Another year of male-dominated NSERC prizes

Tags

NSERC, Women in Science

Once again, NSERC (the national science and engineering funding council in Canada) has announced the winners of its prestigious prizes, which highlight the crème de la crème of Canadian science. And once again, the list of winners has an overabundance of Y chromosomes.

• Herzberg Medal (“Canada’s top scientist”): man (only one woman has ever won this award, and it was last year)
• Polyani Award: man
• Brockhouse Canada Prize: 2 men
• Synergy Award for Innovation: 4 men
• E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowships: 4 men, 2 women
• Gilles Brassard Doctoral Prize for Interdisciplinary Research: 1 man, 1 woman

If you’re keeping score, that’s 3 women and 13 men, or 19% women awardees.

Sadly, this is an improvement (yes, you read that right) over previous years (17% in 2015, 13% in 2014, and an eye-rolling 0% in 2013).

This year brings the overall total to 42 women and 252 men, or a maddeningly low total of 14% women awardees.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting a different outcome. When will NSERC act to improve the gender representation of women in the highest accolades of Canadian science and engineering?

 

Update: here’s a great graphical representation courtesy of Jeff Clements.

The locations of scientific meetings matter

Tags

conferences, diversity, LGBTQ

I think it’s fair to say that in the last week, there’s been quite a shift in the scientific community, or at least certain parts thereof, particularly in the United States. Yesterday’s Executive Orders restricting immigration, though temporarily stayed as of this writing, have rightly caused consternation among many. In research circles, this has meant difficulties for students, faculty, and staff who were travelling overseas, and restrictions on nationals of seven countries from entering the US. The growing anger within the US at this action has resulted in several scientists, many of whom I respect greatly, suggesting that professional scientific societies move their conferences and meetings to venues outside the US, or for non-US researchers to boycott meetings in the US. While these suggestions come from good intentions, it’s rather flawed and, if I might say, a tad hypocritical.

Regardless of where a meeting is held, there will be scientists who cannot or will not, for immigration reasons or reasons of conscience, attend. Hold meetings outside the US could mean some US-based researchers who are not US citizens might not feel safe or comfortable going, for fear of being denied re-entry upon their return. Hold it in the US, and scientists from those seven nations could be unable to attend. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. But this is hardly something new.

I have a list of just under 80 countries where I will not travel, for work or pleasure. Places where being LGBTQ is illegal. Unlike nationality, though, an immigration officer can’t look at me or my paperwork and decide whether I’m queer or not. But the fact remains that, regardless of whether its enforced or not, it’s illegal for me to be me in a sizeable chunk of the world. So if your conference is in Indonesia, Kenya, or Barbados, it’s a non-starter: I’m not going.

Last summer, I wrote about how the Animal Behaviour Society passed a resolution to not hold meetings in North Carolina in response to that state’s anti-trans “bathroom bill”, but at the same time the world’s biggest marine science conference, the IMCC, announced that it’s 2018 meeting would be in Malaysia *, which is on that list of 80 or so countries. Yet where was the concern? The showing of solidarity with scientists who would be affected by holding a scientific conference in such a location?

Some have argued that since these laws aren’t (apparently) enforced, or often aren’t (apparently) applied to foreigners that it would be ok for queer folk to go to conferences in some of these places. F&$# off. Unless you’ve ever had to hide who you were for fear of detention or physical & mental harm – often for years or decades – you have no idea how idiotic that sounds, and how unhealthy it is. Everyone makes their own decisions affecting their personal safety and based on their personal values, and I’ve made mine.

Rather than relocate meetings, societies need to ensure that all of their members can participate. Why, for example, is it still so difficult to allow members to participate by video-conference? It’s 2017 for goodness sake.

No matter where scientific societies hold their meetings, there will be scientists who will not or cannot attend. The sooner we recognize this, the sooner we can work towards a more equitable culture, in science and beyond.

— —

*The folks at IMCC have engaged on this issue, indeed far more than any other conference I’ve heard from, but the fact remains: being gay is illegal in Malaysia.

In praise of researching (and publishing) “local” conservation science

Tags

conservation, local, publishing

If you’ve published a scientific paper in a journal, you’ll know that part of the challenge is making it relevant to a broad audience. Why should a conservationist in Outer Mongolia, Zambia, Murmansk, or Baton Rouge care about your study? Chances are they study )or are concerned with/interested in) different species in different places. The pressure, therefore is to wrap much of our conservation science in global policy and priority frameworks: the Aichi Targets, multilateral environmental agreements, globally threatened species, or highly imperilled habitats. Which is good and fine and has resulted in lots of policy relevant science and conservation action.

But conservation also operates on a much smaller, more local scale, and with individuals on the ground in communities who can influence local, regional, and national policies and conservation actions. And this requires the science underpinning these actions to be, at least in part, local in nature. Sure, we all know that global warming is driving our planet further down the 6th Great Extinction, but most people will only take action when they see this manifest in their own backyards. Why have the doves returned a month early? Where did all the swifts go? Weren’t there fish in this lake?

