science communication Archives - Page 7 of 8

15/04/2013

Disney Ecology

In light of the current stresses of exam season, I have been contemplating my parallel educational history. Of equal, if not superior, importance to any stage of my conventional academic life, I have had a Disney education. If I visit medieval castles or forts rich in feudal history I can’t help but mentally locate Rapunzel’s tower and contemplate the prince’s access route. My Greek mythological references are entirely based upon Disney’s Hercules and any mention of Rudyard Kipling is incomplete without at least one verse of the Bare Necessities. Zoological education is no exception. Early Disney films were rather loosely based on real zoological principles – I don’t remember Snow White using any Pavlovian theory to behaviourally condition her furry friends to help with the housework. Similarly, Mary Poppins serenaded an American robin from her London home because studio executives thought the sight of a European robin would be too confusing for their target audience. However, some recent Disney tomes are more grounded in realistic ecology. Disney was my first introduction to fundamental ecological and behavioural concepts as varied as breeding coalitions, mutualistic relationships and inter-specific communication.

Responsible for introducing Swahili phrases to a generation of Timon and Pumbaa fans, the Lion King is a Disney classic, both as a film and more recently as a highly popular stage musical (which is coming to Dublin soon – even if you don’t normally like musicals you must go to this show for the most incredible stagecraft you will ever see). The film marked one of the first times that animators made a specific effort to study their animal subjects to make their movements and behaviours as realistic as possible. Prior to the release of this film, my four-year old self didn’t know that male lions, often brothers, form coalitions to take over prides or that female lions take a cooperative, crèche approach to raising their offspring. Cooperative behaviour in lions continues to spark interest and research to understand why lions are unique among big cats in exhibiting these social tendencies. Of course, some creative licence remained in Disney’s depiction of their feline heroes – the voice of Darth Vader is sadly absent from the Serengeti and male lions don’t lead a troupe of goose-stepping hyenas in a song of revolution. Similarly, rather than a “king and queen”, there’s an equal dominance status within male members of a coalition and within adult females in a pride (unfortunately socially equal characters don’t lend themselves easily to a re-telling of Hamlet). Despite the sprinkle of Disney magic however, the basic ecological premise of Simba’s pride remains grounded in fact.

My ecological horizons were further expanded by Finding Nemo’s depiction of the mutualistic relationship between clownfish and the anemones they call home. It’s a deceptively simple relationship – the anemone’s sting provides the fish with a predator-free habitat while Nemo and his friends help keep the anemone free from parasites. However, many of the finer details underlying this interaction continue to spark research interest (and I’m obviously not the only one to have experienced a parallel Disney education). Nemo has provided evidence that mutualistic interactions tend towards a nested structure. More recently, the way clownfish move their fins has been identified as helping to increase anemones’ oxygen consumption at night – although, hampered by a malformed fin, I wonder whether Nemo’s personal anemone is gasping for breath a bit more than the other anemones? Furthermore, Finding Nemo did not neglect my geographical education – I now know that to get from the Great Barrier Reef to Sydney it’s just a short ride on the East Australia Current – and if I meet a turtle on the way, just call him “Dude”, Mr Dude is his father.

Thanks to Disney, Nemo’s pal Dory is another star of every aquarium. Forgetful but lovable, Dory was my first introduction to the realms of interspecific communication. While Dory speaks whale, it appears that some whales can learn to talk back. A captive beluga whale in San Diego seems to modify its call to mimic human speech. Neither of these examples are true interspecific communication; Dory’s valiant efforts to converse were unsuccessful and the Californian beluga’s “human” vocalisations appear to be relicts of an ability to mimic other whale species. In both cases, information is not passing between fish and whale or whale and human. Though who knows, perhaps Finding Nemo 3 will be a story of the quest to discover the Rosetta Stone for interpreting whale speech…

So through the talking animals, improbable alliances (why a meerkat and warthog??) and heart-warming moral tales, look out for the ecology in your next Disney film. Combining their subliminal ecological messages with the excellent work of the Disney conservation fund hopefully many more generations will experience a Disney ecological education.

Author

Sive Finlay: sfinlay[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit

wikimedia commons

12/04/2013

Finding a PhD

Undergraduate and Masters students often come to me for advice about how to find a PhD position. I know quite a few students read this blog so I thought I’d share the advice here. Hopefully some of it is helpful! Note this is aimed at people in the UK and Irish system who often go straight from undergraduate to a PhD (or do a brief one year Masters course in between the two). But many points are relevant to the US system too.

