April 2016 - BERG - University of Stirling Mailing Lists

Fw: A message from Stevan Harnad about his new journal
by Eoin O'Sullivan 26 Apr '16

26 Apr '16

Dear all, Prof Peter Hancock kindly forward me this e-mail about a new BBS-style journal on the topic of animal sentience. I'm sure it will be of interest to a few on this list. All the best, Eoin From: em.bbs.0.4ac443.098bd961(a)editorialmanager.com [mailto:em.bbs.0.4ac443.098bd961@editorialmanager.com] On Behalf Of Behavioral and Brain Sciences Sent: 26 April 2016 07:37 To: Peter Hancock <p.j.b.hancock(a)stir.ac.uk> Subject: A message from Stevan Harnad about his new journal Dear BBS readers, Some of you may remember me. I founded BBS in 1978<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Temp/Kata/bbs.editorial.html> and was the editor till 2002<http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Temp/bbs.valedict.html>. After those two busy decades I had not planned to edit a journal again! But when the Institute for Science and Policy of the Humane Society asked me whether I would agree to be the editor of a new open access journal on animal sentience, a topic I consider to be extremely important, both in cognitive science and in ethics, I immediately accepted, and also proposed to implement BBS-style Open Peer Commentary for the new journal. Animal Sentience<http://animalstudiesrepository.org/animsent/> (ASent) has now been launched and the current editors have kindly agreed to let me do one last BBS mailing to BBS Associates to ask: If you have interest or expertise in animal thinking, feeling or well-being, please contact me at harnad(a)uqam.ca<mailto:harnad@uqam.ca> so I can add you to my list of potential ASent Commentators (the embryonic counterpart of the BBS Associate list that I started almost 40 years ago!). Needless to say, if you have a potential target article on animal sentience on which you wish to invite Open Peer Commentary in ASent, you are invited to prepare one. ASent can also consider previously published papers that are particularly appropriate for Commentary if they are revised and updated for re-publication in ASent. If you look at the journal website<http://animalstudiesrepository.org/animsent/> you will see that Open Peer Commentary in ASent is much like in BBS, except that ASent Commentaries and Responses appear serially, as they are received, reviewed and accepted, rather than all in one batch. The author also has the choice of responding one-on-one or in a batch, and the Commentary can continue for as long as there is still something to say. My own inaugural editorial<http://animalstudiesrepository.org/animsent/vol1/iss1/1/> describes the mission and remit of ASent (and Open Peer Commentary is invited on the editorial as well!) With best wishes, Stevan Harnad Editor, Animal Sentience<http://animalstudiesrepository.org/animsent/editorialboard.html> Professor of Psychology, Université du Québec à Montréal<http://crcsc.uqam.ca> Professor of Web Science, University of Southampton<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/people/harnad>

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No BERG meetings until May
by Eoin O'Sullivan 20 Apr '16

20 Apr '16

Dear BERGers, With teaching finished, we have come to the end of our normal schedule of BERG meetings for the Spring semester. However, while there are no meetings over the next few weeks we will have a couple of extra talks in May (I will circulate more information nearer the dates). All the best, Eoin

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Wed special BERG seminar
by Phyllis Lee 12 Apr '16

12 Apr '16

Chaos and cohesion: social disruption and leadership loss in African elephant families. Vicki Fishlock 5:30 in the Psychology seminar room (as usual) Phyllis C. Lee Professor of Psychology Behaviour and Evolution Research Group School of Natural Sciences University of Stirling Stirling FK9 4LA UK Direct line +44 (0)1786 467656 Mobile +44 (0)7802 427132

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Replication Crisis Discussion: Follow-up
by Eoin O'Sullivan 07 Apr '16