And this is where “local” conservation science comes in. And it’s some of the most rewarding science with which I’ve been involved, even though it can be some of the most difficult science to publish. Providing the evidence base for local problems gives scientists and conservationists a better bargaining chip when holding governments to account, to speaking with the public and with media. A local story is usually more relatable than one from a seemingly abstract land far away.

Local conservation needn’t be novel, ground-breaking, cutting-edge, or revolutionary. It’s purpose is rather different, though from an implementation perspective just as important (if not more so). But this very nature makes it a more difficult problem for academic researchers to tackle as it’s unlikely to be of global significance, gain copious citations, or end up in a journal with an impact factor >4. It therefore often falls to scientists in government agencies, independent researchers, and non-governmental organizations to contribute to this science.

I’ve been lucky enough to be involved in a couple of these kinds of studies, and have a few more in the pipeline. We showed migratory patterns and geographic distribution of a Flesh-footed Shearwaters in the northeast Pacific Ocean (Bond & Lavers 2015), and described the current status & threats facing Streaked Shearwaters in the Korean peninsula (Hart et al. 2015). In these papers, we learned a heck of a lot about the species involved, and hope that these will become go-to papers when someone compiles details into whole-species assessments of status, distribution, and threats.

Overall, the key to success with local conservation science is the involvement of local people. The paper on shearwaters in Korea was only possible because of people in Korea. The same is true of the other (as yet unpublished) bits of work I’m involved with. These local connections make the work more likely to be well received (if received at all) by the people who matter (those who will enact policy or implement conservation interventions on the ground). The days of colonial science, where outsiders (often from the UK, US, or other countries with an advanced state of scientific inquiry) come in, do something, leave, and then issue what amount to scientific edicts (which are often promptly ignored) are over (or at least should be).

But, for me, the bottom line is that I find this kind of science fun. It’s adding a piece to a puzzle, and I find it very rewarding, especially when it’s highly driven by local collaborators (I usually just provide some stats, and editing… they do the real work of data collecting, and then working with the community to influence change). And at the end of the day, I like to think that it has some benefit for the species and sites we’re trying to look after.

Example interview questions in conservation

Tags

interviews, job applications, jobs

One of the things I tend to do a fair bit of is recruitment/hiring, usually for seasonal or short (<2 year) contracts. In the last two years, I’ve been involved in well over a dozen competitions as part of the interview or selection panel for what would be termed alt-ac or field tech science jobs.

Recently, several friends have asked for my advice on what to expect from an interview, so I thought it would be worth posting here. I’ve already written a bit geared towards applying for field jobs.

I’ll heavily caveat this, though – my take isn’t everyone’s take, and practices likely vary among (and even within!) organizations. Always remember to consider the albatross. And I’ll assume that you’ve already passed the hurdle of the paper application.

My general take is that if you’re being interviewed, chances are you tick all the basic boxes and the organization is at least considering hiring you. Basically, you meet all the technical requirements; the interview will be about how you approach problems, and other things that can’t be easily assessed on paper.

I always advise folks to think of the sorts of questions the interview panel is likely to ask, and how you might answer them.

Usually, there is some sort of fact-based questions pertinent to the job. For a recent post about marine protected areas (MPAs), we asked which international agreements/treaties were important for MPA designation. The purpose here is to see that you know your stuff (or at least where to look for it). The interview panel will likely have various keywords that they’re looking for here (or their general gists), so there can be a right/wrong answer.

There is often a problem solving part of the interview. “How would you do X”? These are almost always technical in nature, and interview panels will probably be looking for broad grasp of how you approach a problem. This could be analysis, data manipulation, supervision, … the content depends on what the job specification includes. No right/wrong answers here, but trying to understand how you might do in the work environment.

And there are usually a couple of more personal questions. Why did you apply for this job? What is your greatest strength? What is your greatest weakness? We ask these, or similar variations, almost every time. In these cases, there are no right or wrong answers, but are about seeing how your self-assessment might match up against what your referees might say about you (we often ask referees similar questions). Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, so the “I can’t think of any” cop-out isn’t advisable.

In all cases, look for “added value” – moving beyond the question to the next logical step. And if at all possible, use concrete examples of how you’ve done X (or similar to X) in the past successfully, e.g., “We did something similar in a recent paper…”. And in all cases, specific, tangible examples are to be encouraged (yay evidence!).

Lastly, we always give candidates an opportunity to ask questions of the panel, so it’s always good to prepare a few queries in a couple of areas – technical specifications about the job like start/decision dates, questions about resources available, like computing, employment policies and benefits, scope of the job and possibility of branching out, details about the ultimate goals or deliverables, etc.

As I said, these are highly directed towards those looking for work in the non-academic conservation sector, but some of the themes are likely to be broadly applicable based on my experiences in academia as well. And feel free to add your 2¢ in the comments below!

What’s in an affiliation?