1) First make sure you definitely want to do a PhD!

This is really important and I think it’s something that very few of us ever bother to do. The thesis whisperer has some amazing advice on this, and many other subjects related to PhDs, so I won’t repeat too much here. (See http://thesiswhisperer.com/2011/11/07/should-i-do-a-phd/)

Doing a PhD can be an amazing experience, but it can also be extremely frustrating. Often it’s amazing and frustrating at the same time! You will work long hours for several years with very few rewards and low pay. Then once you finish your PhD things get even trickier – there’s no job security until you reach the Lecturer/Assistant Professor level which generally won’t happen until you’re at least 30, and getting that lecturer’s job is extremely difficult as there are far more qualified PhD students than there are postdoc jobs and lecturer jobs. So to succeed you need to work really hard and also have good luck. It’s good to aim high, but it’s also worth having an alternative career plan in mind for if the whole academia thing falls through. So before you start the long road of potential academic misery, make sure you have a really clear reason WHY you want to do a PhD. If it’s because you love research and can’t imagine doing anything else then great! If it’s because you need one for your chosen career (within or outside academia), again great! But if it’s because you don’t really know what else to do after graduating, or because you want to be a student for a few more years, then I’d recommend researching other options.

2) Advertised PhDs.
These PhDs generally already have funding and a planned research project. You just need to apply. Applications are usually fairly simple, just a CV and cover letter plus a couple of references (usually two). For the cover letter, make sure you describe exactly how you meet the criteria in the job description. Check out our earlier blog posts for help with CV writing. For referees try to include academic referees. Your project supervisor would be a good person to ask, followed by the head of department or your tutor. If the position is in aquatic ecology and you did particularly well in your aquatic ecology module you could ask the lecturer who taught you. Make sure you ask people before you put them down as references.

PhDs are advertised in many places including:

Twitter (with #phd or #jobs)
www.findaphd.com
ECOLOG Archives
Evoldir
University websites

Twitter can be particularly useful for this, as lecturers often tweet about positions in their lab and retweet adverts from other lecturers.

3) Non-advertised PhDs.

Not all PhD positions are advertised. Sometimes this is just because the person taking on students already has someone in mind or a good pool of undergraduate students to choose from. More often though this is because although the lecturer is perfectly happy to have a new PhD student they don’t have any funding. In these circumstances you need to apply for your own funding.

There are a couple of options when it comes to funding. The simplest are “personal” awards or studentships. These are PhD scholarships given to individual students based on various criteria – usually the quality of the student and of the proposed project. The other option is that a supervisor may include PhD student funding on a larger grant they are applying for. In this case the responsibility for the application rests with the supervisor. For personal awards the responsibility rests with you.

To apply for your own funding you first need to find a possible supervisor. You should already have an idea of the kind of project you’d like to work on, so you can use the internet to search for supervisors who might fit your interests. Ask around your current lecturers to see if they know of anyone suitable. You can narrow the search by also thinking about the place you’d like to study at. Once you’ve identified a possible supervisor, send them a brief email with your qualifications (attach your CV), what you’d like to work on, why you’d like to work with them and ask if there would be any opportunities in their group. Also mention that you’d be happy to apply for funding (if you have a funding body in mind mention this too). Don’t do this as a bulk email; make sure it’s tailored to the person in question. Also make sure it’s brief; most people today read emails on mobile phones so long emails are annoying.

If they say yes then you can work with them to prepare a proposal. Don’t get discouraged if you don’t get replies or if you get lots of negative replies. It’s not personal, it’s just that people are busy and some already have as many PhD students as they can handle!

One quick tip on choosing a supervisor (again thesiswhisperer has lots of advice for this): don’t just focus on the senior people. It’s exciting to work with a famous scientist, but more often than not they are extremely busy and their groups are hard to get into. More junior people are often given money for a PhD student or two when they start a new job. They also tend to have more time.

4) Where to apply for funding.

The best thing to do is to talk to your potential supervisor about funding options. There are fewer and fewer options these days but each university usually has some kind of scheme, and scholarly societies often give out scholarships. What you are eligible for will depend on the project, your nationality and the country you wish to do your PhD in. For example, EU citizens can get funding from Marie Curie/European Commission if you do a PhD outside of your home country (and in the EU). Students of any nationality can apply for funding from the Irish Research Council to do a PhD in Ireland. Students of any nationality can also apply for a Trinity Postgraduate Scholarship or Ussher Scholarship from Trinity College Dublin if they wish to study at TCD.

