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The Dead of Winter | Dynamic Ecology
I link to this every year. Click the link below to read a lovely piece by Kieran Healy, from which the quoted passage is drawn. It's about Newgrange, an Irish megalithic tomb, but also about so much more. A society—a civilization, if you like—is a hard thing to hold together. If you live in an…
This Friday linkfest is structured to improve rather than degrade learning | Dynamic Ecology
This week: AI teaching assistant, the limits of data, The Sound of Music nominalism, and more. C. Thi Nguyen on the limits of data. There are many pieces on this topic, but this is a particularly good example of the type. Would probably be good reading material for undergrads in quantitative courses. Having said that,…
For the first time, we have non-human, non-intelligent Friday linkfests, that can generatively enact ritual at high speed and industrial scale | Dynamic Ecology
This week: the world's best blogger retires, the LLM spreadsheet revolution, Comedy Wildlife Photography awards, and more. Very good Henry Farrell post on how LLMs are indeed going to revolutionize human life--by revolutionizing the management of large organizations. They'll be revolutionary in the same boring-but-yet-vitally-important ways that filing cabinets, spreadsheets, and 1960s mainframe computers were…
How does your college/university teach Intro Bio? | Dynamic Ecology
Here at Michigan, we have three courses as part of our introductory biology (non-)sequence: a lecture course focused on EEB, a lecture course focused on molecular, cell, and developmental biology, and a lab course that covers both EEB and MCDB. The reason I call it a (non-)sequence is because the lecture courses can be taken…
This Friday linkfest is so bourgeois | Dynamic Ecology
Feeling the urge to freshen things up a bit around the ol' blog. I'm starting small: I've decided to shamelessly steal Matt Levine's schtick when it comes to linkfest post titles. :-) You'll have to read all the linkfest items to find out which one the title refers to. :-) This week: the illusion illusion,…
As a prof, why did you take on an administrative or leadership role? How did it go? What lessons did you learn? Please share your stories! | Dynamic Ecology
Over the years, this blog has done a fair number of advice posts aimed primarily at graduate students and postdocs. Whether about candidacy exams, or the ecology faculty job market, or whatever. We've done many fewer advice posts aimed at mid-career and senior faculty. We'd like to change that, not least because a decent fraction…
Friday links: just make it stop (scientific research edition), and more | Dynamic Ecology
Also this week: scientific content on social media has been nerfed, wizards vs. prophets, memes vs. reproducibility, and more. I'm a bit late to this, but here's Dorothy Bishop's excellent post on what it takes to make a line of scientific research stop. Totally agree as to a part of the problem: when a scientific…
The subject areas of EEB jobs haven’t really changed over the past 10 years | Dynamic Ecology
Way back when I was first on the EEB faculty job market, I used to notice trends in the subject areas of ecology faculty jobs. I especially tended to notice trends relevant to me personally. I'd think to myself stuff like, "Hooray, seems like it's a good year for community ecology jobs compared to last…
Friday links: 1986 called, it wants its data mining Easter egg back, and more | Dynamic Ecology
Also this week: changing gender balance of US undergrads in math-intensive majors, brown bears vs. insurance fraud, LLMs vs. electricity demand, LLMs vs. signalling theory, against writing advice, the reverse population bomb, and more. Writing in Science, Cimpian and King use a giant near-census dataset to show that the gender balance of physics, engineering, and…
The (political?) geography of EEB job applications | Dynamic Ecology
A few years ago, I compiled data on the number of applicants for tenure-track ecology faculty positions in North America, and had some fun building an exploratory statistical model that predicted which jobs would get more applications. I did this just out of curiosity. The answer was basically that jobs at R1 unis, jobs in…
Friday links: statistical inference vs. bridges, AI vs. time wasting, and more | Dynamic Ecology
Also this week: the phylogenetics of geometry, and more. Only a few links this week, but the average quality is higher than usual. Jessica Hullman points us to an old paper by Tukey and Cornfield on "the two spans of statistical inference." This is a very good metaphor for the role of statistics in solving…
Did the pandemic reduce the number of EEB faculty job seekers? Or reduce the number of faculty positions a typical job seeker applies for? Or both? Or what? | Dynamic Ecology
I'm not sure, but I think it's both? Here's a bit of data, tell me what you think. I went back to the ecoevojobs.net spreadsheets from past job years for which the spreadsheet is still in good shape. That turned out to be every year from 2018-19 to 2023-24. I downloaded the counts of number…
Friday links: in case you’re just joining us (#pruittdata edition), ChatGPT vs. Nickleback, and more | Dynamic Ecology
Also this week: climate change and Seneca Falls, book reviews galore, enshittification as a strategy, and more. Stephen Heard on how ChatGPT has become Nickleback. Great post, because it brings data to the party, not just a spot-on analogy. Athene Donald passes on the story of Eunice Foote, an unsung pioneer of both women's suffrage…
As an ecology faculty job applicant, is it worth applying for a position in the same department that didn’t hire you last year? | Dynamic Ecology
