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Scientist Sees Squirrel

scientistseessquirrel.wordpress.com

Seldom original. Often wrong. Occasionally interesting.

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2026 46

  1. Sneaky preaching
  2. Half a dozen thoughts on my 100th paper
  3. The unpleasant smell of a half-roasted turkey – or a half-written manuscript
  4. When will my book’s third edition be out of date?
  5. The “reverse outline”: a useful writing technique I mention, but don’t explain, in BOTH my new books!
  6. Expensive solutions to cheap problems
  7. Why I don’t use LLMs in writing my books
  8. A thesis defence that was a milestone for me, too
  9. You don’t have time NOT to read a writing book
  10. New species from the rainforest vs. new species from museum drawers
  11. The Easter egg in ‘The Scientist’s Guide to Writing’
  12. Here I go again: I’m writing a fourth book!
  13. It’s publication day! “The Scientist’s Guide to Writing”, 3rd edition
  14. The foolishness of “doing more with less”
  15. Wonderful Latin Names: Zupaysaurus rougierei
  16. On humour in scientific talks – and how to use your privilege
  17. Your BASE for mentoring scientific writers
  18. It’s not enough to make a paper exist
  19. Stop buying my book! (Because the third edition is nearly out)
  20. Things I’ve made that are beautiful
  21. The excellent writing advice that I can’t quite get behind
  22. The Sagrada Familia, and good science I don’t like
  23. Good teaching is 15% straight-up entertainment – and that’s OK
  24. I haven’t written the ‘Principia’
  25. Culture in scientific naming
  26. Everyone else’s kitchen is tidier than mine – and writing is hard.
  27. Dark taxa, species naming, and inclusivity in science
  28. Broadening our writing, and mentoring, BASE
  29. We are all “developing writers”
  30. I’d cheerfully double my taxes to have a well-funded society
  31. Formalizing and deformalizing academic writing – with and without AI tools
  32. Friday Link: Marlene Zuk on scientists as writers
  33. The curious case of the self-publishing scientist
  34. Friday Link: How to do good science
  35. The OTHER kind of review that really gets my goat
  36. Four kinds of writing “errors”, and how you might respond when you spot them
  37. The piece of writing that just won’t die
  38. The #1 translatable science superpower: knowing what you don’t know
  39. ‘The Ecology of Ecologists’: what, if anything, is ecology? (book review)
  40. On a two-word scientific paper, and a fascinating (heated) exchange
  41. Wonderful Latin names: Jynx torquilla
  42. Whatever happened to MOOCs? – and why education doesn’t need revolutionizing
  43. Cover reveal: the 3rd edition ‘Scientist’s Guide to Writing’ is getting closer!
  44. Adapting mentoring to, and with, the developing writer
  45. How to lead a journal club you won’t be embarrassed by later
  46. Three stages of manuscript development – and why they matter to you as a mentor

2025 57

  1. It’s publication day! “Teaching and Mentoring Writers in the Sciences”
  2. Latin Names for Gardeners, Part 4: Four major themes for plant names
  3. Latin Names for Gardeners, Part 3: Who gives a plant its name?
  4. Latin Names for Gardeners, Part 2: Latin names aren’t really Latin (they’re much more interesting than that)
  5. Latin Names for Gardeners, Part 1: Why Latin names?
  6. My far-too-late discovery of “science studies”
  7. Our book is SHIPPING NOW! Here’s an easy stocking stuffer + 5 ideas for what to write on the gift tag ✨
  8. What your Introduction section isn’t
  9. How should you pick a PhD research topic?
  10. “This changes everything” redux: opinions about “pathological pedantry”
  11. Are my academic and non-academic writing styles converging? And would that be good?
  12. The third edition of “The Scientist’s Guide to Writing” is coming your way!
  13. Does this really change *everything*?
  14. All the things I was never trained to do
  15. Close encounters of the extinct kind
  16. There’s no “I” in “peer review” – or is there?
  17. What your Discussion section isn’t
  18. I don’t understand graphical abstracts. So I both hate and admire this one.
  19. Wonderful Latin Names: Karpatiosorbus admonitor
  20. The big assumption behind loud opposition to “AI” writing tools – and its two flavours
  21. Owls, blurbs, and a cover – oh my! “Teaching and Mentoring Writers in the Sciences” is getting close
  22. “Ferns”: the most beautiful book I’ve held in a while
  23. My summer of writing books – in song
  24. Sometimes, I love to lose an argument
  25. Wonderful Latin Names: Friendship in plant naming
  26. Mentoring beyond the academic career
  27. What your Results section isn’t
  28. “It must be nice to have your summers off” – and other things we don’t know about each other
  29. Making ChatGPT write badly (for use in teaching): an example, and lessons
  30. The implausibility of things I’ve already done
  31. I complained there aren’t enough novels about scientists – so Madhur Anand wrote one
  32. Upcoming talk on mentoring scientific writing – Thriving PI Summit
  33. Time in the forest, and what we know and also don’t know
  34. On not being a naturalist – but being one anyway
  35. What your Methods section isn’t
  36. Wonderful Latin Names: Hitchhiker’s Guide in a pair of protozoa
  37. No, the plagiarism machine isn’t burning down the planet (redux)
  38. A jackdaw, and the excitement of understanding the world
  39. Where do post ideas come from?
  40. “This changes everything”: hyperbole, and its place in writing
  41. In love with the library
  42. On defining your own metrics of success
  43. The most important part of your revision isn’t your revision
  44. No, the plagiarism machine isn’t burning down the planet (new AI energy-use estimates)
  45. Sauronaradus: the best etymology (for a Latin name) I’ve seen in a long time
  46. Writing advice from the Comte de Buffon
  47. “Teaching and Mentoring Writers in the Sciences” is available for pre-order!
  48. What kind of nerd am I? (And, no two people read the same book)
  49. If our tacit requirement in science for English mastery went away, would that be bad?
  50. Two new species named from The Lord Of The Rings – sort of
  51. Three books to sum up where we’re at with “AI” tools for writing
  52. Toni Morrison, paying it forward, and the power of small deeds
  53. Wonderful Latin names: The vowel-loving whale Mesoplodon eueu
  54. Adventures in the history of science: a trivial rabbithole that turned out to be fun
  55. Being told “you can do it if you try” is really discouraging
  56. Look, Ma, I have a framework!
  57. Ten years of blogging (that’s a lot of squirrels)