5) DO NOT accept a PhD with little or no funding.

Some people are so keen to do a PhD they’ll accept one with little or no funding. This is a terrible idea (unless you’re independently wealthy!). You will need to pay fees (at TCD these are currently nearly €6000 a year) and need money to live on. Many people try to manage this with a part time job, but if you’re working you’re not doing your PhD, which should be a full time job in itself. And remember for every extra year doing your PhD you need to pay fees. This doesn’t even consider where the money for lab materials, conference travel or equipment is going to come from. So make sure you check the status of the funding before you say yes!

6) Qualifications needed for PhD positions.

If you only have an undergraduate degree then you need a 2.1 or 1^st class degree. Remember you’ll be competing with lots of people when you apply so this is just a guide. You can get a PhD with a 2.1 BUT if all the other applicants have 1^st class degrees you will struggle. I personally would prefer a student with a 1^st for their project and a 2.1 overall, to a student with a 2.1 for their project but a 1^st overall.

If you have a Masters then you may get a PhD with a grade lower than a 2.1 but only if you got a good grade on your Masters (preferably a Distinction). Again, your mark for the project component is the most important.

If your qualifications are unusual make sure you explain them. Also make sure you explain them if you are applying to a foreign university which may use a different system. Percentage marks often help here. If you know where you ranked in your class include this information too. If applying for positions in the UK, Irish students should highlight the fact that Irish degrees are 4 years long thus almost the equivalent of a degree and a Masters in in UK.

7) Should I do a Masters or work experience?

Masters courses can be great but they are also expensive and may be of limited benefit in some cases. If you don’t feel ready for a PhD, or are unsure you want to commit to a PhD, a Masters may be more sensible than jumping straight in to a PhD. Also if your grades in undergrad were not very impressive, doing a Masters and getting a Distinction or Merit can override these issues. However, if you’re certain you want a PhD and your project and overall grades were good at undergrad there’s no reason you shouldn’t apply for PhDs straight away. One solution might be to apply for Masters courses and then pull out if you get a PhD (check your contract so you don’t end up losing any money). Masters in Research (MRes) courses may be a particularly good idea as they involve several research projects so allow you to decide if you really like research or not. MSc courses also include taught elements, so these are good if you want to learn more about a specialised topic. These also end with a long research project.

If you want to get a field or conservation based PhD, then work experience may be a better option than doing a Masters. This may still be expensive as most of these positions are unpaid, but then you have the option of volunteering for some of the time and then working to support yourself. Work experience can be Research Assistant positions at universities, internships at conservation charities etc. The Institute of Zoology take interns every year, as do the IUCN. There are field projects on meerkats and baboons run out of Cambridge University that take volunteers each year. Also search ECOLOG and EvolDir (see links in 2 above) for other field assistant positions. Alternatively, if you have a potential supervisor in mind you could email them and offer your services. Or offer to help at a local university so you can live at home and save money. Research Assistant jobs are a great way to learn about PhDs and research from PhD students and researchers you interact with, however, you have to be prepared to work independently as people often don’t have much time to supervise interns.

That’s my advice! Feel free to add alternative advice if you have any. And good luck finding a PhD!

Author

Natalie Cooper

nhcooper123

ncooper[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit

PhD comics

08/04/201308/04/2013

Top tips for science networking!

Science is a business like any other, and it’s hard to get things done if you don’t know anyone outside of your own department. Other scientists will review your papers and grants, invite you to give talks and hopefully employ you in the future. So the more people you know, the easier it gets. Conference season is just around the corner so I thought I’d continue my hints and tips series by talking about networking at conferences.

Step 1: Finding someone to network with…

Find someone you know and get them to introduce you to everyone they know. This person may be your supervisor, but postdocs and other PhD students can be just as helpful. Make sure you return the favour then everyone will know plenty of people! If you know several people, spend time with each of them meeting all their friends and maximizing the number of new people you meet.

It’s pretty rare to go to conference where you don’t know anyone beforehand. This is much harder than option 1 because you constantly have to make the effort to talk to new people which is pretty exhausting. In these situations try asking your supervisor beforehand if they can remotely introduce you to at least one person there. Then follow them around until you make new friends!

