Tag: academia

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Global Lakes Observatory Network Meeting

During unseasonably warm, dry and bright weather in mid-October,the Global Lakes Observatory Network (GLEON) held its annual meeting in Mulranny, Co. Mayo.

The meeting was organised by TCD alumni Elvira de Eyto, Eleanor Jennings and Valerie McCarthy, along with their GLEON, Marine Institute and Dundalk IT colleagues. GLEON represents a network of scientists working on lakes with high frequency physico-chemical observations obtained from buoys deployed with sensors. It is a grassroots network of limnologists, ecologists, information technology experts, and engineers who have a common goal of building a scalable, persistent network of lake ecological observatories.

Unlike more traditional conference formats, where attendees sit and listen to research presentations, GLEON members are grouped together to discuss their areas of interest, identify potential for collaborations and to make the decisions that will inform the future path of the GLEON network. Although the program was very full, the open, collaborative and discursive approach ensured the meeting was highly enjoyable.

The current membership of this global organisation currently stands at 351, attendance at the Mulranny meeting at more than 100 and as the photo shows, there was also a strong showing of TCD students and staff, past and present.

Author

Caroline Wynne: c.wynne[at]epa.ie

Photo credit

Caroline Wynne

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The language of evolution on trial

Humans are purpose seeking beings. Such a fact is nowhere more apparent than in our language. Some scientists argue that this tendency is a cause of confusion in their subject, especially when it comes to descriptions of evolution. The teleological turn of phrase is so tempting because of how much easier it is to read and understand than a dry purposeless, but more accurate, expression.  ‘Wings evolved for flight’ isn’t quite right but we understand the message. I remember my chemistry teacher’s classes were replete with teleology, ions wanted to gain or lose electrons so they could balance their charge. But of course, none of us believed for a second that the atoms intended to do this. All there was to it were the blind forces of the atomic world. So it goes for evolution as our current understanding of the process is teleology free.

Richard Dawkins, who was put on this Earth to popularize evolution, is always quick to correct himself when his tongue slips to purpose. But I would argue that our linguistic short-cuts are not the primary cause of the public misunderstanding of evolution. It was Eugenie Scott who said for many people the problem behind evolution is not one of confusion, rather it’s a full understanding and disgust at the implications of it. Some of us don’t like the idea of being a ‘mere’ animal. Of course language matters but it would be a shame for us to avoid using language which can convey an idea so succinctly when it’s not to blame. Perhaps I’m being overly naïve here and we’re adding to the confusion with our lack of precision. So I’m open to debate on this one. What do you think?

Author

Adam Kane: kanead[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit

wikimedia commons

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Academic heroes

Most people have heroes. As this is a science blog I’m guessing you are already battling out Captain Kirk vs Spock, Batman vs Spiderman or Inspector Gadget vs MacGyver, in your head in order to choose the most appropriate hero. But here, I mean academic hero. That person whose work becomes the foundation of our academic thinking or that we simply admire for their lifetime academic achievements. Deciding on our academic hero makes a great conversation topic and it usually ends up covering pretty much the whole history of science. In my lab, there is an ongoing interest for academic heroes. Some of us would even secretly (or not) like to have a bobble head of our academic hero.

As I work in a mostly theoretical lab whose research is pretty broad, ranging from fisheries, to social evolution and behaviour (some lab members, when asked, simply reply “ecology”), it is not surprising that our academic heroes are not the same person. Even agreeing on what could constitute one, is sometimes controversial. Some scientists just have to be heroes, for example Darwin would be in most academic’s top five for his theory on natural selection, and so would Watson and Crick for the discovery of the DNA double helix that changed the way we do science. But few people would contest their achievements are worthy of the academic hero title and consequently not much fun for a bobble head. Others, in fact most, are surrounded with pro and con arguments and we must be passionate enough to defend them (as we would for Spock). For example, Richard Dawkins is a name that pops up in the blogosphere quite often as an academic hero, not because of his forefront ideas but for popularizing evolution, a hot topic among the public. Should he be a contender for academic hero? Surely Carl Sagan who made cosmology popular is.

