The New York Times published a stunning piece about what is happening to the Greenland ice sheet. It’s an extraordinary piece of journalism and a really important read. Especially if you live somewhere that’s not too far above sea level.

How to Not Drop Out of Grad School. Like everything else I’ve read in Mary Anning’s Revenge, this is great. It’s about how to take care of yourself, and be a happy and balanced person. Working long hours consistently doesn’t make you more productive.

The Odds That a Panel Would ‘Randomly’ Be All Men Are Astronomical

The Frontiers series of journals is now on Beall’s list as a possible predatory series of journals. Here’s a long take on the how/why/what of this move. Beall’s List of predatory publishers — created and run by a rogue librarian — is a useful service for academia, but I am reluctant to even mention, much less endorse, the List because it’s clear that Beall really doesn’t understand the distinction between predatory publishing and open access publishing. Or, if he does understand the distinction, he is deliberately conflating the two because of his social and political views on the value of the for-profit scientific publishing industry. It’s a hot mess and I hope that someone — Retraction Watch maybe? — can step in to keep tabs on predatory publishers instead of leaving these judgments to a source as specious as Beall.

Tools for Change in STEM identifies the two biggest things that need fixing to increase the representation of women.

Daylight Savings is a dumb idea, I say. Why do we still have it? One reason is that Big Candy sells more candy at Halloween.

The new head of the University of North Carolina system is bad, bad news for higher education: “For those of us who think that universities exist for academic purposes — to teach academic knowledge and skills, to pass on academic virtues, and to sustain academic research — the stakes could not be higher.”

Empirically Testing a Three-Step Intervention to Increase Faculty Gender Diversity in STEM. If your department is hiring and you don’t have the gender ratio you should have, then this looks like a very useful guide to make the change we need. Seriously. If you’re on a search committee, print this out and give it to everybody else. Why? “Searches in the intervention were 6.3 times more likely to make an offer to a woman candidate, and women who were made an offer were 5.8 times more likely to accept the offer from an intervention search.”

A nice explainer why we need diversity in science published in The Hill. So some congressional staffers are now more enlightened. (By the way, why it is that they are “staffers” and not “staff?”) Also, the ideas in here are good for boilerplate for your broader effects section. But if you’re like 89% of people, then your broader impacts aren’t targeting underrepresented groups.

The so-called Freshman 15 might be because of bad sleep patterns.

“Many reviewers reject papers for pseudoreplication, and this occurs more often if they haven’t experienced the issue themselves. The concept of pseudoreplication is being applied too dogmatically and often leads to rejection during review.” Really? I’m not inclined to buy this idea. (First of all, reviewers don’t reject papers, editors do! It might sound like a mere semantic difference but does show a lack of appreciation for how the editorial process works, which is the focus of the article.) How often do papers get seriously dinged because the experimental system isn’t amenable to highly replicated units? In my experience — as reviewer, editor, and author — reviewers are understanding of the notion that some kinds of systems can’t be perfectly replicated, because they are taking place in someone else’s plantations or in streams, or habitat fragments that are scarce or difficult to access. Really, this is keeping good science from getting published? Hmmm.

“’You can’t infer process from pattern’ is just one of those things people like to say because they think it makes them sound rigorous and clever. It’s a slogan. Politicians like to bandy these about, and sometimes, we scientists do too. Real rigour and cleverness don’t lie in slogans; they lie in careful thought that recognizes the complexity of nature.”

Six myths about a teaching persona. This is a really good list if you’re wondering what kind of persona that you should be adopting with your students.

Do you know anybody who complains that the approach to math in common core is dumb? Here’s a straightforward explainer why the “new math” in Common Core is way better, and how Americans have been learning math as kids makes no sense and deprives the chance to develop number sense. (If you’re not familiar with Common Core, it’s a new set of standards for K-12 education in the United States, that emphasizes problem-solving and integrative thinking, and definitely an improvement over what we’ve been doing. It’s not a panacea but it does provide teachers more latitude to teach effectively as these are less prescriptive standards and emphasize critical thinking and problem-solving. You might hear trash talk about Common Core standards, but rarely from those who are in charge of teaching it. Implementation varies, of course.)

George Saunders on his development as a writer. (And if you haven’t read anything else by Saunders, it’s amazing stuff, put it on your list. I’d say start with The Braindead Megaphone. And Saunders’s commencement speech is up there with David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech.)