Go to conferences with easily achievable networking goals, for example choose one big name in your field and make sure you have a conversation with them, even if it’s short. However, don’t be that person who goes to conferences with a list of “important” people they want to meet and spends the whole time pestering the big names and ignoring everyone else. The people with the time and energy to start exciting new collaborations are usually students or postdocs, and these are also the people you’ll be meeting at conferences for the rest of your career. So make sure you network with them too!

At huge conferences like ESA it’s often hard to casually network because everyone has already scheduled meetings for every lunch break and evening before they arrive. If you really want to meet with someone drop them an email beforehand and see if you can arrange a quick meeting. Make sure you’re really specific about the meeting place, and don’t be too upset if they don’t show up, they were probably intercepted on the way!

Use social media! Twitter is a great way to arrange tweetups at conferences, and some societies also have Facebook pages where events are advertised. I haven’t tried this yet but I’m very excited about trying it at Evolution and ESEB this year.

Go to all the drinks receptions you can, but skip the conference dinner. This is just my opinion, but I’ve never done any good networking at a conference dinner. They can be fun, but usually they are at the end of the conference so everyone is hanging out with their friends and not really in the mood to talk about work. They are also expensive and the food is often awful. I usually go for dinner with some friends instead and we usually meet other people who aren’t at the conference dinner so we get to make new friends that way!

Step 2: OK so I’m chatting to a new person, what do I say?

I think you should always aim to have a person walk away from a conversation knowing the following pieces of information: your name, your institution and roughly what you work on. Aim to do the same with everyone you meet. If you meet someone particularly relevant to your research interests make a note of this before you forget.

Before going to a conference make sure you have a series of “elevator pitches” prepared. These should be the 1, 5 and 10 minute versions of what you’re currently interested in or working on. If you’re looking for jobs you should also prepare a quick outline of what you’d like to do in the future and the ideal place you’d like to work.

Be interested and interesting. Being interested just involves asking the other person about their work. Everyone likes to talk about their current pet project, and in general these are interesting so you don’t have to fake it! Ask questions where appropriate and be enthusiastic even if you couldn’t care less. If appropriate refer back to their talk/poster or recent papers. Being interesting is harder but again being enthusiastic helps. Talk about your work or the talks you’ve enjoyed at the conference or current areas in science that fascinate you. Hopefully after a somewhat artificial start to a conversation you’ll find yourself in a real and enjoyable chat.

Provided you get in a tiny bit of information about what you’re working on, you don’t have to talk about your work the whole time. Feel free to bemoan peer review, or the funding crisis or the bizarre nature of your structured PhD program. These are great conversational topics as everyone has an opinion and they affect all scientists. Also don’t worry about talking about normal topics – family, hobbies etc. Even the big names have lives outside of academia.

Step 3: Damage control (or OMG I can’t believe I just said that…)

One or two beers are your friends! Alcohol is a great way to reduce inhibitions and help you to chat to people you’d be too terrified to approach when sober. Three or more beers (depending on your alcohol tolerance) are not your friends. If your inhibitions are reduced to the point of dancing on the table people may not remember what you work on. Though they will remember your name…

To be fair, conferences often do involve a lot of drinking and it’s naïve to think you can avoid this entirely. People come to conferences to see old friends and enjoy themselves as well as for work so this should be respected. I think the rule of thumb for alcohol at conferences is to try and hang around with people at the same level of inebriation. Don’t be the drunk group in the quiet bar surrounded by sober people. Also remember that you need to get up the next day and go to lots of talks, so being hungover is not a good idea. Know your limits and never feel pressured into drinking if you don’t want to.

Don’t worry about making a fool of yourself. I’m the champion of this and somehow I still got a job. My classics (all while completely sober) include (1) being put in charge of cake at a meeting in London Zoo and promptly falling over and throwing all the cakes on the floor in front of the director; (2) missing my mouth while talking to a big name at Evolution and pouring coffee all down myself; (3) accidentally wearing a dress you could see my underwear through when meeting the Duke of Edinburgh; (4) complaining that an eminent scientist who published a lot of similar papers would probably publish their shopping list if they could – then realizing the person I was talking to was the scientist’s co-author; (5) insisting that ducks weren’t birds in front of an ornithologist (there’s a logical reasoning behind this but they didn’t stay to hear it); (6) trying to tap someone on the shoulder and accidentally stroking them instead etc. Most of these incidents are not remembered by anyone but my colleagues, and I don’t think they have influenced my career. So if you do say or do something ridiculous, don’t let it scare you away from talking to people in the future!