2024 53

  1. Lightening up the lecture
  2. What would you like to see in a 3rd edition of ‘The Scientist’s Guide to Writing’?
  3. What our new book looks like: “Teaching and Mentoring Writers in the Sciences”
  4. What does good writing advice look like?
  5. Trolley problems in scientific writing
  6. There’s no best way to write something
  7. Buffon’s eulogy, Pliny vs. Newton, and is science a big pile of facts?
  8. ChatGPT has become Nickelback
  9. Not-so-wonderful Latin names: The “stupid treehopper”, Carynota stupida
  10. Is scientific writing getting better or worse?
  11. ChatGPT, teaching, and writing style (and also, fun)
  12. “Helping Students Write” is headed into production. But should we call it that?
  13. Navigating the evangelical fervour of AI absolutism
  14. Making committee work less painful: lessons from peer review?
  15. Linnaeus, Buffon, and is there structure to nature? (Review of “Every Living Thing”)
  16. I can teach scientific writing for your grad program
  17. Back to school, but not for me
  18. St. Jerome’s lions, Pólya urns, and the evolution of biodiversity
  19. The tortoise, the hare, and the Botanic Garden (and science)
  20. Why am I writing this post?
  21. A peer-reviewer mistake that made me think about language
  22. A biologist visits the art gallery
  23. Shopping cart returns and a philosophy of collaboration
  24. In which I experiment with a new way of recommending, and finding, books
  25. “Curious Species”: a historian’s take on how animals resisted being made sense of
  26. The life of a book
  27. My favourite bits, of everything I’ve ever written
  28. Wonderful Latin Names: (Not enough) Muppets in nomenclature
  29. Ursula Le Guin, playing the tuba, and scientific writing
  30. Doing interesting science with a boring grant
  31. “Methods-last” papers aren’t really methods-last
  32. Wonderful Latin names: the large-but-tiny sea monster, Yawunik kootenayi
  33. “The Tortured Poets Department”, vampires, and scientific writing
  34. How to give Jeff Bezos less money – and support an author, artist, or craftsperson
  35. Folks who insist on “data are” don’t understand how language works
  36. Generosity in authorships: the easy way and the right way
  37. When your paper’s title is a question, is the answer “no”?
  38. A road map for writing an Introduction
  39. Wonderful Latin Names: Utivarachna angsoduo and its kin
  40. What can we conclude from the rash of published papers with obvious fingerprints of ChatGPT?
  41. Whether or not your Introduction should include your main result is “the most controversial issue in science”!
  42. “Artificial intelligence” isn’t
  43. Poll: Should an Introduction include your main result?
  44. What the heck is “creative nonfiction” – and do I write it?
  45. Scientific papers and mystery novels are two different things – but advice about Introductions often disagrees
  46. The shutdown of peer-review.io and the dynamics of volunteerism
  47. Why “scholar” is such a great word
  48. If celebrity Latin names are a ploy for media attention, do they work?
  49. My most influential paper was a complete accident
  50. Why most of my papers just aren’t that exciting
  51. On the kindness of Superman
  52. Aren’t AI declarations for journals kind of silly?
  53. Metamorphosis: on being (newly) retired

