This Blog is a fork from a personal blog, in that what started as periodic reviews of scientific articles grew into a two-semester "course" modeled on a graduate-level seminar. What you will find here are lots of scientific journal article reviews and a few editorials, summarized below.
Example Format of Science Corner scientific journal article reviews
Feature Paper: Alon U (2009). How to choose a good scientific problem. Molecular Cell, 35:726-728.
Author Abstract: Choosing good problems is essential for being a good scientist. But what is a good problem, and how do you choose one? The subject is not usually discussed explicitly within our profession. Scientists are expected to be smart enough to figure it out on their own and through the observation of their teachers. This lack of explicit discussion leaves a vacuum that can lead to approaches such as choosing problems that can give results that merit publication in valued journals, resulting in a job and tenure.
Notes on the above:
1) The above is the general format I'll use to cite the papers I'm reviewing. While citation methods vary by discipline and journal, I'm choosing a fairly standard format: Author Last Name followed by First and Middle Intials (Year Published). Article title. Article Journal, Volume (Number if relevant): Pages. I will follow the full citation with the author's abstract, where available.
2) I will give links whenever possible. For authors, I'll try to give email contacts, though please note that I may not have their most recent contact information in the event that a paper is a few years old or even a classic. I will try to link to the full article whenever it is available for free or at least to the source where you can purchase the full article if you choose. Please note that I am not affiliated with any publishers or scientific journals so I will not benefit from any purchases, so I am not trying to steer anyone in a certain way other than to the path of greater knowledge. I will give a link to the Journal website so you can research other articles as well.
What is this all about? Whenever I meet people and tell them I am a marine biologist, invariably people tell me that they either have always wanted to be a marine biologist (and wish they could start over again) or that they wish they were smart enough to have pursued it in university. I've been working as a marine biologist since 1998 but have studied to be one since I was eight years old. My passion began with keeping saltwater aquariums. By the time I was 13 I was keeping reef aquariums and memorizing hundreds of Latin and Greek names for fish. Eventually I was keeping and growing over 70 varieties of corals and other colonial invertebrates. I didn't have a lot of money so I had to grow corals, fragment them, and trade the fragments for new species. I started going to marine aquarium conferences, including MACNA. Eventually, I went to university to obtain degrees in marine biology, but at the time (mid-1990s) there weren't that many "marine biology" degree programs available. Instead, burgeoning scientists would pick a broad discipline and perhaps focus their course studies on marine biology topics.
As a result, I gained a broad science background in zoology, biology, geography, and marine science. Throughout my career I have been frustrated by the seemingly pervasive thought that young scientists need to "learn the ropes" on their own through trial and error rather than careful and appropriate instruction in real-world techniques and professional skills that will be needed later on in life. Actually, I think this applies to all school and is one of the reasons why I looked at school as a BURDEN rather than something that could fuel my inner fire. Eventually, I grew disheartened with my field and almost gave up before deciding to build my knowledge from the base up, which I am still working on now. One lesson I've learned is that one must stay active in their field of choice and continue to learn throughout their life. This blog will cover my quest to do just that every Saturday in a segment I will call "science corner."
As a result, I gained a broad science background in zoology, biology, geography, and marine science. Throughout my career I have been frustrated by the seemingly pervasive thought that young scientists need to "learn the ropes" on their own through trial and error rather than careful and appropriate instruction in real-world techniques and professional skills that will be needed later on in life. Actually, I think this applies to all school and is one of the reasons why I looked at school as a BURDEN rather than something that could fuel my inner fire. Eventually, I grew disheartened with my field and almost gave up before deciding to build my knowledge from the base up, which I am still working on now. One lesson I've learned is that one must stay active in their field of choice and continue to learn throughout their life. This blog will cover my quest to do just that every Saturday in a segment I will call "science corner."
What will I be doing? I will be giving weekly summaries every Saturday of scientific paperscoral reefs and biogeography (I am a coral reef biogeographer, meaning I study and map how similar coral reef organisms are from one reef to another around the world). However, marine biology is a broad and interdisciplinary field that often sees marine scientists applying research techniques from terrestrial fields, so I may cover topics in mathematics, rain forests, birds, insects, plants, etc. Oh, and while it will be rarer given their longer length, I will also review the occasional book. on various topics in marine science so that any interested lay person can understand but that provides enough information for graduate students in the marine field. Because of my background and personal interests, articles will focus heavily on
Why am I doing this? I have learned over the years (after my degrees) that it is uncommon to be taught science in a way that is easy to understand and that can help a student eventually publish their own scientific papers. And for those that aren't studying to be marine scientists but have always had an interest in marine biology or the ocean, I hope that I can better inform you. I am not a teacher by profession but I have taught before to the general public, government officials, high school students, marine enforcement officers, and undergraduate and graduate science students. I have also been on interviewed by journalists for radio, television, newspapers, websites, and even helped create a short environmental documentary film. I am choosing to do this project both out of a desire to help ensure others can get through their science careers with better skills than I was taught and also as a means of self-accountability. Yes, there's something in it for me. I want to better my knowledge of the working literature, so by publicly announcing and posting a weekly summary of a new scientific article, I will ensure that I am continuously working to get through my library of thousands of articles (no, not all of them are good papers and not all of them are important for my field). As time goes on, I'll learn more and you'll learn more.