Betteridge's Law of Headlines violation! Also, note that this post repeats some things I said in passing in a recent post on a related topic. But the question comes up often enough on ecoevojobs.net that I decided it was worth a standalone post. If you're seeking a tenure-track faculty position in ecology in North America,…
No one has ever torn down a scientific Tower of Babel by writing a review paper (so are you sure you should bother trying?) | Dynamic Ecology
In many areas of ecology, key terms are either only vaguely defined, and/or are used to mean different things by different authors. Sometimes, there are also different terms that mean the same thing, accompanied by disagreement over which of those terms should be used. Terminology in many areas of ecology is a metaphorical Tower of…
Let’s remember some ecology blogs | Dynamic Ecology
I'm a baseball fan, so I read a lot of baseball blogs. There's a kind of blog post about men's sports called "let's remembers some guys." They're posts about now-retired players who played within the lifetimes of older readers. Those players were good players, but they aren't so super-famous that every fan will remember them…
Friday links: certainty vs. uncertainty, stupid bugs, and more | Dynamic Ecology
Also this week: tell me again how many continents there are, "pick up the trash that lands in your path," in defense of the (scientific) descendants of Erasmus, and more. More than the usual number of controversial links this week, but I have faith our commenters can handle it. As always, remember not to assume…
What are your favorite scientific book covers? | Dynamic Ecology
I have a book coming out. I have some ideas for the cover, and the marketing folks at UChicago Press will have ideas as well. But I also thought it would be useful to look to other scientific books for inspiration. So: what are your favorite scientific book covers? This one could be a challenging…
What are your favorite campus novels? | Dynamic Ecology
So, what are your favorite campus novels? Novels centered on academics and academia? Here are my suggestions, looking forward to yours. Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis is the classic of the genre. I've read it, I enjoyed it, although of course it's of its time. My personal favorite campus novels--which include some of my favorite…
Friday links: the purpose of statistics, 30 years of notebooks, and more | Dynamic Ecology
Also this week: variance-mean scaling (tennis edition), mean scaling (pumpkin edition), and more From Jeremy: A good post on the history and purpose of statistical null hypothesis testing. Key line: Statisticians and philosophers spend far too much time close-reading Fisher and Neyman and far too little reading Bradford Hill. Statistician and polymath Cosma Shalizi has…
13 ways of looking at my forthcoming book | Dynamic Ecology
My forthcoming book was officially approved for publication by UChicago Press earlier this fall. I just finished revising the text on Oct. 22. So it's definitely starting to feel real! I'm very excited about it, and I hope you are too. The one-sentence elevator pitch for the book is that it's about harnessing diversity of…
As an ecology faculty job applicant in North America, should you ever provide the search committee with additional materials, besides those requested in the ad? | Dynamic Ecology
Betteridge's Law of Headlines applies.* For details that I'm guessing most of you don't need, but that perhaps a few of you might find useful, read on. At the end there's a short postscript on whether it's ever savvy to "read between the lines" of a faculty job ad. As an ecology faculty job applicant,…
Friday links: when to open the black box, don’t fight the power (analysis), and more | Dynamic Ecology
Also this week: analyzing biases in recommendation letters, against political endorsements by scientific journals, and more. From Jeremy: "For the first time, an open application process was used to attract applicants from a wide range of backgrounds. The Chancellor’s Election Committee has considered all applications solely on the specific exclusion criteria set out in the…
The ecological literature grows by at least 5.7% per year. What drives that growth? | Dynamic Ecology
Everybody knows that the scientific literature is growing. Every year, every scientific field sees more papers published than the previous year. But exactly how fast is the ecological literature growing? Can we put some numbers on it? Here's a quick first pass that I did last week to procrastinate on work.* I searched Web of…
Is ecology ready for big code and the errors they hide? | Dynamic Ecology
I recently was informed that a paper in a glossy big name journal that I had paid attention to was retracted due to a coding error. I'm not going to name the paper because that is not the point. Quite the opposite - I commend authors who do the right thing, because mistakes happen to…
Friday links: EEB Mentor Match, book title poll (but not for Jeremy’s book), and more | Dynamic Ecology
Also this week: Lego vs. Alan Turing, how can you tell if your scientific field is making progress, tadpoles for the win, debating the Living Planet Index, and more. From Jeremy: Help Stephen Heard and Bethann Garramon Merkle decide what to call their forthcoming book on "helping students write." They're polling readers on candidate titles;…
Tenure-track asst. professor position in data-driven modelling for ecology and water conservation, University of Calgary | Dynamic Ecology
