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The Lab and Field

Category Archives: navel gazing

2020 by the numbers

31 Thursday Dec 2020

Posted by Alex Bond in navel gazing

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by the numbers

Read previous years’ By the Numbers: 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013

Top posts by views

Amusing bird names explained: Fluffy-backed Tit-babbler (2016)
Personal academic websites for faculty & grad students: the why, what, and how (2013)
Free project ideas in ecology & conservation (2020)
What’s in an affiliation? (2016)
Overseas field courses and equity, diversity & inclusion (2020)
How did we learn that birds migrate (and not to the moon)? A stab in the dark (2013)
The advantages of Google Scholar for early-career academics (2013)
Some thoughts on The University (2020)
On finding an error in my own published paper (2016)
Listing grants on one’s CV (2017)

I’m consistently surprised that 2013 opinions on how to build a website has been in the top 10 nearly (if not every) year.

 

18,250(ish)

The number of visitors. About the same as last year. I know that L&F has never been driven by traffic, but it feels increasingly like shouting into the void.

 

158

The number of countries those visitors came from (or at least their IP addresses mapped to). Shout out to the one person who visited from Togo, Mozambique, Guernsey, Turks & Caicos Islands, Barbados, Macau SAR China, Antigua & Barbuda, Cayman Islands, Solomon Islands, Maldives, Seychelles, Liechtenstein, Nicaragua, Bahamas, Gambia, Isle of Man, Liberia, St. Martin, Cameroon, Swaziland, Brunei, Bolivia, Rwanda, Jersey, Monaco, Kyrgyzstan, Eritrea, and St. Lucia!

 

0

The number of field trips this year. Thank you, pandemic.

 

Many

Papers coauthored this year. Most not as a result of my massive efforts but the perseverance of others. With the pandemic and museum shutdown, I think I did about 1 day of research between April and October. I definitely dropped the ball on a few as well.

 

505

The number of kms I ran this year. Given that I only started running a year ago, and had a major break in the summer, I’m pretty pleased. Highlights were a 4:47/km pace in April, and a half-marathon in November.

 

7246

The number of emails sent this year. Not counting Teams, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal, Messenger, Instagram DM, Twitter messages, and letters.

 

1

The number of people who found L&F by searching “what came first booby the bird or breasts”

 

1

Mental breakdowns this year. End of July. It was not fun. I’m on the way back up, though.

 

and lastly,

8

The number of years L&F has been around. From the heady days of 2013 science blogging to the metaphorical desert in which we now find things. There’s less of an appetite for longer science blogging by random people, and L&F has really shifted from a blog about science to a blog about HOW science happens, which is even more niche. Not that it’s all about the clicks, but with so little engagement it’s hard to see the relevance anymore. The Lab and Field will stay up, but don’t expect any more posts, or at least not with any regularity. Subscribe to the RSS feed (if that’s even still a thing), or get updates by email if you’re super keen. Thanks for joining me on the rollercoaster of the last 8 years.

-Alex

2020 goals

01 Wednesday Jan 2020

Posted by Alex Bond in navel gazing

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goals, year in review

In what is becoming an annual self-reflection (and what I think can be part of effective management!), a look back at the goals I set in 2019, and what I hope 2020 has in store. You can read previous versions here: 2018, 2019.

 

2019 goals

Get that languishing project off that was missed in 2018 off my desk. I mean honestly, it’s been forever. With a paper submitted in December, this is now my “oldest” active project. Sorry, postdoc supervisors & collaborators… it’s coming, I promise!

Yes! We’ve made progress! I now have a firm deadline of March 1st. Hooray! Though the 2018 languishing project also cam back from review (rejected), and has been submitted somewhere else, so it still looms like a metaphorical albatross.

 

Same goes for that grant application. But at least there was some logistical progress (and the granting agency ditched deadlines!).

Ooofffffff. Nope. But at least we have the specimens at the Museum now. This really needs to happen in the year ahead.

 

Build a local group of friends – it always (n = 4) takes me about 2 years to build a group of outside-work friends. A mix of not having kids, not living where I work, and moderate introversion. So far so good for 2019.

