% of Chinese cities surveyed by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development experienced one or more floods between 2008 and 2010. At the same time, two-thirds of China’s municipalities are experiencing water shortages. Kind of rings a bell, doesn’t it? So China has decided, rather than treating these issues separately, to recognize both crises as symptoms of the same issue. The result is one project that has shown promise in helping both drought and flood areas.
The idea behind the <a href="http://english.eastday.com/auto/eastday/nation/u1ai8484432.html">Sponge City project</a> is to use absorbent surfaces, like green rooftops and porous pavements, to collect rainwater that would otherwise flow off hard city surfaces and into underground sewage systems. The “sponges” can then be “rung out”, so to speak, which allows for more direct and efficient use of water resources when they are needed. Huang’s article even notes that a successful pilot project in a part of Shenzhen City resulted in 70% of water that would normally end up in sewers being retained and reused, simply by installing green rooftops. China plans to try out the program in sixteen cities across the country for three years.
This project comes with a lot of other benefits because green rooftops aren’t just good at collecting rainwater. Proponents of green rooftops have suggested <a href="http://www.greenroofs.org/index.php/about/greenroofbenefits">a number of ways in which they can help the environment and our cities</a>. Unlike concrete or clay, they can sequester carbon, which is <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/33198790/ns/technology_and_science-future_of_energy/t/green-roofs-offset-global-warming-study-finds/">critical in mitigating the effects</a> of increasing global carbon emissions. They provide habitat and food for beneficial organisms like <a href="http://conservationmagazine.org/2013/09/bees-hop-between-green-roofs/">honey bees</a>. Some sources suggest that green rooftops can increase urban biodiversity and aid in conservation of rare species, although <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2664.12333/full">these claims are largely untested</a>. Another advantage is that green rooftops improve air quality by filtering out various pollutants depending on what kind of plants you grow. There are also a number of more direct benefits including incentive programs that provide <a href="http://greeneconomypost.com/pays-install-green-roofs-4457.htm">tax credits for installing green rooftops</a> and <a href="https://sourceable.net/want-to-save-money-on-energy-costs-install-a-green-roof/">lower energy costs</a> that result from their insulating effects.
<div id="attachment_1241" class="wp-caption aligncenter" ><a href="http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/greenroof.jpg"><img decoding="async" width="540" height="361" class="wp-image-1241 size-full" src="http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/greenroof.jpg" alt="greenroof" srcset="http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/greenroof.jpg 540w, http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/greenroof-300x200.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 540px) 100vw, 540px" /></a>Photo of a green rooftop from papertastebuds.com</div>
Whatever the primary motivation for installing green rooftops, it’s clear from the preliminary results of China’s Sponge City project that they and other permeable surfaces will be hugely beneficial in dealing with many of the extreme and unbalanced weather events occurring across the world. The United States and other countries should take note because, although it’s not a perfect solution, it seems like this project is headed in the right direction.
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<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
</item>
<item>
<title>A Punch Line with a Purpose</title>
<link>http://www.ecoevolab.com/a-punch-line-with-a-purpose/</link>
<comments>http://www.ecoevolab.com/a-punch-line-with-a-purpose/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Erica Holdridge]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Thu, 30 Apr 2015 16:53:20 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Blog Posts]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.ecoevolab.com/?p=1209</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Is there a place for humor in communicating serious scientific research?]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[How many climate skeptics does it take to change a light bulb? None, it’s too early to say if the bulb needs changing. I could already hear the collective groan of the Internet as I wrote that and, really, I don’t blame you. Humor has long been a rhetorical tactic for getting serious points across. Many great satirists like Shakespeare and O. Henry essentially made their careers off doing just that. In modern science, our attempts at humor are usually cheesy at best. They typically manifest as a “clever” title for a manuscript or a talk in the following format: “Some Play on Words That is Meant to Be Funny: Serious Statement About What We Did.” I find that these attempts at being amusing range from fairly funny to seriously groan-worthy, which usually depends on how forced the joke is. The aim could be to lighten the mood of an otherwise dense paper or to draw in listeners at a busy conference. But there may be an even better reason to include a bit of humor in communicating your research. As the organizers of the <a href="http://www.improbable.com/ig/">Ig Nobel Prize</a>* say, “First make people laugh, and then make them think.”
