SFSYO: Scientist of the Month Rebecca Wragg Sykes
Science For Six-Year-Olds (SFSYO for this school year) is a recurring segment on Science Decoded for Mrs. Podolak’s first grade class at Lincoln-Hubbard elementary school. This year the posts are inspired by #iamscience (also a Tumblr) and #realwomenofscience two hashtags on twitter that drove home for me the importance of teaching people who scientists are and what they really do.
Hello first graders! I’m so excited to introduce you to our February scientist of the month Dr. Rebecca Wragg Sykes. Becky is a palaeolithic archaeologist (I’ll let her explain what that means). Like I did with our other scientists, Penny, Philipp, Anne-Marike, and Pete I asked Becky some questions to find out more about what she does. I hope you will enjoy learning more about her and her research. Below you can read our interview, and if you’d like to ask her any questions, be sure to leave them in the comments!
Erin: What type of scientist are you?
Researchers on a field survery in South
Africa in 2004 (photo by Dr. Sykes)
Becky: I’m a Palaeolithic archaeologist, which means that I study how people lived during the Stone Age by looking at the things they left behind. “Palaeolithic” actually means ‘old stone age’, and I specialise in the Neanderthals, who were an ancient type of human living in Europe and parts of West Asia between about 300 thousand and 30 thousand years ago. There were four ices ages in the enormous length of time they were around, as well as periods when it was warm like it is now. You will have up to 4% Neanderthal DNA inside you, depending on where your own ancestors come from in the world.
I try to work out how these very successful humans lived, by looking at how they used different types of stone technology to survive (for example they made the first glue, from birch bark pitch), how much they moved around the landscape and what kinds of social networks they had: how often did they meet up with each other.
Erin: What did you study in school, and where did you go?
Becky: I loved learning a lot of different things, including literature, history and science. I also enjoyed art. But when I chose my A-levels (final high school subjects) I took Ancient History (Roman and Ancient Greek), French and English Literature. My school (Graveney School, London) was a comprehensive (not fee-paying) school with a great mix of students from many cultures and backgrounds. I did my first archaeology degree at University of Bristol because they had a rock art course, then I decided I enjoyed human origins and did a Masters in this at University of Southampton. My PhD on the British Late Neanderthals was at University of Sheffield.
Erin: Where do you work and what does a typical day at work entail?
Becky: Right now I work part-time to support my family while I am writing a book and articles on my PhD research. This June I will be starting my first proper science job at the Université Bordeaux in France, thanks to a European fellowship (the Marie Curie program). I will be working with many other specialists from around the world who all study human origins too.My project is looking at the Neanderthals who lived in the mountains and valleys in South-West France, trying to match the stone tools that come from open-air sites with those we have already studied from caves with lots of deep layers of artefacts and animal bones. By looking at the kinds of rock the tools are made from at each site, and where those rocks come from, you can start to map out the territory of Neanderthals in the landscape. From this you can begin to work out how far they travelled, whether they exchanged tools with each other, and how complex their relationships with each other must have been. These are the Big Questions in human origins research!
As a stone tool researcher, my day could be spent measuring and recording features on lots and lots of artefacts; later on I use computer programs to look for patterns, like which kinds of stone were preferred for which types of tools. After this, I spend time writing about my findings so everyone can understand about our amazing ancestors.
Erin: Why did you decide to become a scientist?
Becky working with colleague Geoff Smith, a mammoth specialist, on a museum collection.
Becky: I’m a scientist for the same reason that you are all interested in the things you like: everyone has something they’re fascinated by, that they want to know more about. Asking “How?” and “Why?” are things we should never stop doing, and being a scientist means you get to find these things out about the stuff that interests you most. Since I was very young I loved history and imagining what living in the past would have been like, so when I found out that being an archaeologist meant I could do that, I decided that this was the job for me! If I hadn’t become an archaeologist, my other dream job would be an astronomer or a wildlife researcher.
Erin: What is your favorite thing about your job?
Becky: I think two things are my favourite. One is that as an archaeologist I get to be outside excavating sites which is a lot of fun, especially if the weather is nice! I also get to become really great friends with people who I dig with for weeks, and finding something incredible never gets old!
The other thing is that working in science means I get to meet amazing people from all over the world who are interested in the same thing as me, and we can share our passion and find new ways to work together.
Erin: What is something about your job that might surprise us?
Becky: Even though it’s true that archaeologists spend time digging, we also spend many hours back at our office or lab, for example I’ve spent months and months studying thousands of stone tools. Even though collecting my data like this can get a bit boring, sometimes it hits you that a real Neanderthal who lived and laughed and enjoyed the sun also held this tool when there were still woolly mammoths and glaciers (ice sheets) a mile thick. That’s pretty awesome to touch the past like that.
Erin: What are your favorite things to do for fun?
