Back in August, I reviewed the absolutely gorgeous new book Ferns: Lessons In Survival From Earth’s Most Adaptable Plants. And commenters on posts are awesome, because Jeremy Fox asked what he called a “quibbly question”: “Do the authors really try to make the case that ferns are the “most adaptable” plants? Or is…that phrase…just another […]| Scientist Sees Squirrel
I’m reminded just about every day that the disconnect between my education, and the career I built from it, is enormous. Or at least, it seems so. I had a pretty unremarkable educational sequence for a university professor. I did a BSc in Biology, and the only wrinkle is that I did it through a […]| Scientist Sees Squirrel
I’m a huge museum nerd. When I travel, museums are top of my list – and it doesn’t matter a whole lot what they’re museums of.* But what’s even better than a day at a museum is a chance to tour a m…| Scientist Sees Squirrel
In which occasional guest blogger Greg Crowther asks me a peer review question that stumps me – so together, we puzzle it out. Greg: Steve, I was recently reviewing some grant proposals for NSF when, amongst many other reasonable reviewing tips, we panelists were told to “avoid first person.” I have thoughts on this, but […]| Scientist Sees Squirrel
Today, the next instalment in a short series inspired by bad papers I’ve read (some of them, I have to admit, my own). I’ve let myself rant about what a Methods sections shouldn’t be, and what a Re…| Scientist Sees Squirrel
The way we write scientific papers doesn’t change very quickly. Once we settled into the AIMRaD (Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion) format, we pretty much stuck with it: the vast majority of scientific papers use that format, or one of a few minor variations on it.* But we do tinker; and so, there’s a […]| Scientist Sees Squirrel
How do we discover new species of plants and animals? If you’re like a lot of people, you might picture a bearded, brave, and sweaty explorer, standing triumphantly between huge trees in a remote r…| Scientist Sees Squirrel
I continue to be fascinated by the discourse around so-called “AI” writing tools: it’s an amazing window on the ways smart people confront a big change that’s emotionally charged. Especially on social media (no surprise), some of this discourse is very loud. Some of the loudest seems to be from those who are fervently opposed […]| Scientist Sees Squirrel
We (that’s Bethann Garramon Merkle and I) are getting very excited about our new book, Teaching and Mentoring Writers in the Sciences: An Evidence-Based Approach. Over the last few months, we’ve been working with the University of Chicago Press to take it through all the steps of book production: copyedits, proofs, indexing, cover design, and […]| Scientist Sees Squirrel
I’ve always been fond of ferns – the plants, that is. Now I’m fond of Ferns, the book, too. Ferns: Lessons In Survival From Earth’s Most Adaptable Plants (Hardie Grant, 2025) is Fay-Wei Lei and Jac…| Scientist Sees Squirrel
3 posts published by ScientistSeesSquirrel during August 2025| Scientist Sees Squirrel
As a grad student, I loved to argue, about almost anything (mostly over beer). I avoided arguing with my PhD advisor though – mostly out of my knowledge that he was pretty famous, as ecologists go,…| Scientist Sees Squirrel
A month or so ago, I let myself be inspired by bad papers I’ve read,* and wrote a post called “What your Methods section isn’t”. Today, following up on that and with the same inspiration: what your…| Scientist Sees Squirrel
If you’re a scientist like me, you read a lot of papers – and a lot of submitted manuscripts, drafts, and other larval stages of papers.* This is extremely helpful when it’s time to write your own …| Scientist Sees Squirrel
About six weeks ago I annoyed a lot of people by pointing out an inconvenient truth about generative AI (ChatGPT and other large-language models): it is not, in fact, burning down the planet. Despi…| Scientist Sees Squirrel
At least on social media, it’s become common to see ChatGPT and other large-language model writing tools* described as “the plagiarism tool that’s burning down the planet”. This is, I have to admit…| Scientist Sees Squirrel
Here’s an interesting thing about “AI”* writing tools (ChatGPT and the like, better called LLMs for “large language models”): there’s an enormous amount written about them, and yet little of it is …| Scientist Sees Squirrel
About a year ago, I posted some basic information about my new book, coauthored with the brilliant Bethann Garramon Merkle. It’s time for an update: as books grow up, they change and presumably imp…| Scientist Sees Squirrel
Image: Cover of The Idiot, by John Kendick Bangs (Harper and Bros. 1895). Yes, I know there’s a much more famous The Idiot. If it hasn’t happened to you yet, it will: you submit a manuscript for pu…| Scientist Sees Squirrel