Who this is for and how can I help you? Anyone interested in understanding marine science, including Graduate students. While I was a student I was exposed to lots of scientific literature but never really taught how to properly read or write literature until relatively late. I think this is a skill that, along with organization and follow-through techniques, should be taught in the beginning of one's education rather than later. And all too often, the important skills I've learned have been circumstantial entirely to being exposed to a certain professor rather than clear goals of educational establishments. But the way I figure it, life is a continual education and as a friend once told me, your only job in this life is to discover who you are. So for all those out there who want to learn more about marine science, regardless of your background, I hope I can help. For reef aquarists, I hope that I can help you understand the background needed to better replicate the marine environment in your home and bring you from the realm of aquarium to microcosm.
How can you participate? If reading along and passively learning is not enough for you and you hope to actively interact (which many find to be key to education), there are a couple of things that you can do. As I am always on the lookout for good articles in marine science or classic science papers, should you have any that you'd be willing to share, please let me know through a comment or email. For emails, to stop spam, please use the subject heading "Adventure Naturalist" or "Science Corner." It helps me to get to you quicker. If you have a paper that you want to understand but just can't seem to get through (many scientific papers ARE written poorly unfortunately), you can also send it to me and I can review it for you and post the summary here. However, I am not here to help you do your homework so if you want to send weekly seminary assignments to me you will find I am unable to get them to you quickly enough to benefit you academically. And given the proprietary nature of most journal articles, as much as I wish I could just share my entire library with the public, I don't want to get into trouble, so I won't be posting full articles. I will post their abstracts and tell you how to find them so you can decide whether you want to track down the full article though. I hope that I can teach the necessary skills to allow any educated person to understand any moderately well-written scientific paper regardless of their professional background and in the process, appreciate science more.
What qualifies me? I have more than 500 hours of public speaking experience in the arena of marine science and conservation. I used to manage a marine laboratory in the Maldives, where I taught non-native English speakers principles of marine science and coral reef survey techniques. I have a broad academic background with a Master of Science degree in Biology focusing on coral reef biogeography, as well as a Bachelor of Science degree in Zoology with Minors in Marine Science and Geography. I also have a Graduate Certificate in Maritime Archaeology and History, but that won't come into play with the papers I review here. I have been scuba certified through various agencies (PADI, NAUI, AAUS) and have been diving since the age of 13. I have visited reefs in the Hawaiian Islands, the Florida Keys, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the Great Barrier Reef, New Zealand, Bali, the Red Sea, Oman, Thailand, Borneo, the Philippines, and the Maldives. I have created public policy documents for government agencies both domestically (US) and abroad.
Important resources: I have always had to struggle for access to scientific papers and continue to do so to this day. Over the years I have relied on personal contacts and university access to journals to create a large library of diverse scientific literature, a lot with applications towards the marine sciences but articles on many other disciplines as well. I was never taught how to organize my papers into a proper database, simple things like how to name files so they don't get repeated or lost during searches, or where to find free scientific articles. There are a lot of resources out there but many require fees or university affiliations. I am always on the lookout for quality free resources. Hopefully you can benefit from my frustrations by using the following resources (I'll update this page as I learn about more resources):
- Mendeley Desktop: This is a free database program for organizing scientific papers in a variety of formats (web pages, PDFs, MS Word files, etc.). There are a few glitches, in that it will sometimes make errors when importing files (as database information boxes are filled according to certain pre-set algorithms that interpret imported files) and you have to be careful not to move files around on your hard drive once they've been imported (or links are lost), but overall it is an amazing program. If you take the time initially to review all imports, then are careful to enter all correct information on new imports, it will save you hours down the road when you want to search for that one paper on that topic you think you remember.
- Science Online: Science is one of the preeminent scientific journals and along with Nature and PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), it is among the top three most cited journals. It has articles on a wide array of disciplines, from anthropology to marine science to physics to zoology, so there is something for everyone. Articles tend to be short (about 2-5 pages generally) and mainly cover "big discovery" or "big overview" kinds of information. Little known to many students is that a lot of articles are FREE! You just have to sign up for an account.
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