Re: [ECOLOG-L] real versus fake peer-reviewed journals
I am teaching a Sophomore/Junior level evolution course at Texas Tech (where a significant proportion of my students believe evolution is anti-God). One of the activities I have them do is take three creationist claims about science and use the peer-reviewed scientific literature to find evidence to support or refute the claim. It makes them really think about the issues; and if they follow the directions, it does a better job than any of my classroom activities convincing them that the claims against evolution are just a bunch of hooey. Unfortunately, there are journals claiming peer-review status that are not. It can be very frustrating. Like Raphael, I also wonder if there is a good source the students can use as a rubric for telling if a journal article is peer-reviewed. * Kerry Griffis-Kyle Assistant Professor Department of Natural Resources Management Texas Tech University --- On Tue, 7/7/09, Raphael Mazor rapha...@sccwrp.org wrote: From: Raphael Mazor rapha...@sccwrp.org Subject: [ECOLOG-L] real versus fake peer-reviewed journals To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Date: Tuesday, July 7, 2009, 5:03 PM I've noticed a number of cases lately where groups with a strong political agenda (on topics like climate change, evolution, stem cells, or human health) cite peer reviewed studies in journals that are essentially fabricated for the purpose of advancing a specific viewpoint. What's a good way to tell when a journal is baloney? Of course, it's easy for a scientist in his or her own field to know when a journal is a sham, but how can we let others know it's obviously fake? For example, are only real journals included on major abstract indexing services? -- Raphael D. Mazor Biologist Southern California Coastal Water Research Project 3535 Harbor Boulevard, Suite 110 Costa Mesa, CA 92626 Tel: 714-755-3235 Fax: 714-755-3299 Email: rapha...@sccwrp.org
[ECOLOG-L] SAS and REML
Dear listers: I need to run an analysis for estimating variance components using REML of a general mixed model of six factors with unbalanced data and I know SAS calculates REML easily and also has really excellent documentation. The problem is that at my University we don't have acces to SAS. Is there someone who might/will be able to help me running the analysis in SAS? Any help will be greatfull appretiated. Best Regards Adriana Humanes ¡Obtén la mejor experiencia en la web! Descarga gratis el nuevo Internet Explorer 8. http://downloads.yahoo.com/ieak8/?l=e1
Re: [ECOLOG-L] real versus fake peer-reviewed journals
I can't speak to individual articles, but one thing to have your students do is to read the mission statements (usually somewhere near the masthead page) of the journals they consult. As I remember, the journal Creation Research -- published by the Institute of Creation Research -- made it clear the conclusions were known; it was only seeking papers that would confirm those conclusions. Another thing to do is to have them google news accounts of the publishers of the journals in question to find out if they have a particular slant or bias. I believe the publisher of the journal Energy Environment openly eschews peer review. As such, the journal has become a home for papers skeptical of anthropogenic climate change. Dave Kerry Griffis-Kyle wrote: I am teaching a Sophomore/Junior level evolution course at Texas Tech (where a significant proportion of my students believe evolution is anti-God). One of the activities I have them do is take three creationist claims about science and use the peer-reviewed scientific literature to find evidence to support or refute the claim. It makes them really think about the issues; and if they follow the directions, it does a better job than any of my classroom activities convincing them that the claims against evolution are just a bunch of hooey. Unfortunately, there are journals claiming peer-review status that are not. It can be very frustrating. Like Raphael, I also wonder if there is a good source the students can use as a rubric for telling if a journal article is peer-reviewed. * Kerry Griffis-Kyle Assistant Professor Department of Natural Resources Management Texas Tech University --- On Tue, 7/7/09, Raphael Mazor rapha...@sccwrp.org wrote: From: Raphael Mazor rapha...@sccwrp.org Subject: [ECOLOG-L] real versus fake peer-reviewed journals To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Date: Tuesday, July 7, 2009, 5:03 PM I've noticed a number of cases lately where groups with a strong political agenda (on topics like climate change, evolution, stem cells, or human health) cite peer reviewed studies in journals that are essentially fabricated for the purpose of advancing a specific viewpoint. What's a good way to tell when a journal is baloney? Of course, it's easy for a scientist in his or her own field to know when a journal is a sham, but how can we let others know it's obviously fake? For example, are only real journals included on major abstract indexing services? -- Raphael D. Mazor Biologist Southern California Coastal Water Research Project 3535 Harbor Boulevard, Suite 110 Costa Mesa, CA 92626 Tel: 714-755-3235 Fax: 714-755-3299 Email: rapha...@sccwrp.org -- -- David M. Lawrence| Home: (804) 559-9786 7471 Brook Way Court | Fax: (804) 559-9787 Mechanicsville, VA 23111 | Email: d...@fuzzo.com USA | http: http://fuzzo.com -- We have met the enemy and he is us. -- Pogo No trespassing 4/17 of a haiku -- Richard Brautigan
Re: [ECOLOG-L] real versus fake peer-reviewed journals
The standard most people use is the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) list of journals. ISI use to do Science Citation Index and now runs databases like Web of Science (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Scientific_Information). The criteria for selection is fairly conservative and includes peer review. You can see an explanation here: http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/science/free/essays/journal_selection_process/ I tell my students that they can only use journals listed by ISI. The list of journals is huge and I have never run into a citation from the last few decades that I could not find by searching WoS (it only goes back to 1977). ISI also maintains a list of Impact Factors, which you can use to get a rough idea of journal quality based on how often papers get cited. Kerry Griffis-Kyle wrote: I am teaching a Sophomore/Junior level evolution course at Texas Tech (where a significant proportion of my students believe evolution is anti-God). One of the activities I have them do is take three creationist claims about science and use the peer-reviewed scientific literature to find evidence to support or refute the claim. It makes them really think about the issues; and if they follow the directions, it does a better job than any of my classroom activities convincing them that the claims against evolution are just a bunch of hooey. Unfortunately, there are journals claiming peer-review status that are not. It can be very frustrating. Like Raphael, I also wonder if there is a good source the students can use as a rubric for telling if a journal article is peer-reviewed. * Kerry Griffis-Kyle Assistant Professor Department of Natural Resources Management Texas Tech University --- On Tue, 7/7/09, Raphael Mazor rapha...@sccwrp.org wrote: From: Raphael Mazor rapha...@sccwrp.org Subject: [ECOLOG-L] real versus fake peer-reviewed journals To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Date: Tuesday, July 7, 2009, 5:03 PM I've noticed a number of cases lately where groups with a strong political agenda (on topics like climate change, evolution, stem cells, or human health) cite peer reviewed studies in journals that are essentially fabricated for the purpose of advancing a specific viewpoint. What's a good way to tell when a journal is baloney? Of course, it's easy for a scientist in his or her own field to know when a journal is a sham, but how can we let others know it's obviously fake? For example, are only real journals included on major abstract indexing services? -- Raphael D. Mazor Biologist Southern California Coastal Water Research Project 3535 Harbor Boulevard, Suite 110 Costa Mesa, CA 92626 Tel: 714-755-3235 Fax: 714-755-3299 Email: rapha...@sccwrp.org -- Mitchell B. Cruzan, Associate Professor Department of Biology P.O. Box 751 Portland State University Portland, OR 97207 http://web.pdx.edu/~cruzan/
Re: [ECOLOG-L] real versus fake peer-reviewed journals
back in the 90's I simply photocopied the first and second creation stories from the bible and then handed 1/2 the class one version and the other 1/2 the other version. Then I asked them to list the order that things were created. The students were shocked to find that they were almost the reverse of one another. However, I only did this in one class simply because after thinking about it, I was worried about church-state issues. however, it worked almost TOO well. Malcolm On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 8:15 AM, Kerry Griffis-Kylekerr...@yahoo.com wrote: I am teaching a Sophomore/Junior level evolution course at Texas Tech (where a significant proportion of my students believe evolution is anti-God). One of the activities I have them do is take three creationist claims about science and use the peer-reviewed scientific literature to find evidence to support or refute the claim. It makes them really think about the issues; and if they follow the directions, it does a better job than any of my classroom activities convincing them that the claims against evolution are just a bunch of hooey. Unfortunately, there are journals claiming peer-review status that are not. It can be very frustrating. Like Raphael, I also wonder if there is a good source the students can use as a rubric for telling if a journal article is peer-reviewed. * Kerry Griffis-Kyle Assistant Professor Department of Natural Resources Management Texas Tech University --- On Tue, 7/7/09, Raphael Mazor rapha...@sccwrp.org wrote: From: Raphael Mazor rapha...@sccwrp.org Subject: [ECOLOG-L] real versus fake peer-reviewed journals To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Date: Tuesday, July 7, 2009, 5:03 PM I've noticed a number of cases lately where groups with a strong political agenda (on topics like climate change, evolution, stem cells, or human health) cite peer reviewed studies in journals that are essentially fabricated for the purpose of advancing a specific viewpoint. What's a good way to tell when a journal is baloney? Of course, it's easy for a scientist in his or her own field to know when a journal is a sham, but how can we let others know it's obviously fake? For example, are only real journals included on major abstract indexing services? -- Raphael D. Mazor Biologist Southern California Coastal Water Research Project 3535 Harbor Boulevard, Suite 110 Costa Mesa, CA 92626 Tel: 714-755-3235 Fax: 714-755-3299 Email: rapha...@sccwrp.org -- Malcolm L. McCallum Associate Professor of Biology Texas AM University-Texarkana Editor, Herpetological Conservation and Biology http://www.herpconbio.org http://www.twitter.com/herpconbio Fall Teaching Schedule Office Hours: Landscape Ecology: T,R 10-11:40 pm Environmental Physiology: MW 1-2:40 pm Seminar: T 2:30-3:30pm Genetics: M 6-10pm Office Hours: M 3-6, T: 12-2, W: 3-4 1880's: There's lots of good fish in the sea W.S. Gilbert 1990's: Many fish stocks depleted due to overfishing, habitat loss, and pollution. 2000: Marine reserves, ecosystem restoration, and pollution reduction MAY help restore populations. 2022: Soylent Green is People! Confidentiality Notice: This e-mail message, including any attachments, is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the original message.
