Posts

Dr Matthew J Grainger

I am an “uncertain ecologist”. My research focuses on uncertainty in conservation decision making and how best to make use of it in statistical models and in communication…

Dynamic Meta-analysis: When Transparency Meets Multiplicity

Dynamic meta-analysis makes evidence synthesis interactive and transparent — but at a cost.

ESHackathon: Unlocking Evidence Synthesis Through Innovation!

Embark on an innovative journey with ESHackathon – where our workshops promote inclusive dynamic spaces for collaboration in evidence synthesis.

Leveraging Open Source Tools for accelerating Evidence Synthesis

Making missing data work for us

Missing data is a problem for the analysis of ecological data but we can use missing data theory to help fill in gaps in biodiversity monitoring data if the missingness is…

Publications

The full list of my publications can be found on GoogleScholar. If you can not find an open access version of any of my publications please get in contact and I will send…

Small data in ecology

Using OpenAlex to get publication metadata

I have been playing around with the OpenAlexR package which interfaces with the OpenAlex API. This allows you to get bibliographic information about publications, authors…

Vote Counting Is Dead (Except When It Isn’t): A Zombie Method in Ecology

Vote counting is one of those methods that most evidence synthesis guidelines discourage and yet it keeps reappearing in ecological and conservation reviews.

What makes a ‘good’ systematic evidence synthesis?

There are lots of “bad” evidence syntheses published but what makes a “good” one and how can we spot them?

Which shortcuts are really shortcuts in systematic reviews?

Reviews in ecology often take short-cuts in the review process - the effect this has on the risk of bias is unknown and could be quite severe. A recent paper showed (in…

Why Ecology Is Not Medicine: The Structural Mismatch in Evidence Synthesis

A lot of evidence synthesis workflows in ecology and conservation are inherited (directly or indirectly) from medicine. That is not inherently bad, meta-analysis is…