Tags

affiliation, authorship, writing

Every scientific paper has a few key ingredients, but the one that may receive rather little attention is the authors’ affiliation(s). Absent until the early/mid 20th century, authors’ affiliations were probably added to facilitate correspondence with an ever-growing community of readers.

Nowadays, it can be a loaded, political, and/or much discussed part of putting a paper together for a variety of reasons. Organizations, departments, and schools use it as evidence of research output for publicity, or internal and external evaluations. Indeed, in some places, authors (or their departments/institutions) receive financial renumeration for published papers, which hinges on the affiliations. Sometimes this can be gamed (in obvious ways), as more and more researchers are offered honourary positions at institutions where they used to work*, or collaborate frequently. Seeing authors repeatedly list 3, or even 4 affiliations often causes me to raise my eyebrows. Most (some?) of these are legit, but how many simply list affiliations so the institution can add the paper to their list of “papers published by our department/school/institute”? Adding such affiliations has no material cost to the authors, is highly unlikely to be questioned, and so becomes a question of personal ethics. I should add, though, that I suspect this is an extreme minority of cases.

As a general rule, authors should list their affiliation as the place where they did most of the work. In my case, this is fairly straightforward: if I primarily use data collected during my MSc, my affiliation is the University of New Brunswick (and I list my current affiliation as “Present/current address”). In some cases, though, the distinction between data/ideas/projects started at Affiliation A and those at Affiliation B may be more opaque.

Author affiliations can also be a political tool. Some institutions (primarily those outside academia) require approvals to publish, or authors may want to publish on topics that are outside the scope of their work. In extreme cases, authors may wish to make particular points or conclusions that could be counter to those of their employer (e.g., government policy), or their employer may not wish to be affiliated with a particular piece of work. I discussed this last scenario with a friend of mine who was told he couldn’t list his institution’s affiliation on a manuscript. His solution was to basically invent an affiliation (we amusingly settled on the nonsensical “Giraffe & Sons, Ltd.”, though I don’t think he ended up using it in the end, sadly) for work that he did outside of his day job. Similarly, it’s fairly common in ecology/conservation for researchers to do small bits of independent consultancy, which could include publication based on work done while on one’s own dime, so to speak.

On a more annoying/foolish/sinister side, affiliations have likely been used by some to infer the quality of the output (“Check out this new paper from Cambridge” can, to some, sound more impressive than “Check out this new paper from North-central Podunk State University” because some use affiliations as a proxy for quality. Which is utter bollocks).

I think affiliations do matter, though perhaps more so outside academia.

 

*I’m an adjunct professor at the university where I did a postdoc, but this was a requirement to co-supervise a student, and this affiliation appears only on papers associated with that student’s work.

Volunteer field techs are bad for wildlife ecology: the response

Tags

jobs, unpaid, volunteer

This is a joint post by Auriel Fournier and Alex Bond

Over the last several years, we’ve both been advocates for eliminating unpaid field technician positions (see here, here, and here for our previous posts on the topic, and this piece from Nature News). About a year ago, we were both quite frustrated, and decided to make the same arguments we had made on our blogs to a different audience – to those who read the peer-reviewed literature.

So we crafted our best arguments, found appropriate references, and had some wonderful colleagues read it over before submitting it. When the reviews came back, they were more startling than we had expected. In essence, we were asked to prove our assertion that diversity is a Good Thing. Nevertheless, two rounds of revisions (and $150 in page charges from our own pockets) later, our peer-reviewed article entitled “Volunteer Field Technicians Are Bad for Wildlife Ecology” appeared in the Wildlife Society Bulletin in mid-November, and was also posted on ResearchGate.

The reaction has been beyond anything either of us could have imagined.

On ResearchGate, the article had (as of 9 March 2016) 11,724 reads, and an Altmetric score of 173 (the highest for any paper in the Wildlife Society Bulletin). To say we were surprised at the amount of interest would be an understatement.

We also received several emails or comments that we will share here (anonymized, of course). The overwhelming majority have been positive or constructive, but we’ll start with the negative comments, including the one that was the most hurtful.

To paraphrase the anonymous emailer who created a new email address just to send this one message:

Your career is over. No one will hire you because of this.

Well, thank you, anonymous emailer. You are an utter ass-hat of the most contemptible kind. Now kindly sod off.

One of us also had one potential collaborator who pulled out because of our position on unpaid technicians. Which is annoying and it means some very interesting and potentially important science won’t get done. But chances are we would have found something else to disagree on, so we’re not that put out.

And really, those were the only negative comments we’ve received so far. No doubt there have been those muttering in disagreement, but they’ve not yet muttered to us.

The positive feedback has, however, been rather abundant.

A field technician wrote:

I’M SO HAPPY PEOPLE ARE TALKING ABOUT THIS PROBLEM! SO EXCITING TO SEE THIS! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU SO DAMN MUCH. YOU ARE OFFICIALLY MY FAVORITE SCIENTIST RIGHT NOW!

This was just one of several similar notes, each of which brought (and continues to bring) smiles to our faces.