Monkeys compensate for small gonads by being more loud and annoying. (Here is the press release.)

How Back To The Future‘s vision of the future was off. We don’t have that middle class that Marty and his kids were living in. The neighborhood-of-the-non-horrible-future was filmed pretty close to where I live, and this article in the LA Times really resonated with me.

The New York Times published a hideous op-ed that criticized a strawman version of active learning in higher education. It had a fair amount of the get-off-my-lawn-kids-need-to-sit-down-and-listen BS. She only addressed the educational needs of marginalized students in one line, and then in the subsequent line dismissed those concerns as inconsequential. Josh Eyler was up to the task of debunking the false claims in this op-ed. What to think about whether or not to lecture or do active learning? I think we should listen to The Little Professor on this matter.

Why white parents don’t choose black schools.

On Taphonomy:

Dinosaurs teach kids certain things about the monsters they will encounter: that scary things look scary, that scary things are dead, and also that scary things are exciting and anthropomorphic. Dinosaur fights suggest a singular, definitive battle, like a dragon, something you see coming from a mile away, ready yourself for, slay, and move on from. When, of course, real problems are the opposite: boring, small, creeping, not singular but sprawling. And: extant. A grown-up problem is nothing if not alive.

Why is academic writing hideous? “Academics play an elitist game with their words: They want to exclude interlopers.”

Have a great Halloween weekend, y’all.

Poster session drinking game for the Society for Vertebrate Paleontology meeting.

“A former meerkat expert at London Zoo has been ordered to pay compensation to a monkey handler she attacked with a wine glass in a love spat over a llama-keeper.”

Machines get broken. Human social systems don’t “break.” Academics should get back to discussing our systems and conventions in a more sophisticated manner.

The hardest part of academia? Moving.

“A Japanese mathematician claims to have solved one of the most important problems in his field. The trouble is, hardly anyone can work out whether he’s right.”

Wow, Lou Reed was horrible.

Whereas Tom Petty wasn’t horrible, (and picked up a heroin addiction when he was 50, which he kicked.) This is an interesting interview. Almost as interesting as Chrissie Hynde’s interview on NPR, which needs to be listened to rather than read.

California signed into law a ban on the use of the R-word for school mascots. There were four schools still using it, and they are (sadly) clueless about why it’s racist. It’s stunning how they just don’t get it. Anyway, this article about the how these schools are taking the loss of their mascot is informative and a bit tragic, but worth reading if only because the last two paragraphs are just so painfully ironic, in a “I can’t believe this isn’t The Onion” kind of way.

A protocol for data exploration to avoid common statistical problems‘.

Is Walden just cabin porn?

What it’s like to earn a living as a professional subject in clinical trials. This is not a good thing for medical research.

Did you see that story going around, about how an evil scientist saw a rare bird for the first time and then killed it? It took off without any context, and it was implied that this was a rare or endangered species, which is not the fact at all. It’s locally common, just in a really remote corner of the Pacific, and it just hadn’t made its way into a collection, which is really important. Here is an explanation from the person who did the fieldwork, which is a remarkably even-keeled, genuine, and nonjudgmental response to the trashy story you might have had to see on facebook.

Gotta love having an intellectual President. Barack Obama interviews Marilynne Robinson for the New York Review of Books. Just because he can.

Still anonymous, from the exceptional Women in Astronomy blog.

On serial sexual harassment: The Long Con

(By the way, if you’re inclined to hear more from me and HK Choi about the Geoff Marcy situation and his long history of harassment at UC Berkeley, it’s the bulk of the next Not Just Scientists episode that will that launch on Monday.)

A museum from the hometown of William Carlos Williams hosts a reception for all of the people that he delivered throughout his career as a pediatrician. You know, in his spare time when he wasn’t writing poetry. Love this.

Huh. The director of NSF has a blog that gets updated quite frequently.

It looks like there was at least one major omission in the Nobel Prize for DNA repair.

Speaking of which, The Folly of Big Science Awards.

Here is a story about a scientist serving as an observer on a fishing vessel who disappeared under suspicious circumstances.

These are hands-down the best lab manual/exercises for invertebrate zoology. At least, that I’m aware of.

The need for more professors of color: No matter what an institution does or how committed it is, the goal of developing an inclusive and equitable environment for students requires a diverse faculty.