My academic hero, which I shall not name as I might meet him someday and I don’t want to appear a ‘fangirl’ (which I am but doesn’t sound very professional…), amazes me for the numerous ideas and frameworks he put forward in many different subfields. Those ideas and frameworks are perhaps not recognized as important as DNA or natural selection, and many have been rebutted already. However, without them, the progress in ecology and evolution would have been much slower and would likely have taken a different route, i.e. he shaped the field. In my view, he is definitely bobble head material! I’m generally a shy person and a few years ago I missed the opportunity to meet my academic hero in a conference to shyness. How do we go about introducing ourselves to our heroes? Imagine going to Batman and saying “Hello, I LOVE the way you save the world, could you sign my bat-shirt please?”

We always read about tales of people meeting their heroes and generally something embarrassing happens… have you met you academic hero? Tell us your tale.

Author

Mafalda Viana: vianam[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit

wikimedia commons

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The scariest object in my office

As it is Hallowe’en season, I thought I’d write a blog post about the scariest and most horrifying object in my life at the moment – my To-Do list. This monstrous beast lurks on my desk full of tasks ranging from the mundanely specific like “write reference letter for student X” to the vague and rather more time consuming “write paper on Y”. Inevitably some of the things on the list will never get done and will slowly drop off the list like the withered limbs of a leper (I regularly re-write the list to make sure I don’t forget anything important – and also to have the satisfaction of crossing off “write list”). Others, like teaching, will get done but not until the last possible minute. I try to look at it as little as possible to avoid scaring myself into total inaction.

I would love this post to be an amazing revelation about how to make the list get magically shorter, but unfortunately the only option seems to be actually doing the things on the list (or delegating them to someone else)! Instead I decided to analyse my list to see where I am – or should be – spending most of my time. Unsurprisingly teaching makes up a good chunk of it, followed by admin and then finishing up papers from my post-doc! But after looking at the things I spend huge chunks of time on, I looked at the things that take just an hour or two hours at a time. I realized how many of these items fell into the category of academic altruism.

I think of academic altruism as doing anything in academia that helps others but doesn’t directly help you. Reviewing papers is a really obvious example. The recent controversy over academic publishing and open access has thrown this problem into the limelight, and many people have come up with excellent solutions to the problem (for example Jeremy Fox and Owen Petchey’s excellent “Pubcreds” idea). But academic altruism is far more than just reviewing papers. We all help students and colleagues by commenting on manuscripts, discussing ideas, helping with analyses and promoting each others’ papers. PhD students do this as much as (and perhaps more than) faculty members. Those with skills in data analysis (and the patience to help novices) tend to end up doing this even more than everyone else (apologies to Luke McNally who spent 2 hours teaching me MCMCglmm last week for no academic reward apart from my eternal gratitude!).

I think it’s fairly obvious that academic altruism is not generally good for career progression. Of course there may be occasions where we gain collaborators or authorship on a paper through helping others. But mostly academic altruism takes up time with little return for our time investment. That’s not to say that I think it’s a bad thing. In fact, interacting with others in this way is part of what I love about science. But there must be a cost to those who do this a lot, and a benefit to those who refuse to engage with others. Although I’m sure hiring committees like to hear about the extra help you give others, I doubt they would rate that higher than the extra high-profile papers you could have written if you were more selfish with your time. Research also tends to suggest this cost is higher for female scientists because we associate more with “caring roles” (or as our HoD puts it – “we’re less able to leave a student crying in the corridor”).

Open Access week has led to a lot of discussion of altmetrics, so what about a metric for academic altruism? Could we think of a way to do this? Could we get colleagues, students or the scientific community to rate our “selflessness”? Do hiring committees consider these factors, or do extra papers trump everything else?

Well there’s something to mull over this evening as you hide from Trick or Treaters with the lights off. And now I can go back to my To-Do list and cross off “write blog post”. Yay!

Author

Natalie Cooper: ncooper[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit

wikimedia commons