Media – Page 2 – Ecology is not a dirty word

Bees in her eyes: lost in translation or fake news?

April 12, 2019April 12, 2019Manu SaundersLeave a comment

On Wednesday afternoon, I noticed the steadily increasing coverage of the story about sweat bees living in a Taiwanese woman’s eye. It seemed implausible – very few bees are small enough to get in your eye without knowing it, and they certainly wouldn’t survive very long.

But what first caught my attention was the poor communication around this story. The use of words like ‘nightmarish’ and ‘weird’ for a completely normal animal interaction. And the number of stories that were headlining their report with a picture of a totally unrelated bee (usually Apis mellifera), or even other insects. Toby Smith and I have previously looked at how misuse of pictures of Apis mellifera in media stories can affect accuracy of science communication. Continue reading →

Why I posted my first preprint

March 9, 2019Manu Saunders7 Comments

I’ve just published my first preprint. If you’re not familiar with preprints, they are final versions of a paper manuscript that are posted online before they have been peer reviewed.

Long-time followers of my blog will know that I am not a huge fan of preprints. Preprints are not the answer to our angst over peer review, because they involve too many risky assumptions.

So why did I just publish one? Continue reading →

2018’s Word of the Year…a guide for 2019

January 3, 2019January 3, 2019Manu Saunders1 Comment

At the end of each year, dictionaries (and other linguistically-minded groups) release their Word of the Year. The metrics used to rate these words vary by organisation, and the methods (if described) are always a bit vague. But the rating usually involves how often the word was searched for on the dictionary’s site, or how often the word was used in popular online media.

Unlike other ‘of the year’ or ‘best’ ratings, Words of the Year are rarely ‘happy place’ words. They’re a measure of contemporary cultural usage, a sign of the times, not a rigorous measure of meaningfulness or popularity.

We often discuss Word of the Year retrospectively – why did it matter so much last year? But, if you don’t like repeating the same mistakes, it also matters for this year and beyond.

My top picks are: Continue reading →

Don’t, don’t…believe the hype!

November 8, 2018November 8, 2018Manu Saunders8 Comments

We are suckers for hype. The recent media sequel of the mythical Insect Armageddon and the coverage of the latest WWF report on wildlife declines are a reminder of this.

Global declines in insect populations are a huge concern. Insects contribute to myriad ecosystem services through a multitude of ecological processes and functions. If we lose insects, we WILL suffer. But the two studies media have hyped on this issue are not actually evidence that this happening. They are concerning; they are a wake-up call; they are worrying. But, in and of themselves, they are not evidence of apocalyptic declines in the number of all 1+ million species of insect on Earth.

Similarly, the recent WWF report does not show any evidence that humans have ‘wiped out’ 60% of all animals on Earth in the last 30/40 years, as many media outlets are claiming. The truth: the report considered around 4000 species of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians…i.e. vertebrates. There are at least ~400,000 more species of vertebrate on Earth (depending who you talk to), probably more. And huge caveat!… Invertebrates are the most abundant and diverse group of animals, so any claim about ‘all animals’ that doesn’t include invertebrates is automatically dubious. Continue reading →

Insect declines: pay attention

October 17, 2018Manu Saunders7 Comments

Last year I wrote about the Insect Armageddon story – an important paper that received some exaggerated media hype.

A new paper just published in PNAS adds another twist to the insect declines saga…clearly, this story is far from over.

Lister & Garcia analysed data collected in the Luqillo Experimental Forest in Puerto Rico. This area of tropical rainforest is not a ‘pristine’ untouched wilderness, as some media reports are claiming – no place on Earth is untouched by humans! The site has been a long-term research location for decades, going back to the early 1900s, with a focus on experiments to understand the effects of disturbances of all kinds. Many important experimental research projects involving human disturbances (like this one) have happened in the Luqillo forest.

This study is important for a few reasons. Continue reading →

How to choose a framing narrative for scientific papers

October 4, 2018Manu Saunders4 Comments

Have you read a research paper where you experience this sequence of thoughts?: Title/Abstract/Introduction (wow! This is a real problem, someone’s finally answered this question), Methods (um, hang on, this sample size/study system/analysis approach doesn’t quite answer this problem…), Results (okay, these results are interesting, but…), Discussion (whoa, rein it in! I can’t find the link between these assumptions or recommendations and the results…).

The paper may be scientifically sound, as far as the methods & results go. The problem is that the authors have chosen a very broad frame narrative, and then confounded that frame with the interpretation of their results. Continue reading →

Sugar teaspoons for bees and science communication

July 14, 2018Manu Saunders1 Comment

Fakenewsflash: the recent Facebook post claiming to be from David Attenborough, suggesting that we should feed floundering bees a sugar solution to ‘save’ them, was faked.

I’m not on Facebook, but I saw the original post via Twitter, where many popular non-profit and government organisations promoted it (it now seems that many have deleted their posts).

I didn’t know it was a fake post at the time, but I didn’t agree with it so didn’t share it or comment on it. I didn’t want to be the Grinch that disagreed with the popular personality. And perhaps the pollinator message would reach a new audience, despite the fake news…

But what price new audiences? Continue reading →

Insect Armageddon reprise

May 19, 2018Manu Saunders1 Comment

I was recently interviewed for a great new podcast on ABC called Science Friction by Natasha Mitchell. The episode is about insect declines, including the Insect Armageddon story I blogged about last year. Natasha also talks to two well-known Australian entomologists, Ary Hoffmann and Ken Walker, as well as Caspar Hallmann one of the authors of the German insect decline study. It’s really nicely produced and explores more than just the decline issue, showcasing how wonderfully unique insects are and why we need to spend more time getting to know them!

You can listen to the Insect Armageddon story here, or subscribe to Science Friction through your favourite apps.

Ecosystem services or Nature’s contributions to people?

April 3, 2018Manu Saunders6 Comments

IPBES has released media summaries of their reports on global land degradation and restoration, and regional biodiversity and ecosystem services assessments. The results of these reports are really important.

Anyone who has been working in this area for the last couple of decades might have noticed that the reports refer to ‘nature’s contributions to people’ (NCP). Where did this term come from and what does it mean?

In a nutshell, it’s a new term for ‘ecosystem services’.

But do we need a new term? The term ‘ecosystem services’ was only established about 20-odd years ago (the concept is centuries’ older). I’ve been working on ecosystem services research for just over 10 years, and NCP came out of the blue for me. I heard about it a few months ago (just before the IPBES reports had been finalised), when a paper was published in Science by a group of well-respected scientists in the ecosystem services field who were involved in the IPBES assessments. Some related papers were published (here and here) in another journal, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability. Continue reading →