Investigators' Blog
Meet the team: Q&A with Mike Plank
We recently caught up with Principal Investigator Dr Michael Plank, a senior lecturer in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Canterbury. Mike has taken on the role of Theme Leader: Complexity and the Biosphere while Alex James is on hiatus. As a research theme leader, Mike will be steering Te Pūnaha Matatini’s research projects that build a better understanding of New Zealand’s environment and the interactions between biodiversity, the economy, and human decision-making.
Tell us about your research, including projects aligned with Te Pūnaha Matatini
My research is in biological modelling and ranges from the very small (intracellular dynamics) to the very large (marine ecosystems). A common theme in my research is investigating how collective phenomena emerge from interactions among individuals, whether on the scale of single human cell, or the scale of an ocean. I am interested in the insights that relatively simple mathematical models can give into the ways these complex systems function – and why they sometimes go wrong.
One of my projects aligned with Te Pūnaha Matatini is modelling the emergent behaviour of fishers stemming from their decisions about which species or sizes of fish to target. Principles from ecology suggest that natural predators tend to spread their effort according to the productivity of their prey. So why shouldn’t humans behave like natural predators and spread their fishing efforts according to the productivity of the fish? If this really happens, it could change the way we design fishing regulations from top-down control to a bottom-up approach that recognises the effect of the fish stock on the behaviour of fishers as well as the other way round.
What attracted you to the role of Theme Leader: Complexity and the Biosphere?
We have some really exciting projects going on in the Biosphere theme. I’m really looking forward to a new project that will look at the interplay of ecological dynamics, geospatial data, and social attitudes to map the effectiveness of large-scale predator control. Other projects include investigating the effects of social contact networks on epidemic spread, and harnessing the huge potential of citizen science to enhance conservation projects.
We have some amazing scientists and students involved with these projects and I’m excited to work with them and see how we can turn the scientific results into real impacts for New Zealand’s unique ecosystems.
How can research using complex systems, networks, and data assist New Zealand’s environment?
New Zealand is facing a range of pressing environmental issues, including loss of our endemic native flora and fauna, agricultural pest invasions, and management of our fisheries. We have a large amount of data relating to these, for example the Department of Conservation’s tier 1 monitoring programme, and catch data from our Quota Management System. At the same time, we’re investing substantial money and resources into these areas, but we’re not always making full use of the data that are available. Te Pūnaha Matatini’s research programme has the potential to really add value to our conservation dollar by helping us target our resources to areas where they will have the most impact.
Taking a complex systems and network approach also gives us opportunities to look at environmental issues at a larger spatial scale, rather than focusing on projects in isolation. As a simple example, a predator control programme in an area of Department of Conservation land might reduce or even eliminate the possum population in the short-term. But if there is adjacent, privately owned land without any control, the possums are likely to re-invade in the long-term. Viewing the whole country as an interconnected network gives us a better ability to predict long-term outcomes, and therefore a better chance of eliminating possums for good.
My First Conference(s)
By Jonathan Goodman
Never do things by halves, jump in the deep end, give it a go, eat your vegetables, trust your supervisors. This is all good advice and I now realise I must have taken it, having presented at the first conference I have ever attended, then attending another conference three days later run by an organisation I had never heard of before. I have also joined the Te Pūnaha Matatini Whānau committee based solely on my supervisor’s advice. Before I go on, I must admit that all of these actions have proved to be worthwhile and rewarding.
The first conference was the Te Pūnaha Matatini cross-theme hui. This was the first Te Pūnaha Matatini gathering I have attended since joining the Centre of Research Excellence as a PhD student at the start of the year. The hui consisted of a series of short talks, including my first at a conference, interspersed with four rounds of the “Research Knockout” – a game designed by Alex James. The game started with the creation of teams of 3-5 researchers from Te Pūnaha Matatini’s three research themes. Each team then generated a potential research project. Each round of the knockout consisted of pairing up the groups and amalgamating their ideas into an enhanced version. This continued until there were just two groups remaining. In the grand finale, there was a final presentation followed by a vote. The winning research topic was ‘Measuring the impact of the communication of science’.
The question of science outreach also came up at the conference run by the New Zealand Association of Scientists (NZAS). The conference was held at Te Papa in Wellington and celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Association. The conference had a selection of engaging speakers looking at the role of scientists in the past, the present, and into the future. A number of speakers talked about science communication.
