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There can be few words as poignant as ‘endling’, the name given to the last surviving individual of a species. Tell me you don’t find this image of Benjamin, the last Thylacine, heartbreaking? Or that you weren’t moved by the plight of Lonesome George? And what about Martha, the passenger pigeon? Doesn't her story make you weep at our limitless environmental profligacy? But what links all of these endlings is that we know they were once members of a thriving... Read more
Last week, I had the dubious pleasure of revisiting some work I did over three years ago. Back then, as the Census of Marine Life was in its final stages, I got together with Edward Vanden Berghe, then managing the Ocean Biogoegraphic Information System (OBIS), to investigate the suspicion of CoML senior scientist Ron O’Dor that surveys of marine biodiversity largely overlooked ‘the big blue bit in the middle’ – the deep pelagic ocean, by far the largest habitat on... Read more
Following on from my last post, which contained some pretty precise phrases (albeit not ones of my own), I’ve been reading with interest some good recent posts on the need for precision in scientific writing. On this network Matt Shipman (@ShipLives) wrote about the importance of defining technical terms, using examples like ‘extinction’ which is often used more loosely than its specific and precise meaning allows. Elsewhere, Lewis Spurgin (@LewisSpurgin) channels Orwell in an entertaining (and, I may add, spot-on)... Read more
The most important thing to consider as a PhD student writing up is, of course – I’m sure we’d all agree – what quotes you plan to use in order to show of to your examiners just how cultured and well-read you are. A decade and more after submitting my thesis, I’m still proud of my selections, feeling they tick both boxes. (I will leave it to you to decide whether they also tick a third, ‘pretentious git’.) Having finally,... Read more
The inevitable return to TV this week of Masterchef, after a close season shorter even than the English Premier League, has (for strange reasons that I hope nonetheless will become clear) triggered this response of sorts to Brian McGill’s post on Statistical machismo over at Dynamic Ecology last year. Brian lamented the use by ecologists of the latest ‘must use’ statistical method, which is typically complicated both to perform and (perhaps especially) to interpret, without necessarily having much of an... Read more
What with Brian Cox spending an hour explaining the importance of body size in ecological systems, and then prime time marine conservation courtesy of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s ongoing Fishfight, I feel that my research interests have been rather well covered by TV of late. But whereas I have nothing but praise so far for Cox’s Wonders of Life, I find myself somewhat more ambivalent in my views of Fishfight. On the one hand, it is fantastic to see the issue of... Read more
For once I have a good excuse for not having posted recently: the birth, three weeks ago, of our daughter (Webb2.0, as I like to call her). Now you might expect this joyful event to trigger a cuddly response here, and of course I am chuffed to bits and absolutely besotted with her. However, let’s be honest here: newborn babies are just tremendously irritating. Their constant whinging, at all hours, day and night; their inability to perform even the most... Read more
It seems somehow odd to come over all reflective about Twitter, that most impulsive of online communication channels. But over the year or so that I’ve been using it as a kind of super-effective personalised newsfeed, several cautionary tales have played out in my Twitter feed, which I have here distilled into two key lessons. First: distrust numbers, even – especially – those whose implications sit well with your worldview. And second, reign in your outrage: issues are almost certainly... Read more
As buzz words go, ‘big data’ is right up there just now. It seems that every question you care to think of, in every field from public policy to evolutionary biology, can be hit with the big data hammer. Add an ‘omics’ or two too, and you’re laughing. So I’m slightly ashamed that we decided to call our workshop at the British Ecological Society’s Annual Meeting ‘Big Data for Big Ecology’. But when I say ‘we’ I mean the BES... Read more
Preamble I’ve seen a few posts recently on ‘how to write’ for scientists, from the technical (this on how to write a paper) to the more general (this on how to write clearly). So here’s my contribution: how to write an essay. Now I’m all to well aware that, as Brian McGill, author of the ‘how to write clearly’ piece states, this kind of enterprise inevitably teeters on the edge of hubris (both pieces referred to above fall the on... Read more
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