August 2010 Archives

Ira Glass is one of the most successful storytellers around. His This American Life on PBS has been on the air for 15 years and is still going strong. So, when he gives advice on telling stories, it's worth listening.

Stories need characters you can relate to. The plot has to be surprising, leading to thoughts about the world that are interesting and universal. (source)

That, in a nutshell, is why I find it so difficult to make science not just accessible, but interesting to non-scientists. As scientists, our characters are data and ideas, not people. Our plot is the unraveling of a mystery, but it's a mystery about nature not about people.

But I'll keep Ira's advice in mind every time I write about a new finding here. I'll try to find a character -- a person -- who's affected by the story, even if it's the scientist responsible for the discovery, and I'll try to formulate a story with a surprising and universal plot. Please remind me when I fail.

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• 'This American Life' host Ira Glass brings his radio stories to Seattle (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• The Wrong Stuff : On Air and On Error: This American Life's Ira Glass on Being Wrong (slate.com)
• Ira Glass on the Building Blocks of Storytelling (commoncraft.com)

As you may have noticed, posting has been really light for the last couple of weeks. First, there was Botany 2010, and it took me a while to catch up. Then there's the Beijing edition of the Summer Institute in Statistical Genetics. I arrived in Beijing yesterday, after a long flight through Chicago. I'll post when I can, but don't be surprised if you don't see anything until I return to the States on the 27th of Augus.

Earlier this week, The Guardian launched Biodiversity 100

A campaign to compile a list of 100 tasks for world governments to undertake to tackle the biodiversity crisis.

In their inaugural article, Guillame Chapron and George Monbiot take world leaders to task for their lack of action to prevent biodiversity loss.

In 2002, 188 countries launched a global initiative, usually referred to as the 2010 biodiversity target, to achieve by this year a significant reduction in the current rate of biodiversity loss. The plan was widely reported as the beginning of the end of the biodiversity crisis. But in May this year, the Convention on Biological Diversity admitted that it had failed. It appears to have had no appreciable effect on the rate of loss of animals, plants and wild places.

In a few weeks, the same countries will meet in Nagoya, Japan and make a similarly meaningless set of promises. Rather than taking immediate action to address their failures, they will concentrate on producing a revised target for 2020 and a "vision" for 2050, as well as creating further delays by expressing the need for better biodiversity indicators. In many cases there's little need for more research. It's not biodiversity indicators that are in short supply; but any kind of indicator that the member states are willing to act. (emphasis added)

The 100 tasks being identified will be given to particular governments, and they will be asked to commit themselves to those tasks before arriving in Nagoya.¹ You can find a list of tasks that have been suggested so far at http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/interactive/2010/aug/13/biodiversity-100-ideas, and you can submit your own at http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/interactive/2010/aug/13/biodiversity-100-ideas. The ideas must

• Make a major contribution to the safeguard of a particular endangered species or area;
• Be politically costly to implement or strongly opposed by some interest;
• Be strongly and widely supported by scientific evidence.

Head on over and add your ideas to the list.

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• Talk has not halted biodiversity loss - now it's time for action | Guillaume Chapron and George Monbiot (guardian.co.uk)
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• 'Protect nature to secure economy' (guardian.co.uk)
• UN report warns of economic impact of biodiversity loss (bemoreeco.com)
• Biodiversity Inches Up on Corporate Agenda (green.blogs.nytimes.com)
• "Tell world leaders your biodiversity message!" and related posts (countdown2010.net)

That was the subject ine on an e-mail I received yesterday morning from a friend and colleague with whom I've worked for a number of years. Immediately I thought to myself: "Damn! I thought we did a really good job on those revisions. How could the editor decide to reject that paper?" I was beginning to get a little angry.

But then I looked at the title of that e-mail again. Having a paper rejected is bad news, and it always angers me a bit, but it's part of the business. Peer review matters. Every paper I've ever published has been improved by reviewer comments, even those that made me really angry at first and even when those comments came from a reviewer for a journal where the editor rejected the paper. In other words, having a paper rejected is bad news, but it hardly qualifies as really bad news. No the bad news had to be something worse.

Botany 2010 started yesterday with field trips. I drove from Coventry, CT yesterday afternoon. For me, the meetings started with a Board/staff dinner for the Botanical Society of America. It was a chance for existing Board members to see and for new Board members to meet our extremely dedicated and talented staff. We also had a few business items to attend to, mostly getting ready for the Advisory Council meeting later this afternoon and the business meeting later in the week.

Four societies are meeting at Botany 2010: the American Fern Society, the American Bryological and Lichenological Society, the American Society of Plant Taxonomists, and (as you already know) the Botanical Society of America. We have a diverse program of talks and presentations, with the plenary address tonight being given by Ken Miller: Darwinian Grandeur, Darwinian Conflict: America's Continuing Problem with Evolution.. I'm looking forward to his talk and to the chance to meet him.¹

As you know, I'm not particularly good about writing here often, but I'll try to post a few updates during the rest of this week to share some meeting highlights from things that I've seen, which will only be a small fraction of the great things going on here.