07 Apr '16

Hi all, Just writing to follow-up on yesterday's discussion of the replication crises. I know that a few of you expressed interest in this topic but were unable to attend, so I thought it might be worth mentioning a few interesting points/resources. First of all, thanks to all who attended- it was really great to hear your thoughts on this! We all agreed that the Spellman paper (circulated on Tuesday) was a highly readable and reasonably comprehensive summary of the issues and potential solutions (so, well worth a read). Liz Renner brought our attention to some reproducibility issues within the field of oxytocin research. Interestingly, these problems were identified when a research group decided to critical?ly examine their own published work and open their file drawer. Some links here: http://www.vox.com/2016/4/4/11348288/oxytocin-love-hormone http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jne.12384/abstract?campaign=wola… Becky Sharman discussed her own efforts to replicate a curious perceptual effect and she has successfully published these findings in the Royal Society's new OA journal (link here: http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/12/150418.abstract)<http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/12/150418.abstract> Becky has kindly provided a lay summary of this work for those interested (see postscript). So, thanks again to all for such an interesting discussion! Next week we have Dr. Vicky Fishlock talking to us about her work at Amboseli National Park. It is going to be great! All the best, Eoin ? PS: Lay- summary of Mather & Sharman (2015) The implied motion after effect occurs when adapting to still images of motion e.g. someone running causes the same kind of after-effect as looking at actual moving stimuli. We showed that this effect is only present when participants are asked to make a directional judgement (i.e. are the dots moving left or right), but isn't present when they are asked to make a non-directional judgement (i.e. is the top or bottom half of the stimulus moving). The stimuli were exactly the same, only the instructions and the subsequent results were different.

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Fwd: UFAW newsletter Spring 2016
by Hannah Buchanan-Smith 05 Apr '16

05 Apr '16

Please find attached the UFAW newsletter (UFAW kindly fund our BERG seminars) and note the "save the date" for next year's UFAW conference (27-29 June, 2017). From: "Stephen Wickens" <wickens(a)ufaw.org.uk<mailto:wickens@ufaw.org.uk>> To: "Hannah Buchanan-Smith" <h.m.buchanan-smith(a)stir.ac.uk<mailto:h.m.buchanan-smith@stir.ac.uk>> Subject: UFAW newsletter Spring 2016 Dear Hannah, Please find attached the latest UFAW newsletter. We'd be grateful if you could share it with interested collegues and students. Please be aware that the UFAW 2016 meeting at York is now fully booked (our maximum number is 180). For those who still hope to attend we are running a waiting list but there are a number on this list now so the chances of all getting a place are remote. Our 2017 meeting venue can hold upto 400 so we don't foresee this issue next year and hope that you might consider attending. It's already attracting a lot of interest. Kind regards, Steve -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr Stephen Wickens Universities Federation for Animal Welfare The Old School, Brewhouse Hill, Wheathampstead, Herts AL4 8AN, UK Email: wickens(a)ufaw.org.uk<mailto:wickens@ufaw.org.uk> Direct Tel: +44(0)1276 500880; Office: +44(0)1582 831818 (tel), 831414 (fax) MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "c:" claiming to be www.ufaw.org.uk<C:\Users\Steve\AppData\Local\Temp\~ed_sb_3\www.ufaw.org.uk> Save the date: "Measuring animal welfare and applying scientific advances - Why is it still so difficult?" UFAW International Symposium 27-29th June 2017, Royal Holloway, University of London, Surrey, UK. Facebook: Universities Federation for Animal Welfare - UFAW<http://www.facebook.com/ufaw.org.uk> ; Twitter: @UFAW_1926<https://twitter.com/ufaw_1926> The Universities Federation for Animal Welfare (UFAW) is an UK charity that works to develop and promote improvements in the welfare of all animals through scientific and educational activity worldwide. Registered Charity No 207996 (Registered in England) and Company Limited by Guarantee No 579991

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6th April- Replication Crisis Discussion
by Eoin O'Sullivan 05 Apr '16

05 Apr '16

Dear BERGers, We don't have a speaker scheduled this week so we have a nice opportunity to discuss a topic Louise Heron touched upon in her discussion of the "watching eyes effect" last week. As many of you know, there is currently a lot of discussion in the field of psychology (and other scientific fields) about the reliability of supposedly well established psychological phenomena. Much of the debate has focussed on the field of social psychology, but the practices thought to contribute to this "replication crisis" seem to be equally common in many areas of animal research/evolutionary psychology/etc (e.g. underpowered studies, file drawer problem, overreliance on null hypothesis testing, etc.). With this in mind, it might be interesting to discuss some of these factors from the perspective of our own fields. If you would like some more information on this topic here is a short news article which provides plenty of links to other resources: http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/03/psychologys-replication-… I have also attached a recent article (Spellman, 2015), and see below for a few questions we might talk around: 1. Could your field face a "replication crisis"? 2. What are the hurdles preventing reliable research and what can we do to overcome them? 3. Is there an important finding in your field that you have found difficult to replicate? Have you published it? If not- why? 4. If you were to organise a "Reproducibility Project" what studies/effects should be considered (https://osf.io/ezcuj/wiki/home/)? As usual, we will be meeting from 5:20pm in the psychology common room. I look forward to seeing you there! All the best, Eoin

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