[ECOLOG-L] AIBS Public Policy Office: Communicating Science to Stakeholders Webinar
American Institute of Biological Sciences Public Policy Office Communicating Science To Stakeholders Webinar: July 30, 2:30PM EDT Funding agencies increasingly encourage grant recipients to communicate their findings to appropriate stakeholders. Many researchers, particularly those involved with projects with implications for environmental or public health management and policy, want to communicate research findings to appropriate decision makers, news media outlets, or the general public. This webinar presents information and findings from the HBFR Science Links Program, an experiment conducted by scientists and engineers affiliated with the Hubbard Brook Forest Research program. The HBFR Science Links Program demonstrates how a team of scientists can identify and plan a program that effectively delivers timely scientific findings to audiences that need the information to inform decision making. Pre-registration is required for this webinar. For more info please go to http://www.aibs.org/events/webinar/the-hbfr-science-links-program.html Contact: Jenna Jadin jja...@aibs.org 202-628-1500 x229 American Institute of Biological Sciences
Re: [ECOLOG-L] real versus fake peer-reviewed journals
I find this exchange very interesting, and it points up a major problem caused by the burgeoning of scientific knowledge and the limitations of the individual. As scientists, we believe (have faith) that the scientific method is the best means of arriving at truth about the natural world. Even if the method is error-prone in some ways, and is subject to various forms of manipulation, it is historically self-correcting. The problem is that no individual has enough time, knowledge, and background to know if the scientific method is being properly by all those who claim to be doing so. We hear someone cite a suspicious-sounding fact (i.e., a fact that doesn't correspond to our perhaps-erroneous understanding), and we want to know if it is based on real science or pseudo-science. So what to we do? We ask if the supporting research appeared in a peer-reviewed journal (i.e., has this been vetted by the old-boys network?). This sounds a little like the response of the people who first heard the teachings of Jesus. They didn't ask How do we know this is true? They asked By whose authority do you speak? These two questions should never be confused, yet the questions Did it appear in a peer-reviewed journal and Is that journal REALLY a peer-reviewed journal? skate perilously close to this confusion. We are looking for a short-cut, for something we can trust so we don't have to be experts in every branch of science and read every journal ourselves. I don't know the answer to this dilemma, and perhaps there is none, but we should be looking for something better than Does this have the stamp of approval of people who think like I do? We should be looking for something that is not just an encodement of Does this violate the doctrine of my faith? The pragmatic necessity of letting others decide whether certain research is valid should be no excuse for relaxing our personal vigilance and skepticism. Otherwise, we fall into the same trap that ensnares the religionists who are trying to undermine science because it threatens their faith. Martin M. Meiss 2009/7/8 Kerry Griffis-Kyle kerr...@yahoo.com I am teaching a Sophomore/Junior level evolution course at Texas Tech (where a significant proportion of my students believe evolution is anti-God). One of the activities I have them do is take three creationist claims about science and use the peer-reviewed scientific literature to find evidence to support or refute the claim. It makes them really think about the issues; and if they follow the directions, it does a better job than any of my classroom activities convincing them that the claims against evolution are just a bunch of hooey. Unfortunately, there are journals claiming peer-review status that are not. It can be very frustrating. Like Raphael, I also wonder if there is a good source the students can use as a rubric for telling if a journal article is peer-reviewed. * Kerry Griffis-Kyle Assistant Professor Department of Natural Resources Management Texas Tech University --- On Tue, 7/7/09, Raphael Mazor rapha...@sccwrp.org wrote: From: Raphael Mazor rapha...@sccwrp.org Subject: [ECOLOG-L] real versus fake peer-reviewed journals To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Date: Tuesday, July 7, 2009, 5:03 PM I've noticed a number of cases lately where groups with a strong political agenda (on topics like climate change, evolution, stem cells, or human health) cite peer reviewed studies in journals that are essentially fabricated for the purpose of advancing a specific viewpoint. What's a good way to tell when a journal is baloney? Of course, it's easy for a scientist in his or her own field to know when a journal is a sham, but how can we let others know it's obviously fake? For example, are only real journals included on major abstract indexing services? -- Raphael D. Mazor Biologist Southern California Coastal Water Research Project 3535 Harbor Boulevard, Suite 110 Costa Mesa, CA 92626 Tel: 714-755-3235 Fax: 714-755-3299 Email: rapha...@sccwrp.org
[ECOLOG-L] SCIENCE Truth, Reality, and Fantasy Relationships Re: [ECOLOG-L] real versus fake peer-reviewed journals
Honorable Forum: This may just be THE most important posting I have read in several years on this (and other) listservs. If further discussion all the way to a (provisional) conclusion along these lines does NOT happen, THAT will be a very TELLING INDICATOR of the current state of, at least, those actually reading it. I read it almost by accident. WT I hope said discussion radiates beyond this list--all of science, all of intellectual enquiry, should take up the discussion. I am hoping to see a revolution, a transformation in intellectual discipline take place as a result. - Original Message - From: Martin Meiss mme...@gmail.com To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Wednesday, July 08, 2009 8:34 AM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] real versus fake peer-reviewed journals I find this exchange very interesting, and it points up a major problem caused by the burgeoning of scientific knowledge and the limitations of the individual. As scientists, we believe (have faith) that the scientific method is the best means of arriving at truth about the natural world. Even if the method is error-prone in some ways, and is subject to various forms of manipulation, it is historically self-correcting. The problem is that no individual has enough time, knowledge, and background to know if the scientific method is being properly by all those who claim to be doing so. We hear someone cite a suspicious-sounding fact (i.e., a fact that doesn't correspond to our perhaps-erroneous understanding), and we want to know if it is based on real science or pseudo-science. So what to we do? We ask if the supporting research appeared in a peer-reviewed journal (i.e., has this been vetted by the old-boys network?). This sounds a little like the response of the people who first heard the teachings of Jesus. They didn't ask How do we know this is true? They asked By whose authority do you speak? These two questions should never be confused, yet the questions Did it appear in a peer-reviewed journal and Is that journal REALLY a peer-reviewed journal? skate perilously close to this confusion. We are looking for a short-cut, for something we can trust so we don't have to be experts in every branch of science and read every journal ourselves. I don't know the answer to this dilemma, and perhaps there is none, but we should be looking for something better than Does this have the stamp of approval of people who think like I do? We should be looking for something that is not just an encodement of Does this violate the doctrine of my faith? The pragmatic necessity of letting others decide whether certain research is valid should be no excuse for relaxing our personal vigilance and skepticism. Otherwise, we fall into the same trap that ensnares the religionists who are trying to undermine science because it threatens their faith. Martin M. Meiss 2009/7/8 Kerry Griffis-Kyle kerr...@yahoo.com I am teaching a Sophomore/Junior level evolution course at Texas Tech (where a significant proportion of my students believe evolution is anti-God). One of the activities I have them do is take three creationist claims about science and use the peer-reviewed scientific literature to find evidence to support or refute the claim. It makes them really think about the issues; and if they follow the directions, it does a better job than any of my classroom activities convincing them that the claims against evolution are just a bunch of hooey. Unfortunately, there are journals claiming peer-review status that are not. It can be very frustrating. Like Raphael, I also wonder if there is a good source the students can use as a rubric for telling if a journal article is peer-reviewed. * Kerry Griffis-Kyle Assistant Professor Department of Natural Resources Management Texas Tech University --- On Tue, 7/7/09, Raphael Mazor rapha...@sccwrp.org wrote: From: Raphael Mazor rapha...@sccwrp.org Subject: [ECOLOG-L] real versus fake peer-reviewed journals To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Date: Tuesday, July 7, 2009, 5:03 PM I've noticed a number of cases lately where groups with a strong political agenda (on topics like climate change, evolution, stem cells, or human health) cite peer reviewed studies in journals that are essentially fabricated for the purpose of advancing a specific viewpoint. What's a good way to tell when a journal is baloney? Of course, it's easy for a scientist in his or her own field to know when a journal is a sham, but how can we let others know it's obviously fake? For example, are only real journals included on major abstract indexing services? -- Raphael D. Mazor Biologist Southern California Coastal Water Research Project 3535 Harbor Boulevard, Suite 110 Costa Mesa, CA 92626 Tel: 714-755-3235 Fax: 714-755-3299 Email: rapha...@sccwrp.org No
[ECOLOG-L] Faculty Positions Available at Flathead Lake Biological Station
Could you please distribute. FLATHEAD LAKE BIOLOGICAL STATION THE UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA Tenure Track Faculty Positions AQUATIC BIOGEOCHEMIST FLBS invites applications for a tenure-track position in biogeochemistry of river and lake ecosystems. Statement of rationale for the application, with emphasis on ability to obtain research funding, and vita listing 3 references, must be sent via e-mail to mailto:bio...@flbs.umt.edubio...@flbs.umt.edu. CONSERVATION ECOLOGIST FLBS invites applications for a tenure-track position in conservation ecology in a landscape genetics context. Statement of rationale for the application, with emphasis on ability to obtain research funding, and vita listing 3 references, must be sent via e-mail to mailto:consecol...@flbs.umt.educonsecol...@flbs.umt.edu. Both positions are full time at FLBS on the east shore of Flathead Lake near Polson, MT, with half-time salary for teaching and service and remaining annual salary derived from research funding. Specifically looking for individuals that want to work in the transdisciplinary environment fostered at FLBS; more information at http://www.umt.edu/flbswww.umt.edu/flbs. A PhD and postdoc research exp. required. Screening will begin August 4, 2009, and will continue until a suitable applicant is hired. AA/EOE/ADA/Veterans Preference Employer.