While we’re on the topic: Being marked for speaking truth to power.

From the files of “No shit, Sherlock”: Publish or perish may discourage innovate research, a study suggests.

Is Snoopy a narcissist that destroyed Peanuts halfway into its 50-year run?

Should we do blind analysis, to reduce bias?

Dan Janzen is interviewed in La Nacion, the paper of record in Costa Rica, about the waning passion for conservation in Costa Rica. These stories you hear about enlightened conservation ethic in Costa Rica? Those might be relictual. (Note, the article is in Spanish.)

How to recommend reviewers when you submit a paper? This is more insightful than you might think, about the set of people you might suggest: “Give a list of people who aren’t the obvious “usual suspects” in the broad field. In terms of seniority, focus on mid-career (e.g. Associate Prof. level in the U.S. rank scale is often ideal); junior faculty or even postdocs can also be great if they’ve done interesting and insightful work in your area. Often younger researchers do the best reviews, and the ideal is someone who’s had enough experience to develop vision and perspective, but who still has the time in their life to commit to doing a thoughtful review. The perfect name is one to which my response will be ‘Ah ha, of course! I hadn’t thought of her, but she’d be great.’  Give me three of those, and I will be grateful and impressed. Never a bad way for the editor to feel when he’s beginning the process of determining your paper’s fate.”

Seeds that act like dung to get moved around by dung beetles.

This is an outrage: when women are hired into biomedical research positions, they get just a small fraction of the startup costs that men get. What the hell.

And probably not a surprise to those in the know: Harvard has trouble keeping women on the faculty: (who they call “female faculty.” Like the Ferengi.  “The report details a trend in the departure of female faculty members before they stand for full-time tenure review. Last academic year, only 66 percent of women up for the final tenure review—which determines whether or not junior faculty members will be promoted to full-time, tenured professors—actually stayed at Harvard through that review, compared to 78 percent of men, a difference the report calls ‘troubling. In interviews with tenure-track women who were leaving Harvard, administrators found a “striking” reason that they left was an uncomfortable culture in their respective departments, according to the report.” (emphasis mine)

If you saw this story, you could totally predict I would be linking to it: Prison inmates beat a Harvard debate team. Yes, in a debate.

I’m not posting those two previous ones in a row to pick on Harvard at all. I just thought I’d put my two Harvard links next to one another. For reals.

The NSF Division of Environmental Biology blog dispels some myths. One biggie, they say, is that the only difference between the PI and the Co-PI, in their eyes, is who does the paperwork. Huh. Do panelists and reviewers know this?

Why schools should exclusively use free software. (This has a little too much ethical absolutism, and clearly doesn’t choose to look through the eyeglasses of others, but anyway, here you go.)

Some sexist tropes in The Martian (book). I heard the book is amazing, and heard the book is horrible. Clearly a bimodal distribution of responses. I haven’t heard anybody claim it’s fine literature, though. A ripping science yarn, sure.

Why ancient Rome matters to the modern world.

Insect taxonomists have some bunched up undergarments over the description of a species without a voucher. This is not unprecedented, but nonetheless isn’t a good precedent to repeat.

Do you know who discovered that VW was cheating on its emissions? Researchers at West Virginia University, who were working on a $50K grant. In addition to the previous link from the Atlantic, here’s the shorter NPR story.

‘This Goes All the Way to the Queen‘: The Puzzle Book that Drove England to Madness

Does your field station have a guide for responding to sexual harassment and sexual violence? Here’s one from Kathleen Treseder that will be in use with UC Irvine facilities. And UC Irvine has an Equity in Fieldwork initiative.

Now we have video footage of the squirrel that officially (?) has the world’s fluffiest tail. And rumor has it that it is a predator of deer. In all seriousness.

Ta-Nehisi Coates was picked for an extraordinarily well-deserved MacArthur Fellowship. Here is a hilarious interview with him about how he is a certified “genius.”

Lower test scores for students who use computers often in school, 31-country study finds.

Gangolf Jobb wrote Treefinder, software that you use to build evolutionary trees using data from genetic sequencing. Americans are forbidden from using his software because of imperalism. And most western and northern European nations are forbidden because of their immigration policies. In addition to the software manual, the Treefinder site has some primo xenophobic ranting that can’t found on any other phylogenetic software website, at least not that I’m aware of. Yikes.

