Statistical Rethinking Course (Winter 2022 Edition)

This course teaches data analysis, but it focuses on scientific models first. The unfortunate truth about data is that nothing much can be done with it, until we say what caused it. We will prioritize conceptual, causal models and precise questions about those models. We will use Bayesian data analysis to connect scientific models to evidence. And we will learn powerful computational tools for coping with high-dimension, imperfect data of the kind that biologists and social scientists face.

Links: Website, Lectures on YouTube

OpenEvo

Evolving an Open, Networked, and Interdisciplinary
Evolution & Sustainability Education Research Community

We are scientists, artists, teachers, and students working together to reimagine and cultivate a new direction for evolution and sustainability education. We believe interdisciplinary perspectives in evolutionary anthropology can serve as a foundation for  understanding and valuing the science of evolutionary change in our everyday lives and global society. Join us!

Website: http://openevo.eva.mpg.de

Contact in Leipzig: dustin.eirdosh@eva.mpg.de

ManyPrimates

The ManyPrimates project was initiated to facilitate collaboration across study sites in primate cognition research. By joining forces, we hope to address important outstanding questions that individual labs could not answer by themselves. These include:

How reliable are effects in primate cognition research?
How do cognitive abilities map onto phylogeny?
How do environmental variables influence cognition?
How are individual differences in performance structured across tasks and species?

Website: https://manyprimates.github.io/

Contact in Leipzig: manuel_bohn@eva.mpg.de

Repository of the Comparative Cultural Psychology Department of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

The Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology is working on various projects to support open science. This repository contains Open Source Tools developed by the group.

Link: Comparative Cultural Psychology

Cross-Linguistic Linked Data

The Cross-Linguistic Linked Data project is developing and curating interoperable data publication structures using Linked Data principles as integration mechanism for distributed resources. This philosophy allows for

• small-scale efforts to publish individual databases like WALS (World Atlas of Language Structures) or WOLD (World Loanword Database), thereby preserving the brands established by these projects,
• while at the same time facilitating a unified user experience across publications.

Within the project, this approach is applied to publishing lexical and grammatical databases already compiled at the MPI-EVA and elsewhere. This has led to a software framework which can be used to develop database journals, i.e. edited collections of databases submitted by linguists from around the world.

Website: https://clld.org/

Contact in Leipzig: Martin Haspelmath

Martin Haspelmath

I am a comparative linguist who studies the diversity of the world’s grammatical and lexical systems and tries to understand what is universal about them. I am best known for coediting the World atlas of language structures (2005/2013), and as a co-founder of Language Science Press. I am also an honorary (adjunct) professor at Leipzig University.

Website: https://www.eva.mpg.de/de/linguistic-and-cultural-evolution/staff/martin-haspelmath/

ManyIndividuals

We are a global network of researchers with field sites investigating hypotheses that involve generalizing across many individuals (e.g., populations or species). We conduct the same tests in the same way across species to determine whether the results of particular experiments are generalizable beyond that population or species.

Website: https://github.com/ManyIndividuals/ManyIndividuals

Contact in Leipzig: Corina Logan

Bullied Into Bad Science

The Bullied Into Bad Science campaign is an initiative by early career researchers (ECRs) for early career researchers who aim for a fairer, more open and ethical research and publication environment.

Website: Bullied Into Bad Science

Contact in Leipzig: Corina Logan

Open Access Publishing at the Max Planck Society

Financed by the national government and federal states, the Max Planck Society engages in basic research in the public interest. Making its scientists’ research findings available for the benefit of the whole of humanity, free of charge whenever possible (Open Access), is a key aspiration of the Society.

Website: Open Access Max-Planck-Gesellschaft