Re: [ECOLOG-L] real versus fake peer-reviewed journals
The ISI list is good, but not complete and they are making it easier for journals centered in the third world to get inclusion than for those from North America. This is right from ISI, no misconceptions. I spoke directly with their evaluations folks in my work with HCB. They willingly and openly are increasing inclusion of non-US journals that would not make it if they were a North American Journal. ISI is a business and is trying to expand its impact for financial reasons into these other region. Enough griping from my end. On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 10:20 AM, Mitch Cruzancru...@pdx.edu wrote: The standard most people use is the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) list of journals. ISI use to do Science Citation Index and now runs databases like Web of Science (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Scientific_Information). The criteria for selection is fairly conservative and includes peer review. You can see an explanation here: http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/science/free/essays/journal_selection_process/ I tell my students that they can only use journals listed by ISI. The list of journals is huge and I have never run into a citation from the last few decades that I could not find by searching WoS (it only goes back to 1977). ISI also maintains a list of Impact Factors, which you can use to get a rough idea of journal quality based on how often papers get cited. Kerry Griffis-Kyle wrote: I am teaching a Sophomore/Junior level evolution course at Texas Tech (where a significant proportion of my students believe evolution is anti-God). One of the activities I have them do is take three creationist claims about science and use the peer-reviewed scientific literature to find evidence to support or refute the claim. It makes them really think about the issues; and if they follow the directions, it does a better job than any of my classroom activities convincing them that the claims against evolution are just a bunch of hooey. Unfortunately, there are journals claiming peer-review status that are not. It can be very frustrating. Like Raphael, I also wonder if there is a good source the students can use as a rubric for telling if a journal article is peer-reviewed. * Kerry Griffis-Kyle Assistant Professor Department of Natural Resources Management Texas Tech University --- On Tue, 7/7/09, Raphael Mazor rapha...@sccwrp.org wrote: From: Raphael Mazor rapha...@sccwrp.org Subject: [ECOLOG-L] real versus fake peer-reviewed journals To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Date: Tuesday, July 7, 2009, 5:03 PM I've noticed a number of cases lately where groups with a strong political agenda (on topics like climate change, evolution, stem cells, or human health) cite peer reviewed studies in journals that are essentially fabricated for the purpose of advancing a specific viewpoint. What's a good way to tell when a journal is baloney? Of course, it's easy for a scientist in his or her own field to know when a journal is a sham, but how can we let others know it's obviously fake? For example, are only real journals included on major abstract indexing services? -- Raphael D. Mazor Biologist Southern California Coastal Water Research Project 3535 Harbor Boulevard, Suite 110 Costa Mesa, CA 92626 Tel: 714-755-3235 Fax: 714-755-3299 Email: rapha...@sccwrp.org -- Mitchell B. Cruzan, Associate Professor Department of Biology P.O. Box 751 Portland State University Portland, OR 97207 http://web.pdx.edu/~cruzan/ -- Malcolm L. McCallum Associate Professor of Biology Texas AM University-Texarkana Editor, Herpetological Conservation and Biology http://www.herpconbio.org http://www.twitter.com/herpconbio Fall Teaching Schedule Office Hours: Landscape Ecology: T,R 10-11:40 pm Environmental Physiology: MW 1-2:40 pm Seminar: T 2:30-3:30pm Genetics: M 6-10pm Office Hours: M 3-6, T: 12-2, W: 3-4 1880's: There's lots of good fish in the sea W.S. Gilbert 1990's: Many fish stocks depleted due to overfishing, habitat loss, and pollution. 2000: Marine reserves, ecosystem restoration, and pollution reduction MAY help restore populations. 2022: Soylent Green is People! Confidentiality Notice: This e-mail message, including any attachments, is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the original message.
[ECOLOG-L] ESA Outstanding Student Research Awards Application FINAL CALL
Attention All ESA Students, Faculty, and Advisors, We have only received a few applications so far. Thus, we have EXTENDED THE DEADLINE to July 18th. The ESA Student Section is pleased to sponsor the Second Annual Outstanding Student Research in Ecology Awards program. We will award two students, cash prizes for excellence in research via an outstanding publication. There are prestigious awards for both UNDERGRADUATE and GRADUATE research so don't miss out! *** THE EXTENDED DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS IS SATURDAY JULY 18th. *** ELIGIBILITY AND NOMINATION: At the time of the nomination deadline (Saturday, July 18th), the paper must be published in a peer reviewed journal(2007-2009) and the nominee must be an undergraduate student, a graduate student, or have received a Ph.D. within the past two years. The nominee must be first author of the paper and be a member in good standing of ESA's Student Section at the time of nomination. Awards will be granted only to Student Section members. To become a student section member, check the appropriate box on your ESA membership form when you renew your ESA membership (http://eservices.esa.org) or email members...@esa.org. Self-nominations and nominations by colleagues are welcomed. SELECTION CRITERIA: Applications will be reviewed by an Awards Committee appointed by the Officers of the Student Section. Papers will be judged based upon the papers contribution to the field, including originality, study design and impact. *** Nomination packets should include: 1. A copy of the paper 2. A brief letter describing the impact of the paper on the field and standing the date of completion of the degree if the nominee is no longer a student. ***Make sure to indicate whether the research was completed during undergraduate or graduate tenure*** 3. A letter of support from the major professor that also confirms the nominees eligibility for the award 4. A CV from the nominee *** SUBMITTING APPLICATIONS: By July 18th, Nomination packets should be emailed to both Matthew Whiteside (mwhit...@uci.edu) and Rob Salguero-Gomez (salgu...@sas.upenn.edu) as PDFS, with the phrase Outstanding Student Awards in the subject line. Plaques and cash prizes will be awarded to winners at the 2009 Student Section Awards Ceremony in Albuquerque, NM (Tuesday 8pm-10pm, Wool Warehouse) We look forward to your applications, The ESA Student Section Chair: Matthew Whiteside Vice Chair: Rob Salguero-Gomez Secretary: Johanna Delgado-Acevedo Matthew D. Whiteside PhD Candidate Chair ESA Student Section Ecology and Evolution 321 Steinhaus Hall University of California Irvine,CA 92697-2525 USA telephone: (949) 824-9423 fax: (949) 824-2181 http://webfiles.nacs.uci.edu/treseder/public/People/People.htm
Re: [ECOLOG-L] real versus fake peer-reviewed journals
Martin, This all sounds good in the abstract, but it's beyond me how we could do better than peer-review to establish which science is done well and which is not. No matter how reliable a system is, it's always easy to say we should do better than this. But what would you propose to improve on our current systme of vetting scientific research? You don't have to get very far from your own field to run into research you aren't equipped to validate. Most pollination biologists probably aren't prepared to properly assess the quality of research on insect cognition, for example, so they have to rely on other scientists to evaluate the research for them. To what better authority could they possibly appeal? I would certainly not want people who don't have faith in the scientific method deciding which papers can and cannot be published. Jim Crants On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 10:34 AM, Martin Meiss mme...@gmail.com wrote: I find this exchange very interesting, and it points up a major problem caused by the burgeoning of scientific knowledge and the limitations of the individual. As scientists, we believe (have faith) that the scientific method is the best means of arriving at truth about the natural world. Even if the method is error-prone in some ways, and is subject to various forms of manipulation, it is historically self-correcting. The problem is that no individual has enough time, knowledge, and background to know if the scientific method is being properly by all those who claim to be doing so. We hear someone cite a suspicious-sounding fact (i.e., a fact that doesn't correspond to our perhaps-erroneous understanding), and we want to know if it is based on real science or pseudo-science. So what to we do? We ask if the supporting research appeared in a peer-reviewed journal (i.e., has this been vetted by the old-boys network?). This sounds a little like the response of the people who first heard the teachings of Jesus. They didn't ask How do we know this is true? They asked By whose authority do you speak? These two questions should never be confused, yet the questions Did it appear in a peer-reviewed journal and Is that journal REALLY a peer-reviewed journal? skate perilously close to this confusion. We are looking for a short-cut, for something we can trust so we don't have to be experts in every branch of science and read every journal ourselves. I don't know the answer to this dilemma, and perhaps there is none, but we should be looking for something better than Does this have the stamp of approval of people who think like I do? We should be looking for something that is not just an encodement of Does this violate the doctrine of my faith? The pragmatic necessity of letting others decide whether certain research is valid should be no excuse for relaxing our personal vigilance and skepticism. Otherwise, we fall into the same trap that ensnares the religionists who are trying to undermine science because it threatens their faith. Martin M. Meiss 2009/7/8 Kerry Griffis-Kyle kerr...