Getting there? It’s tough working and living in two different communities…

 

Provide better mentorship – I think “mentor” is a title best applied by others to someone who provides mentorship. But ultimately who mentors the mentors? Thoughts on this one gratefully received!

Yep. Still struggling with this one.

 

Make STEM (or at least my little corner of it) a better place for queer folk. Part of that is keeping up the same battles, but part of it is also looking to gear up for what’s next on the horizon. There’s some exciting stuff already planned for 2019, but I know I already operate in a very queer-friendly online bubble. Thoughts? Let me know what I might be able to help with.

Again, a tough one what with literal existential dread. Some days, in everything from emails to journal reviews to in-person interactions, it’s a real struggle, feeling Sisyphean at times.

 

2020 goals

Get. That. Grant. Application. Submitted. That means trying to carve out some thinking time.

Reboot research a little. I still feel like I’m playing catch-up, mostly trying to wrap up existing work (or work paused for various career changes), so haven’t felt like I’ve had time to focus on new work I’d like to do, even though I’ve been at the museum for just over 2 years. This might involve permanently shelving some projects that don’t have external pressures, at least for now. And grappling with how to accomplish research in the (poor, IMHO) research environment of the UK.

Sort out the house. We’ve never lived longer than 4 years in any single address, so the idea of boxes sitting in rooms feels totally normal, but it might be time to settle and invest in some (more) bookcases, shelves, and storage units.

Queer up science some more. Especially in the field.

Here’s to a happy, healthy 2020 everyone!

2019 by the numbers

31 Tuesday Dec 2019

Posted by Alex Bond in navel gazing

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Read previous years’ By the Numbers: 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013

 

This year’s top 10 posts by views:

Personal academic websites for faculty & grad students: the why, what, and how (again!)

Amusing bird names explained: Fluffy-backed Tit-babbler

What’s in an affiliation?

The system of student research in the UK fundamentally broken

Some rambling thoughts on field work to wrap up Pride Month

How did we learn that birds migrate (and not to the moon)? A stab in the dark

Listing grants on one’s CV

The advantages of Google Scholar for early-career academics (also, again!)

Keeping track of projects and prioritising work

Reflection in science

 

18,500 (ish)

The number of visitors to The Lab and Field this year, an all-time low! Readership of The Lab and Field continues to fall, perhaps mirroring a broader trend in blogs. It’s increasingly hard to know what resonates, or what’s useful. Twitter is great for “in the moment” interactions, but anything that’s older than a couple of days gets lost and nearly impossible to find (and certainly not serendipitously). L&F has never been a traffic-driven project, so it will continue.

Annotation 2019-12-29 100222.png

146

The number of countries, according to WordPress’s stats, that these visitors came from. Shout to the single people who visited from Swaziland, Namibia, Albania, Côte d’Ivoire, Cambodia, British Virgin Islands, Montenegro, Falkland Islands, Jersey, Jamaica, Belize, Guyana, Mozambique, St. Kitts & Nevis, Benin, Afghanistan, Sudan, Bermuda, and Oman!

 

3

Trips to the Southern Hemisphere, for field work on Lord Howe Island, and Henderson Island, and my annual visit to the University of Tasmania. Hoping to bring that down to 2 this coming year because it’s getting more and more exhausting (especially coming back to the UK)

 

46

Days in the field this year, in bouts of 17 (Lord Howe Island) and 29 (Henderson). That’s the most field work I’ve done since I was outposted to Tristan da Cunha for 4 months in 2015. I used to absolutely LIVE for field work, but as I continue to get not-younger, less so which I find particularly sad.

 

26

New publications in 2019. Ack! How on earth did that happen? A conference proceedings was published, which accounts for 4, and about 4 appeared online in 2018 but ended up in 2019 issues. Some were massive consortium-type papers, and there were 2 Commentary pieces. Some were also massive collaborations, some (most!) were driven by coauthors and students, but some particular highlights include:

-The first paper by a student I supervised

-A paper we worked HARD on for YEARS, and seemingly couldn’t interest anyone else in

-The first paper from a PhD student in the Adrift Lab, and a cracker at that!

-Our paper with huge media coverage this year, on crabs trapped in plastic waste on beaches. Sad, but important.

