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A key problem in interpreting observational data (UPDATEDx2)

drupaladmin
18 April 2012
I'm a bit late on this, but I just found this very nice blog post from Bob O'Hara on a little-recognized (at least in ecology) problem in interpreting observational data: "errors in variables". That is, for whatever reason, there's random error in the values of your...

Scroll down for cool new guest post!

drupaladmin
18 April 2012
A new guest post by Ayco Tack and colleagues , discussing the background and implications of their interesting new Oikos paper , is now up. But due to a quirk in the way WordPress schedules posts, the post appears further down the page, inserted between two older posts...

What's the worst you've ever been mis-cited?

drupaladmin
18 April 2012
As an academic, sooner or later you'll be mis-cited. Sometimes badly. More than once as a reviewer I've had to correct authors who were trying to cite my papers (and those of others) in support of a claim that was actually the opposite of what those papers demonstrated...

Yes, IDH zombies are still worth worrying about (UPDATED)

drupaladmin
16 April 2012
Via Twitter, Nate Hough-Snee asks whether zombie ideas about the IDH are actually taught any more, and suggests that the idea that the IDH is still popular is itself a zombie idea. That's a question I've asked myself about another zombie. But I was wrong . And in this...

Why shoot yourself in the foot?

drupaladmin
16 April 2012
******************************* A while back I polled readers to ask what new features they'd like to see on the Oikos blog. One popular choice was guest posts by authors of recent and forthcoming Oikos papers. Ask and ye shall receive: here's the first one! It's by...

Hardest (or weirdest) question you were asked during your candidacy exam?

drupaladmin
16 April 2012
One of my Ph.D. students will be taking his candidacy exam soon. This is the exam, also known as "qualifiers" or "orals" at some universities, that tests whether you have the background knowledge to get a Ph.D. In order for candidacy exams to fulfill their purpose,...

From the archives: defending microcosm experiments

drupaladmin
16 April 2012
A microcosm paper on which I am a co-author just got rejected. Which seems as good an excuse as any to repost this , in which I shoot down all the commonly-voiced blanket objections to microcosms in ecology. I have yet to hear a convincing unconditional objection to...

Charles Darwin is going to be in an animated pirate movie

drupaladmin
13 April 2012
The movie version of The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! comes out later this month. I can't wait!

Everything you ever wanted to know about the Price equation

drupaladmin
12 April 2012
...is covered in this review by the great Steven Frank . I know some readers think of me as 'that Price equation guy'. But what I know (and continue to learn) about the Price equation, I mostly got from reading (and continuing to ponder) Steven Frank's stuff. This one...

The paradigm of 'paradigm shifts' turns 50

drupaladmin
12 April 2012
Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is 50 years old this year. It's one of the most famous books on philosophy of science ever published, and one of the only ones to become well-known (albeit usually in a second-hand way) among scientists themselves...

Zombie ideas about disturbance: a dialogue (UPDATED)

drupaladmin
10 April 2012
UPDATE: Just to be clear, disturbance, and environmental variability more generally, can promote stable coexistence. They just can't do so via the mechanisms that the Professor is trying to teach in this dialogue. I've been clear about this in previous posts , but it...

Advice: why network at conferences?

drupaladmin
9 April 2012
Following up on my post on how to network at scientific conferences, it occurred to me that I left unstated why one might want to "network" at scientific conferences. I guess I thought it was obvious, but perusing the comments over at the original post by Scicurious...

Succeeding in academia: being good vs. being lucky

drupaladmin
9 April 2012
I've written about how I was very lucky to get a tenure-track academic position. To complement that anecdote, here's some discussion from NeuroDojo of an actual data-based study of how luck vs. talent determined the career outcomes for 300 physicists tracked over 20...

From the archives: weak reasons for choosing a research project

drupaladmin
9 April 2012
It's the time of year when many first year graduate students are preparing their research proposals. So now seems like a good time to repost my advice on how not to choose your research project. One point I'd add to that post is that it's always a bad idea to try to...

On science for science's sake

drupaladmin
5 April 2012
In my post on justifying fundamental research , I didn't argue for fundamental research just for its own sake. Not because I don't buy that argument, but just because it's a very hard argument to make well. It can easily come off as "just give me money to do whatever...

Advice: how to network at conferences (UPDATED)

drupaladmin
4 April 2012
Scicurious asks a question about "networking" at scientific conferences: HOW do you DO IT? (emphasis in original) Good question! But I can't tell you the answer, because that would involve teaching you the secret handshake which is taught only to Faculty and which we...

Carnival of Evolution #46

drupaladmin
4 April 2012
The best of last month's evolution blogging, here . Lots of stuff on human evolution and sociality this month.

From the archives: how I almost quit science

drupaladmin
2 April 2012
This might be the best thing I've ever written for the Oikos blog.

Apparently the Canadian government doesn't read the Oikos blog

drupaladmin
30 March 2012
Or if they do, they remain unconvinced by my arguments for the value of fundamental research .

From the archives: are some general ecological concepts TOO general?

drupaladmin
30 March 2012
The most important ideas in ecology are general, broadly-relevant ideas, not narrow, parochial ones. But can you have too much of a good thing? Is there such as thing as an overly general idea? Here's an old post in which I argue that there is, and that the most highly...

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