EcoEvo@TCD

26/01/201526/01/2015

Seven crucial academic skills parenting teaches you!

Parenting and academia are not mutually exclusive states. Many academics are parents, we take on different caring responsibilities at different stages in our careers and take on more or less of the parenting responsibilities depending on our family situation. However, parenting is often seen as detracting from our ability to succeed in academia in the zero sum game of work-life balance.

Yes parents* can be under significant time pressures and may have their mobility restricted, but the parenting skills we acquire through on-the-job training, constant practice, trial and error, research and pure luck can also help with the academic day job. It’s time to point out those skills that parenting gives you that don’t necessarily make it onto your cv but which probably should:

Time management.

This is probably the most valuable skill you can have as an academic and strangely, the time constraints that parenting puts on you help you to be more effective when you’re in the office, lecture theatre or conference. Every second is precious and you learn to do those tasks that used to take you an hour in 18 minutes and those tasks that you used to schedule for “when I have a free day” to that time in between the departmental meeting and the next lecture.

Credit: Sean MacEntee

Patience & the long view

Having kids has improved my patience from fairly non-existent to the ability to withstand constant nagging for at least 15 mins before cracking. Patience is an important skill in academia, where the wheels of bureaucracy turn more slowly than a 5 year old getting ready for school. Parenting teaches you to consider the long view, you understand that everything is a phase. While you have to go with the latest penchant for “Frozen” merchandise you also keep your eye on what life lessons a snowman who longs for the summer can teach your kids.

Credit: Ryan Wick

Listening & communication

I’ve learned a lot about my own communication and listening from trying to converse with two-year olds. Being told what to do as an academic or as a two-year old doesn’t work, its all about persuasion and compromise. Listening to what your colleagues want and need, acknowledging it and trying to find win-win situations has a glimmer of hope of working. Be prepared for complete melt-downs at any point as your target audience is likely to be distracted by many other demands, shiny lights and chocolate in the tea room.

Credit: GollyGForce

Communicating to different audiences – new networks & outreach

As a parent you are suddenly presented with new networks and opportunities for outreach: at the school gate, being invited to talk to the local primary school and sitting on the parents committee. This interaction with “the real world” helps with perspective, writing press releases for your most recent discovery and how to explain the importance of the latest p-value. Talking to your kids about your work can help to reaffirm your values – why do you do what you do?

Routine

Most people with a small baby can relate to the importance of routine, if you can get it. Routines are super-important for children and academics. The complexity of the competing demands on our time means that those reliable tea times, weekly meetings and annual conferences are much more likely to be attended if they’re on the same time every day/week/month/year.

Perfection is not an option & knowing when good enough is good enough.

I accepted very early on that I would never be the perfect parent. I read one of those pseudoscience parenting blogs that told me getting it right 30% of the time was probably good enough. At the time when I was driving myself into an early grave trying to be perfect 30% struck me as much more achievable. Knowing when good enough is good enough is a skill that I try to bring into my academic life. Often I help myself “Let it Go” by mentally evaluating the alternatives to a reasonable but imperfect job done: a) a child that has sat in some bubbly water with minimal scrubbing (the reasonable but imperfect outcome) vs. a shiny clean but grumpy toddler & stressed out parent (the “perfect” but ultimately terrible outcome) or a smelly little beast (sometimes necessary but poor outcome that we try not to let out in public/publish).

Relating to students

As we get older and less like our undergraduate students, they get younger and more like our kids… Skills we gain as a parent, for example by helping kids to look on the bright side, building up their confidence and teaching them that sometimes life’s just like that, all helps in helping, guiding and mentoring our students.

Kids are infuriating, stressful, sources of worry and time sinks, but they are also wonderful, make you see the your life in new ways and give you perspective on the world. Replace “kids” with “academic jobs” in the previous sentence and that’s basically how I see it.