@yahoo.com I am teaching a Sophomore/Junior level evolution course at Texas Tech (where a significant proportion of my students believe evolution is anti-God). One of the activities I have them do is take three creationist claims about science and use the peer-reviewed scientific literature to find evidence to support or refute the claim. It makes them really think about the issues; and if they follow the directions, it does a better job than any of my classroom activities convincing them that the claims against evolution are just a bunch of hooey. Unfortunately, there are journals claiming peer-review status that are not. It can be very frustrating. Like Raphael, I also wonder if there is a good source the students can use as a rubric for telling if a journal article is peer-reviewed. * Kerry Griffis-Kyle Assistant Professor Department of Natural Resources Management Texas Tech University --- On Tue, 7/7/09, Raphael Mazor rapha...@sccwrp.org wrote: From: Raphael Mazor rapha...@sccwrp.org Subject: [ECOLOG-L] real versus fake peer-reviewed journals To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Date: Tuesday, July 7, 2009, 5:03 PM I've noticed a number of cases lately where groups with a strong political agenda (on topics like climate change, evolution, stem cells, or human health) cite peer reviewed studies in journals that are essentially fabricated for the purpose of advancing a specific viewpoint. What's a good way to tell when a journal is baloney? Of course, it's easy for a scientist in his or her own field to know when a journal is a sham, but how can we let others know it's obviously fake? For example, are only real journals included on major abstract indexing services? -- Raphael D. Mazor Biologist Southern California Coastal Water
Re: [ECOLOG-L] real versus fake peer-reviewed journals
Hello Kerry, The Language of God.by Francis Collins Quoting malcolm McCallum malcolm.mccal...@herpconbio.org: back in the 90's I simply photocopied the first and second creation stories from the bible and then handed 1/2 the class one version and the other 1/2 the other version. Then I asked them to list the order that things were created. The students were shocked to find that they were almost the reverse of one another. However, I only did this in one class simply because after thinking about it, I was worried about church-state issues. however, it worked almost TOO well. Malcolm On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 8:15 AM, Kerry Griffis-Kylekerr...@yahoo.com wrote: I am teaching a Sophomore/Junior level evolution course at Texas Tech (where a significant proportion of my students believe evolution is anti-God). One of the activities I have them do is take three creationist claims about science and use the peer-reviewed scientific literature to find evidence to support or refute the claim. It makes them really think about the issues; and if they follow the directions, it does a better job than any of my classroom activities convincing them that the claims against evolution are just a bunch of hooey. Unfortunately, there are journals claiming peer-review status that are not. It can be very frustrating. Like Raphael, I also wonder if there is a good source the students can use as a rubric for telling if a journal article is peer-reviewed. * Kerry Griffis-Kyle Assistant Professor Department of Natural Resources Management Texas Tech University --- On Tue, 7/7/09, Raphael Mazor rapha...@sccwrp.org wrote: From: Raphael Mazor rapha...@sccwrp.org Subject: [ECOLOG-L] real versus fake peer-reviewed journals To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Date: Tuesday, July 7, 2009, 5:03 PM I've noticed a number of cases lately where groups with a strong political agenda (on topics like climate change, evolution, stem cells, or human health) cite peer reviewed studies in journals that are essentially fabricated for the purpose of advancing a specific viewpoint. What's a good way to tell when a journal is baloney? Of course, it's easy for a scientist in his or her own field to know when a journal is a sham, but how can we let others know it's obviously fake? For example, are only real journals included on major abstract indexing services? -- Raphael D. Mazor Biologist Southern California Coastal Water Research Project 3535 Harbor Boulevard, Suite 110 Costa Mesa, CA 92626 Tel: 714-755-3235 Fax: 714-755-3299 Email: rapha...@sccwrp.org -- Malcolm L. McCallum Associate Professor of Biology Texas AM University-Texarkana Editor, Herpetological Conservation and Biology http://www.herpconbio.org http://www.twitter.com/herpconbio Fall Teaching Schedule Office Hours: Landscape Ecology: T,R 10-11:40 pm Environmental Physiology: MW 1-2:40 pm Seminar: T 2:30-3:30pm Genetics: M 6-10pm Office Hours: M 3-6, T: 12-2, W: 3-4 1880's: There's lots of good fish in the sea W.S. Gilbert 1990's: Many fish stocks depleted due to overfishing, habitat loss, and pollution. 2000: Marine reserves, ecosystem restoration, and pollution reduction MAY help restore populations. 2022: Soylent Green is People! Confidentiality Notice: This e-mail message, including any attachments, is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the original message. Patrick D. Royer patrick.ro...@ars.usda.gov pdro...@email.arizona.edu USDA Agricultural Research Service University of Arizona Office 520-316-6338 cell 520-245-1894
Re: [ECOLOG-L] real versus fake peer-reviewed journals
In regard to this issue, we should remind that we scientists also fall into this trap. In publishing a paper, we often look for a journal that has high probability of being published. In a way, all you need is several likely minded peers to have your paper published in a peer-reviewed journal. Below is a quote: Hilborn, R. 2006. Faith-based fisheries. Fisheries 31:554-555. A community of belief has arisen whose credo has become “fisheries management has failed, we need to abandon the old approaches and use marine protected areas and ecosystem-based management.” I fear that this belief has shaded the peer review process so badly that almost any paper showing a significant decline in fish abundance or benefits of marine protected areas has a high probability of getting favorable reviews in some journals regardless of the quality of the analysis. Critical peer review has been replaced by faith-based support for ideas and too many scientists have become advocates. An advocate knows the answer and looks for evidence to support it; a scientist asks nature how much support there is for competing hypotheses. http://www.fisheries.org/afs/docs/fisheries/fisheries_3111.pdf Toshihide Hamachan Hamazaki, PhD : 濱崎俊秀：浜ちゃん Alaska Department of Fish Game Division of Commercial Fisheries 333 Raspberry Rd. Anchorage, Alaska 99518 Ph: 907-267-2158 Fax: 907-267-2442 Cell: 907-440-9934 E-mail: toshihide.hamaz...@alaska.gov
[ECOLOG-L] Fulbright opportunities
From March to August 1, 2009, U.S. faculty and professionals are invited to apply for *Fulbright scholar grants at file:///C:/Users/David/AppData/Local/Temp/blocked::http://www.cies.org/www.cies.org. For monthly updates, write us at mailto:outre...@cies.iie.orgoutre...@cies.iie.org for a complimentary subscription to The Fulbright Scholar News, an electronic newsletter. *The Fulbright Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of States Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, is the U.S. governments flagship international exchange program and is supported by the people of the United States and partner countries around the world. Since 1946, the Fulbright Program has provided more than 286,000 participants from over 155 countries with the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research, to exchange ideas and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns. For more information, visit file:///C:/Users/David/AppData/Local/Temp/blocked::http://fulbright.state.gov/http://fulbright.state.gov/. Fulbright Scholar Program for US Faculty and Professionals for 2010-2011: Deadline is August 1st!!! The Fulbright Scholar Program offers 69 awards in lecturing, research or combined lecturing/research in environmental science, including four Fulbright Distinguished Chairs, the African Regional Research Program and the Middle East and North Africa Regional Research Program. Even better, faculty and professionals in environmental science also can apply for one of the 144 All Discipline awards open to all fields. What does Fulbright offer in environmental science? Here are a few of the awards for 2010-2011: Northern and Eastern Europe: Opportunities in environmental health in Finland, renewable energy/energy research in Estonia, Lithuania, Norway and Poland, and ecology/conservation in Hungary and Estonia. Post-communist countries seek scientists and policymakers to develop new policies and solutions to pressing environmental problems. Southern and Western Europe: Award #0226 Pure and Applied Sciences in Bulgaria; Award #0375 Social Sciences (environmental, health and sustainability, ecotourism) in the Slovak Republic; Award #0395 Science and Technology in Turkey; Award #0272 Agriculture or Environmental Studies in Hungary. Middle East and Northern Africa: Award #0461 Multiple Disciplines in Oman; Award #0466 All Disciplines in Saudi Arabia; Multiple Postdoctoral Research awards in Israel and Egypt. Western Hemisphere: Award #0558 Environmental Studies, Biotechnology and Plant Pathology in Trinidad and Tobago; Award #0503 Argentina/Uruguay Joint Award in Environmental Sciences; Award #0554 Renewable Energy Science and Technology in Panama; Award #0504 Canada/Mexico Joint Award in North American Studies Distinguished Chairs: Award #0009 - Fulbright-University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences Vienna in Austria; Award #0034 Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Alternative Energy Technology in Sweden; Award #0024 Fulbright-Israel Distinguished Chair in the Natural Sciences and Engineering. The application deadline is August 1, 2009. U.S. citizenship is required. For a full, detailed listing of all Fulbright programs and other eligibility requirements, please visit our website at http://www.cies.org/www.cies.org or send a request for materials to mailto:schol...@cies.iie.orgschol...@cies.iie.org.