One of the presenters, Simon Nathan, spoke about James Hector and how he effectively pushed the cause of New Zealand science, through his role of Chief Government Scientist, by constantly reminding politicians about the value of science. Rebecca Priestley talked about how science outreach was different back in the days of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR). Instead of scientists engaging in outreach programs, interested journalists and citizens would phone and be able to speak directly with the scientist who was in the best position to answer their queries. Te Pūnaha Matatini’s own Shaun Hendy presented on how social media is currently the only way scientists are able to directly communicate with the population without the risk of their message being obscured. His three guidelines for public engagement were very apt.
Researchers should:
1) Not be d!@#s
2) Get on social media
3) See rule number 1.
The other major theme of the conference was the structure of the pathways inside and outside academia for emerging researchers. I will touch on this in another blog post on the Te Pūnaha Matatini Whānau page.
Having had a rewarding weekend forming connections with talented scientists, and with the science community as a whole, I will sign off hoping that I have followed Shaun’s rules.
Jonathan Goodman
Silencing Science – panel discussion
When: Thursday May 12, 5 pm-6:30pm
Where: Auditorium, Auckland Museum
Cost: free – bookings required. Please register attendee names at friends.events@aucklandmuseum.com or call 09 3026249 or 09 3067923.
What is the first duty of scientists in a crisis – to the government that funds them, to the employer who pays them, or to the wider public, desperate for information? And what if these obligations clash?
On May 12 Te Pūnaha Matatini, a Centre of Research Excellence, is bringing together researchers and journalists to explore the role of scientists in times of public need.
Professor Shaun Hendy, Director of Te Pūnaha Matatini, finds that in New Zealand, the public obligation of the scientist is often far from clear and that there have been many disturbing instances of scientists being silenced.
Shaun leads the conversation that was prompted by research for his new book, Silencing Science. On the panel, Shaun is joined by Drs Siouxsie Wiles and Matheson Russell from the University of Auckland, and Radio New Zealand science broadcaster Veronika Meduna. Moderating the panel discussion is freelance journalist and writer Damian Christie.
Shaun’s book Silencing Science, published by Bridget Williams Books and out May 12, will be available to purchase at the end of the discussion.
Bookings essential.
To ensure a seat please register at friends.events@aucklandmuseum.com or call 09 3026249 or 09 3067923.
NSSI (Not Such a Silly Idea… but do it properly) #5
Welcome back to Not Such a Silly Idea! In this exciting new season, two summer students continue to critique a government document, and this time they have interactive visualisations! In case you missed the first part of our epic journey, you can read instalments one, two, three and four.
One of the claims made in the National Statement of Science Investment (NSSI) which we wanted to look into was based on this graph (Figure 1) on page 20 of the NSSI:
Figure 1
The NSSI asserts that the government’s investment in science has “increased by over 70% since 2007/08”, and that “our science has improved in response”. This is followed with several graphs which show things like increasing publication rate, increasing number of papers in top journals, growing research workforce, and increasing international collaboration over time. These graphs each stand on their own, but fail to relate these improvements to the amount of money the government has been spending on science. One of our goals was to re-visualise these graphs in a way that clearly showed a correlation (or not) with increasing government investment, and we will address that later on. But before that, we had to investigate this data on government spending.
We remain puzzled that the NSSI claims an “over 70%” increase in government expenditure in the last eight years, when according to their own data the increase is more than 80%. Self-deprecation aside, when we went back to The Treasury we discovered that the graph on page 20 is not adjusted for inflation. This immediately indicated that the increase in spending was not quite as significant as claimed, since the government would have had to up their investment by about 40% just to compensate for the devaluing dollar. Using the Reserve Bank calculator, we found that government spending on science has actually increased 55% (not 82%) since 2007/08 and 46% (not 87%) since 2004/05.
After adjustment the government’s spending still showed a rise, however, so we started looking for the implications of that rise. We created the graph below to see whether the government might be able to claim New Zealand’s burgeoning number of publications as correlated with its financial support. To make this graph we had to include a time lag. Cash pays for research, but it takes time for that research to be published. We weren’t sure, though, how long that lag is on average. We did a regression analysis of our data using this equation, in case you’re interested:
We used a range of time lags between investment and publication, from no lag to four years. The time lag that showed the strongest correlation was two years. (We have far too little data to infer anything universal from this – it is simply our best guess.)