Those are my top tips; I hope some of them are helpful! I should point out that I don’t actually follow most of them, but I do try my best! Feel free to add more tips in the comments!

Author

Natalie Cooper

nhcooper123

ncooper[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit

wikimedia commons

05/04/201305/04/2013

What makes a good undergraduate (or Masters) thesis?

Here’s something that few students realize, and even fewer believe: your lecturers and professors actually want you to do well! I gave this advice to the final year undergraduates in October, and now they’ve handed in I thought it might be valuable to share it more widely. Note that they are in no particular order and I’m not talking about specific projects.

1) Do not annoy the people marking your thesis.

Most of my advice comes back to this point! Remember that most people marking your thesis will be marking a lot in a very short time (although this varies among institutions and subjects). Therefore if you make this as easy for them as possible you’re more likely to get a good grade.

2) Read the marking scheme carefully.

For example, there’s no point in listing every single thing you did if there’s no effort mark. See point 3.

3) Be concise.

There are two reasons for this. Firstly, having to read a 10,000 words (or more) monster thesis is going to make your marker grumpy before they even open it, especially with 5-10 theses to mark each year. You won’t be marked down for that (though most places have penalties for going over the word count), but you may find the marker more likely to notice other problems (see point 1).

Secondly, and more importantly, a long thesis usually indicates a lack of understanding of the really interesting findings of your research. Almost anyone can collect data from the lab, field or the literature and then go away and analyse it in every way possible. However, it’s a real skill to pick out the key results and discard the extraneous information. All of the best theses I’ve seen have been short (though I’ve also seen some terrible short theses!). They have an introduction that concisely builds towards their aims/questions, clear predictions, methods and results describing succinctly what they did to answer their questions and whether their predictions were met, and then a careful discussion of how their results fit into the wider literature. Showing every single thing you did is NOT going to get you more marks (see point 2).

People have a horrible habit of writing too much in the introduction. Think very carefully about what the reader needs to know to understand your questions. If you’re working on tortoises in Ireland in field site X, does the reader need to know what a tortoise is? No. Do they need to know where Ireland is? Not really. Do they need to know where your study site (field X) is? Not really, unless you only want to apply your results to field X or if field X is really special or weird. They may need to know the species of tortoise or the climatic conditions at your site but that shouldn’t take more than a sentence.

4) Presentation is really important.

I sometimes joke that you can work out the class (1^st, 2.1, 2.2, 3) of a thesis just by looking at how it’s presented, particularly the reference section. However, there’s a lot a truth to this. If you take care on the presentation, it usually means other aspects will also be good. Part of this is a time management issue. I know it’s difficult but if you can complete your thesis a few weeks early you will have time to polish the presentation and probably to deal with other minor issues in the thesis. Note that many places give marks for presentation so even if you struggled with some aspects you can pick up a few extra marks just by fixing the typos and formatting your references correctly. Note that this is a great thing to do when your brain is too tired to do any more writing or analyses.

5) Take advantage of people who offer to read drafts.

Chatting about this at coffee the other day we estimated that students who got their supervisors to read a draft of their thesis before handing in got a mark that was around 5% higher than it would have been otherwise. 5% might not seem much in the grand scheme of things, but if you got 66%, 5% extra would get you a 1^st… Also take advantage of family and friends for their proof reading services. A great idea would be to do this early and often with your classmates, perhaps reading each other’s work section by section. Again this requires you to have good time management skills – if you want your supervisor to read something make sure you give them AT LEAST a week to read it and AT LEAST a week for you to deal with corrections.

6) Structure is really important.

When writing your thesis imagine you’re telling a story. You start with the background and general area of the study and slowly progress towards the specific questions you are going to address. You then explain your methods, continually referring back to how these methods will answer the questions you want to address. In your results, show how your analyses answered your questions. Finally in the discussion show how your results fit within the published literature and then talk more broadly about what they mean for the subject area. Your questions and aims need to be clear throughout so make sure they are linked together.

7) Be careful with subheadings.

I’m a big fan of subheadings but it’s very easy to overuse them and to use them so you don’t have to link sections together. Even with subheadings, there needs to be some kind of link or the sections become disjointed and your story gets lost. They are ideal for separating major themes in your thesis – for example I always advise my students to have subheadings in the methods section for DATA COLLECTION and ANALYSES.