Re: [ECOLOG-L] real versus fake peer-reviewed journals
Martin: I certainly hope most scientists don't rely on faith in the peer review process to determine if a paper is valid or not. I've always treated peer-review as just setting a low-end of reliability -- e.g. the paper isn't AWFUL if it made it into this journal, and is at least worthy of me reading it -- the better the journal, typically, the higher the bar, but no journal comes close to being infallible. If you've reviewed for mid to upper tier journals, you'll know that the vast majority of submissions are terrible -- we throw out a LOT of bad research. Since science requires repeatability of results, if a paper is absolutely novel and brand new, I will ALWAYS spend a LOT more time reading through it than if its basically confirming what a lot of other papers have confirmed -- peer review + repetition of results = higher reliability. Personally, I disagree with the statement The problem is that no individual has enough time, knowledge, and background to know if the scientific method is being properly by all those who claim to be doing so. If you are citing a paper or using a paper to guide your own research, as a scientist you should be reading the paper carefully enough to decide whether or not it is scientifically grounded -- if you are just pulling out facts from the abstract and discussion, you aren't really doing your job. This type of behavior WILL catch up with you, eventually -- if you are basing your own research on an assumption of validity of someone else's work simply because that work made it into a journal, and that work proves to be in error, you are essentially shooting yourself in the foot down the road. --j Martin Meiss wrote: I find this exchange very interesting, and it points up a major problem caused by the burgeoning of scientific knowledge and the limitations of the individual. As scientists, we believe (have faith) that the scientific method is the best means of arriving at truth about the natural world. Even if the method is error-prone in some ways, and is subject to various forms of manipulation, it is historically self-correcting. The problem is that no individual has enough time, knowledge, and background to know if the scientific method is being properly by all those who claim to be doing so. We hear someone cite a suspicious-sounding fact (i.e., a fact that doesn't correspond to our perhaps-erroneous understanding), and we want to know if it is based on real science or pseudo-science. So what to we do? We ask if the supporting research appeared in a peer-reviewed journal (i.e., has this been vetted by the old-boys network?). This sounds a little like the response of the people who first heard the teachings of Jesus. They didn't ask How do we know this is true? They asked By whose authority do you speak? These two questions should never be confused, yet the questions Did it appear in a peer-reviewed journal and Is that journal REALLY a peer-reviewed journal? skate perilously close to this confusion. We are looking for a short-cut, for something we can trust so we don't have to be experts in every branch of science and read every journal ourselves. I don't know the answer to this dilemma, and perhaps there is none, but we should be looking for something better than Does this have the stamp of approval of people who think like I do? We should be looking for something that is not just an encodement of Does this violate the doctrine of my faith? The pragmatic necessity of letting others decide whether certain research is valid should be no excuse for relaxing our personal vigilance and skepticism. Otherwise, we fall into the same trap that ensnares the religionists who are trying to undermine science because it threatens their faith. Martin M. Meiss 2009/7/8 Kerry Griffis-Kyle kerr...@yahoo.com I am teaching a Sophomore/Junior level evolution course at Texas Tech (where a significant proportion of my students believe evolution is anti-God). One of the activities I have them do is take three creationist claims about science and use the peer-reviewed scientific literature to find evidence to support or refute the claim. It makes them really think about the issues; and if they follow the directions, it does a better job than any of my classroom activities convincing them that the claims against evolution are just a bunch of hooey. Unfortunately, there are journals claiming peer-review status that are not. It can be very frustrating. Like Raphael, I also wonder if there is a good source the students can use as a rubric for telling if a journal article is peer-reviewed. * Kerry Griffis-Kyle Assistant Professor Department of Natural Resources Management Texas Tech University --- On Tue, 7/7/09, Raphael Mazor rapha...@sccwrp.org wrote: From: Raphael Mazor rapha...@sccwrp.org Subject: [ECOLOG-L] real versus fake peer-reviewed journals To:
Re: [ECOLOG-L] real versus fake peer-reviewed journals
I support Martin in this, although I think that James raises a valid point. Peer review is only a poor indicator of the quality of a paper, and often editors end up sending papers to graduate students or even people in other fields. About a third of the reviewing requests I receive are inappropriate, and often I can't even understand what the paper is about. Of course this depends on the particular discipline. In fields where there is a standard methodology peer review can certify that the work was done correctly. In other fields though the reviewer may only be certifying that the paper follows the current paradigm (note the quote from Hilborn in another posting on this topic). Basically we have no definitive way of separating valid results from junk. I am sure that there were plenty of senior scientists who would have rejected the papers of Darwin, Einstein, Wegener and many others. There are also hundreds of papers published in good journals which turned out to be wrong. The suggestion that you look at the journal's mission statement may help. Reputable journals abound, the problem arises with obscure new journals that may have an agenda. (Certainly no respectable scientist would want to publish a complicated model in the online Journal of Simple Systems, www.simple.cafeperal.eu - I can say this with confidence, since I am the editor and publisher). If the journal seems strange or inappropriate, think about why the paper ended up there, Bill Silvert - Original Message - From: James Crants jcra...@gmail.com To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Wednesday, July 08, 2009 3:22 PM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] real versus fake peer-reviewed journals Martin, This all sounds good in the abstract, but it's beyond me how we could do better than peer-review to establish which science is done well and which is not. No matter how reliable a system is, it's always easy to say we should do better than this. But what would you propose to improve on our current systme of vetting scientific research? You don't have to get very far from your own field to run into research you aren't equipped to validate. Most pollination biologists probably aren't prepared to properly assess the quality of research on insect cognition, for example, so they have to rely on other scientists to evaluate the research for them. To what better authority could they possibly appeal? I would certainly not want people who don't have faith in the scientific method deciding which papers can and cannot be published. Jim Crants On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 10:34 AM, Martin Meiss mme...@gmail.com wrote: I find this exchange very interesting, and it points up a major problem caused by the burgeoning of scientific knowledge and the limitations of the individual. As scientists, we believe (have faith) that the scientific method is the best means of arriving at truth about the natural world. Even if the method is error-prone in some ways, and is subject to various forms of manipulation, it is historically self-correcting. The problem is that no individual has enough time, knowledge, and background to know if the scientific method is being properly by all those who claim to be doing so. We hear someone cite a suspicious-sounding fact (i.e., a fact that doesn't correspond to our perhaps-erroneous understanding), and we want to know if it is based on real science or pseudo-science. So what to we do? We ask if the supporting research appeared in a peer-reviewed journal (i.e., has this been vetted by the old-boys network?). This sounds a little like the response of the people who first heard the teachings of Jesus. They didn't ask How do we know this is true? They asked By whose authority do you speak? These two questions should never be confused, yet the questions Did it appear in a peer-reviewed journal and Is that journal REALLY a peer-reviewed journal? skate perilously close to this confusion. We are looking for a short-cut, for something we can trust so we don't have to be experts in every branch of science and read every journal ourselves. I don't know the answer to this dilemma, and perhaps there is none, but we should be looking for something better than Does this have the stamp of approval of people who think like I do? We should be looking for something that is not just an encodement of Does this violate the doctrine of my faith? The pragmatic necessity of letting others decide whether certain research is valid should be no excuse for relaxing our personal vigilance and skepticism. Otherwise, we fall into the same trap that ensnares the religionists who are trying to undermine science because it threatens their faith. Martin M. Meiss 2009/7/8 Kerry Griffis-Kyle kerr...@yahoo.com I am teaching a Sophomore/Junior level evolution course at Texas Tech (where a significant proportion of my students believe evolution is anti-God). One of the activities
Re: [ECOLOG-L] real versus fake peer-reviewed journals