 

85

The number of coauthors, not counting the two large consortium papers I was involved in (that would push this to nearly 140, I’d guess).

 

0.67

My Gender Gap – better than last year, but still not parity. Also excluding the two consortium papers. And still in a binary format, which I’m increasingly less pleased about because that’s not what gender is. I need to think more about how I use this metric and frame this discussion in the future.

 

7726

The number of emails sent. Yikes. That’s back to 2016 levels, the first year I kept track. Especially yikes given the number of days I was in the field (and therefore not really emailing). I attribute this rise to some big projects at work (our building being re-clad), an increase in the number of PhD students I co-supervise from 2 to 4, and trying to coordinate a few professional initiatives.

 

28

The number of people who found The Lab and Field by searching for tits (as in the birds, of course). Including this gem: “why are burds called tits”

 

5

The number of years that I’ve been involved with LGBTQ+ STEM, which remains an absolute career highlight, and something I never imagined would happen.

 

Here’s to a happy & healthy 2020!

DSC09286 small

Me, exhausted after running through the scrub/forest and catching a Henderson Petrel during field work in June 2019. Photo by Jon Slayer.

 

2019 goals

01 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by Alex Bond in navel gazing, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

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goals, year in review

I’ve done an end-of-year “By the Numbers” post for the last 6 years, but last year was the first time I did a looking-forward post on goals for the year ahead. How’d it go?

Well, one of the long-languishing projects got submitted in December. The other remains largely untouched :/

Research kickstarted: tick!

Grant application: err, no. Sigh.

First main supervisor PhD student: Yep! And there’s still a week to apply if anyone’s interested!

Museum digitisation: Oh yeah. Lots of fundraising around this one, but it’s paid off. Hopefully more on this soon.

Natural history paper: not quite.

Genetic barcoding: uh, sorta?

Photography: that’s a hard “no”, sadly.

L&F posts: made 17, which is far more than I thought.

 

So what about 2019?

Get that languishing project off that was missed in 2018 off my desk. I mean honestly, it’s been forever. With a paper submitted in December, this is now my “oldest” active project. Sorry, postdoc supervisors & collaborators… it’s coming, I promise!

Same goes for that grant application. But at least there was some logistical progress (and the granting agency ditched deadlines!).

Build a local group of friends – it always (n = 4) takes me about 2 years to build a group of outside-work friends. A mix of not having kids, not living where I work, and moderate introversion. So far so good for 2019.

Provide better mentorship – I think “mentor” is a title best applied by others to someone who provides mentorship. But ultimately who mentors the mentors? Thoughts on this one gratefully received!

Make STEM (or at least my little corner of it) a better place for queer folk. Part of that is keeping up the same battles, but part of it is also looking to gear up for what’s next on the horizon. There’s some exciting stuff already planned for 2019, but I know I already operate in a very queer-friendly online bubble. Thoughts? Let me know what I might be able to help with.

Here’s to a happy, healthy, and safe 2019 everyone!

2018 by the numbers

31 Monday Dec 2018

Posted by Alex Bond in navel gazing

≈ 2 Comments

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by the numbers

Read previous years’ By the Numbers: 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013

 

17

The number of new posts this year. I had aimed for 18, and this was much closer than I thought I would get. I really enjoyed the Pride Month span, but doubt I could keep up that pace in 2019.

The top 10 this year were:

Personal academic websites for faculty & grad students: the why, what, and how

What LGBTQ+ folk in STEM want to communicate to straight colleagues: unedited responses

How did we learn that birds migrate (and not to the moon)? A stab in the dark

Suggestions for responding to reviewer comments

Amusing bird names explained: Fluffy-backed Tit-babbler

Beware the academic hipster (or, use what works for you) UPDATED

The advantages of Google Scholar for early-career academics

Essential Pride month reading and viewing for straight friends & colleagues

What’s in an affiliation?

Why research seminar series suck, and how to make them better

 

ca. 28,000

The number of visitors to The Lab and Field this year. Who knew so many were interested in some ramblings of mine. Thanks all!

