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Zombie ideas in ecology: the unimodal diversity-productivity relationship

drupaladmin
21 October 2011
Various people have been begging me to do a post on the humped diversity-productivity relationship as a zombie idea--a widely-believed idea that should be dead, but isn't. And since my motto in blogging is "Give the people what they want!"*, here it is! Grime (1973...

Thoughts on NutNet

drupaladmin
20 October 2011
Nice write-up in Science this week on NutNet ("Nutrient Network"), a huge (68 sites, 12 countries, 6 continents) experiment looking at the effects of nutrient enrichment and mammalian herbivore removal on grassland communities. This ongoing experiment was started six...

New evolution blog

drupaladmin
18 October 2011
Readers interested in evolution will want to check out the new group blog Nothing in Biology Makes Sense (the name is taken from Dobzhansky's famous remark that nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution). The contributors are a mixture of experienced...

Zombie ideas in ecology: the t-shirt

drupaladmin
18 October 2011
Wonder if I've jumped the shark with the whole zombie ideas thing...Nah! ;-)

More resources on Bayesian vs. frequentist statistics

drupaladmin
14 October 2011
Deborah Mayo and colleagues have just edited a special issue of Rationality, Markets, and Morals featuring the latest thinking on philosophy of statistics and its links to statistical practice. It's open access and highly recommended (not all the articles are posted...

Ecological and evolutionary movies

drupaladmin
12 October 2011
What are your favorite movies with ecological or evolutionary themes? Fiction, not documentaries. There are a lot of films with conservation or environmentalist themes (think Wall-E or FernGully: The Last Rainforest ), and lots of sci-fi that's loosely about "evolution...

Frequentist vs. Bayesian statistics: resources to help you choose (UPDATED)

drupaladmin
11 October 2011
There are two dominant approaches to statistics. Here, I explain why you need to choose one or the other, and link to resources to help you make your choice. Most ecologists use the frequentist approach. This approach focuses on P(D|H), the probability of the data,...

I am seeking more postdoc applicants (from certain countries)

drupaladmin
6 October 2011
I am seeking applicants for the Government of Canada Post-Doctoral Research Fellowships , and the Canadian Commonwealth Post-Doctoral Research Fellowships . The former award is open to citizens of Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Norway, Republic of Korea, Russia...

Wikipedia: zombie slayer (UPDATED)

drupaladmin
6 October 2011
One reason why zombie ideas are hard to kill is that many folks aren't familiar with, or don't understand, the non-zombie alternatives. For instance, I think many ecologists don't fully understand Peter Chesson's idea of the storage effect. They either mistakenly think...

Interesting recent and forthcoming Oikos papers

drupaladmin
6 October 2011
The editor's choice posts are Chris Lortie's domain, but he's very busy right now and so I thought I'd fill the gap by briefly highlighting a few recent and forthcoming Oikos papers that caught my eye. The current issue of Oikos has lots of intriguing-looking stuff. In...

Mathematics vs. natural history

drupaladmin
5 October 2011
A further belated thought on Lindenmayer & Likens' complaint that ecology is losing its culture of place-based, empirical natural history in favor of (among other things) mathematics. My thought was that they're actually more right than they know. In fact,...

Gonzo ideas in ecology?!

drupaladmin
1 October 2011
Someone found the Oikos blog by searching on "gonzo ideas in ecology". Sorry, but the Oikos blog is the home of zombie ideas in ecology . For "gonzo" ideas in ecology, go here .

I am seeking postdoc applicants

drupaladmin
30 September 2011
I am seeking applicants for the Killam postdoctoral fellowship. This is a competitive, 2-year postdoc awarded by the University of Calgary in any academic discipline. The award provides a salary of $45,000 CAD/year, health benefits, and a research/relocation allowance...

Ecology humor by non-ecologists

drupaladmin
29 September 2011
Maybe we should leave ecology (and stats) humor to non-ecologists; they're very good at it .

Papers with funny titles are less cited

drupaladmin
29 September 2011
Continuing with the recent "humor in science" theme, a study of citation rates in psychology concluded that papers with funny titles get fewer citations. This finding reduces my motivation to try to demonstrate chaotic population dynamics in the amoeba Chaos chaos (yes...

More reasons (and various ways) to fund people, not projects

drupaladmin
28 September 2011
Writing in Nature , John Ioannidis shows that I'm not the only one who believes it's time to rethink how most granting agencies fund science . And if you claim that we shouldn't even bother talking about this because too many other things depend on the current system,...

Why I don't care what the biggest question in ecology is

drupaladmin
27 September 2011
Another tidbit from my interview with Sarcozona that got left on the cutting room floor. She asked me what I think is the biggest or most important question in ecology (something like that, anyway). I said that I don't think that way. I think there are lots of...

What's the funniest scientific talk you've ever heard?

drupaladmin
27 September 2011
You don't have to be funny to give a great talk, but if you are, you can give a great and funny talk. So what's the funniest scientific talk you've ever heard? Or the funniest joke or line? Probably the funniest joke I've heard in a talk involved a bit of physical...

Now THAT'S the way to stop a bandwagon!

drupaladmin
26 September 2011
Claude Shannon invented information theory in 1948, and it quickly became a bandwagon; a summary of the relevant history is here . A big bandwagon is probably impossible to stop single-handed--but the editorial by Elias (1958) came pretty close (or so I understand; I'm...

Ecologist interview: Jeremy Fox

drupaladmin
26 September 2011
Sarcozona's interview with yours truly now up . Thanks again to her for offering me the opportunity, it was flattering to be asked and fun to do. In the interview I reveal the ecology paper that most impressed me. Many folks who know me are likely to find my choice...

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