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the mind wanders where it will

Turkeys – If only endangered species were delicious

11/26/2015

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Zack Steel

PictureWild Turkey - Image source: Wikimedia Commons
When contemplating a holiday-appropriate blog post for this week, the first thing that came to mind was the Turkey. Turkeys are of course the centerpiece of the traditional Thanksgiving feast, but are they really interesting enough to spend five minutes reading about? After all you are quite busy today. Well, Benjamin Franklin thought they were pretty impressive. Legend has it he advocated for the noble Turkey as our national bird over the Bald Eagle. While this may largely be an American myth, his writing on the subject shows he clearly had great respect for the bird.

“For the Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird [than the Bald Eagle], and withal a true original Native of America… He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on.”
- Benjamin Franklin


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Manuscript Rejection

11/20/2015

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Mark Schwartz
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Disclaimer: TED talk therapy for researchers who publish in the peer-reviewed literature.

I just received another rejection (Major revision).  I was very happy with this manuscript, and I was really glad to be done with it. The rejection was not based on unsound science, but was a recommendation to frame the paper better to be more effective and to amend some weak assumptions. We will get this paper published, and it will be improved by the comments that we received. However, this brings to mind an important issue that I think about often: rejection.

Researchers are generally accustomed to academic success. We were good students in no small measure because we do not like to fail. We have demonstrated the capacity to succeed in academics. Failure is, at this point, a bitter pill. Yet, failure is commonplace: 5% of grants get funded, 15% of papers get accepted, experiments fail. Generally, we have always succeeded on those narrow margins. For example most of us got into some school that only accepted that very top fraction of folks; the academic top 10% is our crowd. We expect to succeed despite long odds on failure.

Hence, it often bugs the crap out of us, and sometimes derails our careers, when we fail. Here are my words of advice meant for those of you experiencing or expecting to experience failure (ie, all of you): embrace that failure. Run right up to it, give it a huge hug, say thank you. Mean it. Be genuinely grateful. That is tougher than it sounds.

There are many reasons to take the grateful, albeit reluctant acceptance of failure. Foremost is that your proposal/research/paper will be better when you change the it based on the feedback you get from failing. Knowing that, however, doesn't make failure easy for anyone. Secondarily, science is supposed to be fun. We all need to make failure as pleasant as possible because we will encounter small doses of failure throughout our careers even while we build a record of success. With that, here is my step by step recommendation for you when you receive that email containing the reviews to a manuscript you recently submitted.

Step 1. Before you open the email, place a pencil in your mouth, crosswise and bite gently on it. This forces your smile muscles to engage. It has been shown that smiling makes us happier people. Start by smiling while reading what is highly likely to be a rejection. Let's remember that you are now competing amongst a pool where 100% of your competitors share your expectations of success. This is no longer high school where you are academically competing against a pool where most weren’t trying. There is no shame in rejection.

Step 2. Read only as far as the decision. Force yourself to stop. I know you want to read the rationale immediately. Don't read it now. Wait. You are not yet ready to embrace the change that is needed. The reviewers are, at this point, nattering nabobs of negativism. Give yourself some time to be mad or sad. Mad is good. Mad is a better motivator. Sad is likely. Sad requires sending the self-doubt off on vacation.

Step 3. Draft the thank you letter to the editor.  You received constructive feedback from caring scientists who volunteered their time to help you. Thank them for the care and attention that they invested in you. Be grateful. It has been shown that when you stop and be consciously grateful, you become a nicer and happier person. Write the grateful beginning of your response when you are mad/sad. It will help you get over the mad, possibly even the sad. 

Step 4. Contemplate your community. Spend at least 4 hours doing other stuff, including at least a minute contemplating the well-known fact that everyone you admire in the world of science also has had most of their best work rejected. All of the papers that you cited in your paper were kicked back to their authors for major revision and re-review. OK, so I don't have any data on this. But, I published my first paper 27 years ago, and I probably have a higher rate of rejection now than I did when I first started. I have published over 100 papers. I have had 1 where the paper was accepted on its first go without revision of some sort. That was years ago. Journal rejection rates are very high; there is likely a good reason for rejection that is not specifically related to your skill as a scientist.