Humor is one way to present an idea that may otherwise polarize an audience. President Obama recently used this tact when we called upon comedian Keegan-Michael Key as his “anger translator” in addressing his frustration over climate change deniers in Congress and the media’s tendency to sensationalize just about everything. The bit was so successful, even <a href="http://kdvr.com/2015/04/27/fda-says-dog-chews-put-puppies-humans-at-salmonella-risk-2/">Fox News had to (bitterly) admit that it was “a hit”</a>. People seem to open up more to ideas they would otherwise dismiss immediately if the pitch is softened with a bit of humor. This can be a <a href="http://skeptikai.com/2012/10/25/the-weapon-of-comedy-why-humour-gets-the-point-across/">particularly useful tool</a> for scientists trying to communicate such “controversial” topics as climate change and evolution to the general public. Some people might even say that <a href="http://www.inc.com/kevin-daum/8-ways-using-humor-will-make-you-a-better-leader.html">the ability to make people laugh is part of being a good leader</a>.
Still, there are some downsides to this approach. As <a href="http://evol-eco.blogspot.com/2012/10/ill-try-for-more-content-full-blog-post.html">many</a> <a href="https://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2011/09/29/papers-with-funny-titles-are-less-cited/">other</a> blogs have discussed, <a href="http://jis.sagepub.com/content/34/5/680">a study</a> found that journal articles with amusing titles tend to get cited less often. In this sense, being funny could totally backfire and make you seem like a less serious, credible source of information. I do think it’s important to note that the aforementioned study only looked at psychology journals. So it is possible that the acceptance of silly titles varies by field (An ecologist and a psychologist walk into a bar. Do they both find it equally funny?). I’ll admit that I would rather cite a paper that has a concise and straightforward title than one that seems to be trying too hard to be clever or amusing. Is humor a good tool in communicating serious scientific research? I certainly don’t have the answer but I am interested to know what people think. Perhaps, like everything, there is a time and place for humor in science and some of us are better at it than others.
<a href="http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/climate-cartoon.jpeg"><img decoding="async" width="300" height="199" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1210" src="http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/climate-cartoon-300x199.jpeg" alt="Found through http://skeptikai.com/2012/10/25/the-weapon-of-comedy-why-humour-gets-the-point-across/" srcset="http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/climate-cartoon-300x199.jpeg 300w, http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/climate-cartoon.jpeg 500w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a>
* Pronounced as “ignoble prize” and given annually to “ten unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research”.
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<item>
<title>Cartoon the Classics: Hutchinson (1965) and Pimentel (1961)</title>
<link>http://www.ecoevolab.com/cartoon-the-classics-1/</link>
<comments>http://www.ecoevolab.com/cartoon-the-classics-1/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Erica Holdridge]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Tue, 17 Feb 2015 01:20:59 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Blog Posts]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.ecoevolab.com/?p=1122</guid>
<description><![CDATA[The Ecological Theater and the Evolutionary Play]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[“The Ecological Theater and the Evolutionary Play” (G.E. Hutchinson, 1965)
<a href="http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Hutchinson-cartoon.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300" height="225" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1128" src="http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Hutchinson-cartoon-300x225.jpg" alt="Hutchinson cartoon" srcset="http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Hutchinson-cartoon-300x225.jpg 300w, http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Hutchinson-cartoon-600x450.jpg 600w, http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Hutchinson-cartoon.jpg 720w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a>
Hutchinson (1965) describes ecology as the backdrop against which evolutionary processes play out. In this analogy, ecology can affect evolution, much like the setting of a play can influence the audience’s perception. However, evolution (the “play”) as no affect on ecology (the “theater”).