Mr. Hamazaki's example, whether it is accurate or not, illustrates one of my points. Just to get by in our professional lives, scientists must have faith in the social institutions, such as peer review, that we have created. And yet we all know that social institutions are inherently corruptible. Not only peer-review, but many other aspects of the practice of science, are rooted in these corruptible institutions. Besides the issue I raised earlier, that of becoming too complacent in our acceptance of our own perspective, there is the issue raised on the earlier posts of this thread: How to demonstrate to students (and other people who are not scientific professionals) that not all peer review is created equal. Some journalists, in an attempt to be fair-minded and objective, think they have to give equal time to holocaust deniers and to survivors of concentration camps. This same tendency will give equal weight to our and their peer-review processes. Imagine that you are in a debate on a talk show with an ideologue who cites dubious research results in a dubious journal, but claims that the work is peer-reviewed. What do you say? That isn't REAL peer-review, Is so!, Is not!. Suppose the show host is smart and stops this and asks how to distinguish between valid and invalid peer review. What do you say? We've been doing it this way for many years.? This is the scientific consensus of how it should be done.? This is the method used by people who think right? Try to come up with a wording that would make sense to a lay audience and that couldn't be used by the opponent with equal plausibility, at least to the ears of the lay people whose taxes are funding your research. This should be more than an exercise in rhetoric; we need formulations that in simple terms expose the fundamentals of the process, acknowledge its weaknesses, and distinguish it from phony imitators. I sure don't have the answers, but I think that we as a community could come up with them. Martin 2009/7/8 Hamazaki, Hamachan (DFG) toshihide.hamaz...@alaska.gov In regard to this issue, we should remind that we scientists also fall into this trap. In publishing a paper, we often look for a journal that has high probability of being published. In a way, all you need is several likely minded peers to have your paper published in a peer-reviewed journal. Below is a quote: Hilborn, R. 2006. Faith-based fisheries. Fisheries 31:554-555. A community of belief has arisen whose credo has become “fisheries management has failed, we need to abandon the old approaches and use marine protected areas and ecosystem-based management.” I fear that this belief has shaded the peer review process so badly that almost any paper showing a significant decline in fish abundance or benefits of marine protected areas has a high probability of getting favorable reviews in some journals regardless of the quality of the analysis. Critical peer review has been replaced by faith-based support for ideas and too many scientists have become advocates. An advocate knows the answer and looks for evidence to support it; a scientist asks nature how much support there is for competing hypotheses. http://www.fisheries.org/afs/docs/fisheries/fisheries_3111.pdf Toshihide Hamachan Hamazaki, PhD : 濱崎俊秀：浜ちゃん Alaska Department of Fish Game Division of Commercial Fisheries 333 Raspberry Rd. Anchorage, Alaska 99518 Ph: 907-267-2158 Fax: 907-267-2442 Cell: 907-440-9934 E-mail: toshihide.hamaz...@alaska.gov
Re: [ECOLOG-L] real versus fake peer-reviewed journals
Martin Meiss said: This should be more than an exercise in rhetoric; we need formulations that in simple terms expose the fundamentals of the process, acknowledge its weaknesses, and distinguish it from phony imitators. I sure don't have the answers, but I think that we as a community could come up with them. I don't think could is strong enough. We as a community MUST come up with them. Mr. Hamazaki's example, whether it is accurate or not, illustrates one of my points. Just to get by in our professional lives, scientists must have faith in the social institutions, such as peer review, that we have created. And yet we all know that social institutions are inherently corruptible. Not only peer-review, but many other aspects of the practice of science, are rooted in these corruptible institutions. Besides the issue I raised earlier, that of becoming too complacent in our acceptance of our own perspective, there is the issue raised on the earlier posts of this thread: How to demonstrate to students (and other people who are not scientific professionals) that not all peer review is created equal. Some journalists, in an attempt to be fair-minded and objective, think they have to give equal time to holocaust deniers and to survivors of concentration camps. This same tendency will give equal weight to our and their peer-review processes. Imagine that you are in a debate on a talk show with an ideologue who cites dubious research results in a dubious journal, but claims that the work is peer-reviewed. What do you say? That isn't REAL peer-review, Is so!, Is not!. Suppose the show host is smart and stops this and asks how to distinguish between valid and invalid peer review. What do you say? We've been doing it this way for many years.? This is the scientific consensus of how it should be done.? This is the method used by people who think right? Try to come up with a wording that would make sense to a lay audience and that couldn't be used by the opponent with equal plausibility, at least to the ears of the lay people whose taxes are funding your research. This should be more than an exercise in rhetoric; we need formulations that in simple terms expose the fundamentals of the process, acknowledge its weaknesses, and distinguish it from phony imitators. I sure don't have the answers, but I think that we as a community could come up with them. Martin 2009/7/8 Hamazaki, Hamachan (DFG) toshihide.hamaz...@alaska.gov In regard to this issue, we should remind that we scientists also fall into this trap. In publishing a paper, we often look for a journal that has high probability of being published. In a way, all you need is several likely minded peers to have your paper published in a peer-reviewed journal. Below is a quote: Hilborn, R. 2006. Faith-based fisheries. Fisheries 31:554-555. A community of belief has arisen whose credo has become $B!H(Bfisheries management has failed, we need to abandon the old approaches and use marine protected areas and ecosystem-based management.$B!I(B I fear that this belief has shaded the peer review process so badly that almost any paper showing a significant decline in fish abundance or benefits of marine protected areas has a high probability of getting favorable reviews in some journals regardless of the quality of the analysis. Critical peer review has been replaced by faith-based support for ideas and too many scientists have become advocates. An advocate knows the answer and looks for evidence to support it; a scientist asks nature how much support there is for competing hypotheses. http://www.fisheries.org/afs/docs/fisheries/fisheries_3111.pdf Toshihide Hamachan Hamazaki, PhD : $B_@:j=S=(!'IM$A$c$s(B Alaska Department of Fish Game Division of Commercial Fisheries 333 Raspberry Rd. Anchorage, Alaska 99518 Ph: 907-267-2158 Fax: 907-267-2442 Cell: 907-440-9934 E-mail: toshihide.hamaz...@alaska.gov
Re: [ECOLOG-L] real versus fake peer-reviewed journals
Yes, Dr. Greenberg, I concede your point. In one's immediate research one must go far beyond having faith in the publishing process. By the way, do journals keep accurate data on their rejection rates, on re-submission rates, etc. This would be the sort of information that could be used to distinguish between legitimate journals and journals with political agendas. However, at least in part, my remarks were directed toward our acceptance of work well outside our field. I would like to hold intelligent opinions on climate change, for instance, without having to understand all the climatology, meteorology, oceanography, paleontology, modeling, etc. that truly enlightened opinions are based on. I would like to believe that the voodoo-sounding stuff and the particle zoo that physicists talk about is well-founded in theory and experiment, but I don't understand their mathematics and I never will. So when physicists say they have found the top quark, or that there ought to be a Higgs boson, I have to take that on faith, or perhaps, as Dave Raikow suggested in an earlier post, we should call it confidence. Condidence that those guys know what they're talking about, that their journal editors and reviewers aren't nuts or corrupt, confidence that their mathematics isn't black magic. As an aside, here's a question I put to you: Is this confidence I'm talking about very different, at the psychological level, than the confidence that a tribal person might have in the magical powers of his/her shaman? Well, no *I *don't understand how his curse makes my milk go sour, but *he *understands. He has worked with some of the best shamans arround. His father slew seven leopards. There was a circle around the moon on the night he was born. This is a rather whimiscal set of credentals, but is the psychology by which they might be accepted in a tribal context any different from that in effect when laymen in our society accept our scientific credentials? Martin 2009/7/8 Jonathan Greenberg greenb...@ucdavis.edu Martin: I certainly hope most scientists don't rely on faith in the peer review process to determine if a paper is valid or not. I've always treated peer-review as just setting a low-end of reliability -- e.g. the paper isn't AWFUL if it made it into this journal, and is at least worthy of me reading it -- the better the journal, typically, the higher the bar, but no journal comes close to being infallible. If you've reviewed for mid to upper tier journals, you'll know that the vast majority of submissions are terrible -- we throw out a LOT of bad research. Since science requires repeatability of results, if a paper is absolutely novel and brand new, I will ALWAYS spend a LOT more time reading through it than if its basically confirming what a lot of other papers have confirmed -- peer review + repetition of results = higher reliability. Personally, I disagree with the statement The problem is that no individual has enough time, knowledge, and background to know if the scientific method is being properly by all those who claim to be doing so. If you are citing a paper or using a paper to guide your own research, as a scientist you should be reading the paper carefully enough to decide whether or not it is scientifically grounded -- if you are just pulling out facts from the abstract and discussion, you aren't really doing your job. This type of behavior WILL catch up with you, eventually -- if you are basing your own research on an assumption of validity of someone else's work simply because that work made it into a journal, and that work proves to be in error, you are essentially shooting yourself in the foot down the road. --j Martin Meiss wrote: I find this exchange very interesting, and it points up a major problem caused by the burgeoning of scientific knowledge and the limitations of the individual. As scientists, we believe (have faith) that the scientific method is the best means of arriving at truth about the natural world. Even if the method is error-prone in some ways, and is subject to various forms of manipulation, it is historically self-correcting. The problem is that no individual has enough time, knowledge, and background to know if the scientific method is being properly by all those who claim to be doing so. We hear someone cite a suspicious-sounding fact (i.e., a fact that doesn't correspond to our perhaps-erroneous understanding), and we want to know if it is based on real science or pseudo-science. So what to we do? We ask if the supporting research appeared in a peer-reviewed journal (i.e., has this been vetted by the old-boys network?). This sounds a little like the response of the people who first heard the teachings of Jesus. They didn't ask How do we know this is true? They asked By whose authority do you speak? These two questions should never be confused, yet the
[ECOLOG-L] Science Peer Review Journal qualify Re: [ECOLOG-L] real versus fake peer-reviewed journals
