Friday links: how to stop freaking out about climate change, a rare EEB retraction, and more

Also this week: the bibliometrics of ecology and evolution, Johns Hopkins vs. legacy admissions, and more.

From Jeremy:

A rare retraction in ecology and evolution, this one from American Naturalist, for “irregularities” in the raw data. Apparently, this is the first ever retraction from Am Nat, at least as far as anyone I’ve spoken to knows. Here are some details from first author Kate Laskowski, who it is important to emphasize did not collect the raw data, and who deserves great credit for reacting quickly and appropriately when the irregularities in the raw data were first noticed. There appear to be two other retractions in the pipeline, it sounds like for similar irregularities in their respective datasets. Retraction Watch story here.

Writing in Scientometrics, Réale et al. report a bibliometric analysis of ecology and evolution from 1975-2014. Contrary to what I would’ve expected, they don’t find evidence for closer integration of evolution and ecology over time. As I would’ve expected, they find that both fields have switched from being organized around taxa to being organized around concepts. See this old post for related discussion.

On the Alberta government vs. its own universities. I mostly agree with this.

Johns Hopkins University is ending legacy admissions.

A critique of a recent high-profile PNAS paper finding no racial bias in police shootings, arguing that the original study flouts Bayes’ Rule. I link to this mostly to remind myself to look into it more closely (I haven’t yet looked at the reply to the critique), with a view to possibly adding this to my compilation of “statistical vignettes” useful for teaching intro stats courses.

Writing in TREE, Lord et al. question the evidence from the Russian “Farm-Fox” study that selection for tameness leads to rapid evolution of “domestication syndrome”–or even that there is such a thing as “domestication syndrome”. I link to this mainly to talk about “zombie ideas” yet again give you the chance to make terrible jokes at my expense in the comments. Don’t say I never did anything for you. 🙂 There’s also an interesting Canadian connection to the Farm-Fox story that was news to me, and I’m guessing will be news to many of you as well.

I admit it; I laughed. 🙂

From Meghan:

I liked this piece on how to stop freaking out and tackle climate change. I especially liked point 5, which I think could be useful for sharing with students in my Intro bio course. It begins:

Even though keeping global warming under 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) would absolutely be better than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) of warming, there is no threshold that means that it is “too late” or that we are “doomed.” The lower, the better. It is always worth fighting.

As we fight, it is important for our mental health and motivation to have an image in mind of our goal: a realistically good future.

Imagine dense but livable cities veined with public transit and leafy parks, infrastructure humming away to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, fake meat that tastes better than the real thing, species recovering and rewilding the world, the rivers silver with fish, the skies musical with flocking birds.

I also enjoyed this piece by Beronda Montgomery, on how she works from affirmation, not for affirmation.