Careercast.com recently posted the “top 200” jobs in America now. So let’s see, at number one is “Actuary”. Okay, somewhat surprising but insurance is a big industry. At number two we have “Software Engineer”. I would have expected that to be number one. At number three we have “Computer Systems Analyst”. No surprise there. Number four is “Biologist”. Okay, number five is…hold on, Biologist!?! For those biologists actively looking for new jobs, like me, this is a complete surprise. I would not have put “Biologist” in the top ten, so I looked into a bit. As always the devil’s in the details.
They define “biologists” as “[Those that study] the relationship of plants and animals to their environment.” They created an index based on: “working environment, physical demands, income and hiring outlook.” In the “working environment” category, the more adverse the conditions, both physical and emotional (e.g. physical labor, hazards, competitiveness), the higher the score and the lower the rank. Working in biology scored 314, within a range of 89 to 3314 for all jobs. So biologists have a good working environment. In their ranking, less physically demanding jobs are better, and biology scored 5 out of a range of 4 to 43; so biology is not that physically demanding. Stress scored 27 with a range of 19 to 111. The maximum stress possible would’ve scored a 147.
The income category calculated a “derivative of mid-level incomes” and added the “growth potential” (% change from starting to salary to maximum salary). So by their calculations, mid-level biologists make about $71,000, and have a growth potential of 279%, within a range of $39,000 to $148,000. The range for all jobs was $17,000 to $300,000. The “hiring outlook” was “very good”, scoring 25 out of a range of 45 to -40. They based this score on Bureau of Labor statistics and projections through the year 2016, and unemployment rates in the third quarter of 2009. Salary “growth potential” was used in both the salary score and the hiring outlook.
If I were to compare these scores with my current position, I’d say it’s reasonable. My working environment is not very demanding – occasionally I have to schlep some equipment in the field. There are chemicals in the lab. Biologist face competition if they are seeking grants, and have to deal with critical review all the time, but I’m sure the stress of competition is greater in business and financial sectors. Grants and manuscript reviews can be stressful, but I’m sure most biologists are in science because they love it. The income range makes sense, especially for federal scientists, and their range would reflect the range of salaries from GS-7 step 1 to GS-15 step 10 (in “Rest of U.S.”, the category for locations that don’t have their own specific locality adjustments that increase salaries). $71,000 is what approximately what a GS-11 step 8 or a GS-12 step 2 makes in the “Rest of U.S.” category. It’s fair to call those mid federal scientist levels. Hiring outlook is more difficult to parse.
But to evaluate whether all this makes any sense, we have to consider both the methods and the population. That is, who exactly are they evaluating? Here’s the slide for biologists in their slide show of the ten best jobs:
This provides a clue. That looks like a biomedical lab to me. Yet their definition of “biologist” is very ecological. Is this category inclusive of all biology? There are other science fields on the list:
- #27. Physicist
- #32. Geologist
- #47. Anthropologist
- #50. Archaeologist
- #54. Chemist
- #76. Zoologist
…but no “ecologist” or “environmental scientist”. This list is, of course, a marketing tool to get people to use their job listing service. When I clicked on “biologist” I found 667 listings for all types of positions (technicians, instructors, postdocs, senior scientists), in all fields (e.g. genetics, molecular biology, cell biology, etc…). Only 30 came back with a search for “ecology”, and that contained a mix of science and engineering in various fields. 821 listings fell under “environmental science”, but only 76 if I added “biology” to the search terms, and those results included positions like Air Quality Specialist.
IMHO, their “biologist” category much too broad to be useful. One cannot go to school for “biology” and expect all career paths to be open. Specialization begins early in college when underclassmen choose a track within biology departments. This canalization leads to very different experiences. Different biologists are subject to different physical demands (e.g. lab versus field work), different hazards (e.g. solvents, contaminants), and have different salary ranges and career outlooks. Indeed, I think its safe to say that the career outlook for an immunohistochemist with a Ph.D is very different from an environmental scientist with an B.S. Moreover career tracks within “biology” are subject to different external (economic ) influences. Thus it would have been better to divide “biology” into several categories; perhaps one for biomedicine, immunology, and pharmacology; one for applied genetics, bioengineering and biotechnology; one for commercial environmental sciences, one for basic research or academia in general, etc. Ultimately to compare classes as broadly inclusive as “Biologist” to something as specific as “Piano tuner” is simply not valid.