A scientist at a non-profit wrote:

Hope you are well! I just came across your JWM opinion paper on volunteers and want to say how great I think it is!! I totally agree that it presents challenges to those doing full-time work worthy of pay, and are not getting paid. Even young people doing tough fieldwork getting paid more than $300/month often struggle with feeling grossly under-appreciated. I shared it with my coworkers and we reflected on how to treat our interns better. Thanks for taking the leap to write this!

This was one of our goals – getting people to talk about the issue of unpaid/underpaid technicians in their own institutions.

From another research technician:

Interesting article and I agree wholeheartedly. Although I think these volunteer positions will continue (even the pay to work ones) because they are often sought after. The organizations offering them probably don’t struggle with applicants because people are willing to volunteer just to visit remote nature reserves. Along the same line as your article, there is also a larger issue in that jobs in the wildlife ecology sector generally are not well paid, which essentially causes the same issues as volunteer positions (undermines professionalism, excludes certain groups if people etc.).

Indeed, we see no end in sight for volunteer and pay-to-work positions. Though we’ve started tracking them monthly, and you can see the results over at our Github repository.

Some comments were less clear

The unpaid/underpaid intern situation has bothered me for many years, and someone had call “us” out. One thing I would add is that money is soooo tight that often the PI can’t afford to include the unpaid/underpaid intern’s name in the acknowledgement section of the resulting peer review paper. “We” may also have some issues with acknowledgement.

We are not sure how this comment was intended since neither of us is aware of any monetary limitation from any angle in including anyone, even one’s dog or one’s beard (PDF), in the acknowledgements of a paper.

We also received one long email giving a clear example of how paying technicians to be part of a project does not mean the science is being done well, which was not the argument we were making.

The following came from a professor at a U.S. small liberal arts college:

I have wondered occasionally if a two-pronged approach to this issue would be effective. Writing an editorial to suggest that PIs should incorporate funding for technician seems like a good start. It also seems like it would be worthwhile to write something from the student perspective, suggesting guidelines for when they should consider taking a low-paying (or non-paying) temporary position, how to identify good opportunities, etc.

This is, indeed, an interesting proposition. Auriel has written a bit about applying for field jobs, but as we emphasized in our WSB piece, the decision to accept a position at any salary level is very much an individual decision, and the continued existence of unpaid work and pay-to-work positions is a testament to this (and the number of people willing to accept such positions). The benefits (and costs) vary considerably among individual circumstances, so we’re hesitant to be prescriptive. The most important factor for potential employees (regardless of the level of compensation) is to know your rights, and to make sure the expectations of employer and employee are compatible.

The feedback provided by this person was reflective of several comments we received, and discussions we’ve had:

My take on internships/volunteer jobs. Their role should only be reserved for undergraduates that are still working on a degree. I had no compunctions taking an internship for such low pay. I had very little experience at that point, so the internship was a way for me to learn many different skills to work as a field biologist. I’ve had a few people ask how I got such good experience, and as such good paying field jobs, right after college. working the right internship, that offers lots of learning opportunity, is a good way to help in that regard.

While we’re quite glad that it worked out for this particular person, such experiences and benefits are not exclusive to unpaid jobs. The implicit argument, we think, is that there simply aren’t enough paid positions for everyone, but this is the case in nearly every profession but we don’t see volunteer teachers, for example. In some places, like the UK, trainees have a lower minimum wage. But while many undergraduate students are fresh out of high school with few other obligations (financial, family, or otherwise), this is nowhere near universal, particularly for groups that are under-represented in science (as we argued in our paper).

An African-American faculty member wrote:

But look at undergraduate wildlife classes. You will see already that there are very few of us present. At [research university], I was the only AA (even just minority, I believe) in wildlife for my year (a year later, another AA woman came in). What’s filtering minorities out comes before college, probably before high school. If we want to increase the diversity of our field, outreach efforts need to be concentrated towards childhood and the early teen years, and ideally, we’d have some sort of mentorship program to keep people on a track towards declaring a wildlife/related major once they enter college.

This is, indeed, a very good point. Unpaid positions are just one barrier to diversity in science, and eliminating them won’t solve the problem, but it will help those who’ve made it through to the point where they are looking for such positions. As Simphiwe Dana tweeted recently, “Just because one individual succeeded against all odds doesn’t make the odds acceptable”. Eliminating unpaid positions will help even the odds.

We also received a lengthy message from a female tenured professor at a US research (R1) university:

1) I suspect that many (most?) of your dataset probably consists of technicians recruited to help graduate students. If you make providing not only room and board but also wages sufficient to pay off student loans or supporting sick relatives a requirement, what you are saying is that the only grad students who are allowed to benefit from help in the field are students from well-funded labs and/or working on a project funded by their advisor. Many graduate students do not have access to the types of funding that permit this, yet are doing great science and being highly productive members of our scientific community, precisely because they are able to make things happen on a shoe-string. I firmly believe that PhD students should have a major role in shaping their intellectual development, designing their project, and taking ownership of the direction of their project. This is fundamentally incompatible with a funding model of PI getting a big grant and essentially hiring a PhD student to run it with the help of well-paid technicians. I think your statements that “Unpaid technician positions are bad for science. They are bad for the conservation of our natural world. They are bad for society.” …are wrong because they can make possible a degree of intellectual freedom that is crucial to inventive, original, student-driven research that con contribute substantially to the conservation of our natural world.

