Scientific fields within Biology: How different but similar...

I am endlessly fascinated by the discussions over at DrugMonkey. The DrugMonkey world to an ecologist is kinda like being an American in England....things are so similar yet so startlingly different. Some of the content over there is very foreign to me - R01s, and other NIH jargon (though the glossary at the site is very helpful, kinda like having a travel phrase book). Other content, while using different words, is very much applicable to navigating the academic world of ecology as well.

There's currently a brouhaha over there over a recent post about how the scientific system works (or does not, depending on your point of view) with regards to training, mentoring, and employing young scientists. Much of background for this discussion has been generated by posts from the post-doc realm (e.g., Young Female Scientist) about everything from the lack of utility of PIs (ecology translation: advisor) to frustration with the job market (translation unnecessary, that one's universal).

In particular, I have found interesting indications that the role of a post-doc is very different in the biomedical/cellular biology world. There's a feeling that their post-docs are in the post-doc phase longer than their ecological counterparts. Calls for retirement benefits for post-docs caught me by surprise in particular. I actually did receive retirement benefits as a post-doc and it was the most useless benefit I received. I wasn't on that post-doc for long and now I have a couple thousand dollars stuck in an state benefit account in a state I have no intention of returning to and I was not a part of long enough for the bit of money to qualify for earning long-term interest in. What a waste. Most post-doc positions in my field last on average 2-3 years, though 1 year postdocs are not all that uncommon. This undoubtedly reflects the fact that our grants are on average 2-3 years long and we cannot guarantee funding for any longer than that. NIH R01's apparently are 5 year grants - perhaps if I knew I was going to be someplace for 5 years I'd want retirement too. Most of my friends have been obtaining jobs after that 2-3 year post-doc, so there's also not this same sense of the post-doc being a long-term career phase that I sense from the biomedical fields....though finding a post-doc in ecology may be more challenging because there are fewer out there (most labs are lucky to have 1).

I don't know if the system is "broken" in the field that many of the DrugMonkey subscribers belong to, I'm not qualified to comment. In ecology, I think our system is not perfect. I've seen good people get shuffled out of the system through no fault of their own. I've seen people whom I would classify as mental midgets get very good jobs instead. However, good people generally seem to manage to find positions that give them toe-holds on the ladder of academia and the DrugMonkey blog seems to generally be giving good advice (relevant across fields) on how to turn your academic toe-hold into something more secure. While the process may not be perfect in ecology, I also think that equating not perfect with broken is also....not perfect.

And the #1 ISI ranked journal in Ecology is....

What?!

This week the new ISI impact factors came out and I eagerly perused the new standings among my favorite academic journals. I don't know why I am so interested, but the journal scene has become something of a soap opera to me. Will Ecology Letters continue its meteoric rise or will it pay for its disturbing corporate control of author's intellectual materials? Will Nature continue it's mysterious, drunken, plummet from the stratosphere leaving the field clear for Science to dominate..well, science.

I eagerly looked to see where the respected journals of my field were ranked relative to each other. I pulled up the subject category for Ecology and sorted by impact factor. I was immediately shocked into silence. The #1 ranked journal in the field of ecology is.....B. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist? General Disarray and I were doing this simultaneously in our living room on separate laptops. As we sat there in stunned silence, he was the first to find his voice, "What is that?" Well, "it" is the Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History and in 2007 is published such ecological classics as:

The anatomy of Effigia okeeffeae (Archosauria, Suchia), theropod-like convergence, and the distribution of related taxa

and

The braincase in Paleozoic symmoriiform and cladoselachian sharks

I have nothing against these publications. I am sure they are lovely and important contributions to some field. Zoology, perhaps, or Systematics/Evolution. Paleontology, seems like a good guess. However, I honestly do not understand the titles in this journal, which I take as a bad sign for it being an ecology journal, since I am...well.. an ecologist. There are a couple of papers that might be classified as ecology, but in general it is completely and totally inconceivable to me that this is, in any way shape or form, the top journal in my field.