* I include here male and female parents, there are also many carers of family & friends who while not directly parenting are also under significant constraints. Some of these points may apply more generally to carers but they will have other specific issues to deal with – that’s another blog post…

Authors: Yvonne Buckley, BUCKLEYY[at]tcd.ie & Jane Stout, STOUTJ@tcd.ie

23/01/2015

One body one problem

You may have heard on the academic grapevine that I will soon be leaving Trinity College Dublin. As with all moves I’m both sad to be leaving, but excited to take on new challenges. I’ll be around until the summer, but now this is common knowledge I wanted to explain why I’m moving on. And also to make something else really clear – I’m not leaving because I dislike working here! The School of Natural Sciences (and particularly Zoology where I’m based) has been a fantastic place to work for the last three years. The staff are friendly and supportive, the students are top notch, and the working environment here is energetic and collegiate. I’ve met some amazing people and I hope to continue working with them. I’ve also learned more than I thought possible in just three years.

Then why am I leaving? Mostly it boils down to the “one body problem“. We’re all familiar with the “two body problem”, whereby people in a relationship are forced to find ways to make their relationship and careers work at the same time. Sometimes this involves partners trying to get jobs in the same place, although it could be detrimental to their careers; other times people live apart so they can have more choices over which job to take. Either way it’s a crappy problem and I feel terrible for people in that situation. We talk less about the “one body problem” which also disproportionately affects women and minority academics, particular LGBT academics. I also believe it may be an important reason why these groups leave academia so I think it deserves more attention when we’re thinking about equality.

The “one body problem” refers to the difficulties single academics face when moving around for jobs. In its own way this can be just as bad as the “two body problem” (it’s often quite frustrating when people tell me how lucky I am to be single and free to move about). Arriving in a new place as a single person is daunting and, without the support network of a partner or friends, it is also extremely isolating. Making friends in a new place takes time, and the heavy workloads of academic jobs leave little time for friend making attempts. Added to this, academics are very transient so it’s not unusual to make a new friend, and for that friend to leave just a few months later (in Dublin even the non-academic community is fairly transient). This is particularly hard for international postdocs who don’t have family or friends living nearby to escape to at the weekends. The other issue with the “one body problem” is that eventually most single people would like to meet someone, even if they’re currently happy living an independent life. In some places this is next to impossible, for example, tiny college campuses in the middle of nowhere, and gets harder as people get older. Again this disproportionately affects women and minorities.

I’ve found this problem has become worse for me in recent years. I think this is partly because of my change in job status. As a PhD student and a postdoc I had far more free time to try and make friends when I moved. There were also lots of social events organised for students/postdocs where you could meet each other, and also form a bit of a community. This sort of thing is less common once you’re a professor. Also I’m now the one staying put as the postdocs and PhD students I’ve befriended move on to other places. It also reflects the fact that most people my age are married with kids, particularly the younger faculty here. We get on really well at work, but at 4pm everyone goes home. Eventually I realised that this situation was causing me a considerable amount of stress and unhappiness which was only going to increase as the friends I’ve made in the last three years prepare to finish their postdocs or PhDs and move on. So I’m leaving Dublin because I don’t have a stable support network here and in the long term that is not a good thing for me (or anyone).

If you have new single people joining your department I hope you’ll try and help them to settle in and don’t just assume that being single is the easy option for academics! Note that I’m not saying the “two body problem” is easier! Let’s just recognise that the academic lifestyle is hard for everyone and try to consider how to make things more equal for all women and minority groups, not just those with two body issues, and/or children.

Author: Natalie Cooper, @nhcooper123, ncooper[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit: “TheClashLondonCallingalbumcover” by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:TheClashLondonCallingalbumcover.jpg#mediaviewer/File:TheClashLondonCallingalbumcover.jpg

19/01/2015

Pathway to PhD: should I do a masters degree or an internship?

With deadlines looming for attractive PhD scholarships such as the Irish Research Council, current undergraduates often realise that the path to a PhD is somewhat opaque, with many different ways to get there.

Finding a PhD is something we have covered already, but a question I often get asked is: do I need a MSc or can I go straight in, or what about an internship?

There is nothing stopping you going straight into a PhD from your undergraduate degree, but it can be difficult to be competitive unless you have a flawless academic track record, or have been singled out by a supervisor as an ideal candidate and its pretty much your PhD from the start. More usually, whether you are applying for an open post that has been advertised, or your own funding through a scholarships scheme, you need to out-compete your peers. To do so requires some non-algorithmic compilation of your academic grades, degrees, and academic experiences. Opting for a taught MSc is one obvious way to lengthen your academic training on your CV, as well as hopefully improving on your track-record. Its also a useful way for you to highlight your new skills and explain how they will make you a better PhD student than the rest.