2023 53

  1. The joy, and frustration, of not knowing things
  2. Open data and ChatGPT: on believing contradictory things
  3. On figuring things out – and then quitting doing them
  4. Wonderful Latin Names: Loncovilius carlsbergi
  5. A Rejection of Inadequate Humility
  6. The case against open data
  7. On writing with pleasure
  8. 10 simple rules for writing “10 Simple Rules” papers
  9. Political non-citation: no thanks
  10. Revising isn’t the same as editing – and that’s much more important than it sounds
  11. “Helping Students Write”: a new book coming your way, from a terrific coauthor and me!
  12. My writing pet peeves: “Further studies are needed”
  13. Reviewer: “Increase your sample size 10-fold”. Me: “Get lost.”
  14. Useful ambiguity in academic employment
  15. Silos and epistemic trespassing
  16. Once more unto the breach: thoughts on my last semester of teaching
  17. Species names, chemical names, and what names are for
  18. My writing pet peeves: take it easy with the thesaurus
  19. The world seen through moths: The Jewel Box (review)
  20. Let’s stop using “innovative” as a criterion for grant funding
  21. Wonderful Latin Names: Acanthobunocephalus scruggsi
  22. The one-word check-in: too much, or not enough
  23. Won’t ChatGPT just get better? (And watermelons.)
  24. What happens when ChatGPT writes an entire scientific paper?
  25. What the heck is Substack? – and the case for more fully formed thought
  26. Gamification, self-deception, and writing productivity
  27. How to use ChatGPT in scientific writing
  28. Plastic straw bans and the sugar on my scones
  29. AI language models will fundamentally change scientific writing – but it won’t be ChatGPT
  30. The Delicate Dance of Peer Review
  31. ChatGPT: author, acknowledgement, method, or tool?
  32. Wonderful Latin Names: Zyzyxia lundellii
  33. How bad are the ads? Readers say, not so bad.
  34. Is there an easier way to teach scientific writing?
  35. Consulting readers: how bad are the ads?
  36. To see the worlds behind the names behind the trees behind the forest, all convolved together with strange and impossible contingencies…
  37. Why you should write “In this study, we…” – and then delete it
  38. Why journal papers are like cemetery plots
  39. Peer review bias and double-blind reviewing: a new study
  40. The books I wrote but cannot read (and how translations come to be)
  41. What makes a journal “for-profit”?
  42. On salmon and for-profit journal publishing
  43. SOURs: Strong Opinions Unmoored from Rationale
  44. “A Gentleman in Moscow” and scientific writing
  45. Brevity in scientific writing is a good thing – until it isn’t
  46. Giants of the eastern forests (and a new book about them)
  47. The case of the disappearing author
  48. My love affair with the footnote
  49. My most heterodox scientific-writing lecture (or, how I annoy my colleagues in a good cause)
  50. Why my newest paper is paywalled
  51. What an ecologist learned observing COP15
  52. ChatGPT did not write this post
  53. On rounding numbers, assumptions, and having one’s mind blown

2022 56

  1. Six months into “phased retirement”: how it’s going
  2. Career arcs and “My Life in Fish”
  3. Don’t fear falling at the edge of knowledge
  4. Holiday reading (some suggestions)
  5. On text-mining using Google search tools
  6. Ignotus aenigmaticus: an accidental, and amusing, Latin name
  7. Can you change a species’ common name?
  8. It’s not lazy to do the easy writing first
  9. Dancing Cockatoos and the Dead Man Test (book review)
  10. Exciting news: I’m (co-)writing another book!
  11. University support staff should understand universities
  12. Preprints, peer review, and the eLife experiment
  13. Two trivial writing mistakes that really grate on me
  14. How to boost a book, and an author – and why you should
  15. I don’t mind at all if you get my book from the library
  16. How circular expectations damage our scientific writing
  17. On creativity and science – and play!
  18. No, adverbs aren’t ruining our scientific literature
  19. Why I’m teaching online again
  20. On creativity and science
  21. Another accusation: did David Starr Jordan name a fish after himself?
  22. Convenience and ecological knowledge
  23. So, how’s (semi) retirement going?
  24. Going to the archive, and why
  25. Which institutional affiliation should you list on a paper?
  26. Effective grant proposals, Part 5: Yes, do sweat the small stuff
  27. I think I finally like writing
  28. A new preprint, author contributions, and the best kind of collaboration
  29. Some career news: a(nother) metamorphosis begins
  30. Let’s stop (usually) with the second round of review
  31. Sure, spiders might be insects, but surely bees aren’t fish?
  32. Effective grant proposals, Part 4: Who are you writing for?
  33. Should Latin names of species always be descriptive?
  34. Do fonts matter?
  35. Why I write the Introduction last
  36. Parasitic Oscillations: new ecopoetry from Madhur Anand
  37. Getting past writer’s block
  38. Millipede (Taylor’s Version)
  39. Effective grant proposals, Part 3: Qualifications
  40. Yes, good writing matters: empirical evidence!
  41. How to talk with your mentor about writing (and why)
  42. Effective grant proposals, Part 2: Feasibility
  43. I’m on the “Scholarly Communication” podcast, talking about (what else) scientific writing
  44. Do funny titles increase or decrease the impact of scientific papers? New preprint!
  45. Maybe it’s time to stop teaching “the scientific method” in 1st year biology
  46. My proceeds from the Russian translation of my book are going to Ukraine
  47. Effective grant proposals, Part 1: Novelty and significance
  48. Three questions to ask yourself, if you want to write a successful grant
  49. Weird things (some) ecologists believe: “you can’t infer process from pattern”
  50. A new compendium of resources for scientific writers
  51. It’s out today! The 2nd edition “Scientist’s Guide to Writing”
  52. Two reasons I haven’t started writing yet
  53. Our impenetrable literature: partly a feature, partly a bug
  54. “Do your own research” and open-access publication
  55. Writing “an” Introduction is a lot easier than writing “the” Introduction
  56. P = 0.05 and a teaspoon of baking powder

