Catherine Hulshof
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hulshof.bsky.social
Catherine Hulshof
@hulshof.bsky.social

Chicana ecologist and poet. Biodiversidad y cambio climático. Associate Professor. Founder Big Red Pen Grant Review. biodiversityresearchlab.com

Environmental science 55%
Agriculture 16%

Just love the graphics and collage effects of this video.
Blending live action, animation, and a soulful, hip-hop-infused beat, director Tajana Tokyo offers a rich snapshot of how relationships are understood in Sierra Leone, and how those views diverge from Western ideas – from divorce and cheating to why you should never ‘marry a man you like too much.’
Never marry a man you love too much, and other views on romance in Sierra Leone | Aeon Videos
A playful collage of audio interviews captures candid and revealing reflections on love, sex and marriage in Sierra Leone
buff.ly
Blending live action, animation, and a soulful, hip-hop-infused beat, director Tajana Tokyo offers a rich snapshot of how relationships are understood in Sierra Leone, and how those views diverge from Western ideas – from divorce and cheating to why you should never ‘marry a man you like too much.’
Never marry a man you love too much, and other views on romance in Sierra Leone | Aeon Videos
A playful collage of audio interviews captures candid and revealing reflections on love, sex and marriage in Sierra Leone
buff.ly
A great way to end the year! Our new paper, led by Daniel B. Metcalfe and published in @NatureComms, shows how biases in tropical research risk undermining environmental policy where it matters most. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Gaps in tropical science from unrepresentative distribution of sampling and citation across natural terrestrial environments - Nature Communications
Research in the tropics is unevenly distributed across regions and biomes. Here, the authors find that moist broadleaf forests account for 73% of all tropical citations but cover 29% of the land area,...
www.nature.com

I just won a $20 bet from my sister. I haven't been home 1 hour and my dad asks what I'm gonna do with that box of stuff I have in the closet.

The time capsule has to stay. Happy Holidays from the Hulshof's!

At the end of each year we do strategic planning for the next year, a good time to review principles of slow productivity.
1. Work on fewer things
2. Work at a natural pace
3. Quality over quantity

A bit ago there was a paper or thread making the rounds arguing against Bonferroni correction when looking at many correlations. Anyone remember source?
Excited to launch the new improved Reproducible Code guide from @britishecologicalsociety.org @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social FREE online here! www.britishecologicalsociety.org//wp-content/... Amazing work by some very talented ECRs. We hope it’s useful!
In my first Editorial as Associate Editor for @conphysjournal.bsky.social, we help combat this lack of training by providing some "tips and tricks" for writing constructive peer reviews, based on our collective experiences as editors for multiple scientific journals.
Tips and tricks for writing constructive peer reviews
Peer review has been the cornerstone of scientific inquiry for centuries and is considered the backbone of scientific quality and rigour (Spier, 2002). Des
academic.oup.com
Researchers choose Dryad for all kinds of reasons. One of the biggest is our curatorial team.

Expert data curators screen each submission and work with researchers to ensure high-quality, FAIR-compliant data publications.

bit.ly/3KBT38E

#opendata #openscience #openaccess #datasharing #scisky
How Dryad data curators help make data sharing simple for researchers | Dryad news
Data sharing can be challenging. Dryad’s experienced data curators smooth the way with expert, hands-on support for researchers to ensure that all the data we publish is findable, accessible, interope...
bit.ly
1- El truculento caso de la revista "Science of the Total Environment" que cobra 3600 euros por publicar un paper, y cuyo director figuró como coautor de 200 artículos publicados allí mismo. elpais.com/ciencia/2025...
La caída de una megarrevista científica expone el pelotazo de las editoriales en la ciencia
Una de las cabeceras que más estudios publican en el mundo, expulsada del sistema por irregularidades. Su editorial, Elsevier, supera los 1.300 millones de euros de beneficios al año
elpais.com

'Nobody wants to scale back the industrialization of education it would mean losing money'

Are we still not convinced that education is outdated, not meeting needs of millions and perpetuating inequities? But I've yet to see viable alternatives (except maybe the return of trade schools)

I had the same Q. Many people handle a manuscript (editor, handling editor, reviewers). Who's not doing their job and how do we oust these bad actors? If we don't, publishing in certain outlets becomes meaningless. That's why I publish w/ society journals. You know the people behind the process.

In it's early days @nytwirecutter.bsky.social was the alternative to Consumer Reports but now it just encourages rampant consumerism, wrapped up in mirages of 'quality'. Today's digestif long read:

Why I Broke Up With Wirecutter share.google/Eve6L92jBbKB...
Why I Broke Up With Wirecutter
Graham Downey tells us about how he tried to stop worrying and love the Wirecutter—and how it quietly took over his life.
share.google

When the turpials arrive, hurricane season is over, trade winds start, and surf is up in #PuertoRico. The tropics have many seasons too if you know how to look.

Where does everyone send their tropical plant samples for species identification using DNA barcoding? Guelph?🙏 Leaves are preferable, but if the leaves are too high for pole pruner, what then? Cambium? Thanks for any leads.
🌵 In tropical dry forests, drought avoiders (isohydric) thrive in dry sites with fast growth, while tolerators (anisohydric) dominate wetter areas, boosting biomass non-linearly 👇
buff.ly/8dpEhNv

So: if you were to suspend your knee-jerk reaction and, instead, imagine a perfect world, what qualities would a pay-peer-reviewers model have to have for it to work? Now that's the interesting question/thought exercise no importa (y no judgement) whether you are for or against.

Fin.

I'm not for or against. But I specialize in exploring ideas outside of how we currently operate. Because how we currently operate clearly ain't working.

We are comfortable with NSF honorariums for review panelists but not comfortable with paying for manuscript reviewers. Why? NSF has prestige advantage? Volume/workload is different? Stakes are different?

We love data yet are convinced by anecdotal feelings of how this would be a very bad, no good, terrible idea...without any kind of pilot data/info to base those feelings on...what do existing models out there say? I honestly don't know. Just spit-balling and looking for fellow spit-ballers.

Few people are willing to suspend disbelief and 'play' from a place of imagination/creativity...skills we are suppose to be good at.

Most people hate the idea for all the obvious reasons. Already part of service, where would $ come from, blah, blah, blah.

"How Might We" design a pay-peer-reviewers model that prevents perverse incentives? Training/certifications? Vetted reviewers? Rating reviewers? I asked this question in a @esajournals.bsky.social cross-portfolio discussion and here is what I learned:

"The conservative nature and risk-averse mentality of modern grant review panels are deeply rooted in the scientific community’s culture that values incremental advances over speculative leaps" Why transformational science can't get funded.
open.substack.com/pub/sciencep...
Why Transformational Science Can't Get Funded:
The Einstein Problem
open.substack.com
A US citizen filmed federal agents smashing his car window, as authorities begin a surge of immigration enforcement operations in North Carolina.

The Honduran-born Charlotte resident filed a police report after the officers let him go.

The @esajournals.bsky.social is hosting a cross-portfolio conversation next week. If you are a subject matter editor like me, come and voice your ideas. It's gonna take brave, bold, new ideas to push back against this multi-headed beast.
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...