Here, we think there are two issues at play. While it’s true that many (though not most) unpaid positions are from academic institutions, we’re not arguing that they should be paid extravagant salaries, but at a minimum, those in line with minimum wage requirements in the jurisdiction of their employer. That is, the minimum legal wage for a set amount of work. We feel this is an ethical issue, which could impede intellectual freedom, but just like other ethical dilemmas within science should not be ignored because of that.

We could also do more research if we didn’t have to pay overhead/incidental costs, pay for fuel or travel, or field station fees or to run PCRs. Field technician salary is no different and should be included in budgets and planning. Even things like applying for and reviewing grants costs money, which could be spent on conservation. But we, as a scientific society, have prioritized this (either consciously or unconsciously) over other uses.

It continues:

For PIs providing minimal compensation, there are undoubtedly fewer justifications. But there are some! You acknowledge that everyone has tight funding and is always looking for the way to maximize data/$. That is not going to change, ever. In a hypothetical situation where you had $3000 allocated for technician support. Let’s image that could pay 1 person well for a field season or 3 at rate where they are able to live and eat but not do such things as pay off student loans. If you chose 1 person, you’d be crazy not to ONLY accept the most skilled, experienced people for the job. If you have the freedom to take 3, you can afford to pick people with ZERO experience, and provide a lot more training. People pay through the nose for formal classroom education. Why should they not “pay” in effect, for training?

This really depends on the situation. Alex, for example, hired completely fresh inexperienced field staff for 3 of his 4 PhD field seasons because they were engaged, excited, and would get on well in the field. Skills and experience aren’t the only factors when hiring. But there is a general trend in closing field stations and fewer offerings of field courses at universities, which is concerning. Indeed, some are even claiming that “We have already lost a generation of field biologists”. But this again comes down to priorities and one’s frame of mind. If you have $3000, and a field technician costs $3000, you hire one field technician. We also feel that part of hiring a field technician is to mentor them as a scientist, and to train them, not just give them $X and get back X data. All projects should include time to train technicians in their schedules, even if they hire experienced staff, to ensure the consistency and validity of the entire project.

This commenter concludes:

3) The people who get the most funding are the old white guys. If only old white guys can have technicians, then we hurt the ability to creative, smart, less-advantaged people of doing science and inspiring others to make things happen for them, even if they work on a shoe-string.

Don’t get me wrong… I do understand the logic of trying to make things easier for less-advantaged students. But I think some of your arguments are a little over-stated. Take this: “How is someone—often with student debt, no outside financial support, a child, a sick parent, an expensive medical condition, any kind of regular life expense, or no family to buy a plane ticket for them—supposed to take these positions?” First, if the potential technician has a small child, a sick parent that requires their assistance, or a serious medical condition, then it is not a good idea to fly off to a remote field site, regardless of the compensation. Like it or not, remote field camps are bad places to bring infants and to be sick. It would be irresponsible of the person hiring to put a sick person or child into situations that put them at risk. What are they to do? Only ever study things within an easy drive of medical attention within North America? I also would like to see data on how much biologists are selecting from the privileged for such positions? That data probably doesn’t exist, but it is crucial to your arguments, and without data, I think it might be premature to state your conclusions so forcefully. I can’t speak for others, but I have actively sought to promote diversity from grad-student days onwards. I also can’t see how these policies affect gender or sexual orientation issues.

The issue of diversity in funding outcomes is, of course, important. And it will take a long time for change to trickle down because those in charge often benefit disproportionately in biased systems.

Field camps also need not be remote, either.  Many field positions occur within range of a hospital that someone who needs regular medical tests or even just access to a pharmacy for expensive medications can do that. Yes there are situations where some will be too sick or otherwise unable to participate in field work, but that is certainly not the rule.

This commenter is correct that we have no data on the affluence of field technicians (nor are we aware of any such data collected). But what we do have is information on diversity at later stages of scientific careers, and where women and people of colour tend to be under-represented. Like one of the previous commenters stated, fostering diversity must begin at an early stage.

There are several references in our paper on the effects of unpaid positions on women (and therefore gender composition). And LGBT folk comprise a vastly disproportionate number of homeless. This is, of course, a very extreme example, but LGBT folk are often less likely to have the support of family who could bankroll their time spent on an unpaid job. While the peer reviewed literature we cited in our editorial is not collected from within the scientific field we do not see a reason that the disproportionate impact had on gender diversity in other fields because of unpaid work would be different in science.