2021 64

  1. Why are university strategic plans almost always meaningless?
  2. Stop buying my book! (Because the second edition is nearly out)
  3. Those journals may be “fake”, but I don’t think they’re “predatory”
  4. My goodness that’s a lot of squirrels
  5. Peer review, CVs, and what is Publons for?
  6. Should peer reviewers comment on writing style?
  7. Can we please stop paying attention to grant funding on researcher CVs?
  8. Metaphors in scientific writing: vagueness and confusion, or something better?
  9. Are we watching the death of volunteerism in science?
  10. We’re (nearly) all untrained at SciComm. So, some resources.
  11. My writing pet peeves: “As previously mentioned…”
  12. Raisin buns, leaf packs, acronyms, and thinking
  13. Nerdy thrills: “Charles Darwin’s Barnacle” is in my local public library
  14. Arithmetic, intuition, and very large errors
  15. Your paper is not a Wikipedia article
  16. Taxonomy as activism
  17. Farewell (sort of) to Dynamic Ecology
  18. Weird things scientists believe: that paying reviewers won’t cost us
  19. Music Mondays: By Endurance We Conquer
  20. Leadership lessons from the vaccination-mandate fiasco
  21. Music Mondays: Strangeness and Charm
  22. Why are scientific frauds so obvious?
  23. Music Mondays: Lonesome Friends of Science
  24. Tricks for reading and correcting proofs
  25. Music Mondays: Chemistry
  26. Remote conferences and flying less
  27. Music Mondays: Cold Missouri Waters
  28. Never trust anyone who doesn’t change their mind
  29. Music Mondays: White Collar Holler
  30. The 2nd edition “Scientist’s Guide to Writing” is available for pre-order!
  31. Music Mondays: Out Past the Timberline
  32. How long is a manuscript? All answers are wrong.
  33. Music Mondays: Endless Forms
  34. Butterflies, mustard seeds, and misplaced critical thinking
  35. Music Mondays: Mandelbrot Set
  36. You can’t “stay in your lane”. So you have to know how to drive in your neighbour’s.
  37. Music Mondays (new summer series)
  38. Why I don’t want to be part of “open peer review”
  39. Blogging, writing practice, and self-discovery
  40. Why do pre-meds want to do research in my ecology lab? And should I let them?
  41. Better Posters: Zen Faulkes on ways to rescue the poster session
  42. Why write well?
  43. How many university instructors phoned it in during the pandemic?
  44. Fictional species, fictional names
  45. Don’t use your Discussion to shred your own work
  46. Yes, that paper is paywalled. But you can read it anyway.
  47. Is science communication unteachable?
  48. How scandalized should folks be if I re-use my prerecorded lectures?
  49. Jargon hurts our science – but we just can’t help ourselves
  50. A year in the life of Charles Darwin’s Barnacle
  51. What jigsaw puzzles could have taught me about writing – if I’d listened
  52. Strong opinions, weak effects: What makes a good title?
  53. Online teaching and self-fulfilling prophecy
  54. The Scientist’s Guide to Writing will have a 2nd edition
  55. You can’t (only) target science funding: Covid-19 edition
  56. Let’s be astonished that we get to criticize vaccine rollouts
  57. No two people see a book the same way (or, Canadians CAN TOO be funny)
  58. Is “Charles Darwin’s Barnacle” political? Sure, and I’m unrepentant.
  59. Barf-and-buff writing, and cherry-picking citations
  60. Wonderful Latin Names: Allobates niputidea
  61. What if the way Covid-19 forces us to teach is actually better?
  62. Three reasons for the red pen
  63. A year of books comes to an end
  64. 2020 was weird for blogging, too