 

153

The number of countries those visitors came from. With the strong LGBTQ+ STEM focus this year, I wonder how many were from the 70-odd where its illegal.

 

3

Trips to Australia for field work and writing papers. Ouch, I’m sorry, carbon footprint. Partially mitigated by our lack of children, car, tumble dryer, and red meat?

 

34

Days in the field this year, in three bouts (January, April/May, and October). Look for this to increase in 2019 (eep!).

 

12

New papers this year (with at least 3 more in proof stage that should appear very soon!). For several reasons, I’ve found this year marked a bit of a career change (from Early Career Researcher to Early Career Manager), with the thanks as always to my amazing students, and collaborators!

 

1 in 61 trillion

The probability the thylacine persists in Tasmania. Still. I’m sorry.

 

119

The number of coauthors this year, a record high largely due to a massive effort by Kat Koegan who wrangled 87 of us together for a paper on seabird breeding phenology in Nature Climate Change.

 

0.41

My Gender Gap. Ouff. Excluding the 87 coauthors from the mega-review. Also note that this strictly assumes a gender binary which isn’t necessarily the best. Need to think about this more in 2019.

 

6915

The number of emails sent in 2018, which isn’t much different from last year (yay!). I still say we should bring back typewriters so make people think more about what they put in an email. Outlook remained the most used program on my work laptop this year, at about 40% of working hours!

 

4

The number of searches for “conservation of interviwe” that brought folks here. OK then.

 

1

Full years working a pretty amazing job at the Natural History Museum. I think I’m finally started to begin to get the faintest hint of a semblance of how things work. There’s something pretty special working for a place founded by a statute in 1753.

 

2018 was a bumpy year, but here we are. Happy new year!

My journey

09 Saturday Jun 2018

Posted by Alex Bond in navel gazing

≈ 10 Comments

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LGBTQ

It’s Pride month, and this year there are some fantastic initiatives around like 500 Queer Scientists, and the International Day of LGBTQ+ People in STEM. Rainbow crosswalks are no longer relegated to the likes of Sydney, San Francisco, or London. Equal marriage is now the law in >25 countries. And yet challenges still remain.

Five years ago, I wrote the first LGBTQ+-themed post here on The Lab and Field, which was my attempt to articulate to straight colleagues the nature of the unique challenges faced by queer scientists. Since that time I’ve written many more, but there has always been one that I’ve never consigned to a single cohesive story, at least not in this forum – my own journey.

When I first came out in 2005 (and indeed before then, too), I latched on to these kinds of personal narratives for the pure, simple fact that it so closely echoed my own experiences, feelings, and anxieties. I’d religiously watch new videos from I’m From Driftwood, or read interviews on websites long since forgotten or expired. And I found them profoundly helpful, comforting, and affirming. But the one obvious gap, at least for me, was that none of them were by scientists, or mentioned that side of things.

So it’s with that target audience in mind that I share this, and hope that at least some of you find it useful, helpful, or at least entertaining. And if you’re one of those people, like me back then, know that there is an amazing community of LGBTQ+ folk in STEM; and you can always reach out, too. I’ve been there.

 

I grew up in peri-urban eastern Canada in a city of about 80,000 in the 1990s, and I was a profoundly uncool child. I’d much prefer to write computer programs in QBASIC, cycle around looking for out-of-province license plates (and enumerating them, proving summary statistics each week, though not accounting for survey effort)., and finding refuge in the theatre. Well, until I was awkwardly cast Motel in Fiddler on the Roof (the groom in the wedding). But hey ho there we go. From about spring break of 1995, I knew I wasn’t typical, but I didn’t label it until much later. Deeply closeted in high school (what a hellish, terrible, awful experience in which I used studying and grades and improv to keep up the facade of the wunderkind geek before it was cool, but more cool (and more safe) than being the gay kid), I can still recall a conversation with a good friend at the time. He’d asked what single piece of technology from Star Trek I would most covet. I replied asking if the female character Seven of Nine counted as technology, to which he exclaimed to our group “Hey guys, I just proved that Alex isn’t gay!”. I felt awful.

I also remember in about grade 8 or 9 taking a careers questionnaire which was discussed among the class. I was utterly mortified to find I’d scored the best match with “social worker” or “scientist”. Again, I felt awful.

