MARKETS MECHANISMS AREN'T WORKING FOR BIODIVERSITY

backfiring market based mechanisms for biodiversity

Erratums and Irresponsibiity

electronic publishing has sadly made editing documents harder than ever.

proposition re: corrections, withdrawn papers etc.

link to new doi... OBVIOUS STATEMENT at the location of the original publication stating that there was a response, erratum, withdrawal.

selection of appropriate reviewers

How useful are systematic reviews for conservation?

really great for med, you could say they revolutionised the field

see www.badscience.com

funnel plots

being promoted as the next big thing for the collation of conservation evidence

I would argue that the way that conservation content is arranged it is difficult, if not impossible to acheive the same sort of results...

All medicine in medline and scopus. (See Alex and Goldacre re: whether accuracy of this statement)

No such thing for conservation

Also... The abstracts and titles problem - you wouldn't see a med paper called "Too hip to recover" would you?!!

Also... the grey literature problem.

If you thought that was bad grey literature is tedious to cite (if i had a wish it would be that there was a citation link embedded within the pdf), usually doesn't come with keywords and sometimes isn't available outside the organisation that generated it.

Titles, Abstracts and Conservation

So... this might seem a bit of a tedious rant, but bear with me, because i think it's really important.

This is a title taken at random from the latest issue of animal conservation (the first TOC i could find in my inbox):

Can we separate the sinners from the scapegoats?

I have no particular gripe with the author so i will not mention them here, or the paper itself, which is as it turns out is an interesting commentary on the feature paper of the issue. However, there is absolutely no way you can tell that from the title. I am sure that many if not al of you find it tedious when you have to open an article simply to determine its theme, let alone whether it is specifically relevant or of interest to you and your research or the topic you are searching for at the time. Even worse is when you still cannot be sure after having read the abstract.

This has two major problems:

1. It wastes busy peoples time and energy (or they simply skip things where the subject is not immediately obvious)

2. It is difficult to find said articles when reviewing the literature.

The second of these problems can be partially addressed by using appropriate keywords etc. However, having recently been part of a systematic review (link to syst rev), I have come to realise that this is a non-trivial issue.

So... if you are writing, consider this a plea: No catchy titles unless you have a useful subtitle and if you are a journal, remember how the people using your product think and behave and put your foot down on uninformative titles.

Invictus

INVICTUS

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

- William Earnest Henley

Valediction

A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING.
by John Donne

AS virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."

So let us melt, and make no noise, 5
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears ;
Men reckon what it did, and meant ; 10
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
—Whose soul is sense—cannot admit
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove 15
The thing which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assurèd of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss. 20

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so 25
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam, 30
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just, 35
And makes me end where I begun.

---

Source:
Donne, John. Poems of John Donne. vol I.
E. K. Chambers, ed.
London, Lawrence & Bullen, 1896. 51-52.

Market based mechanisms don't work for conservation...

biodiversity offsets
REDD

...

is croc farming an example of one that did work?