2020 71

  1. How to review an NSERC Discovery Grant
  2. Do people really not know about research ethics boards?
  3. The teaching book I’ve always needed
  4. Opinion, evidence, and preprints
  5. The Easter eggs in my entomology course
  6. Art and science in “This Red Line Goes Straight to Your Heart”
  7. How to make an author happy: Pandemic holiday edition
  8. A year of books (7): Is this the strangest assortment yet?
  9. Some writing books I like
  10. The other crisis of 2020
  11. Klaas’s cuckoo and the joys of old literature
  12. Ego and the eponymous element
  13. Look, Ma, I found a squirrel!
  14. A new (and unfortunate) record: the longest Latin name
  15. A year of books (6): Reading as refuge
  16. Why don’t we capitalize taxonomic names used as adjectives?
  17. Some startling data about the scourge of acronyms
  18. This new flag is even better than you think
  19. Student responsibility for online learning, the prescriptive battles the descriptive
  20. What my online Entomology course look like
  21. A year of books (5): where did the summer go?
  22. The perfect margarita and the perfect scientific paper
  23. How art met science in “Charles Darwin’s Barnacle and David Bowie’s Spider”
  24. Grading, correcting, and mentoring writing: learning on both sides
  25. Drosophila, exponential growth, and the power of evolution
  26. Moby Dick and scientific writing
  27. The list of disfavoured reviewers: who should be on yours? And will an editor heed it?
  28. Do editors really use those lists of “recommended reviewers”? And who should you suggest?
  29. Moving courses online isn’t easy – or cheap
  30. What, if anything, can you conclude from a book’s blurbs?
  31. Diversifying scientific names, and diversifying science
  32. The blog post that dooms the universe
  33. Are spiders insects? And what good are polls?
  34. A year of books (4): Snow into summer
  35. Court: “Spiders are insects.” Biologists: “Say what?”
  36. Mathematics (and the rest of science) for human flourishing
  37. A trivial writing error with a powerful writing lesson
  38. Black Lives Matter
  39. Cracking the code of biology tests: let’s get metacognitive!
  40. Steal this (updated) syllabus for Scientific Writing
  41. How to get comments on draft writing – more than once
  42. I wish my students were motivated by love of subject. But I shouldn’t.
  43. A year of books (3): reading into the pandemic
  44. Covid-19, mystery novels, and how science works
  45. Join me for a reading from “Charles Darwin’s Barnacle and David Bowie’s Spider”!
  46. Six easy ways to make an author happy
  47. Watch my talk about “Charles Darwin’s Barnacle and David Bowie’s Spider”!
  48. From one big midterm to weekly quizzes: what I expected, and what actually happened
  49. Life Lessons From a Pandemic
  50. Sharing the unwritten lore: “Being a Scientist”, by Michael Schmidt
  51. Lessons from a little fish
  52. Editing as conversation
  53. A Year of Books (2): duds and diamonds
  54. History, conservation, and privilege: all in a falcon’s name
  55. My new book, “Charles Darwin’s Barnacle and David Bowie’s Spider”, is out today!
  56. Squirrels in the time of Covid19
  57. Eight is (more than) enough: How peer review gets out of hand
  58. In praise of the red pen: editing as an act of caring
  59. Look, Ma, I’m in the Nautilus!
  60. The origin, and fate, of “sister species”
  61. On the rush to judgment, and modern dance
  62. A year of books: a beginning
  63. Conference sitter, or conference sprinter?
  64. This blog is free, and I don’t have a Patreon, but…
  65. What should you do when Reviewer #2 says “Cite my papers”?
  66. Pizza dough, knowledge, and the problem of authority
  67. Why I threw in the towel on “data is”
  68. Don’t overinterpret “preferably” in a job ad
  69. The magical writing trick that’s right under our noses
  70. A year of books – and why
  71. Gosh, that’s a lot of squirrels – thoughts on 5 years’ worth

2019 60

  1. Blogs are dying; long live blogs
  2. Insects are incredibly cool (or, a whirlwind tour of my Entomology course)
  3. Wonderful Latin names: Liriomyza ivorcutleri
  4. The misplaced responsibility of the outside-work-hours email
  5. Close calls in fiction, and the value of advice
  6. Never mind the pedantry, they’re all “bugs”
  7. Charles Darwin and photography
  8. I answered 46 questions this week
  9. The scientific wisdom of Chief Inspector Armand Gamache
  10. My worst writing atrocity
  11. The empty bottles in my office
  12. Teaching writing through the curriculum
  13. Science, social media, and my fear of corporate puppetry
  14. Quotation marks in scientific writing: seemingly simple, yet terribly troublesome
  15. Three billion lost birds, and what else don’t I know?
  16. Edit to polish the writing, or edit to polish the writer?
  17. The climbing metaphor, or where should we encourage students to send their papers?
  18. Charles Darwin’s Barnacle and David Bowie’s Spider: a new title for my new book
  19. Turning our scientific lens on our scientific enterprise: a randomized experiment on double-blinding at Functional Ecology
  20. Should a paper title tell you what the paper is about? Yes, but not the way Simon/Steve thinks
  21. I just organized a conference. OMG.
  22. I hate checking proofs. Here’s how I make it (slightly) easier.
  23. Why is writing hard, and how can we make it easier?
  24. Out in the forest, and out on a limb
  25. Even more great reads from the history of natural history
  26. What copyediting is, and what it isn’t
  27. Every paper tells a story – or at least, it should
  28. Internet trolls and integration by parts
  29. Is my worst writing habit also my writer’s voice?
  30. It’s been a while since I’ve been this proud of a paper
  31. The dangerous temptation of acronyms
  32. Charles Darwin’s other mistake
  33. A tale of two jokes (one published, one not)
  34. Why I’m giving away my carbon-tax rebate
  35. Love, and its complexity, in a butterfly’s name
  36. Reclaiming voice in scientific writing
  37. Of course you can do significance testing on simulation data!
  38. All the best searches find squirrels
  39. Where did our (scientific writing) voices go?
  40. The unluckiest naturalist ever
  41. (Limited) use-cases for “utilize”
  42. For the love of all that is holy, stop writing “utilize”
  43. Do scientific writers have “voice”?
  44. Aenigma, enigmas, and the progress of science
  45. Reconciling the two functions of peer review
  46. Please help me with the weird Latin name of a wonderful fish: Awaous banana
  47. I love it when reviewers make conflicting suggestions
  48. On teaching writing, and being overruled: a passive-(voice)-aggressive rant
  49. Publishing in English as an additional language (a view from outside)
  50. Timelines in grant proposals are useless. Here’s how I put them to use.
  51. What is science’s “Kokomo”?
  52. Power in the ending
  53. Some (more) great reads from the history of natural history
  54. I’ve submitted the manuscript for my new book!
  55. Tweeting your active research (as outreach)
  56. Let’s all relax about Latin names from pop culture
  57. Yes, I’m teaching a tropical field course. No, it’s not a vacation.
  58. I talked about Latin names and naming on the Natural Reality podcast
  59. Skinny-leg jeans, P>0.05, and one space after a period
  60. Happy 4th birthday, Scientist Sees Squirrel!

