#OverlyHonestMethods

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#OverlyHonestMethods is a hashtag that is trending on Twitter.  With this hashtag (which is simply an easy way to sort and find posts), scientists share the honest, ugly truth behind research.  Some examples:

  • “Data was not recorded on Sundays because I didn’t feel like coming in, and not recorded on this day because spiders”
  • “Got a random number by asking my mom for a 3 digit number b/c I was too lazy to use an actual random number generator”
  • “Only read the abstract of the paper cited because I don’t have any money to pay for the full paper.”

This past week, I felt like I was swimming in my own #OverlyHonestMethods research sorrow.

For starters, my particular project in the Garden Ecology Lab is to document pollinator biodiversity within 24 Portland-area gardens.  I LOVE this project.  It’s the project I’ve wanted to do since I arrived at OSU, in 2007.  But, there are two minor issues with this project.

Distribution of 24 gardens, being sampled for insect pollinators, 2017-2019.

Blue, yellow, and white pan traps ~ placed into home gardens to passively sample insect pollinators.

One of our beautiful, Portland-area garden study sites.

First, it takes me 6.5 hours to drive to all sites, in one day.  This is without doing any of the actual research.  I had originally planned to sample all gardens June 21-23 ~ but this plan was quickly scrapped when I realized that there would be no way that we could physically drive to all gardens, set traps, sample for 10 minutes, and then return to pick up all traps the next day.

Working dawn to dusk, we were only able to sample 13 of our 24 gardens, June 21-22.  So, we pushed our second set of garden samples (the remaining 11 gardens) to June 29-30.  Not ideal ~ but this is why we are replicating our study across three years, and will be sampling gardens once a month, for 3-5 months, within each year.

The other major issue with this study, this month, is that I am chairing the International Master Gardener Conference.

In less than one week, I’ll be welcoming nearly 1,300 Master Gardeners to Portland ~ for a conference that begins on July 9th (pre-tours), and ends on July 17th (post-tours).  That means that my crew and I have been stuffing 1,300 envelopes and bags.  We’ve printed and are putting 3,900 meal tickets into 1,300 badges.  I can’t over-emphasize how much work this conference has been (and continues to be!).  On the one hand, sampling pollinators just before this conference is the LAST thing I needed to do.  On the other hand . . . after spending too many late nights in a hot room, filled with boxes and boxes of conference envelopes, sampling garden pollinators is exactly what I needed.

Of course, when it rains, it pours.  Last week, we also had issues with our Native Plant study.  On Tuesday, I get a call from Aaron, who tells me that:  (1) someone trespassed onto our plots, and sprayed herbicide, and (2) someone pulled our plants up, by the roots, in one of our study blocks (replicates).

Native plant plot. This poor plant was ripped out of the ground, and/or had herbicide applied in the vicinity.

Native plant plot. This one was spared the wrath of wreckless weeders and herbicide applicators.

It’s a long (and enraging) story.  But, long story short ~ we lost all of the plants in our fifth study block.  We only have five blocks / replicates in this study (with 24 plant species ~ it is both expensive and expansive to include more blocks).  So, in one sad, sad day ~ we lost 20% of our replication, which will have negative impacts on our statistical power.

How will we cope?  We’ll regroup and replant.  We were already planning on repeating this study in 2018. Now, it seems like we’ll have to repeat in 2018 AND 2019 ~ which is a bummer . . . because this will extend Aaron’s time in grad school, will cost me 50% more to get him through grad school, and generally makes a sad, sad day for all.

But, the silver linings are: I love working with Aaron, and don’t mind supporting him for an extra year, and Aaron had already mentioned that he might want to stay on for a Ph.D., which would necessarily lengthen and/or expand the scope of his study.

C’est la research.  Perhaps in 2-3 years, we’ll all be able to have a good chuckle about this challenging month.