Julie Old is as Associate Professor at Western Sydney University. We talk about her experiences and research with wombats, various aspects of wombat behavior, conservation efforts, challenges such as sarcoptic mange and roadkill, the Northern hairy-nosed wombat's critically endangered status and efforts to translocate them safely, and much more.

BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith.

Support the show: https://geni.us/bjks-patreon

Timestamps
0:00:00: How Julie got into working with wombats
0:03:14: What are wombats?
0:11:40: How Julie started researching wombats
0:15:34: Sarcoptic mange in wombats
0:25:22: Saving the critically endangered Northern hairy-nosed wombat
0:36:00: How to prevent wombats from becoming roadkill
0:41:46: How do I know a wombat was there without seeing the wombat directly?
0:44:11: What research could I do on wombats and (social) decision-making?
0:47:51: How do wombats navigate in burrows?
0:52:42: How the Australian wildfires in 19/20 affected wombats
0:55:41: WomSAT
0:59:29: The Wombat Foundation
1:01:06: How to translocate a population of wombats
1:08:35: A book or paper more people should read
1:10:53: Something Julie wishes she'd learnt sooner
1:12:11: Advice for PhD students/postdocs

Podcast links

• Website: https://geni.us/bjks-pod
• Twitter: https://geni.us/bjks-pod-twt

Julie's links

• Website: https://geni.us/old-web
• Google Scholar: https://geni.us/old-scholar
• Twitter: https://geni.us/old-twt

Ben's links

• Website: https://geni.us/bjks-web
• Google Scholar: https://geni.us/bjks-scholar
• Twitter: https://geni.us/bjks-twt

References & links

The scientific park: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epping_Forest_National_Park
The Wombat Foundation: https://www.wombatfoundation.com.au/
WomSAT: https://www.womsat.org.au/womsat/

French & Whatley (2002). Diary of a Wombat.
Mayadunnage, Stannard, West & Old (2024). Spatial and temporal patterns of sarcoptic mange in wombats using the citizen science tool, WomSAT. Integrative Zoology.
Old, Hunter & Wolfenden (2018). Who utilises bare-nosed wombat burrows?. Australian Zoologist.
Old, Sengupta, Naraya, & Wolfenden (2018). Sarcoptic mange in wombats—A review and future research directions. Transboundary and Emerging Diseases.
Old & Deane (2003). The detection of mature T‐and B‐cells during development of the lymphoid tissues of the tammar wallaby (Macropus eugenii). Journal of Anatomy.
Old & Deane (2000). Development of the immune system and immunological protection in marsupial pouch young. Developmental & Comparative Immunology.
Park (1962). The Adventures of the Muddle-headed Wombat.
Stannard, Wynan, Wynan, Dixon Mayadunnage & Old (2021). Can virtual fences reduce wombat road mortalities?. Ecological Engineering.
Strahan's mammals of Australia (2023).
Woodford (2002). The secret life of wombats.

Tom Chivers is a journalist who writes a lot about science and applied statistics. We talk about his new book on Bayesian statistics, the biography of Thomas Bayes, the history of probability theory, how Bayes can help with the replication crisis, how Tom became a journalist, and much more.

BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith.

Support the show: https://geni.us/bjks-patreon

Timestamps
0:00:00: Tom's book about Bayes & Bayesian statistics relates to many of my previous episodes and much of my own research
0:03:12: A brief biography of Thomas Bayes (about whom very little is known)
0:11:00: The history of probability theory
0:36:23: Bayesian songs
0:43:17: Bayes & the replication crisis
0:57:27: How Tom got into science journalism
1:08:32: A book or paper more people should read
1:10:05: Something Tom wishes he'd learnt sooner
1:14:36: Advice for PhD students/postdocs/people in a transition period

Podcast links

• Website: https://geni.us/bjks-pod
• Twitter: https://geni.us/bjks-pod-twt

Tom's links

• Website: https://geni.us/chivers-web
• Twitter: https://geni.us/chivers-twt
• Podcast: https://geni.us/chivers-pod