The Faculty of Science at the University of Calgary is hiring an Assistant Professor in data-driven modelling for ecology and water conservation. Ad here. Application deadline is Dec. 31, 2024. Preference will be given to candidates with a primary focus and interest centered around the modelling of aquatic ecosystems and/or water usage, with an eye…
The cybernetic roots of (some important bits of) ecology | Dynamic Ecology
I recently read Dan Davies' new book The Unaccountability Machine (a brief accessible summary of which is here.) Among other things, it's a potted history of, and attempt to revive interest in, management cybernetics. Briefly, cybernetics, as developed by Stafford Beer and others in the decades after WW II, was a set of ideas about…
Friday links: the hurdle model of great bloggers, and more (UPDATED) | Dynamic Ecology
Also this week: spongy floors, TikTok scicomm, the moral panic over LLMs, and more. From Jeremy: Why aren't there more Matt Levines? (Matt Levine being the author of finance newsletter Money Stuff.) Basically meaning, why aren't there more people who blog often and well, to a broad audience, about a non-political industry or niche? The…
As a ecology faculty job seeker, don’t apply only to the jobs you think you’re “competitive” for | Dynamic Ecology
It occurs to me that there might be a common thread tying together various advice posts I've written about the ecology faculty job market in North America. In the past I've advised applicants not to worry that the job might have, or be intended for, an internal candidate. I've advised applicants not to worry if…
Preregistration comes of age (in the worst way possible) | Dynamic Ecology
Protzko et al. 2023 Nat Hum Behav was a high-profile preregistered paper on replicability in psychology. The headline result was a demonstration that you can get replicable results in psychology by using rigorous practices: pre-registering your study design and analysis plan; having a giant sample size; etc. I say it "was" a high-profile paper because…
Friday links: the best ecological novelist you’ve never heard of (?), pandemics vs. preprints, and more | Dynamic Ecology
Also this week: the death of culture (?), the worst scientific misconduct case ever (?), and more. From Jeremy: One silver lining about the Pruitt case was that none of Pruitt's research had any applications. Imagine if somebody had, say, faked a career's worth of high-profile research on Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, and been put in…
As an ecology faculty job applicant, can you tell if the search to which you’re applying “failed” last year? And should you care if it did? | Dynamic Ecology
Betteridge's Law of Headlines applies. For the details, read on. A "failed" faculty job search is one that doesn't result in hiring someone who shows up on campus and starts doing the job. In North America, somewhere between 8-25% of tenure-track ecology faculty job searches fail. Sometimes, a failed search will be re-advertised again the…
How to interpret an ecology faculty job ad that says the department is “particularly” interested in candidates in a specific subfield | Dynamic Ecology
Ecology faculty job ads sometimes say that they're open to candidates in some broadly defined field, but that the hiring department is "particularly" interested in candidates from some narrower subfield. Another, similar sort of add will say that the department is interested in hiring in some broad area of ecology, "including but not limited to"…
Friday links: evidence vs. scientific reforms, p-values vs. speed limits, Delft Daphnia, and more | Dynamic Ecology
Also this week: off-label stats, absence of evidence = evidence of absence, and more. From Jeremy: When does absence of evidence constitute evidence of absence? The answer is straightforward, I think, but I still found the illustrative examples interesting. Statistician Daniel Lakens doesn't expect to be convinced by data that scientific reform is working (and…
Computing ponds | Dynamic Ecology
I'm still working my way through Dan Davies' new book, The Unaccountability Machine. In part, the book is a history of business management cybernetics. Today I learned that leading cybernetician Stafford Beer tried to build a computer out of a tank of Daphnia. Here's Beer, quoted by Davies, describing what he called his 'computing pond':…
How to start a blog | Dynamic Ecology
I have some colleagues at UMaine who are thinking about starting a blog (in an allied field of ecology) and, knowing my experience with Dynamic Ecology, they asked for what tips I would pass on. To be honest I was surprised how few tips I had. I like boiling down learned experience into a few…
Friday links: infinite anatomy, taking joke courses seriously, time series guessing game, and more (UPDATEDx2) | Dynamic Ecology
Also this week: Data Colada vs. Francesca Gino, CW Mills vs. blogs, Stephen Heard vs. your graduate students, remembering the guy who was in the thing, and more. Lots of good stuff this week! From Jeremy: Ooh, this is both fun and instructive: online time series guessing game. Each day, it shows you a time…
Citation metrics as accountability sinks | Dynamic Ecology
I just started Dan Davies' new book, The Unaccountability Machine. His last book, on financial fraud, was both interesting in its own right and had surprising lessons for academic scientists. So I'm hoping for the same from Davies' new book, and so far it's satisfying my hopes. Right in the first chapter, there's an interesting…
Highlights from recent comment threads | Dynamic Ecology
Meghan, Brian, and I remain too busy to crank out lots of meaty posts right now. So why not check out some highlights from recent comment threads? Our commenters are the best. :-) JC Cahill suggests that the ESA meeting has become boring because ecology as a field has become boring, and that the field…