Honorable Community: This should be more than an exercise in rhetoric; we need formulations that in simple terms expose the fundamentals of the process, acknowledge its weaknesses, and distinguish it from phony imitators. I sure don't have the answers, but I think that we as a community could come up with them. Martin Ah, Amen, brother Martin--if you will excuse the expression. I look forward to a list of candidate answers to Martin's most reasonable suggestion/challenge right here on Ecolog! With all this rapid-fire peer-review, it shouldn't take long, eh? WT PS: Please excuse me for deleting Hamazaki's message here; I don't know if I am the only one affected, but I get a window about installing a language pack that introduces an unnecessary step, since Hamazaki's text is in English, not Japanese, and I don't see the need to propagate even that relatively insignificant bug through out the list repeatedly. Perhaps Hamazaki could remove that feature from his future English postings? If that isn't possible, I suppose I can live with it, but I have to choose cancel every time it comes up--which is ever time I even touch a posting with Hamazaki's posts embedded in them with the cursor. But when there is a large number of such postings, it takes a lot of time; therefore, I tend to delete them. - Original Message - From: Martin Meiss mme...@gmail.com To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Sent: Wednesday, July 08, 2009 2:29 PM Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] real versus fake peer-reviewed journals Mr. Hamazaki's example, whether it is accurate or not, illustrates one of my points. Just to get by in our professional lives, scientists must have faith in the social institutions, such as peer review, that we have created. And yet we all know that social institutions are inherently corruptible. Not only peer-review, but many other aspects of the practice of science, are rooted in these corruptible institutions. Besides the issue I raised earlier, that of becoming too complacent in our acceptance of our own perspective, there is the issue raised on the earlier posts of this thread: How to demonstrate to students (and other people who are not scientific professionals) that not all peer review is created equal. Some journalists, in an attempt to be fair-minded and objective, think they have to give equal time to holocaust deniers and to survivors of concentration camps. This same tendency will give equal weight to our and their peer-review processes. Imagine that you are in a debate on a talk show with an ideologue who cites dubious research results in a dubious journal, but claims that the work is peer-reviewed. What do you say? That isn't REAL peer-review, Is so!, Is not!. Suppose the show host is smart and stops this and asks how to distinguish between valid and invalid peer review. What do you say? We've been doing it this way for many years.? This is the scientific consensus of how it should be done.? This is the method used by people who think right? Try to come up with a wording that would make sense to a lay audience and that couldn't be used by the opponent with equal plausibility, at least to the ears of the lay people whose taxes are funding your research. This should be more than an exercise in rhetoric; we need formulations that in simple terms expose the fundamentals of the process, acknowledge its weaknesses, and distinguish it from phony imitators. I sure don't have the answers, but I think that we as a community could come up with them. Martin
Re: [ECOLOG-L] real versus fake peer-reviewed journals
I think the best way to help students to get criteria to decide when a journal or article is non scientific (or even fake) is to give them a solid (but please amenable!) background of the basis of Phylosophy of Science and the difference between Science, Arts and Religion before sending them to read peer journals. It is not necessary to impose Science over Religion, just to make them to understand that religion is a kind of knowledge based on faith and dogmas while Science is testable. Thus, if something non-testable is written in a peer journal, it is a fake since it pretends to be science while being pseudo-science. Including Art is nice because, as well as Science, Art implies discipline and creativity but the difference is that artists are encouraged to cultivate their own feelings while Science tries to understand the real world in a testable (not faithful way). Arts are charismatic since they help each individual to explore him/herself instead of following dogmas; nice way to escape from the nails of religion, helping students to keep the mind open to Science. When someone knows the difference between Scientific and Religious Knowledge it is easier to read an article and think This one is science, this one is religious and this other is opinion. Shame that it is necessary to us to talk about such a topic 200 years after the birth of Darwin. But if we have to do it, we have to do it! Hope it helps. Edgardo I. Garrido-Pérez Goettingen University, Germany Date: Wed, 8 Jul 2009 13:22:13 -0500 From: jcra...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] real versus fake peer-reviewed journals To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Martin, This all sounds good in the abstract, but it's beyond me how we could do better than peer-review to establish which science is done well and which is not. No matter how reliable a system is, it's always easy to say we should do better than this. But what would you propose to improve on our current systme of vetting scientific research? You don't have to get very far from your own field to run into research you aren't equipped to validate. Most pollination biologists probably aren't prepared to properly assess the quality of research on insect cognition, for example, so they have to rely on other scientists to evaluate the research for them. To what better authority could they possibly appeal? I would certainly not want people who don't have faith in the scientific method deciding which papers can and cannot be published. Jim Crants On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 10:34 AM, Martin Meiss mme...@gmail.com wrote: I find this exchange very interesting, and it points up a major problem caused by the burgeoning of scientific knowledge and the limitations of the individual. As scientists, we believe (have faith) that the scientific method is the best means of arriving at truth about the natural world. Even if the method is error-prone in some ways, and is subject to various forms of manipulation, it is historically self-correcting. The problem is that no individual has enough time, knowledge, and background to know if the scientific method is being properly by all those who claim to be doing so. We hear someone cite a suspicious-sounding fact (i.e., a fact that doesn't correspond to our perhaps-erroneous understanding), and we want to know if it is based on real science or pseudo-science. So what to we do? We ask if the supporting research appeared in a peer-reviewed journal (i.e., has this been vetted by the old-boys network?). This sounds a little like the response of the people who first heard the teachings of Jesus. They didn't ask How do we know this is true? They asked By whose authority do you speak? These two questions should never be confused, yet the questions Did it appear in a peer-reviewed journal and Is that journal REALLY a peer-reviewed journal? skate perilously close to this confusion. We are looking for a short-cut, for something we can trust so we don't have to be experts in every branch of science and read every journal ourselves. I don't know the answer to this dilemma, and perhaps there is none, but we should be looking for something better than Does this have the stamp of approval of people who think like I do? We should be looking for something that is not just an encodement of Does this violate the doctrine of my faith? The pragmatic necessity of letting others decide whether certain research is valid should be no excuse for relaxing our personal vigilance and skepticism. Otherwise, we fall into the same trap that ensnares the religionists who are trying to undermine science because it threatens their faith. Martin M. Meiss 2009/7/8 Kerry Griffis-Kyle kerr...@yahoo.com I am teaching a Sophomore/Junior level evolution course at Texas Tech (where a significant proportion of my students believe
Re: [ECOLOG-L] real versus fake peer-reviewed journals
I think Jonathan has identified the crux of the issue here- well-trained scientist do not rely on the opinions of others to determine which papers are valid and which are perhaps flawed. Critical thinking/reading is a primary goal of all graduate programs and is something we introduce undergraduates to in advanced courses. This takes extreme forms sometimes as I have seen journal club sessions where there is almost a competition among students for who can most effectively eviscerate the paper to display its defects. By the time our graduate students complete their training they are nearly intellectual piranhas ready to rip apart any paper or proposal that comes their way, and many a young scientist has built their career by deconstructing the work of their predecessors. This is both the strength and the horror of the peer review process - we send off our precious intellectual offspring (papers and proposals) with what we think is great hope and promise only to be shredded by the reviewers. Anyone who has participated in this process knows that it works very well most of the time, but as I said at the beginning, its all about individual assessments, and it is guaranteed that there will be disagreements over the value and validity of any individual paper. That said, I would only caution contributors to this list to take care with the use of words. Something like 'faith' to a scientist (will my PCR reaction work today or not) is very different than the use of this word in a religious context. Some who read these posts may try to use these exchanges to support personal views that the writer never intended - to inappropriately support an a view that 'faith' is intrinsic to science, hence raising the validity of science alternatives. Words like these are loaded with a variety of meanings, so I would advocate sticking to a scientific vernacular for writings that are posted to this list. Mitch Jonathan Greenberg wrote: Martin: I certainly hope most scientists don't rely on faith in the peer review process to determine if a paper is valid or not. I've always treated peer-review as just setting a low-end of reliability -- e.g. the paper isn't AWFUL if it made it into this journal, and is at least worthy of me reading it -- the better the journal, typically, the higher the bar, but no journal comes close to being infallible. If you've reviewed for mid to upper tier journals, you'll know that the vast majority of submissions are terrible -- we throw out a LOT of bad research. Since science requires repeatability of results, if a paper is absolutely novel and brand new, I will ALWAYS spend a LOT more time reading through it than if its basically confirming what a lot of other papers have confirmed -- peer