Ultimately we are glad that this article is being read and discussed and we hope that it will continue to be so that in another 12 years another editorial will not need to be written that cites ours and Whitaker 2003. If we value diversity in science we need to stop making excuses and start letting our actions match our priorities.

And lastly, from a tenured professor in Canada:

PS: I am just back from a meeting where we kicked off an international research network that will involve massive amounts of field work.  We used your editorial as a justification to write “no unpaid jobs” in the bylaws. I know it’s usually the angry people that are the more vocal, so I wanted to let you know.

One small change along the road to improving how we do science.

When we first floated this idea about a year ago, we had no idea it would strike such a chord with so many people (both positively and negatively). After all, we don’t think that the suggestion that people should be paid for the work they do was so radical.

First woman wins Herzberg medal as “Canada’s top scientist”

Tags

Herzberg Medal, NSERC, Women in Science

It’s become somewhat of a tradition these last few years for me to look at the gender (im)balance of the major prizes and awards dished out by NSERC in Canada, because they don’t have a great track record of recognizing women (see my original post here, and update on the 2014 awards here).

It is therefore with mixed feelings that I present below the 2015 results.

For the FIRST TIME in 25 years, a woman was awarded the Gerhard Herzberg Medal (colloquially known as the prize for “Canada’s top scientist”) – Dr Victoria Kaspi from McGill.

And for only the second time, a woman was awarded the John Polyani Award – Dr Barbara Sherwood Lollar from the University of Toronto. A hearty congratulations to both!

But, sadly, the exuberant news ends there…

• Brockhouse Canada Prize: 1 of 2 recipients a woman
• Steacie Fellowships: 1/6
• Brassard Prize: 0/1
• Synergy Awards: 0/12

That gives an overall total of 4/23 recipients being women (or 17%). The long-term average is now 39 women of 239 recipients, or 17% (which I will sadly point out is still higher than last year’s 13%), and unchanged from where it was when I did the original analysis in 2013.

So while this is a huge day for Canadian science (regardless of gender), we still have work to do.

 

Footnote: see the 2013 post for more background and discussion on the issue

I am not an academic (for now)

Tags

academia, altac, work

I’m a bit of a pedant when it comes to some things. I detest dangling participles, I become annoyed at misuse of the semi-colon, and I find words used as “shorthand” for much larger, broader concepts are irksome. One of the most personally egregious examples of this is the binning of anyone doing scientific research into the category of “academic”. It’s very meaning – an adjective describing those things pertaining to the academy – betrays its exclusion of those who are not part of the academy, sensu stricto. Like me.

I work for an NGO, a charity, an organization that by its very definition is non-academic. Some have dubbed this “alt-ac” (short for alternative academic), but even this moniker posits, implicitly, that one could reasonably be called an academic, rather than a researcher, scholar, scientist, or artist. I think many people are scientists, and many in science (and more narrowly the scientific academy) often forget that those non-academic, non-professorial positions exist, particularly when they opine on the challenges of grant writing, student supervision, collaborative work, or scientific (not academic!!) publishing. As a non-academic scientist, I do all these things, too.

Stephen Heard, on Scientist Sees Squirrel, recently wrote about what he dubbed “Academic Inclusive Fitness” – those aspects of his job that ultimately contribute to his professional legacy (akin to the survival of his genetic diversity in others, such as nieces, nephews, or siblings), but appear altruistic on the surface. Reviewing papers, being an editor at a journal, serving on graduate student committees (mine included!), serving in organizational administrative positions, and publishing his much anticipated book on scientific writing* are all activities that have the potential to decrease direct research output (the metric, deeply flawed, that is often used to measure scientific “production”)

In his post, Steve related an anecdote about a non-academic asking who his boss was, which is not a straightforward question for an academic to answer. Herein lies one of the biggest differences between academic and non-academic science. I have a boss. And she has a boss, and so does he. I can draw a solid line from the staff I supervise right up to the Chief Executive with ease. It was the same when I worked at Environment Canada, in the Canadian federal government. I am, ultimately, responsible to someone else in the organization for certain projects, and my research is guided, or even dictated by the organization’s research needs, agenda, and priorities.

While this might rub some the wrong way, it’s how just about every job outside academic research operates. Organizations have a mandate, and its employees work toward the goals within that remit. Academics, however, have a tenuous balancing act between the demands of their organization (teaching, administration), and their own requirements (research), though there can obviously be varying degrees of overlap.

So my first suggestion is, rather than talk about “Academic Inclusive Fitness”, consider “Scientific Inclusive Fitness” as a broader term that encompasses the entire research community.

This raises, though, some particular challenges for those of us “on the outside”, so to speak. While I’m pretty lucky, and can undertake some of these seemingly altruistic tasks, others may not be in the same situation. The result is that much of this ends up being done outside “normal work”, which often means weekends, evenings, or early mornings. This poses several problems for those who can’t (or chose not to) do this “non-work work” on, essentially, their own time. I’m under no illusion that many academics don’t face the same pressures, but when one already has a 40-hour work week, yet is still expected by the broader scientific community to chip in, it can be trying.

