Recommended reads #177
Rich Lenski’s excellent guide: “How to write a response to reviewers in ten easy steps.” (As an author this is what I do, too. As an editor, this is what I like to see because it minimizes my effort searching through manuscripts for information, and allows me to focus on the science.)
More results on how the pandemic is affecting scientists unequally, including a larger reduction in research time for women.
There’s a news report in Nature about the financial challenges that scientific societies are facing because of cancellations of in-person conferences.
The facade of fit in the faculty search process
COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter Movement: Managing Academic Realities
A nice feature article in Nature, on cultural taxation
Natural history learning should be compulsory
There’s a short news report in Science about the challenge of teaching field and lab classes online.
White privilege in the CSU funding structure (which is also applicable to many other state university systems, in which the whiter campus gets more per-student funding)
Jeremy Fox of Dynamic Ecology, shared out a blog post that calls into question the validity of a recent paper about an experiment that tweeting about an article increases its citation rate. I shared this paper in rec reads 176, and I was interested because I was rather surprised in the result of the experiment (as correlative studies had shown a modest or nil effect, and in my experience, when people tweet papers, the popularity of the tweet has little to do with anybody following the link to look at the paper. So I found the finding to be surprising. Did read that paper? No, dear reader, I did not.). Anyhow, like for all scientific papers, notwithstanding the peer review process, caveat emptor.
The Colorblind Rainbow Center For Campus Diversity is seeking a new director.
A blog post from some students about what they want in online courses (and they end up recommending many well-established best practices for online teaching. So it’s a good read.)
An interview with Anthony Fauci about his relationship with the White House.
This obituary of Charles Webb. It’s a quality read for many reasons, but this one line captured my imagination: “At some point Eve changed her name to Fred in solidarity with a support group of men named Fred who claimed to suffer low self-esteem.”
Just a reminder that EEB Mentor Match is live! Please do communicate to undergrads this summer who can be working on their GRFPs, there are mentors standing by to help.
Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t remind y’all that my book is available for pre-order! (Because of pandemic related issues, the publication date was pushed to October.) And since we are all going to end up teaching online, yes, the book has a whole chapter about online teaching.