Rapid online publishing has the potential to screw-up citations and citation statistics
Publishing with Environmental Science and Technology has been a positive experience, if you can believe that. They rapidly publish papers online prior to actual printing, and this has produced an interesting side note. What’s the proper citation? In the past, the citation was a reference to the work in publication. Hence “Raikow et al. (2009)” referred to the paper paper, the only form of the document. Indeed, that’s how I referred to my recent ES&T paper on resource sheds on my CV, which matters because I’ve been using it for job applications. In fact, I distributed some CV versions with the citation :
- “in press”
- “2009″ (but without a DOI or page numbers)
- “2009″ (with a DOI but without page numbers)
Now the paper has a full citation: “Raikow, D. F., J. F. Atkinson, and T. E. Croley, 2010, Development of resource shed delineation in aquatic ecosystems. Environmental Science and Technology, 44:329-334, DOI: 10.1021/es900562t.” Catch that? 2010. Online it’s listed as having a “Publication Date (Web): December 21, 2009″, but the citation (I guess) should be listed as Raikow et al. (2010). It’s an interesting thing to note in this changing world of scientific publication, but there is a slight problem.
I’m revising a paper for Ecological Applications that makes reference to a paper recently accepted by ES&T. The submitted first draft manuscript refers to the paper “in review”. I was going to send back the revision with the citation as 2009, with a DOI but no page numbers. If I had, and if it wasn’t caught in time (like during the proof stage), the reference would have been wrong. Now I suppose it will have to be 2010, but I might not know the page numbers in time to include them in the revision.
I suppose this is an uncommon occurence, and only happens at the changing of the year, but there is the potential for this kind of thing to screw up automatically generated citation statistics (e.g. the h-index, google scholar). A solution would be to have the DOI become the salient portion of a citation.
PCBs escape burial in aquatic sediments, infiltrate terrestrial food webs, and put birds at risk
Polychlorinated Biphenyl’s (PCB’s) were manufactured from the 1950s-1980s for a variety of industrial uses. They are persistent organochlorine compounds, meaning that they are lipophilic and biomagnify in food webs. PCBs are not a single compound, but rather a mixture of up to 209 congeners. They are suspected carcinogens and harmful to humans and wildlife through such processes as endocrine disruption and reproductive malfunction. This matters because of places like the the former Sangamo-Weston Capacitor Plant, now the Sangamo Weston Twelvemile Creek / Lake Hartwell Superfund Site near Clemson, South Carolina. Between 1955 and 1978 this factory dumped 181MT, or 400,00 lbs, of PCBs directly into a nearby stream. This resulted in the contamination of 30km of Twelvemile creek and Lake Hartwell. The factory site has been remediated, and is now a giant kudzu patch. No trace of the factory remains. Numerous wells dot the site to test and treat the groundwater. But despite mitigation of the factory site, PCB levels remain extremely high in the sediments of the stream and the Twelvemile Creek-arm of Lake Hartwell.
Insects are known to carry contaminants with them as they emerge from aquatic habitats as adults. Spiders are known to congregate along shorelines to exploit emergent insects as an abundant food source, a process known as ecological subsidy. This study sought to investigate utilization of aquatic insects and exposure to PCBs in terrestrial riparian spiders. Can riparian spiders be used as “sentinels” of local PCB levels? Might PCB accumulation in spiders pose a risk to organisms higher in the food web, like birds?
Walters et al. (2009) used stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen to establish trophic links between the aquatic and terrestrial food webs. In food web ecology, stable isotopes are commonly used for this purpose because the ratio of light vs. heavy naturally-occurring non-decaying isotopes can differ between food sources. The ratios of isotopes in predators can thus indicate the foods they are eating. In this case, aquatic and terrestrial insects had distinct differences in both carbon and nitrogen isotopic ratios. Spiders at the shoreline had isotopic ratios consistent with a high rate of aquatic insect consumption. Shoreline spiders also had extremely high levels of PCBs.