It is important to remember that simply listing your modules or new skills in bullet-points is not the way to do this. You need to elaborate, and explain how your modules improved you as an academic, and how you interacted with the course to better yourself. Don’t just say “I took a course on linear mixed effects modelling”, tell us about how you realise now that this tool is important in ecology as a hierarchical data structure is a very common feature of research in this domain, and that you can now tease apart effects that manifest within and among groups. Give an example of how you applied this tool to answer an ecological question. The MSc projects are typically larger than your undergraduate ones, and ideally you would conduct a novel enough piece of research to allow you to write it up as a research paper – this is a great way to rubber-stamp your CV for PhD applications.

Of course, MSc courses tend to cost money, and last up to one year (or some are even two years these days). Another option is to volunteer as an intern in a research group. With the right match to your supervisor, and a bit of luck, this approach can be just as good as a MSc or even better (at least in my opinion). You might intern as a research assistant helping to run experiments or collect field data for on-going projects. Such teams are often in need of extra hands, and being involved can mean you learn lots of new skills and techniques. Ideally though you want to make sure you are involved enough, and have the chance to put enough academic input to the project to deserve and be rewarded with authorship on a research paper.

Alternatively, you might intern more as an individual in a group, and work on your own project much like doing a MSc project but without the actual degree. Again, you are looking to develop new skills, learn new techniques and apply them to ecologically or evolutionarily relevant questions. The not guaranteed, and by no means necessary, icing on the cake would be a research publication.

Ultimately, some post-graduate experience will really help your CV when applying for PhDs but only if you can articulate how your efforts have improved you as an academic. A research paper (or several!) would be the ideal outcome from whatever path you take as it is nearly indisputable evidence of your ability to do science as part of a team, to a high standard and to convey your findings to an audience.

I took a research assistant position after my undergraduate degree, and used that to explain how the overall experience had convinced me of my desire to pursue academic research, as well as providing me with new skills. I am therefore quite keen on the idea of internships or research assistant positions in place of the more formal and structured MSc courses, so it’s rather a personal thing for me. Take some advice from others though, as maybe the MSc route carries more weight for different people.

Author: Andrew Jackson @yodacomplex

http://www.tcd.ie/Zoology/research/research/theoretical/andrewjackson.php

Photo credit: http://www.quickmeme.com/Condescending-Wonka/page/1826/

16/01/201521/03/2019

Predators: feathered friend or foe?

On Wednesday January 14th the Pat Kenny show on Newstalk radio station hosted Professor Luke O’Neill (a prominent Trinity College Dublin Immunologist), in a segment exploring the causes of the huge declines seen in European bird populations newstalk.ie/player/podcast. Comments from both Professor O’Neill and Mr. Kenny implicating raptors and corvids in these bird declines provoked a storm on social media. Every Irish environmental NGO has strongly condemned these implications. Professor O’Neill was not in possession of the full facts and has apologised*. Predatory birds are not responsible for severe declines in many bird populations [1] and here at TCD EcoEvo we lay out the real reasons for these declines and show why natural predators like Red Kites, White-tailed Sea-eagles and Golden Eagles are in fact of huge benefit to ecosystems. Continue reading “Predators: feathered friend or foe?”

13/01/2015

Ecology of religious beliefs

It is well known that your country of birth has a big influence on your religious outlook. That’s why Ireland is dominated by Christians whereas Iran has a mostly Muslim population. Your scientific outlook doesn’t escape from this either. For instance, it’s arguable that the idea of group selection is viewed much more favourably in the US than the UK. Turning back to religion, a group of authors have recently carried out a study on the ecology of religious belief. In their work they were able to predict the societies that believe in moralising high Gods by drawing on historical, social and ecological data.

As we’re in the beginning, we need a definition, so what exactly is a moralizing high God? These are “supernatural beings believed to have created or govern all reality, intervene in human affairs, and enforce or support human morality”. Supernatural belief has had a number of ecological correlates associated with it and this study points to environmental instability as one major driver. An environment with an unpredictable spatial or temporal distribution of resources lends itself to cultivating cooperation among the animals found within it. Among humans this results in a “reduction in cheating, increased fairness, and a tendency to cooperate”. And this is a fertile ground for the development of religious belief. One conclusion is that cultures in close proximity or those that share a common language exhibit similar religious beliefs.