Jerry Coyne, evolutionary biologist, atheist activist, and blogger, officially announced his promotion to Professor Emeritus. He reflects at length on his career, the state of science today, and his plans for retirement. One tidbit in there that raised my eyebrows is that he was able to renew his grant from the NIH for thirty years of consecutive funding. Another other thing that piqued my interest is that over the course of those thirty years of funding, he had four graduate students. His two big pieces of advice for junior scientists? Work hard, and don’t engage in “gratuitous co-authorship” on the papers produced by members of your lab. I guess with his extensive record of mentoring so many students over the length of his career, he’s earned the right to give that advice.

On an entirely unrelated note, check out this very brief youtube that shows the change in the age structure of NIH grantees between 1980 and 2010:

Nine Ways to Improve Class Discussions

It sounds insane that the US and China might go to war. But in the history of civiliations, a shift of power as big as this one has almost always been associated with war. Are conditions any different now or are we destined to fall into “Thucydides’s Trap?” This is a really interesting read.

The grass may look greener: a post by David Baltrus about being a microbiologist in a research institution that doesn’t have a microbiology program to house the many microbiologists at the university. He’s dealing with intellectual isolation issues that those of us in teaching-focused institutions deal with, and it has good insights. (My university just hired a microbiologist. So now, we have one microbiologist in the whole university. I bet she can relate to this.) My experience has been that if a colleague is in a different building, or a different floor of the same building, they might as well be across town or on a different continent.

What one college discovered when it stopped accepting SAT/ACT scores

Four behaviors I had to overcome to move forward in my career. Robert Talbert explains that his teaching went through a progression of phases, each improving his teaching. The post in which he explains these professional transitions is pure gold. I think a lot of the ideas in there crystallize the central message about respect for students that underpins the ideas about teaching on this site:

1. Moving from unprofessionalism to being a professional.
2. Moving from the reflex of assigning blame to the process of solving problems.
3. Moving from having it be about me and my personality, to having it be about students’ lives.
4. Moving from thinking of students as objects to students as human beings.

Math with Bad Drawings: What does probability mean in your profession?

The “doomsday” seed vault in Svalbard has been opened for use, because of the crisis in Syria.

The Power of Grace Jones

Amid budget fight, Illinois State Museum prepares to close. This is tragically shortsighted.

The shockingly racist campus salute for USC’s student body president

“Don’t tell me what’s best for my students,” finally a take about trigger warnings with adequate nuance that seems to pretty much reflect what I think, for what it’s worth.

I was chatting with some people the other day who hadn’t heard of the term “microaggressions.” If you have been inclined to dismiss this term, or the ideas associated with it, this explainer might just change your mind, I hope.

“Remembering the Vela Incident” – did you know about the nuclear test in the south Indian ocean, from a joint Israel-South Africa venture — or was it something else? An interesting mystery that persists.

Three universal New Yorker cartoon captions that work with every New Yorker cartoon.

Philip Morris knew that smoking caused cancer and COPD back in the 1950s. And Exxon precisely knew how their product was causing climate change long, long before Al Gore started to write Earth in the Balance and before anybody else was talking about climate change.

If you can handle the p-word, this is a really informative interpretation of the extreme wealth that pervades the administration of elite universities and what that means for us and our students.

“Why I don’t recommend the Pomodoro technique” Endorsed.

How to Dress in Academia and Not Feel Like You’re Dead Inside.

How can p = 0.05 lead to wrong conclusions 30% of the time with a 5% Type 1 error rate? – this is a rebuttal to a paper that I linked to in recent months. Good stuff.

This Trump situation is depressing. Or is it? “Donald Trump Is Saving Our Democracy”

Choosing the Best Approach for Small Group Work

If I had to identify the best blog about academia, I wouldn’t pause before saying it is Tenure, She Wrote. The recent story about Title IX, which I would classify as a must-read if I thought it’s my business to actually tell you what to read, is just one of the many amazing things that come from the folks who run that shop.

If you’re an ecologist who hasn’t been pointed to the blog of Manu Sanders, I’m rectifying that situation. Here’s a recent post about art history, in a series about the importance of humanities in science.

The Heartbreak of Watching Richard Dawkins Implode

Putting kids into college: Here’s a story about a family that hired a college admissions advisor.