8) Don’t worry if your final thesis doesn’t match your proposal.

Things change all the time during projects. Perhaps your experiments didn’t work so you had to change them, perhaps there wasn’t enough data for you to test your hypothesis, perhaps you couldn’t catch any of your chosen study animal. Of course these problems are frustrating but they shouldn’t affect your thesis (trust your supervisor, they will help you fix this!). However, when you come to write up make sure that your introduction matches the question you ended up asking, not the question you intended to ask. I know it’s painful to set aside all the work and reading you did for your proposal, but you won’t get credit for irrelevant information (see point 2).

9) Analyses in methods and results

Students often get confused in these sections. As a guideline, although you don’t need to understand the maths, you do need to understand WHY you are doing the analyses you are doing. Which of your questions are you testing? Why are you using a t test or an ANOVA? Why did you log your variables? In the results explain what the result means biologically – i.e. if you have a significant correlation between body size and shell size in your tortoises write this then give the statistics in brackets afterwards. Check with your supervisor about how to report statistics. Also check published papers! You should have read plenty by this point. Another pitfall to avoid is assuming that really small p values equal really important results. P values tend to get smaller when you have lots of data, so you can get a tiny p value but when you look at a scatter plot the points are all over the place. Instead look at r² values, a high r²value shows you how strong the correlation is between your variables (but again be careful as when you have very few data points r² are likely to be high).

10) So how do I get a 1^st class (A) mark?

Again see point 2 and check the marking scheme. However, most institutions will have broadly similar requirements. We want you to show us that you could be a professional scientist and that your thesis could be written up for publication with some extra work. This means we want to see the following: really clear links between your background information, aims, methods, results and discussion, critical evaluation of the methods you employed and the results you obtained (how could you do things differently?), excellent presentation throughout, clear understanding of how your project fits into the bigger picture and the wider literature, and evidence of novelty. Novelty is really hard to understand, but what we’re looking for is evidence that you engaged with the project and really began thinking like a scientist. This may be demonstrated by how you’ve linked your results with those of someone working in a different system or by excellent suggestions for how you’d further your project. We need evidence that you’ve gone above and beyond the advice of your supervisor and things you’ve learned in lectures and thought beyond the narrow confines of your project. It’s hard to explain what I mean, but when I see it I know instantly because I stop thinking of the project as the work of an undergraduate student and start thinking of it as the work of a future peer. Note that everything else must also be of a very high standard, so although you may show evidence of novelty in your discussion, if your presentation is a mess you will not get a 1^st.

Author

Natalie Cooper

nhcooper123

ncooper[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit

http://911thesis.blogspot.ie/

15/03/201304/04/2013

Your days are numbered

Last weekend journalist Rod Liddle applauded the efforts of two scientists who wrote a primer for the lay public on physics. His applause stopped when it came to the content though. The problem for him was the quantity of maths the authors used to get their point across. Liddle wrote “By the time we got onto calculus and derivatives I had long since raided the wine rack and things stopped making sense altogether.” But calculus is an integral part of the Leaving Certificate maths curriculum in Ireland and A levels in the UK so why should an educated man find it so intractable? Well, for one, maths is often taught in the abstract.

Of course many of us struggle with the abstract world of maths so this isn’t restricted to Rod Liddle. And I realise that not everyone can be a master of all trades. The trouble is, maths is damn useful, and in science it’s indispensable. Look at how Eugene Wigner spoke of the ‘Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences.‘

In secondary school and throughout university I thought biology was almost a maths free science. How wrong I was. If you ignore the quantitative part of biology you miss a wealth of literature and hamper your understanding of the subject. Without statistics much of biology would be stamp collecting. So it’s worrying that a maths-phobia has infected biologists. Look at this study showing that as the number of equations in a biology paper increases the number of cites it gets goes down. There even seems to be a split in the biological community, the theoreticians on one side and the empiricists on the other.

Back in 1959 the chemist C.P. Snow gave a Rede Lecture in which he decried the split between the sciences and the humanities. He called this ‘The Two Cultures‘. I don’t think we’ve bridged that gap. But I’d hope that biologists can improve the way they communicate with one another. Every effort should be made to make a scientific paper as clear as possible.

