Also this week: meet the new boss con artist, same as the old boss con artist, breaking up (with the ESA) is hard to do, Wildlife Photographer of the Year, fox vs. problem, and more.
I’m not sure why I always read con artist stories like this one with great interest. Because they’re all the same. Which is why I was puzzled by the line near the end about the “unique nature of the case.” What exactly was unique about this con? Or am I misunderstanding what the authors mean by “unique”? Aside: note that I don’t think these sorts of cons are at all analogous to scientific fraud. A key difference between most cases of scientific fraud, and cons like the one reported in the linked article, is that most cases of scientific fraud don’t turn on the (claimed or real) personal attributes of the fraudster–their race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. If you want to learn about scientific fraud by way of analogy with other sorts of fraud, you want to look at frauds like stock market scams or art forgery.
Bethann Garramon Merkle is considering quitting the ESA, because she no longer feels like the hidden perks of volunteering with the ESA are worth the financial costs of society membership and attending society meetings. Very interesting, thoughtful, and personal pair of posts. I say that even though I’m slightly dismayed by the conclusion:
I know — there are loads of us ESA members who have valuable expertise. I’m not special in this regard. I shouldn’t be the only one who gets compensated, or even gets some travel support. We should all be compensated for what we know and contribute. That’s my firm stance. We offer a phenomenal service, for free, to an organization that makes money off of us paying to attend its annual conference and also offer all the content during it.
To be clear, while I don’t agree with Bethann’s conclusion, and it bums me out that she arrives at that conclusion, I fully appreciate why she arrives at that conclusion. I get where she’s coming from, even though I’m coming from a different place.
There’s a place for everyone (maybe not in the ESA, but in life more broadly). Good piece.
More on what Andrew Gelman calls the “piranha principle”. Turns out the 2024 Abel Prize (basically, the mathematics Nobel) was given for piranha principle results. Now I want to learn more about those prize-winning results, and see if they have any applications in ecology. Ecologists study many things that are (or can be thought of as) the stochastic outcome of lots of different contributing factors. So ecologists need to know if/when those contributing factors will all tend to cancel one another out (that’s the “piranha principle”).
Recently I linked to a couple of positive reviews of Nate Silver’s new book, On the Edge. Here’s a very negative review, from Leif Weatherby and Ben Recht. I read it with interest as well as disappointment. I’ve read, enjoyed, and agreed with many of Ben Recht’s blog posts. So I was surprised and disappointed to find this review rather unfair. It includes at least one falsehood about Silver’s past work, and mischaracterizes Silver’s own views on gambling policy and Sam Bankman-Fried. The review reads to me like it’s trying to establish not just that Silver’s book is bad, but that Silver himself is a bad person. I would like to read a negative review of Silver’s book that comes from an opposing point of view to Silver’s, but that engages with the book more fairly. I’m definitely open to the claims that Silver is very wrong on some things (I said as much in my own review of his last book), has blind spots about other things, and that the framing of his new book is oversimplified. Indeed, even positive reviews of his new book have said all those things. Surely it’s possible to say those things in a negative review while still providing a fair and accurate summary of the book, and a fair and accurate summary of Silver’s own views. Anyone who already dislikes Nate Silver will no doubt enjoy reading their own views repeated back to them. But personally, I prefer it when book reviewers write for a broader audience than people who already agree 100% with them, and give their audience a bit more credit.
At least that bad review had one good effect: it inspired Dan Davies to muse interestingly on the phrase “horses for courses,” and its application to Nate Silver’s book, and to data analysis (and life) more generally.
There are many nature photography contests out there, but for me the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition is the best of them. Here are some of this year’s commended photos. The force blorp is strong with this one. 🙂
Writing in Plos Biology, Gross & Bergstrom use a simple theoretical model to explore the consequences of clashing incentives around risky scientific research. I’ve only skimmed it very quickly, but am passing it on because it looks very interesting. Key quote from the abstract:
Because the scientific community is approximately self-governing and constructs its own reward schedule, the incentives that researchers are willing to impose on themselves are inadequate to motivate the scientific risks that would best expedite scientific progress.
Experimental proof that it doesn’t matter how you cook pasta. 🙂
You say that like it’s a problem. 🙂