“Animal Population Regulation by the Genetic Feed-back Mechanism” (D. Pimentel 1961 Am Nat)
<a href="http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Pimentel-cartoon.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300" height="225" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-1129" src="http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Pimentel-cartoon-300x225.jpg" alt="Pimentel cartoon" srcset="http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Pimentel-cartoon-300x225.jpg 300w, http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Pimentel-cartoon-600x450.jpg 600w, http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Pimentel-cartoon.jpg 720w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a>
To stick with this analogy, Pimentel (1961) sees ecology and evolution more as two actors in the same play, interacting dynamically.
 
*The contrast of these two approaches to evolutionary ecology is laid out wonderfully in Reznick 2013 Am Nat. 
**Cartoons by E. Holdridge.
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<item>
<title>Grad School Interviews: The ONE Thing You Need To Know</title>
<link>http://www.ecoevolab.com/grad-school-interviews-the-one-thing-you-need-to-know/</link>
<comments>http://www.ecoevolab.com/grad-school-interviews-the-one-thing-you-need-to-know/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Erica Holdridge]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 13 Feb 2015 05:28:29 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Blog Posts]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Graduate School]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.ecoevolab.com/?p=1111</guid>
<description><![CDATA[You got an interview at the perfect graduate program and you are willing to do whatever it takes to impress them into thinking you’re an outstanding candidate so they will give you an offer. Pause: this is where you should rethink your reasoning….]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[You did it! You decided that you want to pursue a Ph.D., contacted potential advisors, applied to a handful of programs and now you’ve been invited by the program for a visit and interview. To begin, take a step back and celebrate for a second because you jumped over a lot of hurdles to get where you are.
First, you had to <a href="http://www.indiana.edu/~halllab/grad-student-resources.html">figure out if a Ph.D. is really for you</a>. Once that was over, you went through the process of seeking out and contacting potential advisors, which, lets be honest, is downright awkward. Then, a portion of those advisors found some reason to pick you out amongst the dozens of emails they likely get from potential students every year. After that, you went through the process of filling out an application, writing a personal statement and requesting letters of recommendation from people who (you hope) know and like you well enough to tell these programs why they should offer you a spot in their department over any other applicant. Phew!
Initially, you’re excited for a lot of reasons – brilliant faculty, exciting research, new city, beautiful campus, etc. – not to mention, the university is paying for your trip! But as the visit gets closer and closer, you find yourself becoming more nervous than excited. You catch a serious case of <a href="http://www.ecoevolab.com/the-irony-of-impostor-syndrome-everybody-has-it/">impostor syndrome</a> (“As soon as I start talking, they’re going to realize they made a horrible mistake inviting me out for this interview!”). On paper, the program is perfect so you are willing to do whatever it takes to impress them into thinking you’re an outstanding candidate so they will give you an offer. Pause: this is where you should rethink your reasoning….
These potential graduate student visits are kind of like going on a date. It might be cliché, but the most important thing is to be yourself. At the interviewing stage, getting into a program isn’t a matter of being a good student; no more than getting a second date is about being a good or bad person. It’s a matter of being the right fit for them and you. So if you take the approach that you must impress at all costs, you run the risk of saying things you wouldn’t normally say or that may not be 100% true and, ultimately, ending up in a graduate program that just isn’t a good fit. In the long run, this will create problems for you, your advisor/lab and maybe even the department. I’ve seen a lot of advice on the Internet about how to be successful in graduate school interviews but the only advice that I think really matters is: leave the impostor at home and just be you.
<a href="http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/speed-dating.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="287" height="300" class="alignnone wp-image-1113 size-medium" src="http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/speed-dating-287x300.jpg" alt="" srcset="http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/speed-dating-287x300.jpg 287w, http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/speed-dating.jpg 313w" sizes="(max-width: 287px) 100vw, 287px" /></a>
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<item>
<title>Convergent Evolution of Thought</title>
<link>http://www.ecoevolab.com/convergent-evolution-of-thought/</link>
<comments>http://www.ecoevolab.com/convergent-evolution-of-thought/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Erica Holdridge]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Fri, 29 Aug 2014 17:14:29 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Blog Posts]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.ecoevolab.com/?p=898</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Are big ideas inevitable? ]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[A few weeks ago, I considered the power of <a href="http://www.ecoevolab.com/two-heads-are-better-than-one/">collaboration in science</a>. We’re all familiar with the idea that “two heads are better than one” and, to a certain point, even more are even better. But a more interesting interaction of scientific minds has caught my attention recently. More often than you might expect, great ideas come about independently and almost simultaneously.