And voila, there is a positive correlation between the amount of money poured into ‘science and innovation’ and the number of papers churned out. But what does the money do? Do scientists publish more frequently when they are better funded? In other words, does greater funding increase productivity measured in papers per full-time researcher? Or does the money go towards increasing the number of people producing papers in the first place?
Six years ago, Professor Shaun Hendy published this paper (page 56). It drew the conclusion that although our publication output increased hugely from 1990-2008, that increased output was due to a rise in the number of researchers, not the number of papers each researcher produces in a year. Having read this paper, we expected to find similar results for 2000-2014, but we were surprised to see that both FTEs and productivity have been steadily on the rise, according to both OECD and Statistics New Zealand data.
The publication output numbers we retrieved from SciVal, and we found two different sets of researcher full-time equivalents (FTE) data; one in the Main Science and Technology Indicators database on OECD.Stat, and the other in the R&D surveys on Statistics NZ. There was a confusing discrepancy between these sources because the latter breaks down Higher Education researcher FTEs into ‘researcher’ and ‘student researcher’, while OECD.Stat makes no distinction, and the numbers didn’t come to the same total. Our best guess is that one counts only PhD students, while the other also includes Masters.
These two graphs are very interesting, because in spite of the differences, they support that both the number of science researchers and their productivity has increased.
So, apart from the fact that MBIE needs to be careful with accurately presenting information, we can conclude government investment in science has indeed increased, and that it is correlated with increased output of publications, increased research workforce, and increased productivity. Of course, just from these graphs we can’t be sure which way round the causal relationship works. A great incentive, surely, for both parties to keep up the good work!
Win tickets to Adam Rutherford ‘Gene Genie’ tour
WIN TICKETS TO Dr Adam Rutherford’s Royal Society of New Zealand ‘Gene Genie’ tour!
Follow Te Pūnaha Matatini on Twitter or Facebook and tell us your #sciencehero for your chance to WIN tickets to the below events.
GENE GENIE TOUR
Te Pūnaha Matatini is proud to support the Royal Society New Zealand tour of Dr Adam Rutherford, geneticist, BBC 4 science presenter and science writer – touring 15-22 March 2016.
Dr Adam Rutherford is a science writer and broadcaster. On radio, he is the presenter of BBC Radio 4’s flagship science programme, Inside Science, as well as many documentaries, on the inheritance of intelligence, on MMR and autism, human evolution, astronomy and art, science and cinema, scientific fraud, and the evolution of sex.
TOUR DATES
Christchurch | Genetics and disease 6pm Tuesday 15 March
Aurora Centre, cnr Greers Road and Memorial Ave, Burnside High School, Christchurch
Dr Adam Rutherford discusses the genetics underlying disease with Professor Vicky Cameron (Christchurch Heart Institute), Professor Nigel French (Massey University) and Professor Parry Guilford (University of Otago)
Dunedin | Conservation genomics 7.30pm Thursday 17 March
St David Lecture Theatre, cnr St David and Castle Sts, University of Otago, Dunedin
Dr Adam Rutherford discusses ancient DNA and conservation genomics with University of Otago researchers Dr Catherine Collins, Professor Neil Gemmell and Dr Michael Knapp
Tauranga | Family and genealogy 7pm Monday 21 March (refreshments served from 6.30pm)
Tauranga Yacht Club, Sulphur Point, Tauranga
Dr Adam Rutherford discusses genealogy and family issues with University of Otago Professors Lisa Matisoo-Smith, Stephen Robertson and Hamish Spencer
Auckland | Genetics and health 6pm Tuesday 22 March
Auckland Museum Events Centre, The Domain, Parnell, Auckland
Dr Adam Rutherford discusses medical genetics and epigenetics with University of Auckland and Auckland DHB researchers Dr Don Love, Dr Rinki Murphy and Professor Cristin Print
Buy tickets>
Dr Rutherford is also touring as part of the New Zealand Festival, Wellington
*Feature image: Adam Rutherford Royal Society of New Zealand.
Competition:
– Runs 02 March to 21 March, 2016.