PCBs concentrations in the sediment of Lake Hartwell decrease downstream. The shoreline spiders tracked this longitudinal pattern, with highly significant linear relationships that explained much of the variance (as high as r^2 = 0.87). Araneid spiders, which spin large and strong vertically-oriented orb webs in the canopy, tracked this PCB signal least well. In contrast, Tetragnathid spiders, which spin weak horizontal webs directly over the water, tracked the signal very well. interestingly, emergent flying chironomids (midges), collected over the water, did not track the longitudinal signal at all.
“Wildlife values” (WV), or PCB concentrations required to be present in prey items in order for predators to reach a threshold of potential physiological harm, was calculated for birds. WV’s are calculated on a prey-item basis, and consumers must consume some of the prey items for a WV to be calculated. So in this case, “spider-based PCB wildlife values for birds” were calculated, or the PCB level that has to be present in spiders for birds to be potentially affected. Lower values mean it takes less contaminant to cause harm. The more spiders you eat, the greater the risk, and the lower the WV. The smaller your body is, the greater the risk, and the lower the WV. The higher your ingestion rate, the greater the risk, and the lower the WV. The least susceptible bird present in the region that consumed at least some spiders was the American Kestrel, with a WV of 13,230 ppb. Kestrels are relatively large for spider-eating birds, eat very few spiders as a percentage of diet, and have low ingestion rates, so are at low risk of being exposed to dangerous levels of PCBs. At the other end of the scale are nestling chickadees, which are small, have high ingestion rates, and eat alot of spiders as supplied by their parents, with a WV of 529. The maximum PCB concentration found in spiders exceeded 6000 ppb. This means that there are areas in the study site where the risk of potentially harmful PCB exposure to the most vulnerable members of the terrestrial food web is extremely high, i.e. where spiders exceed the WV by more than 10 times. These areas were mapped.
Riparian spiders were shown to be sentinels of PCB levels in the aquatic sediments. Because sampling sediment for PCBs is difficult and costly, sampling riparian spiders represents a faster and cheaper alternative for site monitoring. Riparian spiders were also shown to harbor enough PCB to pose a high risk to terrestrial arachnivores. Indeed, the risk is so great, a nesting could be exposed to harmful levels of PCBs by eating a single spider.
Walters, D., Mills, M., Fritz, K., & Raikow, D. (2009). Spider-Mediated Flux of PCBs from Contaminated Sediments to Terrestrial Ecosystems and Potential Risks to Arachnivorous Birds
Environmental Science & Technology DOI: 10.1021/es9023139
Our new PCB paper has just been published as an ASAP article. Here’s a screenshot of my Resource shed paper in the ticker and the PCB paper at the top of the ASAP list at the same time.
Having received favorable reviews, I am now in the process of revising my paper “The spatial extent of aquatic subsidy and contamination in lake riparian food webs” for Ecological Applications.
My new resource shed paper in Environmental Science and Technology is highlighted on the ES&T website’s rotating story ticker today! It’s number 6.
Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment has accepted a letter I wrote about using the dose-response design instead of ANOVA. They say it will be several months before it can be published due to a backlog of letters.
When federal applications ask to “Provide an example of your technical writing skills ” they mean it literally
Provide an example of your technical writing skills in one or more of the following areas: project report writing, protocol writing, grant proposal, graduate thesis, and/or peer-reviewed publication in 2500 character or less.
- A KSA for a federal job
If you see a question like this in a federal vacancy announcement (i.e. in the self-evaluation section) they want an actual writing sample, not a citation. So cut and paste 2500 characters worth of text from a paper. Personally, I find it ridiculous to have to provide a 2500 character writing sample when I have plenty of first-authored peer-reviwed papers, but there it is.
Oh, and for you federal human resources personel, the wording of this question is ambiguous. Better wording might be “Provide a sample of your technical writing skills. Do not supply a citation to a written work…”