However, the authors nuance this statement that this form of religion is being driven as a response to environmental harshness. In fact, they note that for societies living in a really harsh environment like the Inuits, variations tend to lead to more positive periods rather than negative ones and this seems to inversely correlate with the probability of believing in these type of gods.

One ironic point however (largely discussed in Jerry Coyne’s blog post), is that this paper is also influenced by the authors’ societal framework: a society traditionally believing in a god that they consider as moral and improving human lives. Taking that into account, some parts of the methodology heavily influence the results. The definition of morality by the authors and its benefits on humans as a species are highly depend on the societal framework where one is born. The “reduction in cheating, increased fairness, and a tendency to cooperate” is traditionally seen as a “good” thing for humanity in Abrahamic religions. Making it a universal or biological “right” behaviour is only the authors’ point of view (and probably one of their funding agencies).

Author: Adam Kane & Thomas Guillerme, @P1zPalu and @TGuillerme

Photo credit: http://mattleese.blogspot.ie/2009/12/we-dont-know-if-jesus-ever-rode-them.html

09/01/2015

Career planning for PhD students

The Royal Society has published a new set of guidelines for managing the career expectations of PhD students in STEMM subjects (science, engineering, technology, maths and medicine). The publication was the result of a series of roundtable discussions held at the Royal Society with PhD students, supervisory teams and University careers professionals.

This blog post from the British Ecological Society provides a good overview of the document and discussion of how it fits into existing career development opportunities for PhD students.

With ever increasing numbers of PhD graduates and restricted academic jobs, academic careers are becoming the exception rather than the rule in many STEMM disciplines. The report highlights the need for PhD students to be realistic about their career expectations and goals and the importance of continuous professional development during their studies.

The document contains guidelines and recommendations for students, supervisors, career professionals and higher education institutions. It’s very encouraging to see that the training and mentoring of ecology and evolutionary graduate students at TCD already follows many of the principles.

This is mainly due to the success of NERD club, our weekly meeting of ecology and evolution researchers. The primary purpose of this group is to develop research projects and encourage new collaborations but many sessions are also devoted to career development. We have discussed academic careers advice and application tips but also non-academic careers and the transferrable skills such as public communication and teaching that can be applied to any career choice. As students, we’re very lucky to benefit from the mentoring and advice of enthusiastic and dedicated staff members.

One aspect of the Royal Society guidelines which I hadn’t considered previously is the recommendation that PhD students should seek a mentor who is not their supervisor for career advice. It’s an interesting suggestion, especially since many supervisors have limited personal experience of non-academic careers, and a good thing to consider for any PhD student.

Hopefully these new guidelines will encourage more students, supervisors and institutions to make broad career planning an integral part of every PhD student’s experience.

Author: Sive Finlay, @SiveFinlay

Photo credit: http://sironaconsulting.com/2009/10/29/my-top-10-funny-job-interview-cartoons/

05/01/201518/02/2019

South Africa’s topsy-turvy seasons

It’s easy to forget that seasons work in different ways in different places. On a recent trip to Kruger National Park in South Africa, I was expecting to see European breeding birds. I was also expecting that South Africa would be enjoying a season similar to a European spring; a simple six-month discrepancy with the northern hemisphere. While I found the European birds, including Swifts, Swallows, Cuckoos and Willow Warblers, I found a rather different type of spring. South Africa has very short transition seasons (spring/autumn) and more extended hot/cold (winter/summer) seasons. Over much of South Africa, summer (mid-October to mid-February) is a hot and sunny season, frequently accompanied by afternoon thunderstorms. In Kruger, summer is marked by the beginning of the “wet” season and the birth of new Impala, Wart Hogs and Wildebeest. However, the majority of the resident mammals don’t have a breeding “season”; all of the “Big 5” (buffalo, elephant, rhino, leopard and lion), can give birth to young in any month.

