Don’t say “Darwin” when you mean “evolution”. Don’t say “theory of evolution” when you mean the established historical facts of change over time and common descent. And above all, don’t say “Darwin’s theory of evolution” except in the historical context of the evolution of ideas. If you do, you are guilty of scientific, logical, historical, and pedagogical errors, and playing into the hands of our Creationist opponents.

Dalton is to the modern atomic theory, and the modern atomic theory is to chemistry, as Darwin(not to forget Wallace) is to evolution, and as evolution is to biology. But we don’t call our present perspective on atoms “Dalton’s theory”, and indeed, unless we are speaking historically, it sounds odd to even talk about “atomic theory” when we discuss atoms. So why should we refer to “Darwin’s theory”, and indeed why should we talk about the…

I spent last Thursday and Friday (February 20 and 21) at an NSF workshop concerning the replicability of research results. It was chaired by John Cacioppo and included about 30 participants including such well-known contributors to the discussion as Brian Nosek, Hal Pashler, Eric Eich, and Tony Greenwald, to name a few.  Participants also included officials from NIH, NSF, the White House Office on Science and Technology and at least one private foundation. I was invited, I presume, in my capacity as Past-President of SPSP and chair of an SPSP task force on research practices which recently published a report on non-retracted PSPB articles by investigators who retracted articles elsewhere, and a set of recommendations for research and educational practice, which was just published in PSPR.

Committees, task forces and workshops – whatever you call them – about replicability issues have become almost commonplace.  The SPSP Task Force was preceded…

A lot hand wringing on the tenure track (and the job hunt) is about publication number and venue. I don’t think I have much more to say on venue (other than I do get the sense that perceptions might be starting to shift), but number is interesting. My operating assumption here is, with apologies to Dobzhansky, Nothing in academic careerism makes sense except in light of local tribal norms. This is why all attempts to have standard metrics (alt* or otherwise) are doomed and ridiculous. The relevant tribes here are your field, department, and university. Look at these tribes, because Twitter and blogs don’t have these answers, and you will go crazy trying to parse and apply the various norms of other tribes in your own context.

I was thinking of this because recently Potnia Theron (who is on a tear of incredibly useful blogging) blogged about someone who was…