Also this week: Lego vs. Alan Turing, how can you tell if your scientific field is making progress, tadpoles for the win, debating the Living Planet Index, and more.
From Jeremy:
Help Stephen Heard and Bethann Garramon Merkle decide what to call their forthcoming book on “helping students write.” They’re polling readers on candidate titles; link goes to a blog post that summarizes the book and includes the poll. I plan to buy a copy when it comes out. You should as well, but only if you also buy two copies of my forthcoming book from the same publisher, because I want to outsell Steve and Bethann. #friendlycompetition 🙂 In semi-seriousness, Steve and Bethann’s book has a much broader target audience than mine does, and so is likely to outsell mine. In total non-seriousness: WHICH WILL MAKE MY UPSET VICTORY ALL THE SWEETER. 🙂 In the comments, please leave your suggestions as to a friendly wager Steve, Bethann, and I should make over our book sales. 🙂 I’m thinking of the kind of wager that city mayors in the US make when their cities’ football teams play in the SuperBowl. Wagers like “If our team loses, I’ll send you a case of the local food delicacy for which our city is famous. If our team wins, you have to wear our team’s jersey during your next tv interview.”
Longtime readers will recall that, back in 2017, Meghan was involved in setting up the EEB Mentor Match program. The program is now run by the Diversity Committee of the American Society of Naturalists. The program provides support to grad school applicants in the US with their applications for grad programs and fellowships. Signup forms for both mentors and mentees, and more information about why the program exists and how it works, can be found at this link. The EEB Mentor Match organizers are especially keen to line up mentors in all areas of ecology and evolution. So if you are familiar with the US grad school system in EEB, please do sign up as a volunteer mentor!
The annual Living Planet Index was released this week. The headlines are the same as every year: alarming. Should they be? Here’s Brian’s 2020 post criticizing the LPI for being excessively alarmist. Here’s Hebert & Gravel 2023 Ecology on the problems that uncertainty propagation creates for the LPI. Here’s our recent extensive Friday linkfest discussion of other recent papers critiquing (or, depending on your point of view, refining) the LPI.
How would we know if psychology was making progress? Typically excellent Adam Mastroianni piece. I think the argument generalizes to ecology, especially the analogy to alchemy. Related old post from Brian.
Lego Turing machine.
Canadian tadpoles for the win, Wildlife Photographer of the Year edition.
Physics Nobel Prize alignment chart. 🙂
The correct reading of Lord of the Rings. 🙂
Coming up:
Is ecology ready for big code and the errors it hides? (Brian)
The ecological literature grows by at least 5.7% per year. What drives that growth? (Jeremy)