Ecological Thoughts

But it's gonna take money, A whole lot of spending money. It's gonna take plenty of money, To do it right, child. It's gonna take time, A whole lot of precious time. It's gonna take patience and time, To do it, to do it, to do it, to do it, to do it, To do it right!   George Harrison (1943-2001)     Much has been written on the fact that doing (good) science requires money. Essays have looked at how much countries invest in science as function of the GDP, how much of this investment comes from the private sector and even some indication of productivity stems from socio-economic analysis, often carried out by the academic community. Papers produced by dollar invested, papers by scientist or the number of scientists per inhabitant are examples of this. Also, monetary return ratios per units of investment are showcased to highlight the contribution of science to the economy.   Productivity indicators are called for because the scientific community uses-to a very variabl...

  A student of ecology knocks on a supervisor’s office door, -” Excuse me…are you busy right now? …wanted to show you something”  The supervisor (always -and never- busy) replies: -“Sure thing…do come in’   The student walks in, takes a seat and pulls-open a laptop. The screen shows R code and different consoles. For the next many minutes, the excited student shows code and graphs and explains in careful detail how all was achieved, what packages were downloaded and how this changes the last analysis done so far, of the data collected last summer.  The supervisor nods in agreement while entertains a shy smile. This exact situation occurred a week ago, and last month and… who knows how many times.   This scenario has probably been experienced in recent times by students and supervisors throughout academia. The adoption of R-coding to analyze ecological data has been a game changer. Accessibility, almost unlimited capabilities and power are attractive assets,...