Also this week: Philip Ball interview, game of telephone (biodiversity and Indigenous lands edition), Dynamic Ecology vs.. LinkedIn, Jeremy attempts to dispel a false but amusing rumor, and more.
From Jeremy:
No, 80% of the world’s biodiversity is not found on Indigenous territories. A little while back Meghan linked to another example of this sort of claim. “Game of telephone” claims, that get widely repeated (and often garbled or exaggerated), even though the original source is unreliable or even nonexistent. Another example is the claim that bacterial cells in or on the human body outnumber human cells 10:1.
Audio, video, and transcript of Tyler Cowen’s long, wide-ranging interview with science writer Philip Ball. Interesting throughout, even though I disagree with a few bits of it (e.g., I don’t think pressure to publish is an important systemic cause of scientific misconduct, at least not in North America, Europe, Australia, or New Zealand.) Here’s the summary of the interview, to encourage you to click through:
Tyler and Philip discuss how well scientists have stood up to power historically, the problematic pressures scientists feel within academia today, artificial wombs and the fertility crisis, the price of invisibility, the terrifying nature of outer space and Gothic cathedrals, the role Christianity played in the Scientific Revolution, what current myths may stick around forever, whether cells can be thought of as doing computation, the limitations of The Selfish Gene, whether the free energy principle can be usefully applied, the problem of microplastics gathering in testicles and other places, progress in science, his favorite science fiction, how to follow in his footsteps, and more.
Speaking of Philip Ball, here’s his review of Richard Dawkins’ new book, The Genetic Book of the Dead. Given that Ball himself just published a book that’s critical of Dawkins’ genes-eye view of biology, you might be surprised that Ball’s review is positive.
You’ve probably heard someone bemoan the fact that people with academic parents are much more likely than the average person to become academics themselves. But the same is true for just about every occupation, and it’s not any more true for academia than it is for any other occupation. So if you want to bemoan the facts that farming, carpentry, plumbing, law, medicine, the federal civil service, school teaching, professional athletics, professional acting, professional music, elected political office, and more all tend to run in families, by all means go ahead. (Aside: I personally wouldn’t bemoan it; my own feelings are mixed.) But it makes no sense to single out academia for criticism here. It makes no sense to single out academia, because the issue isn’t specific to academia. (Disclosure: my parents were not academics.)
Wait, back in 1960 a US federal government report opposed what are now called “soft money” positions (i.e. allowing federal research grants to partly or entirely cover the PI’s salary)? Huh, interesting, I had no idea.
I hear that some social media activity among academic ecologists has moved to LinkedIn? I dunno, that’s just what somebody told me. Anyway, never let it be said that this blog doesn’t move with the times. We now have a LinkedIn sharing button at the bottom of each post. You’re welcome.
And finally, a colleague told me this week that there’s a rumor going around that I’m ecoevojobs.net organizer Anonymous Potato. Which would make me one of history’s cleverer fraudsters if it was true, which it’s not. AP and I both got a laugh out of it, tho. 🙂