Friday links: boring grants vs. interesting science, and more

Also this week: abstracts = proposals, tears of the swan, effective ecology, lion bonds, 2024 ESA award winners, and more.

From Jeremy:

Congratulations to all 2024 ESA award winners!

I am here for all your Lacrymaria olor content. I have cultured Lacrymaria olor, they are super-cool. They are rubbish at catching prey in my experience, but they look amazing trying to do it. And the English translation of their Latin name–“tears of the swan”–is evocative and lovely.

Stephen Heard on how to do interesting science funded by a boring grant.

Writing in TREE, Jake Alexander reviews Roger Cousens’ new book Effective Ecology. Well, I say Cousens’ book, but it’s actually a hybrid of a sole-authored book and an edited volume. I’ve read the book myself, but don’t trust myself to do a review. Effective Ecology overlaps too much with the book I’m writing; I don’t trust myself to be objective about it. I’d either be too critical, or not critical enough. But I encourage you to check it out.

Writing in Scientometrics, Simsek et al. report results of an experiment that randomly assigned grant panelists for a Dutch early career research award to either receive the applicant’s CV plus the full proposal, or the applicant’s CV plus an abstract of the proposal. The treatment had no detectable effect on the proposal rankings. I’m not surprised or bothered by the lack of a detectable treatment effect. Are you? (not a rhetorical question) Obvious follow-up question: what, if anything, does this result imply for the design of grant programs?

Writing in Journal of Ecology, Lee et al. reconcile the conflicting results of two recent studies of phenological mismatch between trees and wildflowers. I was interested in this because it’s a collaboration between the authors of the two conflicting studies. Perhaps the take-home lesson here is that so-called “adversarial collaborations” work best when the collaborators aren’t adversaries.

Athene Donald on not knowing where you are going, career-wise. Related old post.

Simpson’s Paradox, NIH clinical trial sample size edition.

Remember rhino bonds? Get ready for wild dog bonds and lion bonds.

Here’s a link for all my US friends who dream of moving to Canada. Immigration to Canada is way up recently. But I just learned that emigration from Canada to the US is way up as well. It’s up among people born in Canada, people born in the US, and people born elsewhere. The most recent data are from 2022, so I’m curious what the post-pandemic numbers look like. Note that I link to this only for the data, not for the anecdote-based speculation as to the reasons behind the data.

New link in the global food web just dropped. 🙂

Marine biologist. 🙂