2018 73

  1. Latin names that amuse my inner 9-year-old: Onopordum acanthium
  2. How (as an editor) I choose lists of reviewers
  3. My most important work is not what I’ve always thought
  4. Lemon zest, theory of mind, and the hazards of localized advice
  5. Becoming a science writer: a musical in three acts (guest post)
  6. 15th century technology and our disdain for “nearly significant”
  7. The basic arithmetic that makes meetings bad
  8. Who should organize your department’s seminar series?
  9. How I became a writer (guest post)
  10. Statistical Inference as Severe Testing: How to Get Beyond the Statistics Wars (book review)
  11. Go ahead, use contractions: poll responses and more
  12. Yes, most reviews are submitted at the deadline. No, that doesn’t justify shorter deadlines
  13. Don’t stop writing in the Chasm of Despair
  14. How big an obstacle are common contractions for non-native speakers of English? Polls!
  15. Twitter and your Research Program: tweeting your publications
  16. Back yard cats, balloons, and butterfly releases
  17. Wow – a “People’s Choice Award” for Scientist Sees Squirrel!
  18. Presenting statistical results: pointers in scientific writing
  19. No, vineyards are not beautiful (a conservation conundrum)
  20. University professors should understand university administration
  21. Why on Earth are flowers beautiful?
  22. “Scientist Sees Squirrel” is nominated for a People’s Choice Award!
  23. Tree trunks, game theory, and the invisible hand
  24. My latest paper is a garden
  25. “Latin” names that aren’t Latin
  26. Do I work for the Class that pays me? (guest post)
  27. Tweeting Science to Policymakers
  28. The Disco Era of scientific writing
  29. How do successful academics write? Helen Sword’s “Air & Light & Time & Space” (review)
  30. Twitter considerations and tips at conferences
  31. How long should you wait before nudging the journal about your manuscript in review?
  32. Tweeting to the Science Community: Audience, Content, and Voice
  33. What does it mean to “take responsibility for” a paper?
  34. How bizarre: Names without things
  35. The “publication power-of-attorney”, and why you should have one
  36. Attempts to standardize the common names of species are deeply weird
  37. How to find a squirrel
  38. Scientific writing, style, and the trolley problem
  39. How do you choose a journal when it’s time to submit a paper?
  40. Turns out “The Scientist’s Guide to Writing” was not actually my first book!
  41. I’m leading a writing workshop (at Entomology 2018)
  42. Plants in ecological webs
  43. Entrepreneurship in Victorian botany: did you know that was a thing?
  44. The fetishization of entrepreneurship
  45. Making people angry
  46. Posts for conference season
  47. Who’s in charge of the English language?
  48. From ego naming to cancer screening: type I error and rare events
  49. Steal this syllabus! (or, how I taught Scientific Writing)
  50. (More) reading on the history of natural history
  51. Collegial governance and crickets in the meeting room
  52. Are there really “only so many ways to write the Methods”?
  53. Can a thesis chapter be coauthored?
  54. Do you really have to rewrite your Methods for every new paper?
  55. Magnolia, Magnol, and cascades of naming
  56. Imposter syndrome, and some posts I’m proud of
  57. Making a conference introvert-friendly
  58. I’m writing another book!
  59. I refuse all review requests with deadlines < 3 weeks. Here’s why, and how.
  60. Gardens, beachheads, and invasions
  61. Less than a tribute: when Latin names are insults
  62. University administrators should understand universities
  63. Academic nomads, academic settlers
  64. Accidental SciComm
  65. The arrogance and common sense of teaching from my own book
  66. Writing the Methods as a plausibility check
  67. The efficiency of the lazy scientist
  68. The Songs of Trees (review)
  69. What’s the most famous sentence in the scientific literature?
  70. There’s no such thing as “an unrelated genus”
  71. “Guest-post SPAM” is a thing now
  72. Adventures in coauthorship networks: my Erdős number
  73. Three years without an attention span