Step 5. Read the review. If a minimum of 4 hours have elapsed, and that is important, you may be ready to read the reviews. If you feel Mr. Mad coming back, you might need to stop and come back later. Feel free to use the pencil in the mouth at any time. Take another four hours, minimum.

Step 6. Revise the letter to the editor. Go back to the thank you letter and enumerate the positive aspects of the review (things the reviewers liked about your paper). Then enumerate the constructive components of criticism that you find in your first read of the reviews. Now give it some more time. The weekend sounds about right.

Step 7. Get to work. You are now ready to revise your manuscript. Once you have given yourself the time and mental space to gracefully and gratefully accept criticism, you will be much better at incorporating the constructive criticism and make your paper effective at reaching the target audience. Remember, the editor chose those reviewers because they thought that these people represent your target audience. Even if the reviewers simply failed to understand your paper, you need to write a clearer paper.

You will succeed, but first you will fail. When failure causes self doubt, and it will, follow these easy steps. 1. Assume the power pose: stand up, put your hands on your hips, lift your chin, spread your legs at least 18 inches apart. 2. Watch this video. It will put you in a better mindset to work through the self doubt and revise the paper in a way that will succeed. Rock on. The world needs you. Thank god for TED talks.

How do you deal with rejection? Share your clever coping strategies.

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Counting Birds

11/13/2015

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Mark Schwartz
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Day 1. White-headed buffalo weaver
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Day 2. Elias guiding the hapless gringoes
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Secretary bird stalking insects and small mammals
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The hoopoe!
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Lilac breasted roller on a wildebeest skull. How quaint.
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Ground hornbill!
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The beautiful red & yellow barbet.
I recently visited Kenya. I was there because I have a son who studies Hyenas in the Masai Mara.  We traveled around a bit, saw loads of hyenas and gnus. I counted some birds. Here is what went down.

Day 1. Nairobi to Lake Baringa. 49 species. Bird of the day: White-headed buffalo weaver because it looks like a sports uniform should. Stylin’. Just to confess, as twichers go, I am an advanced beginner (I can tell a finch from a frigate bird). I can attribute my interest in nature, biology and the reason I am a professor to a childhood fascination with birds. During my teens I kept a bird life list and proudly watched it grow through my youth. However, I was never very sophisticated. I did not, for example, explicitly link birds to habitats much other than waterfowl to water. I think that I still own the Golden Guide to Birds of North America, and I could probably count how many I had ticked off by the time I was about 20. What I can’t do is accurately say how many I have added to that list since I was 20. While in Kenya, I guessed that it was about 160. So, that was our goal: 160 species of birds in two weeks.  
 
Day 2. 24 species. Still at Lake Baringo. Bird of the day: Abysinnian scimitarbill. Pretty cool bird with a super cool name. How can you beat that? Even though I don’t keep track of North American birds, when I travel I like to bring the binoculars and acquire the best local bird guide I can to count what I see. I am fairly strict. I need to see it. I need to be very certain of the ID. If there are look alike species that differ in range, I will use the range map to dictate which one I saw and count it. I will use local guides. For example September 4 and 5 (yesterday and today) we had Elias on the journey who knows the local birds quite well. This helped quite a lot (78 in 2 days).
 
Day 3. 15 species. Now at Mpala just west of Mount Kenya in the Likipia Valley. Regionally, this seems like a great example of integrating local enterprise (cattle and goat grazing) with conservation of nature. We are closing in on 100 species in three days. Now, I know that the real experts get something like 400 species in 24 hours. As I said, advanced beginner. We are not dedicating the day to birds, but we do pay attention. Bird of the day: Secretary bird. How can it not be? That might be the coolest bird in the world.  We have moved locations and so expect a bit of a bump. 

