Almost 10 years ago, I wrote a post about writing a response to reviewer comments. It focused on the overall structure of a response to reviewers, with suggestions on what to include and how to address things like if reviewers disagree. That post – which I think is still relevant – focused on the response itself. In this post, I want to focus more on my process for actually writing the response to reviewers and making the revisions. As I said in the earlier post, I’ve generally had the good fortune of responding to reviews that are thoughtful and constructive. Even with that, it can be…. an em ..read more

Also this week: Leibniz vs. public health, fake superconductivity, Jeremy’s favorite eclipse image, and more. From Jeremy: Primatologist Frans de Waal, who emphasized continuities in intelligence and behavior between human and non-human primates, has passed away. Link goes to an obituary in Nature. Here’s Nature’s news article, summarizing the confidential University of Rochester report on how Ranga Dias faked a blockbuster result on room-temperature superconductivity. The report came out in the course of Dias’ lawsuit against the university in an attempt to get his job back. Getting to the bo ..read more

Even our regular readers often don’t read the comments on our posts. But if you don’t read the comments, you’re really missing out. Not just on insightful discussions of the posts, but also on interesting side conversations, funny jokes, and more. Our commenters are the best! So, to encourage you to read the comments, here’s the first of an occasional series of posts linking to some highlights from our recent comment threads. harisridhar points us to the fascinating story of Carel Ten Cate’s replication of Niko Tinbergen’s classic animal behavior experiments. Bethann Garramon Merkle (‘CommNatu ..read more

Recently, I polled y’all on whether ecological studies have improved over time in one specific, quite basic respect: sample size. Here are the poll results, along with the answer. Both of which are given away in the post title: most poll respondents think that sample sizes have increased over time in ecology. Most poll respondents are wrong. (Sorry most poll respondents!) Poll results We got 101 responses; thanks to everyone who responded! 68% of respondents guessed that ecological sample sizes have increased over time, vs. 32% who guessed that they haven’t (“not sure” wasn’t an option). I als ..read more

Shorter title, that contravenes Betteridge’s Law: Is spurring research interest in topic X like Daffy Duck’s magic trick? Yes, of course you’re going to have to read on to find out what I mean by that! *** A few years ago, I asked whether publication of a meta-analysis (or really, any review paper) encourages or discourages publication of further studies on the topic. One could imagine it going either way. On the one hand, authors of meta-analyses and other review papers often pitch their work as identifying important gaps in the literature, that ought to be filled by future research. And in ..read more

Also this week: remembering Estella Bergere Leopold, testing for editor bias at EEB journals, how to be more like Keynes, the most powerful source of energy in the universe, inevasive species, what Jeremy wants for his birthday, and more. From Jeremy: Pioneering paleobotanist Estella Bergere Leopold has passed away. She was 97. Link goes to a Nature obituary. I’m a bit late to this. Writing in Functional Ecology, Srivastava et al. test for editor bias by reanalyzing data from a recent randomized double blind review experiment involving several EEB journals. Very crisp and clearly written. Some ..read more

Recently, we polled y’all on sending thank you notes after a campus interview for a faculty position. Perhaps because this is not a very important issue in the grand scheme of things, it seems to attract a lot of anxious discussion among faculty job seekers. (Have a browse through ecoevojobs.net if you don’t believe me…) Faculty job seekers understandably are very keen to do everything right when it comes to campus interviews. But when it comes to whether or not to send thank you notes after a campus interview, it’s not obvious that there even is a “right” thing to do. Not even if you operatio ..read more

Also this week: interviewing your undergraduate students, the latest on serial fraudsters in EEB, the coming enshittification of Canadian universities, combatting perfectionism and imposter syndrome, and more. From Jeremy: Another Expression of Concern for former marine ecologist Danielle Dixson, who faked the data in multiple high-profile papers. My understanding is that the University of Delaware terminated Dixson’s employment; she’s no longer listed among their faculty. Sticking with serial fraudsters in EEB: Guelph botanist Steven Newmaster has had a second paper retracted. See here for ba ..read more

One of the things we’re planning on doing with Dynamic Ecology 2.0 is revisiting some old posts that are still relevant, but possibly with some updating. This is one of those posts! The original post was a guest post by Catherine Searle, who at the time was just finishing up a postdoc and moving to a faculty position at Purdue. She’s now an Associate Professor! Being able to give a short, concise overview of your research is super useful and a skill that pretty much all of us could use some more practice with. Cat’s old post is still very relevant, so I encourage you to click through to read h ..read more

Jeremy made a compelling case that the typical scientist produces modest contributions to the field but that is enough (it is still leaving the world better than we found it). But several commentors, while acknowledging that in a field with thousands of scientists most of us aren’t going to do more than Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, still felt that a vision of science that doesn’t also include some big advances was unsatisfying (me among them). So the question emerges, are there big advances happening in ecology right now? or will there be in the immediate future? Obviously this is a somewhat ..read more