If you study emotions or emotion-related phenomena in animals (e.g., circuit neuroscience, animal welfare, etc), please please please read this excellent new book by @BatjaMesquita on cultural variation in emotion.

Inherent in the vast majority of studies in animals... 1/ ... on emotions, whether those studies are trying to suss out a neural circuit or understand what stimuli capture's animals' attention, is the assumption that emotions are "conserved" across phylogeny - all animals have some set of emotions (with lots of emphasis on fear). 2/

Writing Resources 🧵:

I started out a horrible writer, full of debilitating anxiety re:writing. I have a sig LD that makes both reading & writing really hard. I got help way too late (end of PhD) and scraped by to finish my PhD. Reading a TON about writing has helped me...

1/ ... not only to figure out how to do it, but how to do it pretty well; not only how to not hate it, but how to love it. If I (w/my sig language processing issues) can learn to write well and love to write, I believe the vast majority of people can too.

2/

Circa 2013, I realized that my career was in trouble. Something about being 5 years into PD, end of my F31, lots of job aps + no interest, & seeing my friends all launch their careers, made me realize that I wasn't good at many components of my job. So, I started reading... 1/ ... what I call "academic self-help books". In reality, lots aren't targeted towards academics at all. Over the years, I've promised trainees a blog post on the best/worst resources, but not gotten to it. So, I'm going to accomplish the same thing via a series of 🧵s.

2/

I was, for a very long time, a horrible no good very bad writer. And I hated doing it. And it caused great anxiety.

I spent a couple of years binging on "academic self help" books (mostly about writing) and just forcing myself (with much agony) to just sit down and do it. 1/

https://twitter.com/Sakiera_Hudson/status/1483997028350840836

2/
At some point, with lots of time spent writing and identification of a language processing disorder (which led to learning some compensation techniques & understanding the source of my anxiety), it stopped being so awful.

And then every so slowly, writing became a joy.

I’m in the middle of reviewing grants and seeing a lot of the same issues in them.

A thread of 1/dunno how many.

Of note: When I review a grant, I start from the premise “I want to fund this; convince me I’m not wrong” (the alternative being “convince me I should find this”). Issue 1.1: Define your terms. Don’t assume reviewers will be squarely in your subdiscipline (often we aren’t). Don’t assume you’re using the term in the only way it can be used. Tell your reader how you are using key phrases, even if you think that person should know. 2/