– Social media competitions run through Te Pūnaha Matatini Twitter and Facebook
– Each winner receives two tickets to selected event
– A maximum of up to 40 tickets available (up to 10 per event)
– Winners selected based on best entries for each social media event
– Winners selected at Te Pūnaha Matatini’s discretion.
The First Post
By Ben Curran
It’s an interesting thing, writing the first post. It’s an interesting thing writing the first line.
Whether it’s the first line of a paper, a chapter, a grant application or a blog post, I always find the first line … daunting. It’s only now, having finished the thesis and other things need to be written, that I recall how awful that first line is. Even if there is a specific goal behind the writing, an idea that you set out to communicate, what words do you choose for the first sentence? Who are you talking to? What sort of tone are you after? These are things that paralyse the first line.
And then there’s the times when you’re forcing yourself to write when there is no specific goal other than to practice writing. I liken this situation to the one I encountered all too often in one of my previous incarnations as a bartender – there’s always a customer who comes in at some point and says “surprise me”. Most often they got a glass of water.
Like it or not, writing is a large part of what we do. Sure, the thinking, the testing, the figuring out what’s going on are important, but in the end they mean nothing if we can’t communicate the results. And for larger audiences, writing is the primary means of communication.
Writing has to start somewhere though. Writing the first line, whether it’s a good sentence or not, is always awful. It is almost certainly going to be at least edited, if not entirely removed. Which makes it, in the greater scheme of things, not particularly important. This, to a certain extent, can be extended to the entire first draft of pretty much any work. One of my PhD supervisors, in an effort to get me writing, used to stress that whatever I wrote for the first draft was going to come back with red ink all over it. I was told to just write something, anything, a foundation upon which the story you are trying to tell could be built.
If you’re not used to working with wood, there is often a feeling of trepidation in making the first cut. Making the first bend in a piece of metal, applying the soldering iron for the first time to a circuit board. All of these things impart a sense of beginning and often the thought that runs through your head is “what if I screw it up”. It’s the same thing with writing. Measure twice, cut once, Dad said. The first draft is only the first measurement. The first sentence is only the first line on the plans, drawn with pencil.
So if you have a specific idea to communicate, start writing. After a while that feeling of trepidation is replaced by familiarity. Knowing the first draft is only the rough plan of your work means that, eventually, writing the first sentence becomes … an odd thing. Just odd. And yet familiar, interesting even.
And as a scientist, when I see something interesting, I usually want to stop and take a serious look. Turn it over, see how it works. This is where it can be good if you don’t have a specific idea to communicate, put that first, odd sentence down and see where it takes you. Possibly somewhere very much like here.
Video Workshop for Scientists
Wellington – Wednesday March 30 / Auckland – Thursday 31 March 2016
The Science Media Centre is hosting a workshop on communicating science in 90 second videos aimed at an online audience and leveraging platforms like Youtube and Vimeo.
Great short videos can be produced using the high-definition camera built into your smartphone or tablet. How can you harness this technology to bring your science to life? What are the best ways to shoot, edit and distribute your video content?
This workshop will answer all of your questions and introduce you to great tools that will help you in the video production process.
Limited to 20 places. Participants will be selected based on the video concepts outlined in the application form.
Workshop topics:
- Why is video so powerful?
- Scripting and storyboarding short videos
- Finding images and footage
- DIY video – harnessing your smartphone to make great videos
- Software and tools you can use.
Applications close 15 March
Course fees: FREE to attend — by invitation
Find out more and APPLY NOW!
Conference: Multicore World 2016
Conference Summary
15 – 17 February 2016
Shed 6, Queens Wharf – Wellington, New Zealand
Bringing together business and technical know-how of developing and deploying multicore and manycore based solutions (5th edition). Including panels and debates on: “HPC in the Cloud: the SKA example”and “TOPS: The Open Parallel Stack”
Multicore World is a global think-tank that allows you to network and learn about all aspects of multicore and manycore technology and business. Organised by Open Parallel since 2012, takes the pulse of this fast growing ecosystem: sessions cover latest developments in software and hardware, applications and the businesses behind these trends.
Find out about:
• Software for the enterprise in a complex world
• Machine Understanding: the future of the Data Centre
• Big Data and Internet of Things: scalability and industry applications
• Heterogeneous Computing and Exascale Computing
• TOPS: The OS for a Data Centre Rack Scale Computer
Browse through the program> openparallel.com/multicore-world-2016/program-2016
Conference Summary
Conference Schedule
Discount offer
25% discount on tickets purchased by February 12. Email danene.jones@auckland.ac.nz to find out how, or check out the February 10 newsletter.
