michael catchen

@mdcatchen.bsky.social

4148 Followers 478 Following

data scientist/research software engineer, Schmidt Center for Data Science and Environment @ UC Berkeley. building open software for bioacoustic monitoring. phd in ML for biogeography of species interaction networks. gottacatchenall.github.io he/him

Scientific figure showing hotspots of projected losses of interactions in a bumble bee pollination network.
Scientific figure depicting species elevational range shifts under three different climate scenarios in the top left, and bivariate plots depicting hotspots of species gain and loss in the southern rocky mountains on the right.
A conceptual figure outlining a protocol for using species distribution models to prioritize sampling for pathogens in wildlife
the phrase "but we see a large increase in absolute loser bees" in an excerpt from a draft scientific manuscript
A LinkedIn comment with text: "We celebrate Christ who MAY HAVE actually been quantum too. He dissappear for 3 days but some scholars think he just shrank down VERY SMALL until he able to find growth ray or pill or liquid (unknown). It a test of our faith to believe in that which we cannot see like molecules or ants. MORE STUDY"
A passage from "The Dialectical Biologist" by Levins and Lewontin. The paragraph reads: "One form of reductionist materialism regards abstractions as a form of idealism, so materialism in science necessarily overthrows abstractions and replaces them with some sort of “real” entities, each of which is then unique because of the immense complexity of interacting forces on each and because of the underlying stochasticity of nature. It is obvious, however, that we cannot eliminate all abstractions, or else nothing would remain but chronicles of events. If any causal explanations are to be given, except in the trivial sense that a historically antecedent state is said to be the cause of later ones, then some degree of abstraction is indispensable. There can be no predictability or manipulation of the world except by grouping events into classes, and this grouping in turn means ignoring the unique properties of events and abstracting the events. We can hardly have a serious discussion of a science without abstraction. What makes science materialist is that the process of abstraction is explicit and recognized as historically contingent within the science. Abstraction becomes destructive when the abstract is reified and when the historical process of abstraction is forgotten, so that the abstract descriptions are taken for descriptions of the actual objects."
Clippy the annoying paperclip saying "It looks like the best lack all convictions. Would you like some help with that?" Below is a checkbox that reads "Don't show me this tip again"
Text: In addition, exercises that are especially recommended are marked by a marginal encouraging rat. Drawing of a cartoon rat.