2017 76

  1. Arguing with myself
  2. I’m about to teach a writing course, and I’m very scared
  3. Defenders of the passive voice
  4. I don’t work for the people who pay me
  5. The J-shaped curve of blog-post popularity
  6. Things I teach that are not true
  7. Monarch butterflies, and weird failures of observation
  8. Why journals like “reject, but resubmit”
  9. Originality is over-rated. (Including by me.)
  10. My weirdest job interview – and assumptions from familiarity
  11. Statistics in Excel, and when a Results section is “too short”
  12. Three witches in the woods
  13. Terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Latin names
  14. The coauthors I’ve never met
  15. Negative-news bias and “the disaster that is peer review”
  16. Four unconvincing reasons not to crowdfund science
  17. Reach and impact of science-community blogs in ecology (new paper!)
  18. Oral storytelling and my supposed superpower
  19. How to write, and read, a (manuscript) rejection letter
  20. Poetry and Science – A New Index for Predicting Catastrophes (review)
  21. Folk taxonomy, the postal service, and mailing live animals
  22. The statistics of pesto
  23. Asking for feedback on job applications: attitudes and practices
  24. Thoughts in memory of my father
  25. Temporal trends in the Journal Diversity Index
  26. Can we stop saying reviewers are unpaid?
  27. How good (a manuscript) is good enough?
  28. What’s in an idea?
  29. The power of “thanks”
  30. My journal life list
  31. Recent reading on the history of natural history
  32. Are two years’ data better than one?
  33. Well, THAT could have been awkward: job-interview edition
  34. Wonderful Latin Names: Salacca zalacca
  35. Robert Boyle’s Monstrous Head
  36. Canada’s 150th, and how should we think about incomplete progress?
  37. Thoughts from a room on the 13th floor
  38. Poll: where do you stand on asking for feedback on unsuccessful job applications?
  39. “Peer Community In”: Beyond the traditional publishing model (guest post)
  40. Personality, politics, profile
  41. Why is our Garden green?
  42. How to write, and read, a (job) rejection letter
  43. Where do I find the time to blog?
  44. The Scientist’s Guide to Writing is a year old!
  45. On being nerdsniped by Dynamic Ecology
  46. A month of spamvitations
  47. We praise originality, but we don’t seem to value it
  48. Am I the last holdout against making (publication-quality) figures in R?
  49. Persistence in publishing: the Tubthumping strategy
  50. Reviewing with imposter syndrome
  51. The botany of henna
  52. Reproducibility and robustness
  53. Things that are more important to me than reviewing your manuscript
  54. (Continued) From the trenches: How I’m learning to write (guest post)
  55. Two tired misconceptions about null hypotheses
  56. From the trenches: How I’m learning to write (guest post)
  57. A capital dilemma: “western Australia” or “Western Australia”?
  58. To sign or not to sign: what the Replies taught me
  59. Why I sign (most of) my reviews
  60. Nuancing brevity: less isn’t always more
  61. How to handle a useless review
  62. Stephen King and me
  63. Squirrels, serendipity, and the reach of a blog
  64. “Student competition sessions” at conferences are weird
  65. Why aren’t we agitating for open-access groceries?
  66. Life under the snow
  67. Knowing, and naming, your audience (with “lay audience” poll results)
  68. One figure at a time, please
  69. Help! What term should we be using for a “lay audience”?
  70. Being an open-access advocate doesn’t excuse you from proper literature searches
  71. Wonderful Latin names: Spurlingia darwini
  72. Early career researchers make great peer reviewers. How can we get more of them?
  73. Universities that did not hire me (a chronicle of absolutely normal rejection)
  74. My plodding journey to better writing (guest post)
  75. This is what a terrible teaching statement looks like
  76. Small-town mayors, functional traits, and the estimation of extremes

2016 89

  1. Negative results, conferences, and the open file drawer
  2. Open science, phosphorus, and economic impact
  3. How to write a terrible teaching statement
  4. Wonderful Latin names: Eriovixia gryffindori
  5. Some OTHER good books on scientific writing
  6. The tyranny of reader expectations
  7. When is a review paper worth writing?
  8. The three functions of a thesis
  9. No, your field isn’t “broader” than mine
  10. About last week
  11. Are you wearing your conference nametag wrong?
  12. Why do we mention stats software in our Methods?
  13. Please don’t “make science transparent” by publishing your reviews
  14. Is this blog a “science blog”? If not, what is it?
  15. Conference nametags mostly suck
  16. David Richardson live-tweets “The Scientist’s Guide to Writing”
  17. Why I assign the group work that I hated as a student
  18. There’s fungus among us
  19. The funny papers on my CV
  20. My most influential paper was a complete accident
  21. The first rule of writing
  22. The one kind of review that really gets my goat
  23. What is UpGoer Five for? Poll results, and thoughts on polls
  24. Does anyone else find “Up Goer Five” a bit condescending?
  25. Why I have a 37-page version of my CV (and why you should too)
  26. SciComm, and who should do it
  27. Summer flashbacks
  28. How do we make students into professional learners?
  29. Are there any Klingon “Latin” names?
  30. Why I still list (and pay attention to) journal names
  31. Can we just put down the laser pointers please?
  32. Working on “vacation”
  33. Out-of-touch administrators – and their mirror images
  34. Fish out of water: a scientist examines a poetry thesis
  35. Blogging as an introvert
  36. Why most studied populations should decline
  37. Conferencing as an old fogey
  38. Every qualifying-exam candidate should say “I don’t know”
  39. The garden of insects
  40. Fisher’s geometric model of software updates
  41. Lessons from three role models
  42. Commerson’s Dolphin and ego naming: a (minor) mystery solved
  43. Why I’m going back to saying “Latin” names
  44. How much time do you spend writing? Survey says…
  45. Write as I say, not as I do
  46. How much time do you spend writing?
  47. The “opponent” system: my experience at a Swedish PhD defence
  48. Friends don’t let friends use “cf.”
  49. The most useful statistical test that nobody knows
  50. Writing on writing makes me nervous
  51. Worth a read: The Naming of the Shrew
  52. The warship Vasa and argument from authority
  53. Why so few novels about scientists?
  54. Searching for squirrels again
  55. Whither the two cultures?
  56. Writing the Methods section as narrative
  57. Spring, light, and strategy on the forest floor
  58. Author Q&A for “The Scientist’s Guide to Writing”
  59. How to handle an idiotic review
  60. Caribou Run: poems about caribou and us, by Richard Kelly Kemick
  61. I’m on the People Behind the Science podcast
  62. Writing a book: what a long strange trip it’s been
  63. Statistics and significant digits
  64. Ternary plots and the Grand Unified Theory of Potato Chips
  65. “The Scientist’s Guide to Writing” is out!
  66. The university as an organization: collegial or hierarchical?
  67. To love or to hate Miss Rumphius?
  68. Good uses for fake data (part 2)
  69. Teaching population dynamics with simulations in R
  70. Libraries, books, and librarians
  71. For your next conference: poster or talk?
  72. Good uses for fake data (part 1)
  73. Graphic design, error, and accidental learning
  74. An introvert goes conferencing
  75. What’s in a (Latin) name?
  76. Why do conferences have themes?
  77. The globalization and provincialization of universities
  78. The best Acknowledgements section ever
  79. Do biology students need calculus?
  80. Wonderful Latin Names, Part 6: Syzygium aromaticum
  81. Three things a university might be for
  82. Student blogging on insect conservation: a success story
  83. Academic inclusive fitness
  84. What do you think about “celebrity” Latin names?
  85. Supervisory inflation and “value-added” mentoring
  86. 1.8 billion years in a jar
  87. Where the heck are my students?
  88. Vaccinations, global warming, and the fork in the canning jar
  89. A year of Scientist Sees Squirrel: thoughts and thanks

