Crossing the Atlantic

Someone once asked me if my research collaborations abroad were a worthwhile use of time and money. I had just explained a project, which was effectively desk work – the statistical analysis of a large dataset. Why use public money to fly all the way to Denmark and upend a life to do a project…

The old frontiers of biogeography

Ecology is often criticized for being a weak science, with limited data, few ideas, and little predictive power. As a practicing scientist, I often feel frustrated by our collective inability to make the same dramatic progress as seen in other fields – for example, physics in the earth 20th century, during the quantum mechanical revolution….