Day 4.  13 species. Still at Mpala. We have reached 100! Bird of the day: Hoopoe. Sorry. I can’t help it. I was fascinated the first time I saw a picture of one when I was about 12 and have loved that species ever since. About 12 years ago in China I stopped a conversation in mid-sentence with “I’m sorry” to chase after the first one I ever saw. Among other things, the hoopoe has a crazy large distribution. It nests from southern Europe through to the east coast of Asia, south of Siberia. It also is distributed south to the southern tip of Africa (skipping over the Sahara and the Congo. It likes open country, and there is lots of it in Asia and Africa.  That conversation in China was with my dean and a reporter from a leading Chinese newspaper. Bad dog. So, 12 years later I see a hoopoe for the 3rd time; still just as exciting!
  
Days 5 and 6. 21 species. We spent these days driving south, through Nairobi and then out to the Maasai Mara. Bird of the days: Yellow-billed duck. Africa has a huge diversity of most bird groups. The number of falcons, for example, is mind-boggling. However, with no recent glaciation and few lakes, there just aren’t many ducks. Perhaps with all the crocodiles, water is a dangerous place for ducks. The Egyptian goose seems to be the only duck-like thing that has figured out the water. Hence, the y-b duck may be the first real duck I have seen in Africa. Maybe there are places with lots of ducks, but I haven’t seen them. (you can start an African duck dynasty, though). OK, I did not get a picture of the dang duck, and they aren’t photogenic anyway. Hence, second bird of the days: Lilac breasted roller because they seem wicked smart and are beautiful to boot.
 
Days 7-11. 26 species. Five days in the Mara Conservancy near Serena Lodge at the Hyena research camp. Bird of the week: Black and white casqued hornbill. This is a very cool representative of a very cool group of birds. We barely had a glimpse at the pair of these before they flew off, so this is more a nod to the hornbills generally, of which we have now seen 5 species. About here I started a campaign for two birds before breakfast. This was easy because we generally did hyena observations at dawn and did not get back to camp until 9:30. Hence, breakfast was mid-morning. Going pretty well. In fact, most days we got exactly 2 birds before breakfast. Our days are mostly filled with hyena observations and watching the Wildebeest migrations (crossings at the Mara River with loads of very large crocodiles). So, mostly francolins, spurfowls, vultures, hawks and other birds easily visible in open country. with no picture of a black and white casqued hornbill,  here is a picture of a ground hornbill. Nearly as cool; spiffy  eyelashes!
 
Days 12-14. 22 species. Bird of the days: English sparrow, Yellow-throated sandgrouse, D’Arnaud Barbet. You have to hand it to the English sparrow, they get around. As for the Yellow-throated sandgrouse, simple elegance abounds. Elegant plumage, elegant call, elegant powerful flight. The D’Arnaud barbet is not the most elegant of the barbet’s (the one I saw days earlier and pictured to the left is), but pretty spectacular as bush birds go. This brings the total to 170, or 10 more than my estimate of my childhood in North America. Yea!
 
OK, so we ended up with 176 bird species in total. I was totally jazzed. [ post script note. I counted my approximated North American bird list, it is closer to 300]. We saw wildebeest crossing the Mara River, complete with crocodile predation. Hyenas doing unmentionable things to each other. I could not possibly identify my favorite experience. It was the trip of a lifetime. However, at the same time as I saw the vulture pictured below, I saw another with its head completely up a dead zebra's ass (check out the 23 second video)! 

What kind of a bird sits like this? Crazy!

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White-back vulture, just chillin'
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    Happy hour

    It might be science, it might be nons(ci)ense, but it still smells.

    Brain eddies are where we deposit random thoughts that we find amusing, distracting or otherwise like a Friday afternoon.

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