review + repetition of results = higher reliability. Personally, I disagree with the statement The problem is that no individual has enough time, knowledge, and background to know if the scientific method is being properly by all those who claim to be doing so. If you are citing a paper or using a paper to guide your own research, as a scientist you should be reading the paper carefully enough to decide whether or not it is scientifically grounded -- if you are just pulling out facts from the abstract and discussion, you aren't really doing your job. This type of behavior WILL catch up with you, eventually -- if you are basing your own research on an assumption of validity of someone else's work simply because that work made it into a journal, and that work proves to be in error, you are essentially shooting yourself in the foot down the road. --j Martin Meiss wrote: I find this exchange very interesting, and it points up a major problem caused by the burgeoning of scientific knowledge and the limitations of the individual. As scientists, we believe (have faith) that the scientific method is the best means of arriving at truth about the natural world. Even if the method is error-prone in some ways, and is subject to various forms of manipulation, it is historically self-correcting. The problem is that no individual has enough time, knowledge, and background to know if the scientific method is being properly by all those who claim to be doing so. We hear someone cite a suspicious-sounding fact (i.e., a fact that doesn't correspond to our perhaps-erroneous understanding), and we want to know if it is based on real science or pseudo-science. So what to we do? We ask if the supporting research appeared in a peer-reviewed journal (i.e., has this been vetted by the old-boys network?). This sounds a little like the response of the people who first heard the teachings of Jesus. They didn't ask How do we know this is true? They asked By whose authority do you speak? These two questions should never be confused, yet the questions Did it appear in a peer-reviewed journal and Is that journal REALLY a
[ECOLOG-L] Post-doc in remote sensing at Michigan
Please distribute to potentially interested candidates. Please submit applications to the address given at the end of this message. db Post Doctoral Fellowship Opportunity The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor The University of Michigan announces a post-doctoral research opportunity, beginning as early as September 2009, focusing on experimenting with and applying emerging image processing methods for crop classification in the Great Plains using a combination of satellite imagery (primarily Landsat) and county-level agricultural data. The goal is to assess the physical extent of cropland over time, and to evaluate the use of object based classification in identifying specific types of crops, at multiple points in time back to the beginning of the Landsat archive. The position is part of an interdisciplinary project funded by the National Institutes of Health to understand the effects of demographic, economic and technological change on environmental processes in the Great Plains, particularly as they affect the carbon and water cycles, and patterns of biodiversity. Supervision of the candidate will be offered by faculty at the School of Natural Resources and Environment and the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, a unit of the Institute for Social Research. The successful candidate for this position will have expertise and interests in remote sensing and image processing, especially in agricultural mapping, object-based image analysis, and change analysis. A PhD in Remote Sensing, Geography, Environmental Science, Agricultural Sciences, or a related field is required at the time of appointment. The University of Michigan, a leader in undergraduate and graduate education and one of the world's premiere research universities, offers rigorous academic programs, outstanding faculty, and diverse cultural and social opportunities in a stimulating intellectual environment. Applicants should submit a statement of research interests, a resume, a representative example of their scholarly work, and the names, addresses (including e-mail), and telephone numbers of three references to: Post-doc Search c/o Michelle Overholser ICPSR PO Box 1248 Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1248 Or by email to mshuk...@umich.edumailto:mshuk...@umich.edu The University of Michigan is a Non-Discriminatory Affirmative Action Employer.
[ECOLOG-L] Mosquitoes as keystone species?
Our field crew is working in the extensive wetlands surrounding Alamosa, CO and we've noticed something interesting: there are no mosquitoes in or near Alamosa. This is because the city sprays for them regularly. We're not complaining... but we have also noticed fewer grasshoppers, bees, and frogs than we might otherwise expect. Are these (and other) species directly affected by the insecticide (which chemicals are used post-DDT?) and/or are mosquitoes ecologically important -- even keystone -- species? What happens when you remove a parasite from the foodweb? Our field crew is, among other things, cataloging the vegetation in the area -- could we expect to see e.g. fewer flowering plants? Anything else we could look for? Is anyone doing research on this quasi-Silent Spring phenomenon or know more about the possible ramifications of parasite/pest control?
Re: [ECOLOG-L] real versus fake peer-reviewed journals
Having been an editor for four years, I am starting to think that most things get rejected due to: 1) poor writing 2) incomplete lines of though 3) poorly citing statements 4) excessive speculation 5) wrong stats And usually, you can clean up these issues. On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 8:01 PM, Mitch Cruzancru...@pdx.edu wrote: I think Jonathan has identified the crux of the issue here- well-trained scientist do not rely on the opinions of others to determine which papers are valid and which are perhaps flawed. Critical thinking/reading is a primary goal of all graduate programs and is something we introduce undergraduates to in advanced courses. This takes extreme forms sometimes as I have seen journal club sessions where there is almost a competition among students for who can most effectively eviscerate the paper to display its defects. By the time our graduate students complete their training they are nearly intellectual piranhas ready to rip apart any paper or proposal that comes their way, and many a young scientist has built their career by deconstructing the work of their predecessors. This is both the strength and the horror of the peer review process - we send off our precious intellectual offspring (papers and proposals) with what we think is great hope and promise only to be shredded by the reviewers. Anyone who has participated in this process knows that it works very well most of the time, but as I said at the beginning, its all about individual assessments, and it is guaranteed that there will be disagreements over the value and validity of any individual paper. That said, I would only caution contributors to this list to take care with the use of words. Something like 'faith' to a scientist (will my PCR reaction work today or not) is very different than the use of this word in a religious context. Some who read these posts may try to use these exchanges to support personal views that the writer never intended - to inappropriately support an a view that 'faith' is intrinsic to science, hence raising the validity of science alternatives. Words like these are loaded with a variety of meanings, so I would advocate sticking to a scientific vernacular for writings that are posted to this list. Mitch Jonathan Greenberg wrote: Martin: I certainly hope most scientists don't rely on faith in the peer review process to determine if a paper is valid or not. I've always treated peer-review as just setting a low-end of reliability -- e.g. the paper isn't AWFUL if it made it into this journal, and is at least worthy of me reading it -- the better the journal, typically, the higher the bar, but no journal comes close to being infallible. If you've reviewed for mid to upper tier journals, you'll know that the vast majority of submissions are terrible -- we throw out a LOT of bad research. Since science requires repeatability of results, if a paper is absolutely novel and brand new, I will ALWAYS spend a LOT more time reading through it than if its basically confirming what a lot of other papers have confirmed -- peer review + repetition of results = higher reliability. Personally, I disagree with the statement The problem is that no individual has enough time, knowledge, and background to know if the scientific method is being properly by all those who claim to be doing so. If you are citing a paper or using a paper to guide your own research, as a scientist you should be reading the paper carefully enough to decide whether or not it is scientifically grounded -- if you are just pulling out facts from the abstract and discussion, you aren't really doing your job. This type of behavior WILL catch up with you, eventually -- if you are basing your own research on an assumption of validity of someone else's work simply because that work made it into a journal, and that work proves to be in error, you are essentially shooting yourself in the foot down the road. --j Martin Meiss wrote: I find this exchange very interesting, and it points up a major problem caused by the burgeoning of scientific knowledge and the limitations of the individual. As scientists, we believe (have faith) that the scientific method is the best means of arriving at truth about the natural world. Even if the method is error-prone in some ways, and is subject to various forms of manipulation, it is historically self-correcting. The problem is that no individual has enough time, knowledge, and background to know if the scientific method is being properly by all those who claim to be doing so. We hear someone cite a suspicious-sounding fact (i.e., a fact that doesn't correspond to our perhaps-erroneous understanding), and we want to know if it is based on real science or pseudo-science. So what to we do? We ask if the supporting research appeared in a peer-reviewed journal (i.e., has this been vetted by the old-boys network?). This
[ECOLOG-L] Book for ecology course
Greetings ECOLOGers, I'm starting to plan an on-line course in ecology for next year, and would like a smallish book (not a full textbook on ecology) that gives an outline of the field (I'd also like one for entomology, by the way). Publishers seem to only offer full-size, twice-as-much-as-I-can-cover-in-a-semester texts for $100 or more. Has anybody here read or used Laws, Theories, and Patterns in Ecology by Walter Dodds? I can't find even a table of contents at Amazon or at the publisher's website. Barring that, any other suggestions? I've looked for these books, but fear I may have to write my own course pack to provide to my students what I am seeking. Joseph Gathman Assistant Professor University of Wisconsin - River Falls