It was around this time that the US version of the television show Queer as Folk came out, airing late at night on a cable network. I watched it, feeling guilty in undertaking what was essentially a clandestine mission each Friday. The finale to Season 1 featured one of the main characters, a high school student, getting beat in the head with a baseball bat, only about 3 years after Matthew Shepard’s brutal murder in Laramie, Wyoming. If the narrative of the 1980s and early 1990s was one of HIV, that of the late 1990s was violence and kids getting kicked out of their homes (not me, but I know of many others, none of which would’ve made the news). It didn’t exactly inspire confidence.

In undergrad, I continued to be profoundly uncool, not drinking, not partying, and spending time studying, in the lab, or the library, but again spending time in the theatre. Despite the generally welcoming nature of the town, the campus, and no doubt many of the faculty at this small liberal arts university, it took until the summer before my senior year (2004) before I finally said “Welp, I guess I’m gay?” to myself in the bathroom mirror, choking down a lump in my throat because I was at work.

This was the summer after Ontario had legalised same-sex marriage, and the debate was raging through the other provinces and territories of Canada. Unlike the horrendously acrimonious public vote in Australia in 2017, equal marriage in Canada was all debated in the courts or various legislatures. But the vitriol remained. And being in eastern Canada, a place with a fairly high concentration of “good ol’ boys”, it wasn’t the most positive and encouraging atmosphere. So the obvious next steps was to run away to a small offshore island!

The first summer of my masters research, on a small island in the Bay of Fundy, was one of incredible growth, professionally and personally. I learned so much about seabirds, conservation, ecology, wildlife management, and science more broadly, but I was also profoundly depressed (and undiagnosed) as I tried to figure out who (and occasionally, what) I was, and how others would interact with me. Remote offshore islands aren’t the greatest place when one’s mental health isn’t that great. But that summer, distracting myself with the hard work and desire to impress a new supervisor, I saw a faint hint of a crack in the closet door. And I was terrified.

That summer/autumn, I had a 20-30 minute walk to campus each day, and to make the journey more enjoyable, I’d pop in a CD to my discman (it was 2005 after all, and I wasn’t cool enough for an iPod). I’d play a single CD for a week or so, and then move on to another. One week I put on my recently-purchased Death Cab for Cutie CD “Plans”. Which in retrospect probably wasn’t the wisest thing for someone with some pretty not-fun depression and identity issues. But the music echoed my mood, and at the time I found it comforting. Now, I can’t listen to it at all.

On September 15th, 2005 after getting home from the lab, I realised I had to tell someone, so I called up one of my closest friends and came out for the first time. The genre of “coming out stories” was quite popular at the time (well, at least for me), so I had read/watched nearly every one I could find on the internet. The ones that went well, the ones that ended poorly. It was not uncommon for advice on coming out to include things like “keep a stash of cash for a couple of days” and “make sure you arrange with a friend beforehand to spend the night, or a couple of nights, if you need to”. Thankfully, I was financially independent and living on my own, but that’s the kind of pervasive environment that existed (or at least that I perceived).

She was, perhaps predictably, fine. Mum was the next day, and was fine in the end, though perhaps a bit surprised. Dad was the day after, and was fine, too. In fact, all the family — grandparents, sister, aunts, uncles — were totally fine once they got over the initial surprise. I was so incredibly lucky. I know others for whom it was not fine.

A few months later, my (future) husband and I went to watch Brokeback Mountain in the theatre, which was both the most exhilarating and terrifying public act of queerness I’d yet undertaken to date. For weeks after, my computer desktop picture was a still from the film of Ennis’ and Jack’s shirts hanging in a wardrobe. It was a way of signalling my gayness without having it be obvious. I felt like such a rebel.

And the thing about closet doors, is that once they open a little bit, they often fly off, splintering into a thousand pieces. For the first time in 23 years I began to feel more comfortable in my own skin, at least personally. I was still in the closet professionally. My supervisor had a bumper sticker that said “Families are Gay”, which I was never sure how to take (years later when I recounted this take, he told me his son had put it there, and it was intended to be indicative of support).