There are a TON of examples in biology!
<ul>
<li>Alfred Lotka and Vito Volterra</li>
<li>Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace</li>
<li>G.H. Hardy and Wilhelm Weinberg</li>
</ul>
Sometimes they even come about in threes!
<ul>
<li>J. Mark Baldwin, Lloyd Morgan and H.F. Osborn</li>
<li>Friedrich Traugott Kutzing, Charles Cagniard-Latour and Theodor Schwann</li>
</ul>
There seems to be the general belief that big ideas come from brilliant minds. However, the fact that independent derivation of great ideas is fairly common might hint at another mechanism. Maybe the big ideas are already “out there”, floating around as part of the climate of thought for that time. The brilliant minds are just so in tune with that climate that they pick up on the big ideas. This would suggest that these field-shaping discoveries, paradigm shifting theories and groundbreaking papers are eminent and would come to fruition no matter what. If it weren’t Darwin, natural selection would have eventually been proposed by someone else (Wallace or maybe even another person entirely).
Of course, this is not to take any credit from the brilliance of these ideas or the people who present them. It takes a creative and insightful mind to thoroughly develop and provide support for a complex idea like natural selection. Ultimately though, the credit may go to the person who captures the idea the fastest.
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</item>
<item>
<title>Two Heads Are Better Than One</title>
<link>http://www.ecoevolab.com/two-heads-are-better-than-one/</link>
<comments>http://www.ecoevolab.com/two-heads-are-better-than-one/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Erica Holdridge]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Wed, 30 Jul 2014 20:43:46 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Blog Posts]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.ecoevolab.com/?p=868</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Watson and Crick, Lennon and McCartney, peanut butter and jelly! Do all great things come in pairs?]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[I recently heard a <a href="http://www.npr.org/2014/07/24/334903925/when-it-comes-to-creativity-are-two-heads-better-than-one">review</a> for a new book by author Joshua Wolf Shenk called Powers of Two. The author not only debunks the “myth of the lone genius” but also makes a case that two is the magic number when it comes to creative collaboration. The idea has a certain intellectual romance to it, which led me to explore a few examples of great pairs in science.
 
<ol>
<li>Marie & Pierre Curie Not only a great pair, but also a great couple in science. It was largely due to Marie’s persuasion that Pierre ever submitted his doctoral thesis. In turn, he arranged for her first research position in the School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry in Paris where he worked. Pierre also engineered the electrometer Marie used for her experiments and eventually abandoned his own research interests to join her work, leading to their discovery of radium, a great body of work on radioactivity and a Nobel Prize.</li>
</ol>
 
<ol start="2">
<li>Peter & Rosemary Grant Another great pair and couple in biology, the Grants are known for their long-term research on Darwin’s finches in the Galapagos. Their research has demonstrated evolution under natural selection and made major contributions to our understanding of genetic diversity and the mechanisms behind speciation. Both hold emeritus positions at Princeton University.</li>
</ol>
 
<ol start="3">
<li>Michaelis & Menten Best known for their namesake model used to describe enzyme kinetics. Maud Menten joined Leonor Michaelis in Berlin where they collaborated on the investigation of enzyme activity. In 1913, they published what is now a classic paper in biochemistry describing the relationship between enzyme-substrate concentration and the rate of reaction as predicted by the Michaelis-Menten equation.</li>
</ol>
 
<ol start="4">
<li>Watson & Crick…. & Wilkins & Franklin Although students learn it in high school biology as such, admittedly this shouldn’t be classified as a “pair”. Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin were working on the structure of DNA at the same time as James Watson and Francis Crick. Using x-ray diffraction, Franklin was able to deduce that DNA takes on a helical shape but wanted to wait to make her findings public until she had more proof. Wilkins shared her findings with Watson and Crick, who then added the idea of complementary strands and incorporated Chargaff’s discovery of base pairing to assemble the double helical DNA model we all know today.</li>
</ol>
 
This leads me to the more likely possibility that collaboration in any number can be extremely beneficial. A 2005 <a href="http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/55/5/438.full">BioScience paper</a> found a positive correlation between the number of authors on a publication and its citation rate. A shining example of this is Darwin’s seemingly endless number of correspondences throughout his career. Shenk’s book also notes that creative power can be fueled not just by collaboration but also competition. In this scenario, rivalry between two people (or two groups) can provide the momentum to do something bigger and better than the other. For example, a long-standing debate between R.A. Fisher and Sewall Wright resulted in massive contributions to evolutionary theory and the foundation of the field of theoretical population genetics. Ultimately, it does seem to be the case that truly great ideas rarely develop in isolation.
