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- January 17, 2012
- 09:35 AM
- 238 views
PCa and PCoA explained
by Bob O'Hara in Deep Thoughts and Silliness
Just before Christmas I was asked to talk to our molecular biologists about multivariate analyses. I was reminded of this on Thursday afternoon, when I saw that I had to talk to them on Friday. "Ah, no problem", I thought....... Read more »
Gower, J.C. (2005) Principal Coordinates Analysis. Encyclopedia of Biostatistics. info:/10.1002/0470011815.b2a13070
Warton, D., Wright, S., & Wang, Y. (2011) Distance-based multivariate analyses confound location and dispersion effects. Methods in Ecology and Evolution. DOI: 10.1111/j.2041-210X.2011.00127.x
- May 31, 2011
- 05:44 PM
- 652 views
Species-area relationships don't overestimate extinction rates from habitat loss
by Bob O'Hara in Deep Thoughts and Silliness
Today at work we had a journal club about a recent paper in Nature that had caused a bit of a stir. It had suggested that the reason we don't see as many extinctions due to habitat loss as we'd...... Read more »
He, F., & Hubbell, S. (2011) Species–area relationships always overestimate extinction rates from habitat loss. Nature, 473(7347), 368-371. DOI: 10.1038/nature09985
- May 24, 2011
- 04:34 PM
- 716 views
Escaping the poverty trap
by Bob O'Hara in Deep Thoughts and Silliness
(I conned GrrlScientist into posting this on her Guardian blog) Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California (1936) Image: Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) Common domain. As an old fashioned liberal, I want us all to be happy, and for the State to play a...... Read more »
Plucinski, M., Ngonghala, C., & Bonds, M. (2011) Health safety nets can break cycles of poverty and disease: a stochastic ecological model. Journal of The Royal Society Interface. DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2011.0153
- November 30, 2010
- 07:42 PM
- 415 views
The Original Red Queen's Hypothesis
by Bob O'Hara in Deep Thoughts and Silliness
Leigh Van Valen (who died last month) is well known for being an original thinker. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that the only way he could publish his most famous idea was to start a journal to print it...... Read more »
Van Valen, L. (1973) A new evolutionary law. Evolutionary Theory, 1-30. info:/
- November 17, 2010
- 04:39 PM
- 427 views
Rates of Scientific Fraud Retractions
by Bob O'Hara in Deep Thoughts and Silliness
Ivan Oransky on his Retraction Watch blog pointed to a paper by R. Grant Steen looking at numbers of retraction and whether they were due to fraud or error. Ivan pointed to a news item on The Great Beyond by...... Read more »
Steen, R. (2010) Retractions in the scientific literature: do authors deliberately commit research fraud?. Journal of Medical Ethics. DOI: 10.1136/jme.2010.038125
- October 1, 2010
- 06:29 AM
- 601 views
Am I wasting my time?
by Bob O'Hara in Deep Thoughts and Silliness
Physicists have it easy. When they're not talking about stuffing their hands into their equipment, they're measuring their fundamental constants to 38 significant figures. Chemists too have a simple time - they get to make stinks and bangs with expensive...... Read more »
Knape, J., & de Valpine, P. (2010) Effects of weather and climate on the dynamics of animal population time series. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2010.1333
Mutshinda, C., O’Hara, R., & Woiwod, I. (2010) A multispecies perspective on ecological impacts of climatic forcing. Journal of Animal Ecology. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2656.2010.01743.x
- August 10, 2010
- 04:43 PM
- 481 views
The Virology of Christ
by Bob O'Hara in This Scientific Life
Now, this is just silly. Last month a case report appeared in the Virology Journal (not, I’ll admit, my normal read). It had the following title: Influenza or not influenza: Analysis of a case of high fever that happened 2000 years ago in Biblical time The original case was reported from two sources as follows [...]... Read more »
Hon, K., Ng, P., & Leung, T. (2010) Influenza or not influenza: Analysis of a case of high fever that happened 2000 years ago in Biblical time. Virology Journal, 7(1), 169. DOI: 10.1186/1743-422X-7-169
- April 18, 2010
- 11:14 AM
- 544 views
*Cough cough* *choke*
by Bob O'Hara in Deep Thoughts and Silliness
All of use in central and northern Europe are suffering from the latest Icelandic insult: rather than settling their debts after their banks collapsed, they've sent us bits of less-than-prime Icelandic real estate. You can see some in this view...... Read more »
Pönkä A, Savela M, & Virtanen M. (1998) Mortality and air pollution in Helsinki. Archives of environmental health, 53(4), 281-6. PMID: 9709992
- April 6, 2010
- 05:02 AM
- 444 views
More on Branch Lengths and Species
by Bob O'Hara in Deep Thoughts and Silliness
On Monday I wrote about one of those frustrating papers that asks an interesting question, but the more you look at it, the less sure you are of the results. In this case they might be right, but I...... Read more »
Venditti, C., Meade, A., & Pagel, M. (2009) Phylogenies reveal new interpretation of speciation and the Red Queen. Nature, 463(7279), 349-352. DOI: 10.1038/nature08630
- March 22, 2010
- 08:58 AM
- 493 views
Branch Lengths and Species
by Bob O'Hara in Deep Thoughts and Silliness
Some creationists have become terribly excited by a recent paper and accompanying New Scientist article It'll come as no surprised that they have failed to understand the paper, and I'm confident that explaining the paper in a post won't...... Read more »
Venditti, C., Meade, A., & Pagel, M. (2009) Phylogenies reveal new interpretation of speciation and the Red Queen. Nature, 463(7279), 349-352. DOI: 10.1038/nature08630
- January 22, 2008
- 04:12 PM
- 717 views
Gender Differences: Need More Data!
by Bob O'Hara in Deep Thoughts and Silliness
I was asked about this last week by a colleague, and now it's hit the blogosphere, so I thought I would publicly leap into a dispute about sexism in science. And make a plea for people to actually look at their data.This was all started by a group of biologists who have been working at NCEAS on publication biases in ecology (the biggest bias is, of course, that not enough of my papers get accepted straight away). They managed to get their latest results published in TREE.The received wisdom is that there is a bias against women in science. One area where t... Read more »
A BUDDEN, T TREGENZA, L AARSSEN, J KORICHEVA, R LEIMU, & C LORTIE. (2008) Double-blind review favours increased representation of female authors. Trends in Ecology , 23(1), 4-6. DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2007.07.008
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