Are You a Conformist?
All the new and exciting developments in movement ecology demonstrate that a new era for the science of animal space use may be in the making. However, not all ecologists are that enthusiastic. On one hand we are confronted with new theoretical ideas, criticism of old dogma and off-piste hypotheses that are still in the process of being empirically scrutinized. On the other hand these developments also bring up the expected dose of controversy, confusion, and plain ignorance of what’s on the table. Taking the latter attitude would imply a risk of becoming a conformist, which should not be confounded with sound scientific skepticism. A conformist typically observe a new theoretical direction and its empirical support, but will tend to reject its implications “anyway” – even prior to testing the new approach and methods on one’s own data (or prior to waiting for others to do the job on their data). In a recent post, "Stepping Away From the Markov Lamppost" (see Archive), I fo