Blogs

SORTEE member voices – Vijayan Jithin

[SORTEE member voices is a weekly Q&A with a different SORTEE member]
   

Name: Vijayan Jithin.
 

Date: 02 July 2021.
 

Position: Masters Student.
 

Research and/or work interests: I am interested in ecology, evolution and media. Currently my work focuses on habitat ecology, behavioral adaptations, and education.
 

What do you see as the greatest challenge facing the open / reliable / transparent science movement at large or specifically in ecology and evolutionary biology?:
I think one of the greatest challenges facing the ORT science movement is lack of awareness. In addition, most people not from well-funded institutions, or highly developed countries, lack funding for publication in open-access journals and funding to meet archival policies of journals. To do better science, we need the existing knowledge to be openly available, which is not in the case for many. Academic societies and institutions should adopt ORT science policies which will enhance the overall quality of ‘doing’ science!  

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The Replication Crisis is not a crisis for researchers - it is a crisis for society

Perverse incentives in research careers lead to poor research practices prevailing. This problem may not necessarily be a problem for researchers as their careers can benefit from questionable research practices. The end users of science (such as government agencies, policy makers and wider society) are the ones who are negatively impacted by poor science and we argue here that the systemic change must come from them and not from within the research community alone.

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SORTEE member voices – Michael Jennions

[SORTEE member voices is a weekly Q&A with a different SORTEE member]
   

Name: Michael Jennions.
 

Date: 02 July 2021.
 

Position: Professor of Evolutionary Ecology.
 

Research and/or work interests: sexual selection; behavioural ecology; evolutionary ecology.
 

Where were you born and raised?
I was born in Manchester, UK. And I was raised in Johannesburg, South Africa.    

Where to find you online?:
http://thejennionslab.weebly.com/
   

[The opinions expressed in this blog post are those of the authors and are not necessarily endorsed by SORTEE.]

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SORTEE member voices: Dylan Gomes

[SORTEE Member Voices is a weekly Q&A with a different SORTEE member]
   

Name: Dylan Gomes.
 

Date: 02 July 2021.
 

Position: Postdoctoral Researcher.
 

Research and/or work interests: I am broadly interested in the wildlife conservation (especially human-impacts to wildlife), statistical methods (particularly LMM/GLMM), and the cultural and institutional practices in science (especially regarding sharing data and code, statistical/methodological choices, peer-review, and the hierarchical nature of research institutions and how this hierarchy influences author lists and workloads).
 

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SORTEE member voices: Gerald Carter

[SORTEE Member Voices is a weekly Q&A with a different SORTEE member]
   

Name: Gerald Carter.
 

Date: 02 July 2021.
 

Position: Assistant Professor.
 

Research and/or work interests: animal behavior, cooperation, communication, cognition, reciprocity, bats.
 

What do you see as the greatest challenge facing the open / reliable / transparent science movement?:
I think the greatest challenge for open, reliable, and transparent science is changing actual human behavior rather than just identifying what everyone should do. Scientists are less rational and altruistic than we think we are, and many of the traditional academic incentives are completely misaligned against the incentives for good science. For example, the academic goal of being influential does not ensure the scientific goal of being correct. We need academic incentive structures that both align with our higher collective scientific goals and also recognize and exploit the lower self-centered human goals of scientists. For example, science converges on truths by pitting our biased ideas against each other, demanding that we use evidence and logic to convince our worst critics, and forcing us to change our ideas when presented with counter-evidence. This process requires that we are rewarded for criticizing popular ideas, admitting to errors, and being uncertain and careful. Yet, our current academic system mainly rewards the opposite: being agreeable, seeking popularity and conformity, hiding mistakes, and being overconfident. How do we change academia to incentivize different behavior? That’s the challenge as I see it.  

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SORTEE member voices: Melina de Souza Leite

[SORTEE Member Voices is a weekly Q&A with a different SORTEE member]
   

Name: Melina de Souza Leite.
 

Date: 2 July 2021.
 

Position: PhD Candidate.
 

Research and/or work interests: Community Ecology, Landscape Ecology, Demography.
 

What’s an open science practice or topic that you’ve changed your views on within the last few years? Why?:
I’ve learned a lot about the importance of standardized data management protocols (at least in the same project!), especially for metadata. Messy data, even if available in open repositories, don’t help much! :).  

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