Which brings me to Amy Parachnowitsch’s post on Small Pond Science about how we define “work”, and the problems of “carry-over” from one position to the next. Like the activities that contribute to Scientific Inclusive Fitness, it can be challenging for non-academics (and indeed academics!) to find time to wrap up projects from their previous positions. As Amy put it on Twitter, the system works (relatively well) when everyone is in the system, but when someone leaves, it becomes very hard. This could be a student leaving research after their degree, or someone getting off at a different stop along the career subway, including leaving academic while remaining a scientist. Often it’s this past work, and activities that might contribute to “Scientific Inclusive Fitness” that get dropped.

In the end, it all comes down to expectations – both our own, and those we have of our colleagues, applicants, students, collaborators, and friends. And recognizing that non-academic scientists face many of the same challenges as our academic brethren, but also some challenges that academics may not necessarily think of. Which can be problematic when we are all assessed, judged, or evaluated against criteria driven by academia.

One day, I may end up in a university, being an academic, but that’s just a job title, not a career.

 

*I received no commission for this mention, though am open to negotiation when the royalties start piling in. What about financial inclusive fitness? Steve, you know where to find me.

Landing an academic job is like an albatross

Tags

academic job market, albatross, job search

No, really.

This post over at EcoEvoEvoEco, which stated “Anyone with a decent record can get a faculty position”, made the rounds on Twitter last night. In it, Andrew Hendry posits that, based on his experience (in 2001), if one is not picky (i.e., has minimal selection criteria), and ’sticks with it’, one will end up a tenured professor somewhere, and voila, problem solved.

Unsurprisingly, this elicited a rather fierce reaction by some readers. The academic job market has changed since 2001. ’Not being picky’ amounts to moving anywhere regardless of family, or other constraints. And what I think is perhaps the most germane (here, and in many of these advice posts to academic job seekers): this is the experience of one individual in one set of circumstances in a process that, as someone described it, has high variance and and multiple confounding covariates.

Now, instead of throwing gas on the fire of this perennial topic, I want you, dear reader, to consider the albatross.

An albatross (of the Atlantic Yellow-nosed variety). Consider it, please.

Because ultimately, this whole discussion is one of demographics, and if there’s one thing I now a bit about (aside from tea, improv, puns, and naan bread), it’s demography. It’s a significant part of my research, and I think the whole ’I can academic job AND SO CAN YOU!!1!’ can learn something from it. But first, some basics.

Albatross lay a single egg each year (or every 2 or 3 years in some cases). Chicks fledge (usually about 70% of the time), and spend the next 5-18 years at sea before returning to land to breed for the first time, and recruit into the breeding population. They then breed (at some interval) for many, many years, and then perish. Albatross’s annual survival can be grouped, broadly, into 4 categories:

• S1 – the survival of chicks in the first year
• S2 – the survival of immature birds at sea
• S3 – the survival of birds recruited into the breeding population
• S4 – the survival of old birds nearing the end of their natural lives

S1 and S2 are always lower than S3. Those years at sea are tough. Birds have to find enough food, figure out migration, avoid getting caught in fishing gear, learn that eating plastic is bad, and make it to breeding age, court and find a mate.

Breeding adults tend to have high survival. They know what they’re doing, know how to find food for them, and for their chicks, and are pretty adept at avoiding longlines. But as they get older (in some cases, 40, 50, 60+ years old), their reproductive success can drop, and so does survival, and they disappear.

How do we know this?

Scientists have, collectively, put millions of small metal rings/bands on birds, and looked for these individuals year after year, or had bands from dead birds sent in from fishing vessels. And we know that these survival rates, S1 through S4, depend on a plethora of covariates: species, site, year, climate, individual quality, introduced predators, fishing effort, sea temperatures, food availability, … We also have to consider those albatross for whom we don’t know the ultimate fate… they simply didn’t show up in year x, but may show up again in the future.

Consider the case of Wisdom, a Laysan Albatross on Midway Atoll. At 64, she’s the oldest bird of known age, and is showing no signs of stopping. But also consider the case of the much lesser-known J22503. J22503 was a Tristan Albatross chick that our team banded on Gough Island in September 2014. S/he was found dead 2 months later, the victim of predation, mice, starvation, or some other factor.

Now, let’s swap ’albatross’ for ’academic’ (leaving aside, for the moment, that this also applies to some non-academic scientists, too).

Academics can apply to many jobs in a year, but the survival rate of those applications is low (at the population level; S2). After enough years of zero job application survival, the academic perishes (stops looking for academic work). And there are many factors that influence academic survival during this ’immature’ phase, while ’at sea’: gender, location, field, sub-field, individual quality, … And some proportion of academics survive this period (find a job), and thereafter have high annual survival (S3) until they approach retirement (S4).

