It’s Pride month, and this year there are some fantastic initiatives around like 500 Queer Scientists, and the International Day of LGBTQ+ People in STEM. Rainbow crosswalks are no longer relegated to the likes of Sydney, San Francisco, or London. Equal marriage is now the law in >25 countries. And yet challenges still remain. Five years ago, I wrote the first LGBTQ+-themed post here on The Lab and Field, which was my attempt to articulate to…

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It’s Pride month, which seems like as good a time as any to pose this puzzler that has been cartwheeling around my brain for the better part of a year now: why is it so difficult to get ecological or organismal professional societies to engage on LGBTQ+ diversity? And why is it when they do, they often muck it up? For the last 3 years, I’ve been going to/organizing/hosting/thoroughly enjoying the LGBTQ+ STEMinar, a day-long…

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NSERC (the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council) is Canada’s funding council for, well, natural sciences and engineering. And each year they recognize the crème de la crème of Canadian scientific & engineering research. Sort of. It really helps to be a guy. I first got riled up about this issue in 2013 (which, shockingly, is 5 years ago), at a time when no woman had ever been awarded the Herzberg Medal, colloquially known as…

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Last week I had a fantastic chat with the Queer Science discussion group based at Memorial University of Newfoundland, which is also where I happened to do my PhD. One of the perennial questions when I talk about being an out scientist is how the LGBTQ+ side influences the science side, and vice versa. As someone not particularly versed in sociology, queer theory, or feminist studies, I lack the terminology and background to put my…

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If you’ve been involved in research for more than a couple of years, chances are you quite quickly start to accumulate a list, even if only in your mind, of Things It Would Be Neat To Do. These could be things that you identify as gaps while pursuing your main research theme, or ideas that spark out of a paper you happened to leaf through while waiting for a meeting to start. And typically starting…

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I’ve already done 2017 by the numbers, and inspired by Auriel Fournier, here are some goals for 2018, in no particular order…   Get two long-languishing papers submitted. One is from my postdoc (and formed a pretty bit part of it), and the other is a long-standing collaboration that just needs some dedicated attention. I’m reminded of this lovely cartoon. Kick-start my own research again. This may sound silly, but when I worked for the…

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Read previous years’ By the Numbers: 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013   12 The number of new posts this year. Definitely a low, but some classics remain popular. The top 10: Personal academic websites for faculty & grad students: the why, what, and how How did we learn that birds migrate (and not to the moon)? A stab in the dark Beware the academic hipster (or, use what works for you) UPDATED Volunteer field techs are…

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The latest summary of amusing search terms (and some often facetious answers) that brought people to The Lab and Field in 2017. Find previous iterations here.   Who are scientists We all are!   how do people learn about migratory birds Blog posts, ornithology classes, naturalist societies, spear-throwing competitions…   data error in published paper *clutches pearls* SURELY NOT!. Eh, it happens. Most of the time it’s not intentional.   easy scientific names for lab Repetition…

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A significant non-zero number of scientists do additional paid work on top of their day job in the form of consulting, or being paid for their expertise by someone other than their main employer (a university or research organization, for example). This inevitably leads to the question of how much a given service/task will cost, and as a the usual outcome is an under-estimate on the part of the would-be consultant. As someone who’s done…

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There has been much discussion in the last decade about how to better prepare graduate students for jobs outside the research-driven ivory tower, so called “alternative academic” or “altac” jobs, for example those in corporate, government, or NGO organizations to name just a few. And I think it’s generally recognized that not every graduate student defending their thesis or dissertation, and passing their oral exam or viva will end up a tenured research professor. Which…

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