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<title>Does One Bad Paper Spoil the Bunch?</title>
<link>http://www.ecoevolab.com/does-one-bad-paper-spoil-the-bunch/</link>
<comments>http://www.ecoevolab.com/does-one-bad-paper-spoil-the-bunch/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Erica Holdridge]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Wed, 09 Jul 2014 20:37:24 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Blog Posts]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.ecoevolab.com/?p=849</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Does a small percentage of papers that a retracted for misconduct reduce public trust in science as a whole? ]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[Far too often, I read about yet another highly publicized scientific paper that has been retracted due to research misconduct. Most recently, it was a <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/07/02/stem-cell-retraction/12024779/">paper published in Nature</a> that proposed a simple, too-good-to-be-true method for producing stem cells, referred to as stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency (STAP). The paper was retracted because, to put it simply, it appears that some of the figures were manipulated. Perhaps even worse is that it sounds almost exactly like a number of other stories I’ve heard.
My mouse hovers over the “Share” button for a few seconds but I always decide against it. I can’t bring myself to show that ugly side of science to my friends and family. I’m sure they’ve seen it already because this story is all over, but I just don’t want to be the one to show it to them. Even writing this right now is extremely difficult for me. Still, sweeping these issues under the rug does nothing to quiet the question in my mind: Does the misconduct of a few feed public mistrust in science as a whole?
It’s unfortunate but it does seem like every retraction and every report of egregious misconduct adds to public mistrust in scientific research. Of course, on the flip side, there are times where retractions of this nature have reinforced science in the face of skepticism. The case of <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/01/05/autism.vaccines/">Andrew Wakefield’s falsified work</a> on the connection between autism and the MMR vaccine (or lack there of) immediately comes to mind. Climate change and evolution are two areas where a notable portion of the public takes issue with the validity of scientific support. Surprisingly, the <a href="http://www.people-press.org/2009/07/09/public-praises-science-scientists-fault-public-media/">Pew Research Center</a> found that disbelief in evolution and climate change does not necessarily translate to a negative attitude toward science and scientists.
<div id="attachment_850" class="wp-caption aligncenter" ><a href="http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Screen-Shot-2014-07-09-at-1.11.50-PM.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300" height="196" class="wp-image-850 size-medium" src="http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Screen-Shot-2014-07-09-at-1.11.50-PM-300x196.png" alt="Screen Shot 2014-07-09 at 1.11.50 PM" srcset="http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Screen-Shot-2014-07-09-at-1.11.50-PM-300x196.png 300w, http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Screen-Shot-2014-07-09-at-1.11.50-PM.png 458w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a>Table from Pew Research Center’s “Public Praises Science; Scientists Fault Public, Media”</div>
I should note that only a relatively small percentage of peer-reviewed papers are retracted – about 0.02%, according to <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111005/full/478026a.html">Van Noorden (2011)</a>. Of that, an even smaller percentage can be attributed to misconduct. Many retractions are the result of honest mistakes; perhaps a more mild offense than deliberate misconduct but certainly damaging in its own right. In fact, it’s possible that both kinds of retractions produce the same result when it comes to scientific credibility, either due to lack of distinction between the two in the media or because, ultimately, both produce the same ends (miscommunication of information) through different means. It also seems that cases of misconduct tend to get more media attention simply because it makes a better story than an honest mistake.