So, how did it get there? Well, aside from the obvious answer that someone at ISI was smoking something when they put that journal into the ecology category, the more interesting answer is in the impact factor itself. This journal has an impact factor of 16.85. To put this in perspective, Science, Nature, and PloS Biology, and PNAS have impact factors of 26.372, 28.751, 13.501, 9.598, respectively. This means the Bulletin of AMNH is between those of Science and PLoS Biology. How the heck did this thing get there? Well, it publishes around 6-7 papers per year and each paper is approximately 100 pages or more (i.e., they're BOOKS!). I am very sure that each of these papers is extremely valuable because of their comprehensive coverage on a topic.

I find the whole thing very fascinating and I have had a great deal of fun imagining the rush of papers the Bulletin of AMNH will be receiving from those wanting to tell their promotion and tenure committee that they published a paper in the top ecology journal. Having milked the Bulletin of AMNH for the total amount of fun I can, it is time to return to more serious insights to be gained from the new rankings. Apparently the intervention by the other Nature publishing group journals successfully shook Nature out of it's drug-induced stupor, convincing it to take back control of the Nature Corporation and challenge Science's hegemony over the world....

An Astrophysicist, I am not

My first exposure to a blog was El Gentraso, by John Whitfield, which I found after reading his excellent book In the Beat of a Heart. I love this blog. It's smart, witty, and often deals with ecological issues. Unfortunately, El Gentraso has been completely silent since February. My withdrawls from El Gentraso prompted me to find a replacement. So for the past few days I have been poking around the blogosphere, avoiding my various deadlines, looking for a smart, witty, ecologically relevant blog. While I am currently "dating" a variety of blogs to see if they can replace El Gentraso , I found numerous other sites that frankly disturbed me. Many of the blogs that came up in my search for "ecology" were not ecology at all. They were, by my definition, environmentalism.

Now, I know I'm a bit of a fuddy-duddy about definitions sometimes, but I really feel like the increasing use of the term "ecology" as a synonym for "environmentalism" to be disturbing. One is a science and the other is a belief. The very words tell you this. An "ism" is "a distinctive system of beliefs, myth, doctrine or theory that guides a social movement, institution, class or group" (from Wikipedia). An "ology" is "a field of study or academic discipline" (also from Wikipedia). While a good definition of ecology is sometimes lacking, it is most often defined as the study of how organisms interact with their environment. Wanting to recycle to save the environment does not make someone an ecologist (though many ecologists do want to recycle to save the environment). The distinction is difficult for people for some reason, but perhaps these examples may help:

I make someone sign a legal contract when they buy my house - does this mean I am a lawyer?

I drive a car, does this make me a NASCAR driver?

I appreciate the beauty of a clear, starry night, does this make me an astrophysicist?

The distinction between ecology as a science and environmentalism is important to more than just my sense of academic snobbishness. The most awful stereotype I run into is not the female in science issues, but the ecologist as left-wing radical. Every time I introduce myself as an ecologist to a right-wing member of the public, they stop listening to me because they assume that my statements on the environment are politically driven, not scientifically grounded. I fight this stereotype in my non-majors class when I teach students about endangered species and global warming. I fight this stereotype with the driver of the airport shuttle. As a graduate student, I would introduce myself at bars as anything but an ecologist because I couldn't take being asked how it was possible to get an advanced degree in tree-hugging.

I appreciate that people strongly believe that the environment is important to protect. I believe that there is increasing evidence to suggest that it may be to the benefit of humanity in the long-run to preserve the services that nature provides (fact sheet on pollination services). However, I also believe that bad things result when science is conflated with agenda and belief. Of course, given the arguments on just this issue that I have had with some of my colleagues, perhaps I am wrong on this point. In which case, I am a NASCAR-driving astrophysicist.