drupaladmin
16 September 2011
In the comments on a previous post, I got into a discussion about the reasons why one might study short-term (i.e. transient) dynamics as opposed to long-term (i.e. asymptotic) dynamics. For instance, one might study a system's short-term response to a single...
drupaladmin
14 September 2011
The bandwagon effect is when people believe or do something just because lots of other people believe or do it, independent of other reasons for believing or doing it (such as empirical evidence or logical argument). Like every science (e.g., astronomy , information...
drupaladmin
12 September 2011
Karl Cottenie has a thoughtful post up responding to my post on the zombie idea of the intermediate disturbance hypothesis . That's what I was hoping to do: get people to stop and think, so I'm really glad Karl did so. I thought I respond here, both because my response...
drupaladmin
7 September 2011
Thanks in large part to the influence of NCEAS , more and more ecologists are involved in collaborative research networks these days. Via email, Jason Fridley asks: are these networks making us too nice to each other? You'll naturally be reluctant to tell your...
drupaladmin
2 September 2011
Students especially should read this post over at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative on inductive vs. deductive approaches to research. It touches on a range of issues, like whether we should seek simplicity or embrace complexity in our models, whether simple models are...
drupaladmin
26 August 2011
Stephen Jay Gould & Richard Lewontin's 1979 article "The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: a critique of the adaptationist programme" is one of the most widely-discussed papers in evolutionary biology over the last 40 years (cited over 3700 times...
drupaladmin
12 August 2011
In addition to putting on free evening ecology talks for the general public, the ESA should also be doing at least one Science Cafe in association with the annual meeting. Science Cafes are events in which (at least in Calgary, where I live) a couple of scientists plus...
drupaladmin
11 August 2011
Sarcozona asks why the ESA meeting doesn't include free lectures aimed at the general public. That's a great question; I think it's really weird that the ESA doesn't do this. The Canadian ecology & evolution meeting included such a lecture back in May (in the...
Following up on Dustin's recent post on bridging ideological divides , and related posts here , here , and here . Wanted to toss out a couple of further thoughts on how to do bridge-building. I like Dustin's idea to invite folks on opposing sides of a divide to write...
Great post over at The EEB and Flow , responding to Lindenmayer and Likens' recent piece claiming that ecology is losing its empirical, place-based "culture" in favor of modeling, meta-analysis, and data mining. A quick glance at recent issues of our leading journals...
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