Any scientist worth their salt would tell you it’s pointless to extrapolate from Wisdom, or J22503, to all albatross worldwide. Or even all Laysan (or Tristan) Albatross. Or even all albatross of the same species in the same site in the same year. We simply need a bigger sample. The same is true of academics. A good mark-recapture (or demographic) study needs a minimum of 200 ’marked individuals’ to estimate annual survival (and that applies to each strata we want to potentially consider!). Extrapolating from 1, or 2, or even 10 isn’t sound.

In 2013, I solicited some data on the number of job applications & interviews, and got a decent response. But even this is far too low a sample size (n = 63) to be of much use. What we need is, ultimately, a study that follows the job applications of quite literally thousands of hopeful academics from graduation to their exit from the job market (for whatever reason), along with all the covariates that we know influence job application success. I certainly lack the time (and IRB approval) for such a study. But in the meantime, remember that ’your mileage may vary’, and extrapolating from one person’s (or even 10 people’s) experience is perilous.

—

Note that I’ve also not said anything about density dependence and carrying capacity of the academic population. Or about how both of those parameters change over time (and have likely changed since 2001). Or about luck and stochasticity. You get this idea.

Yes, there are things one can do to try and improve the probability of a successful job application, but these are by no means a guarantee, and criteria vary by field, location, institution, department, moon phase, …

And I get that these posts are trying to be helpful in some way – showing that success is indeed possible. But they often gloss over many of the finer details (much like How To Draw An Owl).

UPDATE: Katie Burke pointed out on Twitter that a better analogy would be one where leaving the academic job search is a transition to another state, or permanent emigration, rather than death. I, myself, have done such a transition. The model then becomes a multi-state mark-recapture, with all the joys that entails.

The high price of scientific conferences

Tags

conferences, funding

As a student, I quite enjoyed going to conferences. My first was the Society of Canadian Ornithologists in 2005 in Halifax, a gathering of about 100 people from universities, government, and the private sector in one hotel conference room for 2 days. If memory serves, I think I paid $50 (or rather my supervisor did), and we all drove the 5 hours from Fredericton. I met lots of great folks there, and learned a lot.

But lately, I’ve become rather frustrated with conferences. It seems to me that conferences are increasingly becoming less about the science, and more about the conference. As someone who’s spent many years producing local theatrical productions, I recognize many of the same things: promotion, venue, sound/lights (AV equipment), catering, … all of which can be had on a sliding scale of cost, but which are increasingly costing more and more. And then there are the conference add-ons that really have little to do with the actual science: the often-accompanying tote bag/swag from various sponsors, and the bar service (often during the poster session evenings).

Now, some of these costs are imposed by the venue. If you want alcohol served, there’s usually a minimum purchase, and you’ll also pay for serving staff, for example. But there are some steps that people organizing conferences can take to reduce what is becoming a burdensome cost. Do we really need those posh biscuits at the 10am tea break? Swanky tapas during the poster session? I’d argue not.

Here’s a quick spin through some of the ornithological conferences just to see how much they currently cost (assuming early-bird registration for a non-student, and not counting travel & accommodation):

British Ornithologists Union 2016: £235 members / £440 non-members

American Ornithologists Union/Cooper Ornithological Society 2015: $320 USD members / $395 USD non-members

North American Ornithological Congress 2016: $499 USD

Pacific Seabird Group 2016: $285 USD / $330 USD

International Penguin Conference 2016: R4500 (roughly $300 USD)

And some general ecological ones thrown in to boot:

Ecological Society of America 2016: $342 / $510

British Ecological Society 2015: £350

International Marine Conservation Congress (2014; 2016 price not yet posted): $462 / $624 USD

 

And again, this is exclusive of any travel, accommodations, or food. The PSG meeting, for example, is in Turtle Bay, Hawaii (an hour’s drive from Honolulu at a $300/night resort… though more ’affordable’ accommodation is likely to be found within 15-30 minutes’ drive).

Given that we’re often asked, as scientists, to show value for money, and budgets are ever shrinking (or at the best, not increasing, which is a decrease in real terms), we need to start asking whether it’s good value for money (often public grant money) to attend these expensive meetings. Sure, they’re fun, and a good chance to catch up with friends and colleagues, but is that enough for 1-4 days’ of listening to others talk about their research? Or at best, spend 15 minutes talking about some recent work of our own?

Yes, it costs money to run a conference. As a former producer, I’m only too aware of how much it costs to rent a venue, host a website (let alone one with online registration/payment), and coordinate a herd of cats group of scientists. But could we not all bring a brown-bag lunch one day? Plan meetings in more affordable cities near major airports? Forego the complementary drinks at the bar?

While most conferences offer a discount for students, the number doing so for postdocs or scientists who haven’t been visited by the magical funding fairy is much lower. To say nothing of scientists who spend money from their own pocket to go these shindigs.

There are of course also the ethical arguments about the potentially large carbon footprint of flying all over the place (and as an aside, we also have a carbon budget here at the RSPB).

I’m not arguing that we do away with conferences. I think they provide valuable time to interact with colleagues, network, and I very much enjoy attending them. But we need to make scientific conferences more affordable, or worth the ever-increasing prices.