Ben's links

• Website: https://geni.us/bjks-web
• Google Scholar: https://geni.us/bjks-scholar
• Twitter: https://geni.us/bjks-twt

References and links

Episode with Stuart Ritchie: https://geni.us/bjks-ritchie
Scott Alexander: https://www.astralcodexten.com/

Bayes (1731). Divine benevolence, or an attempt to prove that the principal end of the divine providence and government is the happiness of his creatures. Being an answer to a pamphlet entitled Divine Rectitude or an inquiry concerning the moral perfections of the deity with a refutation of the notions therein advanced concerning beauty and order, the reason of punishment and the necessity of a state of trial antecedent to perfect happiness.
Bayes (1763). An essay towards solving a problem in the doctrine of chances. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London.
Bellhouse (2004). The Reverend Thomas Bayes, FRS: a biography to celebrate the tercentenary of his birth. Project Euclid.
Bem (2011). Feeling the future: experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect. Journal of personality and social psychology.
Chivers (2024). Everything is Predictable: How Bayesian Statistics Explain Our World.
Chivers & Chivers (2021). How to read numbers: A guide to statistics in the news (and knowing when to trust them).
Chivers (2019). The Rationalist's Guide to the Galaxy: Superintelligent AI and the Geeks Who Are Trying to Save Humanity's Future.
Clarke [not Black, as Tom said] (2020). Piranesi.
Goldacre (2009). Bad science.
Goldacre (2014). Bad pharma: how drug companies mislead doctors and harm patients.
Simmons, Nelson & Simonsohn (2011). False-positive psychology: Undisclosed flexibility in data collection and analysis allows presenting anything as significant. Psychological Science.

Laura Luebbert just finished her PhD in computational biology and will soon be a postdoc with Pardis Sabeti, to hunt some viruses. We talk about how she got into biology, how she created a widely-used software project (gget) with no prior coding experience, her recent reports when she discovered questionable data in key papers about honeybee dances, and much more.

BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith.

Support the show: https://geni.us/bjks-patreon

Timestamps
0:00:00: Why Laura studied biology in Leiden/the Netherlands (and the importance of early scientific training)
0:13:41: How Laura ended up doing a PhD at Caltech with Lior Pachter (and how to choose one project if you're interested in many things)
0:22:00: gget: Developing and maintaining a software tool with no prior programming experience
0:54:07: Laura's future postdoc (with Pardis Sabeti): global virus-hunter
0:59:34: Finding and reporting questionable data in published papers about honeybee dances
1:36:43: A book or paper more people should read
1:38:55: Something Laura wishes she'd learnt sooner
1:40:38: Advice for PhD students/postdocs
1:44:02: Bonus: should I learn Catalan?

Podcast links

• Website: https://geni.us/bjks-pod
• Twitter: https://geni.us/bjks-pod-twt

Laura's links

• Website: https://geni.us/luebbert-web
• Google Scholar: https://geni.us/luebbert-scholar
• Twitter: https://geni.us/luebbert-twt

Ben's links

• Website: https://geni.us/bjks-web
• Google Scholar: https://geni.us/bjks-scholar
• Twitter: https://geni.us/bjks-twt

References and links

Episode with Jessica Polka: https://geni.us/bjks-polka
Episode with Elisabeth Bik: https://geni.us/bjks-bik
Episode with Joe Hilgard: https://geni.us/bjks-hilgard

Prototype fund Germany: https://prototypefund.de/en/
PubPeer: https://pubpeer.com/

Aaronovitch (2014-). Rivers of London series.
Frisch (1927). Aus dem Leben der Bienen.
Luebbert, Sullivan, Carilli, Hjörleifsson, Winnett, Chari & Pachter (2023). Efficient and accurate detection of viral sequences at single-cell resolution reveals putative novel viruses perturbing host gene expression. bioRxiv.
Luebbert & Pachter (2023). Efficient querying of genomic reference databases with gget. Bioinformatics.
Luebbert & Pachter (2024). The miscalibration of the honeybee odometer. arXiv.
https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2024/07/02/the-journal-of-scientific-integrity/