And now the moment you've all been waiting for...available today open access in
#PaleoAnthropologyJournal
, I and my co-authors (
@QueffelecAlain1
,
@PickeringRobyn
) present our detailed rebuttal for the assertion of deliberate burial by Homo naledi. Thread:
I will die on the hill that archaeology is spelled with “ae” and I will change it back no matter how many times people change it to “archeology” in my drafts 😬
I haven’t yet seen anybody point out that shooting hominin fossils into space has irreversibly altered them due to exposure to increased radiation. Valuable scientific information may have just been destroyed forever, for a publicity stunt.
I read a paper today that includes an abbreviation and acronym WORD BANK, that pops up in the pdf when you hover the cursor over an abbreviation in-text. This is the most useful thing I have ever seen in my life and we should all be doing this.
@AcademicChatter
Exciting confirmation of the antiquity of the White Sands footprints out today! I spoke with Scientific American about the study. In sum of some more extensive comments, I buy it now. Go science!
Now that everything is official, I am SO EXCITED to announce that I have accepted a position as an Assistant Professor at
@GeorgeMasonU
! Thrilled to get to teach amazing students, and watch this space for exciting new research in human paleoecology!
#NewPI
Announcing my doctoral dissertation defense, open to the public on Tuesday March 29th at 10 AM EST!
Anyone in DC is welcome to attend in person, and we will be streaming over Zoom - DM me for the link!
Almost PhDone!
Finding it impossible to care one bit about my PhD. My mom is severely immune compromised and has ONLY ONE LUNG. Tack on to that anxiety disorder and data collection indefinitely suspended, and you get every minute of every day filled with an aching fear. Pet pics please!!
@biologistimo
SUPER carcinogenic, that’s an old fire grenade. If you can fully encapsulate it for transport, take it to a fire department. If you can’t move it without it leaking, call their non-emergency number and ask for someone to come retrieve it. Liquid is brown, might not be airtight.
@TheBcellArtist
I elected not to move my family for a non-permanent position, which limited my options. Postdocs are often 9mo-1yr, during which you’re expected to be useful AND apply for the next job AND publish AND possibly uproot your life for MAYBE a chance at TT? Nah...
Scary truth: I was just cut from an adjunct position to teach a class all the way in 2021. Universities are already trimming both their curriculum and their contingent faculty well past this coming fall semester. It’s going to be bad. For students, instructors, and for research.
I just closed all the tabs related to my dissertation after uploading my final corrections to the university. I put every errant file on my desktop away in a folder. I closed my analysis software for the first time in a year. I opened a Prosecco and laughed with my lab.
#PhDone
A piece in
@ScienceNews
covering paper on deliberate burial by Homo naledi. It is good to see that the Rising Star team agrees in hindsight that their methodological choices were incorrect. I disagree with their other responses, but that was expected.
I’ve gotten a lot of new followers this last couple of weeks - I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself beyond “that chick who published the new Homo naledi critique.” To get a sense of me, you can start with my other new paper in this thread: 1/
Anyone published with me knows how seriously I take geochemical analyses with XRF and how careful I am to deeply understand the data I have gathered and what it reflects. I feel no qualms in saying that the new H. naledi paper has deep structural issues in its use of XRF. 1/
NEW VIDEO. An update on the Homo naledi controversy!
"The Real Dirt on Homo naledi with Dr. Kim Foecke (
@KimFoecke
). Does geochemistry prove Homo naledi burial?" (link in next tweet)
A great chat that covers open science, replicability, geosciences, and ofc, Homo naledi
Now that everything’s signed and official I can finally announce that next week I will start a contract position with
@NMNH
@HumanOrigins
! I literally cannot explain to you how excited I am to be working with
@BrianaPobiner
, Rick Potts, and
@jpapio
. Limit does not exist 😁
@JadeArchaeobot
@kristinlkrueger
@HarvardGSAS
I’m so sorry this happened. This is absolutely appalling. As a current graduate student it’s sickening to know that even such concrete evidence has been dismissed. The future of archaeology deserves better.
Huge news - my NSF DDRI proposal was officially recommended for funding today, meaning I now have the full support of the big anthro granting trifecta! Humbled, honored, thrilled, and couldn’t be more excited to not have to compromise a single part of my dissertation!!
@gwCASHP
Thrilled to share my first first-author paper - Portable X-Ray Fluorescence Spectroscopy Geochemical Sourcing of Miocene Primate Fossils from Kenya! I know, I know, this has nothing to do with nitrogen isotopes. But still cool, promise! A thread:
@AcademicChatter
SPSS is a dumpster fire. R, and even Python, should now be the only way we teach stats and data visualization in undergrad and ANYONE who uses stats in grad school.
Thanks everyone for all the love on my two papers this week! It made picking these up today feel especially good - like pressing the “launch” button on my career!
For those asking, yes I do have comments on the revisions to the Homo naledi pre-prints. I’m taking some time to carefully review it and gather all of my thoughts, and will write something here soon. For now, I will say this - I do not think they fixed the problems.
I’ve hit the point in my PhD where I don’t even know what my stress dreams mean. This time I was at a conference and Paul Rudd was there and told me he liked Australopithecus. Sorry brain, I don’t know how to help you with that one 😂
@JacquelynGill
Hi! I’m finishing my PhD in human paleobiology in 6 weeks, and I study the impact of complex food behavior on the reliability of chemical paleodietary proxies. I’m hoping to shift more into paleoenvironmental proxies, and I love museum outreach. Someone hire me 😁
@AcademicChatter
Being able to stick with your gut in the face of sometimes-bad advice from senior academics. And learning that advisers and mentors are advisers, not bosses, and are not always right.
