Hola Manuel, Yours is a tough question, looking for specificity that is beyond what I looking for in grant proposals. When I reviewed grad student research proposals , I was looking for a statement that would demonstrate some thought about the proposed project and plans for analysis beyond the immediate results. I was not looking for a statistical hypothesis. I agree that, as you say, statement of an hypothesis can be easy and the difficulty is designing the test. Maybe, because I was dealing with student proposals, I was trying to teach the applicants that they needed to state what they thought was obvious and think about predictions to test what they were proposing to do. In English we also say, "do as I say, not as I do". I hope that in my example, we weren't 100% guilty of the 'not as I do' part since I differentiate between grants intended to support research, and what I do at work, which isn't usually research to my way of thinking because we don't do much analysis of the results of any given inventory (from the office perspective, the main point is to know where rare species are in order to protect them).
So, what do I consider a scientific hypothesis to be? For practical purposes I've looked for a statement of a question to be investigated and a discussion of how it is to be tested. You may well be right, that there isn't much carefully defined hypothesis testing in Ecology, but I think that it is useful to encourage attempts to approach that goal, and to try to do it oneself, if only to keep in mind that (inverting things) what we observe may have more than one cause or the cause that seems obvious may not be the operative one (using the multiple working hypotheses ideas). Saludos, Pat -------------------------- Pat Swain NHESP Community Ecologist From: Manuel Spínola [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, March 07, 2011 12:02 PM To: Swain, Pat (FWE) Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Hypothesis Testing in Ecology Dear Pat, But what do you consider a scientific hypothesis? Because the statement of an hypothesis could be easy, the difficult task is the logic of the study to test the hypothesis, something that you have to do with the predictions because you cannot test an hypothesis itself, but throught its predictions. My believe is that there is an illusion about hypothesis testing in Ecology. In spanish we say: "Haz lo que yo digo pero no lo que yo hago" (do what I say but not what I do). Most published articles on ecological journals are not about truly hypothesis testing. Best, Manuel 2011/3/7 Swain, Pat (FWE) <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Ecolog-L, Way back when the question about hypothesis testing in ecology was first posed to the group, one of the questions was whether anyone had rejected projects or grant proposals for lack of hypotheses. The discussion has gone on while I thought about posting a response to that, but with Jane Shevtsov's prodding, I offer the following thoughts on hypothesis testing and research. For some years I was on a committee to review and select graduate student research proposals for grant support for a regional botanical organization at the same time that I was involved in evaluating proposals for small contracts from my office which is focused on rare species and uncommon natural communities in the state. (I stress the research grants vs. contracts; and I am no longer on the committee which no doubt has different biases from mine, and my office doesn't have money for small contracts like we used to). On the grad research committee, I was far more likely to approve proposals for consideration if a hypothesis was stated, and I tended to veto projects that didn't do that. For example, I think that pure survey of a property for species (making a list of all the species of some taxonomic group) encountered isn't research, but such a project can be developed and proposed in ways that has research in it (effects of land use history, recreation, management...). If a student wanted to inventory a property as a research project, as someone funding grants I wanted the reasons given for why that property is worth the effort and what will be done with the results. I recall one otherwise quite good proposal I didn't consider because it just said that the property was interesting and the nonprofit owning it should know what was on it. I wanted to be shown what assumptions are being made (those should be stated as hypotheses to be tested in a proposal for a research grant), predictions! of where differences might be and why and expectations that post inventory analyses would be undertaken. However, some of the projects that I rejected as not being research might well have been fundable (I think some were) by my office where we want to know what rare species are in particular places, and what is rare. We have funded contracts for surveys for particular taxonomic groups in general as well others focused on rare species/natural communities along rivers, on particular properties, and so on. I think these general surveys are valuable, but they don't overtly involve hypotheses and testing. However, it can and does include assumptions/hypotheses; as one of the posters on the topic pointed out there are always assumptions made. One doesn't walk every square inch of a site, rather picks areas (from aerials, maps, knowledge, observations when out there) places that are most likely to be different/interesting (have rare things). So my thinking back when I was on the grad research committee was that for an inventory to be research and worth funding with a grant, the proposal had to clearly state hypotheses to be tested, and better, to discuss (yes, in only 2 pages) underlying assumptions going into the project. Maybe some of what I was after was an overt awareness of the questions and assumptions involved in setting up the project. And some idea of expected analysis of the results. My convoluted discussion summarizes to 'yes, I rejected proposals that didn't have hypotheses stated'. Pat ---------------------------------------------------------- Patricia Swain, Ph.D. Community Ecologist Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Program Massachusetts Division of Fisheries & Wildlife 1 Rabbit Hill Road Westborough, MA 01581 508-389-6352 fax 508-389-7891 http://www.nhesp.org -- Manuel Spínola, Ph.D. Instituto Internacional en Conservación y Manejo de Vida Silvestre Universidad Nacional Apartado 1350-3000 Heredia COSTA RICA [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Teléfono: (506) 2277-3598 Fax: (506) 2237-7036 Personal website: Lobito de río<https://sites.google.com/site/lobitoderio/> Institutional website: ICOMVIS<http://www.icomvis.una.ac.cr/> Pat ---------------------------------------------------------- Patricia Swain, Ph.D. Community Ecologist Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Program Massachusetts Division of Fisheries & Wildlife 1 Rabbit Hill Road Westborough, MA 01581 508-389-6352 fax 508-389-7891 http://www.nhesp.org