Elephant Herd Mud-Bathing — Elephant Herd Mud-bathing

The native people of the Limpopo and Mpumalanga provinces have incorporated the link between the birth of impala and the arrival of rain into folklore. Their stories say that impala are the animals that decide when it should rain. If the rain is early, the impala need it early, if the rain is late, the impala are not ready for it at the usual time. While I thought that might make the impala unpopular, it seems they are held in high esteem.

As well as the transcontinental migrant birds (like the Swallows and Cuckoos I mentioned earlier), Africa has numerous bird species which migrate within the continent. In November (the date of my visit), the Woodland Kingfishers arrive in Kruger.

Woodland Kingfisher - displaying — Woodland Kingfisher – displaying

Their arrival is probably timed to coincide with the rise in insect numbers, following the new growth triggered by the rains, because Woodland Kingfishers feed on grasshoppers, locusts and beetles, rather than fish.

For an ecologist, migration is a fascinating area of study, especially when closely-related species compete for food at different times of year. Indeed, the migrant Woodland Kingfishers compete with resident Brown-hooded Kingfishers for food. By coincidence, a study considering such questions has just started in Kruger.

Author: David Kelly, djkelly[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit: David Kelly

19/12/2014

Christmas wish list

For our last post before the Christmas break we decided to collect people’s scientific Christmas wish lists from the department. We got a diversity of answers ranging from the realistic to the fantastical.

Thomas Guillerme wants a super computer “that runs everything instantly, like if you have to run a loooooooong MCMC, it spits out the results instantly.”

Natalie Cooper says “I’d like an automatic marking machine that could grade coursework and exams for me while I eat mince pies and drink tea. Failing that I’d like some friendly elves who would grade them for me while I sleep. And yes, as you may have guessed, I do have a stack on marking on my desk!”

Darren O’Connor asks for “Swarovski EL 8.5 x 42 binoculars. Their optic wizardry and quick fire focus make them unbeatable in the field.”

Aoibheann Gaughran says “what I would like is the gift of great mathematical/statistical comprehension (a little chip implant in my brain would be great!). Can I have two? Id also like the gift of speed-reading. Combined, they would mean I could quickly read all of the relevant literature, formulate a decent hypothesis to test and analyse the results with confidence.”

David Kelly is looking for “A twenty-first century view of new vertebrate species from the ICZN, to avoid the collection of voucher specimens. Even with full genome phylogenies, high-definition photography and 3D printers, the collection (i.e. deliberate killing) of type specimens remains an inescapable part of the description of new species.”

Sean Kelly is expecting big things, “An unlimited funding stream would be handy… I’d love some tiny electronic devices that can provide super accurate geographical positioning data and take high resolution video footage, as well as being able to remotely transmit all this data via satellite. I could then attach these wee devices to the beaks of birds and just wait for the mountains of data on the birds movement ecology and migration patterns, diet and feeding ecology, competitive interactions, etc, etc, to just roll in. Simples. If they’re out of stock, I’ll take a machine that sequences a bird’s full genome from a single feather.”

Kevin Healy is pragmatic, he wants “a permanent job in science that pays at least the average industrial wage”.

Adam Kane wants some new tech “I’d love an air wing of drones to spy on wildlife all from the comfort of my office.”

Deirdre McClean is looking for “an automated counter microscope that could continuously count protist and bacterial cells to make my lab life easier so I could focus on the fun parts of experiments.”

Pitch in with what you’d like to get to make your research that bit easier or more enjoyable.

Author: ecoevoblog

Photo credit: wikimedia commons

15/12/2014

Literacy Levels

Scientists and science communicators often make the point that the public are scientifically illiterate and that this needs to change. But why? The line goes that as we live in an age of science so everyone should be comfortable reading, writing and talking about science such is its pervasiveness in 21^st century society. Robert Hazen argues for the importance of literacy saying, “A scientifically illiterate person is effectively cut off from an immensely enriching part of life, just as surely as a person who cannot read” (1). However scientific literacy is not something that is easily defined. So it is important to look at the various conceptions of it before asking if we can improve it.

Many authors consider science as more than a body of facts or something to be learned by rote and bemoan the dry science curricula, “It has for long been my contention that we are crushing our students into the flatness of equation-grinding automatons and forcing them into blind memorization of problem-solving procedures.” For example, there is the argument that scientifically literate individuals should possess a skill set of attributes and, for instance, be able to answer “How do we know …?” and “Why do we believe …?” questions (2). Richard Feynman said as much when he emphasised the important distinction between knowing the name of something and knowing something. There’s a world of difference between a person who can list off every bird species name and someone with an education in ornithology.