This will have to come from both sides. Those quantitative minds will have to make it clearer what they’re talking about. I suggest using in-text drop down boxes to make every step explicit as the number of equations ratchets up. This shouldn’t be a problem as we move away from paper publications and use all of the tools the digital age affords us.

But there is an onus on the rest of us to up-skill. Fortunately this has never been easier. A large proportion of MOOCs are mathematically themed and sites like the Khan Academy are a fantastic resource. A real boon of these courses is they afford anonymity, so you can safely check out logarithm identities without embarrassment.

Author

Adam Kane: kanead[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit

wikimedia commons

11/03/2013

Comedy science

Last Wednesday a bunch of us (thanks to @nhcooper123 for organising) went to see Robin Ince @robinince perform his stand-up comedy science show The Importance of Being Interested at the Science Gallery. His shows are a unique blend of education and humour, combining a whistle-stop tour of the world of science with hilarious anecdotes, all the while vehemently challenging the doubters and the nay-sayers.

I found his show immensely inspiring, and I have to admit that I am normally bored by pop-sci outside of the relative academic safety of my office. I took so much from the show, but I think it boils down to these three points:

The world is big and wide, and fully of wonder. I kind of know this. Its pretty much the reason why I’m a scientist, but Robin has a wonderful charm and ability to find all the really cool stories and point out the best bits, even when showing you something you already know. Be in awe of the world around you.
Don’t sit back and swallow the crap. He would doggedly challenge the stance of anti-science types or the science ignorers. He took the anti-vaccine brigade to task, mocked homeopathy and challenged the religious devout. Recently, I have found myself sitting on my hands, and shoving food in my mouth at parties so as to avoid getting drawn in to discussions – well, arguments really about such matters. I have been taking a pacifist’s approach that in retrospect is cowardly and does a dis-service to science and the work of all my colleagues and my own. But no more. Bolshy grumpy argumentative Andrew is back (just ask my colleagues). I’m not sure my wife will thank @robinince but apparently he suffers from foot-in-mouth too. Be true to your convictions.
Don’t be shy. His style is mad, frenetic, at times all over the place, but always entertaining. Its all too easy to retreat into your shell when you present in public. People like Robin remind you that an entertaining style will hold your attention no matter how many beers you sank during the interval. Equally, you don’t be yourself when on stage. You can put on a show, be something different, whatever works to entertain. Lecturing is an act. Tell funny stories – why you will get poo on your finger if you stick it up your bum for instance. Swear at least occasionally (this is one of my tricks and usually gets a giggle and wakes up those in torpor). Be fun, be mad, be witty and be entertaining.

If at all you like science, one of his shows is a must see. Hopefully this inspiration lasts. If not, I will just have to go see his show again.

Author

Andrew Jackson: a.jackson[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit

wikimedia commons

25/02/2013

Intelligent Design: Part Three – Dr Alistair Noble’s ‘The Scientific Evidence for Intelligent Design’: the review

I would like to say that the talk presented a range of evidence for intelligent design and carefully countered the usual arguments against it. I would like to say this, but I can’t. The talk, which lasted over one hour, spent much of the time quoting non-scientists and misquoting scientists, painting ID proponents as martyrs to the cause and science as tautologically incapable of addressing questions of design. The religious beliefs of ID proponents were constantly referred to, despite supposedly being completely irrelevant, which was an indication that this was, after all, a religious proposition not a scientific one.

It would be easy to question the credentials of Dr Alistair Noble (PhD in chemistry) and ask how someone who has been outside of scientific academia longer than I have been alive can claim to have found fundamental flaws that no working biologist has been able to find, but I won’t. Instead, I have tried to focus on the claims of Dr Noble and see if they can be answered (see my last blog post).

There is much more that I could have said. The case for evolution is so strong that I could go on for hours about the evidence from multiple disciplines that support it. It seems that the same cannot be said for intelligent design. Dr Noble spent about 15 minutes of his (more than) one hour talk providing evidence which can be easily refuted by anyone who has even a basic understanding of evolutionary theory. His ‘evidence’ ultimately boiled down to an Argument from Incredulity with a side helping of the Argument from Authority.

I was disappointed by the lack of scientific rigor Dr Noble exhibited. Not one journal article was presented, not a single claim that hasn’t been refuted multiple times before. I had hoped for an intellectually stimulating talk that would force me to question my understanding of evolutionary theory but instead I was confronted with the same, tired claims that have been presented by ID proponents for years now. It is a shame that Dr Noble could not have used his clearly considerable intellect to study the actual science and see that evolutionary theory is not a threat to his faith but is an amazingly simple yet profound explanation into how the diversity of life arose.

