Happy holidays!

As the year draws to a close, here’s hoping all readers a well-deserved break this season. As I write the final post for this track for this year, here I am reflecting on my favorite posts that I’ve written in each track (there will be a similar blog post on the theology track too!).

As of today, I’ve written 19 posts in the ecology track (20 if you include this review post!). While there have been weeks when I’ve been too busy/sick/occupied to commit to a post, for the most part I am fairly satisfied with these posts, both in quantity and in quality. Having a blog to pen down my thoughts on topics that I found interesting has been intellectually fruitful and rewarding and I hope to continue this habit of blogging in 2026, although probably with slightly lower frequency.

All-time favorite blog post

The blog post that I am most proud of this year is my first one ever on academic fraud. In fact, this topic was what drove me to seriously consider finding an avenue in which I can pen down my thoughts on complex issues in my work as an ecologist. Surprisingly, even though I was definitely ill-experienced with WordPress’s UI while crafting my first blog post, I was still the most satisfied with my writing style in this post. Maybe it’s just easier to write about something spicy, like fraud…

Somehow, I was not nearly as satisfied with the sequel to that post, which looked at the countries that produced the most retracted scientific articles. To me, the novelty of that post was its analysis on how retraction rates varied across countries, but I found it challenging to meaningfully comment on those trends without digging much deeper into the data – a deep dive I simply didn’t have time for. Maybe someday I will pick this up again…

Favorite hardcore ecology blog post

Several blog posts in the ecology track were covering topics related to the general scientific enterprise, such as fraud, biases and education. A small subset, however, dove deep into various ecological topics such as conservation and functional ecology. Among these, my favorite post goes to the one on shifting baselines. Even though my own research was more closely related to a different blog post, I still found the most satisfaction in thinking and writing about shifting baselines given its relevancy to so many adjacent ecological topics such as conservation, restoration and environmental law. Perhaps my favoritism is because the topic sounds so pedantic and arcane on the surface, yet it has immediate repercussions on some of the most pressing issues we face in ecology today.

Favorite data-driven blog post

A small number of my posts pulled data from various sources, either to prove a point or to highlight an analytical process. These kinds of posts tend to experience poor readership for obvious reasons (who enjoys reading charts and numbers?), but among these my favorite goes to the post on soccer teams. To write that post, I resorted to writing my own R script in the spirit of the original study that inspired the post’s topic that there is no one single right answer in science. I think it cannot be stressed enough that every single scientific finding in history was built on scientists making hundreds of seemingly trivial, arbitrary decisions in their hypotheses, experimental design and statistical analyses. Most of the time, doing science is a matter of creativity and judgement, and not necessarily based on objectivity or rules set in stone.

Favorite post that blends both ecology and theology together

A big motivation for crafting two separate tracks in this blog is to show how my experiences in my day job (as an ecologist) complemented or conflicted with my thoughts about God and Scripture (as a believer). In my opinion, the post that best highlights the crossroads between ecology and theology is the discussion on the valuation of biodiversity. As a believer, I think all life is sacred in some way and deserves to be conserved and protected. Yet, the ecologist in me knows that is 1) unrealistic; 2) unverifiable; and 3) a valuation not necessarily shared by everyone. Thus, wrestling the two perspectives on biodiversity together was an intellectually fulfilling exercise that made it one of my favorite posts to date.

Least favorite post

Finally, as I picked my favorites, there was one specific post that gave me the icks while writing it. That post happened to be a response to the Samantha Fulnecky essay controversy, where I explored crafting an essay about gender that felt scientifically legit, yet grounded by conservative religious convictions that Fulnecky initially wrote in her original submission. Crafting that essay forced me to hold some pretty dehumanizing views that made the writing process feel unnatural and forced (which was kind of the point, but ew regardless). Looking back, I don’t think my Frankenstein of a writing was suitable to be in a blog format (and certainly not in one of such small readership); perhaps I might try to submit it to Reddit someday to invite more critiques and viewership…

Closing thoughts

2025 has been my first year of blogging, and I am proud of myself for sticking it through. I hope to be able to carry on this habit of writing and letting my thoughts roam on paper (it’s a great alternative to doomscrolling btw), though I anticipate that I’ll commit to a biweekly post instead, taking turns between the two tracks.

Happy new year everyone!