In contrast, it’s been argued that a pursuit of scientific literacy for all is futile. There are two purported stumbling blocks to widespread scientific literacy: the cumulative nature of science, resulting in an ever increasing amount of information and science’s use of counter intuitive descriptions (3). These barriers are so great as to prevent the majority of people attaining literacy. Instead we should engender an appreciation of science. The point is that a person’s early encounters with science involve fascination and curiosity, only for this to give way to courses that stress memorisation and dry subject matter.

But I think this is overly pessimistic. The important concepts in science are readily explicable to a lay person and the same goes for the process of making hypotheses. Even quantum physics, that byword for the impossible, has a legion of eager physicists who draw on a series of ingenious analogies to convey the main points behind it. I would suggest that there is a scale of scientific literacy from an appreciation of science, on to an understanding of how science works and then on to knowing the particulars of a given area i.e. a scientific vocabulary.

References

Hazen RM. Why should you be scientifically literate. ActionBioscience org. 2002.
Arons, A.B. (1983). Achieving Wider Scientific Literacy. Daedalus. 112 (2), p. 91-122.
Shamos, M. 1988. The lesson every child need not learn. The Sciences 28(4):14–20.

Author: Adam Kane, kanead[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit: www.hetemeel.com

12/12/2014

Vox populi – when science and the public engage

Scientists are now being held to greater accountability by a variety of communities (both public and private), and the idea that scientists should be trusted to work in the interest of the public good, by virtue of their profession, is no longer accepted. So we now have a situation where government leaders and policy makers worldwide are finding ways to effectively communicating science and technology issues to the public and to include citizens in science and technology decision-making processes. This is a process termed upstream public engagement. Successful dialogue should prevent the given scientific issue from becoming ‘evidence-resistant’ which seems to have happened with genetically modified organisms where public fear of GMOs is a serious constraint.

It has been pointed out that when the public are left out of any such dialogue it should come as no surprise that they are distrustful of the outcomes of the resulting applications. Yet a number of arguments have been levelled against public participation in science. Bill Durodié cites four reasons that count against public participation: demoralising scientists, patronising the public, elevating new ‘experts’ and deflecting blame. However, I think his arguments are alarmist and have a number of faults which undermine his contention with public participation.

He argues that including lay opinions will result in science and scientists becoming marginalised. He says “But science is not ‘just another point of view’. It may be culturally situated, but this does not mean that it is only contextually valid.” Such a conflation of lay opinions with expert evidence would of course be disastrous but this is not what public participation is about. Upstream engagement would allow people to understand the potential risks of a science in its infancy.

According to Durodié “By having to make science more ‘accessible’ in order to be ‘inclusive’, this ends up by diluting the detail, eroding the evidence and trivialising the theory.” But simplifying science happens among scientists and science communicators all the time. Experts always have to frame their ideas to allow for ideas to be communicated to a specific target audience.

The nanotechnology seems to be taking stock of the consequences that a bad PR campaign can have. The GM debate has resulted in a ‘nanophobia-phobia’, i.e. “the phobia that there is a public phobia [,]” with respect to nanotechnology (Joly and Kaufmann 2008). The so-called emerging technologies of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science will certainly require upstream engagement with the public.

Computer scientist Bill Joy (2000) advocated a policy of relinquishment for such technologies which he deemed too dangerous. Science does not have any inbuilt mechanism to determine if research should continue; there is no moral component to the scientific method. And although I do not agree with Joy’s viewpoint, such anxiety demonstrates that certain areas of science require public upstream engagement. Indeed some commentators rightly point out that uncertain science can have an ethical and moral component and lay people are just as entitled to have their say in this respect. It is encouraging that some scientists have the prescience to recognize potential dangers of upcoming technology.

Author: Adam Kane

Photo credit: Wikimedia commons

References

Jackson, R Barbagallo, F Haste, H . (2005). Strengths of Public Dialogue on Science-related Issues. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy. 8 (3), p. 349–358.

Joy, B. (2000). Why the future doesn’t need us. Available: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html.