2015 77

  1. The Plant Gastrodiversity Game
  2. How plants prepare for winter
  3. 60 new odonates from Africa, in a paper with style
  4. Post-publication peer review and the problem of privilege
  5. Should you appeal when a journal rejects your paper?
  6. Searching for squirrels
  7. Kind mentors, and the other kind
  8. Two ways I flubbed my first job interview
  9. Science fiction, stone plants, and the certainty of improbable things
  10. Good jargon and bad jargon
  11. Is “nearly significant” ridiculous?
  12. Should impact factor matter?
  13. Some thoughts on praise in science and for scientists
  14. What if we flip the students instead of the classroom?
  15. The centrifugal theory of species diversity
  16. Sheep, lupines, pattern, and process
  17. The “one thing I teach that nobody ever forgets” may be wrong!
  18. Is everything “broken”?
  19. Why do we make statistics so hard for our students?
  20. Why do not we use contractions in scientific writing?
  21. Is biology beautiful?
  22. The paradox of university governance
  23. The one thing I teach that nobody ever forgets
  24. Please stop asking me to think outside the box
  25. Creativity, play, and science
  26. I’d rather be teaching non-majors
  27. Why goldenrods don’t make you sneeze: the biology of pollination
  28. How long should peer review take?
  29. Why would anyone want to be an (Associate) editor, anyway?
  30. Are “side projects” self-indulgent?
  31. Does mega-authorship matter?
  32. Was Barbara Cartland a genius? And are you?
  33. Invasions, beauty, and ecosystem services: a conundrum
  34. The joys of other people’s field work
  35. “Two cultures” and the talk that terrified me
  36. Don’t fear falling at the edge of knowledge
  37. Sea monsters, waterbugs, and the fear of what lies beyond
  38. Where the Earth shows its bones
  39. How I started blogging (reposted interview with Paige Brown Jarreau)
  40. Are scientists “we” or “they”?
  41. Why do senior academics ramble on?
  42. (not so) Wonderful Latin Names, Part 5: Turdus ignobilis debilis
  43. The compensations of academic service
  44. Can a scientific paper be too short? Part II
  45. Can a scientific paper be too short? Part I
  46. Why grant funding should be spread thinly: some followup
  47. The Golden Age of Weird Papers
  48. What’s your most undercited paper?
  49. Nature’s pharmacy? “Medicinal” plants in the garden
  50. The dumbest thing I ever said to a reviewer
  51. Why grant funding should be spread thinly
  52. Are reviewers crazy? Or are they saints?
  53. Wonderful Latin Names, Part 4: Yi qi
  54. “Encouraging” solo authorship would be a really bad idea
  55. Dealing with the defect in English
  56. How should grad students learn to write?
  57. The dumbest thing I ever wrote to an editor
  58. Do scientists want beauty? Or, why I wrote my weirdest paper ever
  59. On expressing our joy as scientists
  60. Our literature isn’t a big pile of facts
  61. Vultures for England: A modest proposal
  62. Is there science in scientific writing?
  63. “Latin” names that aren’t Latin
  64. I have the best job on the entire planet
  65. So you’re “not interested” in being Department Chair?
  66. Wonderful Latin Names, Part III: Two creatures named “merianae”
  67. Reproducibility, your Methods section, and 400 years of angst
  68. Plant galls: how insects co-opt plant development to build themselves homes
  69. What’s your most overcited paper?
  70. In defence of the P-value
  71. Wonderful Latin Names, Part II: Abudefduf saxatilis
  72. The best writing in science papers: Part II
  73. Story behind the paper: Integrating phylogenetic community structure with species distribution models
  74. What’s a “publication power-of-attorney”, and why should you have one?
  75. Wonderful Latin Names, Part I: Upupa epops
  76. When not to read the literature
  77. Does an academic need an attention span?