The subject of retractions has been gaining a lot of steam in the media recently, with several recent studies (outlined nicely in this New York Times article) showing that retractions are on the rise, and misconduct and falsifying data are one of the most common reasons. Yesterday on Twitter, I […]
Paleoecology has really blossomed as a field in the last decades, due in large part to increasing concerns about climate and the environment. It’s always been a strong, dynamic field, going back almost a century ago if you start with the very first modern pollen analyst, von Post, but recently […]
Did you know that it’s National Postdoc Appreciation Week? Probably not, if I had to guess from the lack of mention on various social media, but it’s a real thing– in 2010, the House of Representatives even passed H. Res. 1545, officially recognizing the event. Postdocs, do you feel appreciated? […]
I am honored to join Scientopia for the next two weeks as a Guest Blogger! I’ve decided to devote my two-week tenure exploring plant-herbivore interactions (past and present) given that I’m thinking a lot these days about ecological anachronisms and how well large-fruited trees will be able to cope with […]
There are five letters in this week’s PNAS, responding to an article by Isabel Israde-Alcántara et al., that came out earlier this year on purported impact markers in Lake Cuitzeo, Mexico. In one letter (Gill et al. 2012), my coauthors (Jessica Blois, Simon Goring, Jenn Marlon, Pat Bartlein, Andrew Scott, and Cathy […]
I’ve been mostly attending talks on community assembly and trait-based ecology so far, as both are subjects I don’t know much about but am interested in. I think there are some really neat opportunities to apply a paleo-perspective to both fields, and I’ve been kicking around potential project ideas for […]
It’s been a whirlwind of a week: I deposited my dissertation last Wednesday and left for Providence, RI to start my postdoc at Brown, and then promptly boarded a plane for Portland, OR for the ESA meeting. This is my first time as a SEEDS (ESA’s group to promote diversity […]
This is a quick update to say: I defend my dissertation tomorrow! I have a lot of thoughts about this, most of which I am unable to articulate because I am literally eating, breathing, and dreaming my dissertation, which means I’m finding it difficult to articulate anything that isn’t about […]
I often look at the CV’s of researchers whose careers I admire to get a sense of their trajectory, and to build a rough road map of goals and objectives. How many papers do I want to put out in order to be as competitive as possible for a particular […]
Things have been rather quiet on this blog in the last month or so as I’ve been working hard on #phd2012, and I wanted to give a brief update lest you thought this particular mammoth had gone extinct. I’ll be defending my dissertation on July 5th, and am planning on […]
The Contemplative Mammoth 