But before I was out in the ecology/ornithology community, I was certainly out on campus, heading up the university’s “Safe Space” project. This was a safe, controlled environment that I knew a priori would be supportive. People came to workshops to learn, essentially, Queer 101 – terminology, what to do when someone comes out to you, where to direct them for help locally if needed. In this time I also met my husband and we moved in together. And then we went off to Newfoundland for my PhD.

If the move to my MSc signalled by personal coming out, my PhD was my professional equivalent. My first meeting with my supervisor (in the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on the way to field work in Alaska), he asked about my wife. “Partner”, I corrected him, and tried to suppress the butterflies.

During those four years in Newfoundland, I attended my first Pride (2011), got legally married (2010), binge-watched Queer as Folk one Christmas break for the first time since I saw it on TV a decade ago, and despite being out, I was constantly linked romantically by other staff and students to some of my (single) women fellow grad students (much to our collective amusement at the time).

I also came across my first LGBTQ+ scientist, Joan Roughgarden, and met my first actual honest-to-goodness queer scientist in real life, when a fellow grad student invited a former colleague of his who recently took up a faculty job in California. That lunch in the grad pub was a bit of an “aha!” moment, where I realised for the first time that being gay and a scientist were entirely compatible. Until then, I had always felt my life had at least two separate components that would never overlap. That year, they united to form a perfect circle.

Fast-forward to a postdoc in Saskatchewan, and the founding of The Lab and Field where I had an outlet, for the first time, for exploring life as a queer scientist. Moving to the UK in 2014, and a fairly vibrant Twitter community resulted in the LGBTSTEMinar in 2015, a one-day STEM conference for LGBTQ+ folk that I think is beyond amazing. I still remember when Beth first mentioned the idea, and I pleaded with her to wait until I returned from field work in December 2014 to hold it (so I’m at last partially to blame for the January timing… sorry everyone).

I now have the safety, confidence, and support to be out personally, as well as professionally, though challenges remain (and likely always will, at least during my lifetime). And looking back on my post from 5 years ago, some of the challenges have been overcome, some remain, and new ones have arisen, but those, dear reader, will be the subject of a future post.

2018 goals

29 Friday Dec 2017

Posted by Alex Bond in navel gazing

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

goals

I’ve already done 2017 by the numbers, and inspired by Auriel Fournier, here are some goals for 2018, in no particular order…

 

Get two long-languishing papers submitted. One is from my postdoc (and formed a pretty bit part of it), and the other is a long-standing collaboration that just needs some dedicated attention. I’m reminded of this lovely cartoon.

BatmanPapers

Kick-start my own research again. This may sound silly, but when I worked for the RSPB, the research was driven by the organization, so lots of things I wanted to do get dropped, or I passed along to others.

Submit one grant application (in reference to the above).

Find funding for, and recruit, my first student as primary supervisor.

Acquire a typewriter.

Make serious inroads into digitizing the NHM collection. This is a big part of my job, and hopefully it will take off in 2018 in a major way.

Submit 2 natural history papers. I think I know what one of them might be, but to get #2 I’ll clearly need to get out and do some natural history-ing!

Learn what “genetic barcoding” means, and how to do it.

Get back into photography after a 4-year hiatus.

Write 18 new posts for The Lab and Field. This blog has really slowed in recent years, and I’d like to rejuvenate it a bit. It’s been a struggle lately to write things that aren’t making me cranky, or to find the time to write at all.

 

Whatever your goals, here’s to a happy and productive 2018 (defined however you want)!

The vast unread masses (or, tremendously unpopular posts)

25 Saturday Feb 2017

Posted by Alex Bond in navel gazing

≈ 2 Comments

So The Lab and Field turned 4 years old recently, and as someone not opposed to a little but of navel gazing, I thought it might be interesting to look at the least popular posts since 2013. This was also sort of prompted by a couple of folks who recently read older posts, and exclaimed (well, I imagine them exclaiming) that they’d missed it, or forgotten about it.

One of the things I enjoy about blogging is the longer half-life compared to other online activities, like twitter or instagram (fun though those are).