Author

Sarah Hearne: hearnes[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit

wikimedia commons

08/02/2013

Intelligent Design: Part Two – Dr Alistair Noble’s ‘The Scientific Evidence for Intelligent Design’: the claims

“A lie can travel halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on” (Mark Twain, attributed).

In my previous post I gave some background on intelligent design, the theme of a talk I recently attended by Dr Alistair Noble. This time, I’ll try and address his claims.

It is easy to say something that is not true. It is not always so easy to explain why it is not true. Such is my problem here. I can summarise Dr Noble’s arguments into a few sentences, but it takes paragraphs to explain why they are wrong. Here goes!

His argument centered around DNA. Dr Noble’s background in chemistry, specifically in trying to artificially synthesise chemicals, showed him how difficult it was to make even simple molecules. He explained his problems with DNA and used two specific examples to illustrate his argument: the bacterial flagellum and cytochrome C. His arguments were essentially:

they look designed
they are too complex to have arisen by chance

The design argument can be easily refuted. Apparent design does not mean actual design. Humans are extremely good at seeing things where they do not exist, like shapes in clouds and Jesus on burnt toast. This is a well-known psychological phenomena called paradolia and can lead us to see design where none exists.

The second claim requires a bit more care. DNA, the bacterial flagellum and Cytochrome C are all highly complex and could not have evolved by chance. In fact, as Dr Noble so carefully illustrated, Cytochrome C would have taken longer than the lifetime of the universe to arise by chance. So if they did not arise by chance then they must have arisen by design, surely? Well, no.

This conclusion can only be made if you have a deep misunderstanding of evolution. At a very basic level random mutations occur which may be beneficial, neutral, or detrimental to an individual. Then natural selection ‘selects’ those mutations which are beneficial and ‘rejects’ those that the detrimental. Small changes over long timescales lead to big changes, mutations can build on each other and can be co-opted to other functions. The bacterial flagellum is a perfect example, with studies showing how molecules were co-opted from other functions to form the flagella. At no point was there a useless proto-flagellum.

ID proponents, including Dr Noble, focus on the random aspect of evolution but completely ignore the selection part, which is arguably the more important aspect. If there were no natural selection then their claims would be valid, but its presence provides a beautifully simple explanation of how complex molecules, complex biological components, and even complex organisms could arise.

Next time, my review of the talk.

Author

Sarah Hearne: hearnes[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit

wikimedia commons

30/01/2013

Intelligent Design: Part One – a brief explanation and history

Trinity College Theological Society recently held a talk by Dr Alistair Noble titled ‘A Scientific Case for Intelligent Design’ which I attended as, possibly, the only biologist in the room. It was a fascinating, if deeply frustrating, experience. Before I get into the details of the talk, a brief explanation of intelligent design may be necessary. . .

Intelligent design (ID) is the ‘theory’ that certain features of the universe, including life, are best explained by invoking a creator. I put ‘theory’ in quotes because in a scientific theory is a very particular beast. It must have both explanatory and predictive powers. For example, the theory of evolution by natural selection explains how life evolved and can also be used to make predications about life that can be tested. The ‘theory’ of intelligent design has little explanatory power (“the designer did it”) and makes no predictions. As such, it is held with little esteem within the scientific community.

Outside the scientific community, however, there are some who hold ID in very high esteem. They think that it is a credible scientific theory and there have been many attempts, particularly in the U.S., to have ID taught in schools as a counter to evolution. This is deeply worrying to those who care about scientific literacy but has to be tackled carefully.

The reason for such caution is that ID is most loudly promoted by religious groups who feel that the theory of evolution is anathema to their beliefs and as such must be countered. In the past they countered with Creationism, but in recent years they have tried to remove the explicit religious overtones of Creationism, removing God, replacing him with an unspecified ‘designer’ and calling the new theory ‘intelligent design’. Thus the debate around ID is not just a scientific debate but is also a religious debate involving deeply held personal beliefs.

I hold the opinion that your personal beliefs are yours, and are no concern of mine, but when you try and mess with science, well, that’s another story! I went to the talk as I was curious to hear the scientific evidence for ID. Would it persuade me that there was a case for ID? . . .

Author

hearnes[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit

wikimedia commons

05/12/2012

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