To end on a more positive note, the vast majority scientists seek to counter this mistrust with public outreach in many forms. In fact, I’m doing it right now. Blogging has become a recent favorite of scientists as an avenue for communicating their work. Interestingly, it was a <a href="http://www.ipscell.com/stap-new-data/">blog by stem cell researcher Paul Knoepfler</a> where many shared their attempts to recreate STAP cells that significantly contributed to the ultimate retraction of the paper mentioned earlier. This week, Casey shared an ECOLOG posting with the lab that advertised a new website, <a href="http://www.publiscize.com/">Publiscize</a>, that helps scientists communicate their research to laypersons. Not to mention things like open houses, science cafes, <a href="http://www.ecoevolab.com/crowdfunding1/">crowdfunding</a>, <a href="http://datanuggets.org/">work with K-12 schools</a> and many other ways of showing off the beautiful side of science. All I can hope is that this kind of positive outreach is enough to replace the trust that is lost with interest.
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<title>Make Room for Bayes in Your Statistical Toolbox</title>
<link>http://www.ecoevolab.com/make-room-for-bayes-in-your-statistical-toolbox/</link>
<comments>http://www.ecoevolab.com/make-room-for-bayes-in-your-statistical-toolbox/#respond</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Erica Holdridge]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Wed, 18 Jun 2014 21:49:40 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Blog Posts]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Bayesian]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[models]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[statistics]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.ecoevolab.com/?p=823</guid>
<description><![CDATA[This isn’t middle school gym class and you don’t have to pick sides. Be a Bayesian or a frequentist as it suits your data.]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[Many ecologists (and particularly graduate students) have a vague concept of Bayesian statistics, probably based on some cursory information from an intro stats course. Most know that they differ from frequentist methods in the way they approach probability theory and incorporate some kind of “prior knowledge” with likelihood to produce a posterior probability distribution. Although the philosophical differences are not trivial and are the selling point of Bayesian inference for some, I will not delve into them too much. What I will say is that most Bayesian models will use “uninformative priors”, in which case, the result is essentially identical to the maximum likelihood estimates for the same model. So why bother with Bayesian statistics if you can use maximum likelihood and get the same answer?
The real beauty of Bayes lies in hierarchical Bayesian models*. In his 2005 paper in Ecology Letters <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2004.00702.x/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=true">“Why environmental scientists are becoming Bayesians”</a>, Jim Clark provides some great examples of just how useful these models can be. For starters, they allow for the addition of stochastic factors that help to better describe the variability in our data. This isn’t the kind of variability that will decrease with sampling size but real, biologically meaningful variability that that often has complex relationships and is difficult to quantify – think differences between individuals or ecologically relevant time points. Clark gives the example of the nonlinear relationship between individual tree fecundity and maturation/senescence, which is not well represented by counts of seeds in seed traps.
<div id="attachment_826" class="wp-caption alignnone" ><a href="http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Screen-Shot-2014-06-16-at-6.02.38-PM.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300" height="124" class="wp-image-826 size-medium" src="http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Screen-Shot-2014-06-16-at-6.02.38-PM-300x124.png" alt="Screen Shot 2014-06-16 at 6.02.38 PM" srcset="http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Screen-Shot-2014-06-16-at-6.02.38-PM-300x124.png 300w, http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Screen-Shot-2014-06-16-at-6.02.38-PM-600x249.png 600w, http://www.ecoevolab.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Screen-Shot-2014-06-16-at-6.02.38-PM.png 828w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a>Figure from Clark (2005) Ecology Letters</div>
Next, hierarchical Bayes differs from classical mixed modeling in that it can more easily deal with complex hierarchical problems. What is a hindrance for more simple models is what allows Bayes to shine with the more complex – it’s reliance on computation power, namely MCMC algorithms. Models that would be too complex to even attempt using traditional methods become possible with hierarchical Bayes.