@grg_perry
@huw_groucutt
One last thought - I firmly believe that eLife should consider explicitly stating “We don’t publish papers. We host papers and publish reviews.” Because in my perception, there’s a lot of baggage with the word “publish” in academia. Meet folks where they are to get the change.
@AnnieEMason
@OpenAcademics
My advice: if you decide PhD, 1) never accept an offer that does not come with funding, and 2) pad your skills during so you are broadly employable in the event of a crap job market (a la now). I am glad I’m doing a PhD, I love the science, but you need realism and contingency.
@kevinsblake
@blekhman
Indeed, as a funded PhD student I pay almost $2,000 per year for campus parking, that is still about 25 minutes walk away from where I actually work.
Attention academic Twitter! I am officially job hunting! I will be defending my dissertation and graduating in May 2022, aiming to begin a position summer or fall 2022.
Link to my website where you can download my CV:
A short thread about me:
Dear PIs: if you can’t guarantee funding for living expenses, please don’t advertise for PhD students. These are jobs, for which you require high skill and prerequisites, and students need to eat and pay rent. Applying for funding is not funding available!
@grg_perry
How do you respond to the idea that under this model, eLife could become a legitimizing platform for pseudoscience? Where does the line come between acceptable and unacceptable science? Based on the reviews, this paper had almost no scientific support.
@JacquelynGill
The verbiage on “hybrid” models in this announcement is what’s going to save this situation - especially for PhD students. If we can turn diss research credits, for example, into being labeled “in person required” on paper, that will go a LONG way. Same principle for undegrads.
Use of analytical methods requires foundational understanding of the core of those methods. I feel my pub record qualifies me to provide a detailed assessment of the XRF work in a forthcoming thread. For now, I will simply state that the work doesn’t meet established standards.
Hi I’m Kim - I have anxiety disorder and panic disorder, and I was diagnosed when I was only 9 years old. I’ve been on medication for nearly two decades and I’m so PROUD, because now I’m a functional human getting a PhD thanks to treatment and support.
#MentalHealthWeek
@Homo_SLAYpien
External hard drives and back up EVERYTHING. All the time. In like, multiple places. I found having a physical planner helpful, writing things down and checking them off helps me feel like I’m accomplishing things. Break to-do lists into pieces that seem absurdly small. It helps.
Possibly hot take(?) - nearly every STEM or STEM-adjacent PhD program should offer and require a course in the use of some type of graphic design software.
I’m pretty convinced at this point that doing a PhD is 65% random Googling, 10% actual research engagement, and 25% trying not to murder various levels of administrative personnel.
Something to look forward to this year! Thank you
@PhysAnth
for all of the hard work you’ve done to enable us to share our research and connect with one another! Of course, it is the one year I wouldn’t have had to travel to go to the in-person conference... 😂
I’m working on a research proposal that is 100% my idea, and I’m very excited about it. It feels significant that for the first time, an adviser didn’t provide the starting nugget for a project. It’s like baby scientist level up!
Announcing my doctoral dissertation defense, open to the public on Tuesday March 29th at 10 AM EST!
Anyone in DC is welcome to attend in person, and we will be streaming over Zoom - DM me for the link!
Almost PhDone!
I have to say, in building several new courses I am feeling very vindicated in my hoarder-esque decision to save every note and assignment and exam from every undergrad class “in case I ever need them.” I NEED THEM!! Yes!!
@MosquitoLab
@FossilHistory
@KimFoecke
It’s not a preprint. A preprint is posted online before peer review
This is a fully peer reviewed & accepted paper online ahead of being put in an issue: “PaleoAnthropology publishes fully peer-reviewed, copy-edited articles ahead of issue publication, enabling faster access”
Quarantine updates: a guy trying to work out on a tiny balcony across the street has just accidentally launched a dumbbell over the railing, where it fell 12 stories and created a small crater in the sidewalk. This is the most thrilling thing to happen in weeks.
@indyfromspace
I can direct you to two very awesome scientists who spent many years researching the mechanics/materials in this situation - no bias at all that it includes my dad 😜
I don’t think it’s possible to accurately express the exhaustion of trying to do a dissertation, apply for jobs for the first time, teach, and like...do laundry and feed yourself. In a pandemic.
#PhDChat
Hey
@PhysAnth
. I just received an e-mail informing me that there will not be a discounted student rate in the conference hotel block this year. Seems a major oversight considering
#AAPA2020
is in one of the most expensive cities in the country...
#AAPA2021
is live! Check out my presentation in the “Paleoanthropology: Paleoecology II (Teeth, Diet, and Isotopes)” session - link here for those registered! Our live session is 4/16 at 12:00 EDT, but the video is up to view as of today.
Every time I do something more complicated in R lately and can get it to work, I think about how lucky I was to land at
@gwCASHP
at exactly the right moment to have taken the new quant methods class with
@wabarree
. High-key life changing and dissertation-saving. Thankful 🦃
First and foremost, what this paper is NOT. It is not a personal attack. It is not a critique of motive, public-facing decisions, or anything else. It is a critique of scientific practice, method, and data analysis in a very specific arena. 2/
Ph.D. student
@KimFoecke
co-wrote a paper on hominoid teeth from Losodok, Kenya recently published in the Journal of Human Evolution. The authors examine both the morphological attributes and provenience of the teeth. Read it here:
Very excited to see this paper out in
@PNASNews
! We used Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) and analysed lipids in archaeological pottery without prior extraction mapping their precise distributions to understand lipid uptake and preservation!
As a field, we must reflect on how we structure research questions and consider the balance between exploratory research and hypothesis testing that is so central to what we do. We call on paleoanthropology to always get back to basics in research design and learn about methods!