So without further ado, here are the Bottom 10 from the last four years:

Friday scribbles: more abstract ideas

tl;dr – video abstracts are a nice idea, but do them well or not at all.

 

Taxonomic troubles

tl;dr – ornithologists need to agree a common taxonomy; the current system impedes communication & conservation.

 

Astrophotography as a gateway to science

tl;dr – taking grainy pics of planets & galaxies in high school was a major factor in getting me hooked on science. That and the US space program.

 

FAQ, and answers thereto (Christmas 2016 edition)

tl;dr – off-the-cuff answers to the frequently asked questions that people search, bringing them to The Lab and Field. The most recent instalment of this recurring feature.

 

Friday Scribbles: abstract ideas

tl;dr – suggestions for how to write an abstract, and a fun in-class exercise to practice!

 

The name game

tl;dr – Sign up for ORCID. Accommodate people with names that don’t conform to Latin alphabet first-name-middle-initial-last-name format. Science is international and multicultural.

 

Too many endangered tigers in Nepal?

tl;dr – human-wildlife conflict! Also, stop shooting carnivores.

 

The Brain Scoop

tl;dr – what can I say? I was an early adopter. Now a highly successful channel based at the Field Museum in Chicago. Yay Emily!

 

The science never says it all

tl;dr – this still breaks my heart. When your science goes pear-shaped, make what you can from the result. As John Cleese once opined during a lingerie shop robbery, “adopt, adapt, and improve”.

 

The Arctic Expert Test

tl;dr – 1970s scientists were sexist and culturally inappropriate. See also: Flow Clearwater.

 

So why have these posts garnered <100 visits each? Many are from 2013 and 2014, and from a time when I had more time to write (oh to be a weekly blog again!). Perhaps the subject matter is just too dull, or the titles too obscure. Perhaps my readership at the time was minute (indeed, it was). I think it’s fair to say that over the last four years, L&F has evolved a bit (fewer, but longer posts, and I think a trend towards more personal content). But whatever the reason, I’m still pleased with these posts, and I hope if you read them again, you will be as well.

2016 by the numbers

31 Saturday Dec 2016

Posted by Alex Bond in navel gazing

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

year in review

It’s time once again for my annual round-up of science, and science blogging by the numbers. You can also read the 2013, 2014, and 2015 editions.

19

The number of posts on The Lab and Field this year, which is low, but I found that blogging took more energy/effort this year than I had to give.

The most popular posts this year were:

  1. Personal academic websites for faculty & grad students: the why, what, and how
  2. Landing an academic job is like an albatross
  3. Beware the academic hipster (or, use what works for you) UPDATED
  4. Volunteer field techs are bad for wildlife ecology: the response
  5. How did we learn that birds migrate (and not to the moon)? A stab in the dark
  6. The advantages of Google Scholar for early-career academics
  7. Languishing Projects
  8. Why the #LGBTSTEMinar succeeded & was needed
  9. I am not an academic (for now)
  10. Manuscript necromancy: challenges of raising the dead

I’m always amazed that a blog post about how to build a basic website is still, by a long shot, the most popular post year after year. It had >3x more visitors than the next most popular post. Go figure!

31,905 (give or take)

The number of page views this year. Good heavens you people, don’t you have anything better to do?

152

The number of countries/autonomous regions represented by those readers. Wow. About a third of visitors were from the US, with >4000 from each of Canada and the UK. Shout out to the one visitor this year from Bolivia, Barbados, British Virgin Islands, Dominica, Samoa, Honduras, Jersey, French Polynesia, Montenegro, New Caledonia, Solomon Islands, Senegal, Cambodia, U.S. Virgin Islands, Papua New Guinea, and Curaçao!

16

Days I spent in the field, the shortest time of any year where I’ve had field work. All done on Lord Howe Island, Australia, which I hope to return to in 2017.

17

The number of new papers published this year, up from 10 last year thanks to some exceptionally productive co-authors! A bunch of these were also from a Special Issue that I co-edited, and that took much longer than anyone expected (2.5 years).

37

The number of co-authors I had in 2015.

0.48

My Gender Gap for co-authors in 2016 (the ratio of female:male coauthors). A step up from last year (0.29), but far from parity.