Te Pūnaha Matatini Cycle Challenge
What: Te Pūnaha Matatini Cycle Challenge – join the team and commit to reducing your climate impact.
When: February 1 to 29
Where: From wherever you are across Aotearoa
Something wheely good is happening at Te Pūnaha Matatini HQ – Director Shaun Hendy bought a bicycle and Executive Manager Kate Hannah is riding to work! As a result, the whole HQ team has committed to reducing our climate impact by starting a February bike challenge.
You can take part by using the #tpmride hashtag on Twitter. Post us your ride to work photos and tell us how many kilometres you’ve clocked up.
Auckland riders> sign up to the Te Pūnaha Matatini Auckland Bike Challenge team and log all your rides.
Tips for reducing your climate impact
Check out this Motu post that features research by Suzi Kerr, a Motu senior fellow and TPM principal investigator, on tips about how Kiwis can reduce their climate impacts.
NSSI (Not Such a Silly Idea… but do it properly) #4
By Catherine Webb and Nicola Gujer
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, we started deconstructing the National Statement of Science Investment and considering the claims it makes.
Our first blog post ended with an unanswered question – is the proportion of a country’s papers in the global top 10% of citations a good way (or at least the best available way) to measure science excellence? The NSSI’s definition of excellent science is “well-designed, well-performed, well-reported research, recognised as such, e.g. through peer review.”
In preparation for our first blog post, we were dealing with a graph that suggested New Zealand produces science which is not quite as ‘excellent’ as our comparative small advanced economies, because a lower percentage of our publications make it into the 10% most cited publications worldwide. In that post, we discussed the limitations of that graph, but nonetheless concluded that it does show New Zealand lagging slightly in the production of ‘top-shelf science’.
Still, we were curious to see whether there are any more useful ways of measuring ‘science excellence’ that might paint a different picture.
What if just looking at the papers with the most citations is not the right approach? Are citations a good way to measure excellence at all? One flaw with citations is that papers can become highly cited for two reasons: by being amazing, or by being such poor science that everyone wants to correct it (like Wolfe-Simon’s paper on a bacterium that thrives on arsenic). Also, as we discussed in our second post, citations tend to follow a ‘rich-get-richer’ power-law distribution, which makes a well-known paper garner even more citations, while another paper, nearly as good, can dwell in obscurity all its life.
However, even if citations are not a great way, they may currently be the least-bad way of assessing the impact of publications. But what kind of citations should we use to compare countries? Every country has different areas of specialty, and if they are alone in that area, they may not be cited very much by other countries, even if their science is top-notch. New Zealand, for example, is environmentally isolated and unique. Our conservation or agricultural papers for instance may not be of immediate relevance to anyone else as much as they are to us. If our science is rather useful to ourselves, but not to the rest of the world – should that make it less ‘excellent’?
We broke the data down into only intranational citations per publication and only international.
Because international citations make up the vast majority of any small country’s citations, these have the greatest impact on the percentage of publications in the 10% most cited. Thus, in terms of ranking countries, these two measures of ‘excellence’ can be roughly used as proxy.
Does New Zealand’s rate of intranational citations balance our lagging overall ranking?
| Country | Intranational citations per publication | International citations per publication |
| New Zealand | 1.25 | 5.95 |
| Denmark | 1.70 | 8.35 |
| Finland | 1.46 | 6.87 |
| Ireland | 1.13 | 7.05 |
| Israel | 1.23 | 6.98 |
| Singapore | 1.35 | 7.82 |
| Mean average | 1.35 | 7.17 |
It’s possible that New Zealand produces publications which are more relevant and therefore cited more within our own country than they are in other countries; we just don’t cite enough to pull up our average very far, but this is conjecture.
In any case, does New Zealand do well enough by intranational citations to let us off the hook of general lack-of-excellence? Well, we certainly have room for improvement. The next question is, obviously, how to improve – a subject for another article, where we examine government investment and its effect on the science sector.
Look out for our next episode in the New Year, and may the force be with you over the holidays!
*Featured image by XKCD comics.