Finally, ecologists often wish to make predictions based on their models but doing this in a quantitative manner can be a struggle. There seems to be a trade off between simple models that have a lot of predictive power and complex models that do a better job of describing natural processes. This is where hierarchical Bayes truly shines, allowing for predictive power even with complex models. In essence, this is because we’re building the natural structure of the system’s processes into the model. So instead of poking a domino and seeing what happens at the other end of the chain, we are aware of every domino in between and we can predict how each will affect the next.
This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to hierarchical Bayes and there is obviously much more to it than I have room for here. There are boundless ways in which the hierarchical Bayesian framework could be useful to ecologists and I think everyone should at least be aware of its utility. Bayesian stats shouldn’t be viewed as an alternative to classical techniques but another, quite useful tool to be pulled from our toolbox in the right situation.
*A special thanks to <a href="http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~tm9/">Tom Miller of Rice University</a> and <a href="http://www.kbs.msu.edu/education/summer-courses/elme">Kellogg Biological Station’s ELME program</a> for opening my eyes to how useful hierarchical Bayesian models can be!
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</item>
<item>
<title>Research Away from Home</title>
<link>http://www.ecoevolab.com/research-away-from-home/</link>
<comments>http://www.ecoevolab.com/research-away-from-home/#comments</comments>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Erica Holdridge]]></dc:creator>
<pubDate>Wed, 28 May 2014 16:38:53 +0000</pubDate>
<category><![CDATA[Blog Posts]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Featured]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Field Work]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[planning]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[travel]]></category>
<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.ecoevolab.com/?p=805</guid>
<description><![CDATA[There is no foolproof way of going about an out-of-town research trip, but some planning and preparedness can certainly help!]]></description>
<content:encoded><![CDATA[Shampoo, toothbrush, deodorant…Falcon tubes? Preparing for a solo out-of-town research trip is a new experience for me. I’m the first to admit that I have the memory of a goldfish when it comes to packing. I am all too familiar with that gut-wrenching “I’m definitely forgetting something” feeling. However, forgetting your toothbrush pales in comparison to forgetting an essential piece of equipment for your field research. With my first long-distance research trip under my belt, I thought others might find it helpful if I shared a few things I learned during this experience.
It’s the oldest trick in the book and seems like such a simple idea but make a list of all the things you need to bring – it really does work! Making a packing list forces you to sit down and really think about what you’re going to need. For an even better list, don’t just write down what you need but also the quantity of each thing you will need.
On a similar note, bring more than you think you’ll need. If you believe you might need something at some point, just bring it. Worst case scenario, you wasted a little bit of suitcase space but it’s better than getting to your field site and realizing you wish you had something you left at home. Likewise, bring a larger quantity of items than you anticipate your work will require. If you plan to use 50 Falcon tubes, bring 60 or 70 or even 100 if you can spare the room in your bag. We all know from experience that these things tend to be used a lot faster than you expect or sometimes end up getting lost in the shuffle. Having a little bit of a buffer is a good bet hedging strategy.
A great suggestion from my advisor: write a note explaining to TSA why I have 75 plastic tubes full of mysterious liquid along with a bunch of odd looking filters and syringes. Surprisingly, most other researchers I talked to say they travel for work with unusual things fairly often and have never had a problem. Still, I think it’s better to be safe and leave a note on the top of your bag just in case.
Finally, having a home base at your destination is always a plus when you can arrange one. I was lucky enough to have <a href="http://www.bio.fsu.edu/~miller/HOMEPAGE/">Tom Miller’s lab</a> at Florida State University adopt me for a few days. Not only did they allow me to use their space and large equipment I couldn’t possibly travel with, but they also provided me with helpful advice and great company!
Does preparing for these trips ever get any easier?! That I don’t know the answer to. Perhaps one of you old pros could fill us in! If I had to guess, I would say not completely but with some planning and preparedness it might become a little less stressful. At least… I hope it does.
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