Heaps (metric)

The number of brilliant people from Twitter that I’ve met in the last 12 months, mostly at conferences like the LGBT STEMinar, at ornithology meetings in Edinburgh and Barcelona, or because we both happened to be in the same place at the same time. Lots of connections strengthened, much laughter, and a few collaborations, too. And tea.

8 (maybe 9)

Number of graduate/honours students I’m co-supervising in 2017. Certainly wouldn’t be possible without the university-based supervisors spread across the UK, Canada, and Australia. This is largely a new adventure for me, and I’m sure there will be peaks and valleys. Or perhaps swings and roundabouts.

9

Number of staff I was involved in recruiting this year, from seasonal posts to 2-year positions. Let’s just say I’ve gotten to know our HR department rather well lately. But I’ve also had a chance to see what makes a good interview (from both sides), which has been rather instructive.

7825

Number of emails I sent in 2016. That’s roughly 21/day (or 34/working day). Some were long, others much shorter. This is the first year I’ve kept track, officially. The volume of email is something I struggle with this most in my day-to-day job, and I highly recommend this post by Meg Duffy over on Dynamic Ecology for strategies to cope. I will try to send fewer emails in 2017.

3

New countries visited this year: Germany, Spain, Switzerland. Or 4 if you count Wales.

 

2016’s been a tough year for a lot of people, me included, for reasons that can’t be put into numbers. Let’s all look after each other in 2017.

2015 by the numbers

31 Thursday Dec 2015

Posted by Alex Bond in navel gazing

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

year in review

It’s time once again for my annual round-up of science, and science blogging by the numbers. You can also read the 2013 and 2014 editions.

 

23

The number of posts, which by all accounts isn’t that bad since I was away for 4 months on Tristan da Cunha and Gough Island, and away for most of May.

The most popular posts this year were:

  • Personal academic websites for faculty & grad students: the why, what, and how (a perennial favourite, it seems)
  • The advantages of Google Scholar for early-career academics
  • Beware the academic hipster (or, use what works for you) UPDATED
  • Who are scientists?
  • How #icanhazpdf can hurt our academic libraries
  • Some lessons learned from 10 years of sciencing
  • How did we learn that birds migrate (and not to the moon)? A stab in the dark
  • Why volunteer field techs are a bad idea
  • Now accepting submissions: CrapWildlifeVolunteerJobs.tumblr.com
  • Future of Visiting Fellowship postdoc program in doubt

Like most writers, I think some my favourite bits are missing from this list, like tips for applying for field jobs,or how to be an LGBTQ ally at conferences, or the continued under-representation of women in NSERC major awards.

 

42,222

The number of page views this year. I continue to be amazed that there are people out there who are interested in the ramblings of a wayward Canuck navigating the world as best he can. My deepest thanks.

 

165

The number of countries/autonomous regions represented by those readers. Wow.

 

109

Days I spent in the field, on Tristan da Cunha and Gough Island. I hope to have a post on time spent in the field sometime in the new year. Suffice it to say, it’s a long time, and filled with rewards and challenges.

 

17

The number of new papers published this year, up from 10 last year thanks to some exceptionally productive co-authors! Many of them were also a glut from postdoc work that have finally seen the light of day. I think this reflects more my career stage than productivity: I suddenly have staff, and a glut of collaborative projects.

 

34

The number of co-authors I had in 2015.

 

0.29

My Gender Gap for co-authors in 2015 (the ratio of female:male coauthors). Not particularly happy about this one, but I will take some solace in the fact that I inherited several projects that had a large number of male collaborators. Need to do better next year.

 

6

The number of posts I have started this year, but not finished for various reasons. Not happy about that one, either, since I think they’re all important things to write about, and I think I have some thoughts to contribute.

 

3

The number of keyboards that died on me this year. Was it something I said typed?

 

202.3

The size, in ml, of the average Atlantic Yellow-nosed Albatross egg, which has remained unchanged since at least 1854. Just one of the highlights of a paper I’m working on at the moment.

 

and lastly…

 

1

The number of family members lost this year who told me I could do anything.

 

Here’s to a happy, productive, and successful 2016!

Science Borealis

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