Becky: I love getting out into nature especially watching birds (I’m writing a book about birds in prehistory). I enjoy writing about science on my blog, and taking photographs. I really like to play games on the Xbox with my husband, and I have a weakness for science fiction novels.
***
What do you think first graders? I think Becky’s work is pretty cool, do you have any questions for her? Be sure to leave them in the comments. For any adult readers you can catch Becky on twitter @LeMoustier
Jorge Cham: The Science Gap
I recently watched this TED talk given by Jorge Cham, the creator of PhD Comics (Piled Higher and Deeper) and I wanted to make sure I shared it here because he makes some great points about science communcation. I don’t think anything he brings up would really come as a shock to someone who pays attention to science and the media, but I do think that his use of humor and cartoons is very effective.
The traditional way that scientists get their research in the form of an academically published article out to the public is “sub-optimal?” Not exactly a shocker, but an important point nonetheless. Sometimes I think we (and by that I mean me) have a tendency to get so wrapped up in the science communication world that you can almost forget that so many people are really far removed from the issues and research that we tackle on a daily basis. As a science writer it is my job to be a bridge between scientists and the public, so it is always a good reminder to think about the level of understanding and interest of your audience.
There are a lot more points to make about this one, but I’m short on time for blogging this week, so I’m just going to take my own advice from last week’s post and not push myself to think things when my brain is tired. (Better to put my brain cells toward thinking about #scio13!) But, if you have thoughts, by all means I’d love to know what you think!
Before I just leave this here, Cham mentions the cartoon he made at the request of Daniel Whiteson to explain what the Higgs Boson is in the TED talk so I thought I would also post that for those who are interested. It really is a great explanation of the Higgs… something I know a lot of science writers including myself have struggled with!
Filling the Empty Page: Reading To Write
You’ve started a blog. Congratulations. Now what?
Of the many things I learned while in Journalism school, perhaps the bit of advice that I echo the most is that if you want to write well, you must read good writing. I’ve found this to be particularly true when blogging. If you want to blog about a topic it is extemely adventageous for you to be aware of what others have already said on the subject. It doesn’t do you or anyone else any good for you to produce content that is already out there (especially if your audience is smaller, and definitely if you don’t cover the topic as well as your peers.)
It has been my experience as a science blogger for three years that what you write doesn’t have to be the most timely, exciting thing on the Internet. Sure, those studies and stories that are making waves are great to write about, and when I blog about things like dinosaurs farting themselves to death I get a decent amount of traffic. But why would anyone care what I think of a study on dinosaurs when they could head over to Laelaps and read what Brian Switek has to say about it? Why would anyone care what I think about an infectous disease story when the world has Maryn McKenna’s Superbug? Or any chemical story when Deborah Blum has that beat superbly locked down?
I don’t think there is much value to writing about things that others have already covered, and covered well, unless there is some angle or something I feel like I can bring to the conversation. For the record, “I agree” doesn’t add much to the conversation – unless a topic is controversial and someone is getting attacked by the trolls and you want to show solidarity. If I do have something to say, in most of those cases it would probably be more beneficial as a blogger (especially a new bloger) to add a comment to those existing posts and jump into the conversation than sounding off in my own diatribe. There are, of course, exceptions when I do think it is worthwhile to toss in your two cents about a topic. But, in general if you aren’t going to blog about the latest splashy story, then what ARE you going to blog about?
What has made the traffic on my blog spike, and has increased my profile as a blogger more than anything else that I’ve done is to write about what interests me the most. Simple, I know, but I think when you are just starting out as a blogger it can be easy to feel like you need to be talking about what everyone else is talking about. The way to get noticed isn’t to join the herd, the way to get noticed is to do something that no one else is doing. Writing about what you feel most passionate about, regardless of everyone else, will make you stand out. Writing about something that matters to you, and gets you fired up, is in my humble opinion the key to writing an exciting post. If you’re excited, it will bleed through your writing.
Offer readers something they can’t get elsewhere – whether that is a manifestation of your childhood obsession with Amelia Earhart, a series of interviews with people you find interesting, or ramblings on your love/hate relationship with learning to code. Find answers to the questions that are bugging you, like when I decided to find out why the Scientific American blog network is so supportive of fledgling science writers. Your blog is your corner of the Internet, so carve it out for yourself. Make yourself at home. You wouldn’t decorate your home in a style that everyone else likes just because they like it, so don’t do it to your blog.
All this isn’t to say that the ideas are just going to start pouring onto the page. Just about every week I spend too much time staring at the empty screen trying to figure out what it is I want to say, and what matters enough to warrant a post, and throwing out all my bad ideas before I hit on something with a spark. Which brings me back to the advice I started with: read good writing. The idea for this post came from reading a collection of blog posts called The Best Science Writing Online 2012 (fomerly known as the Open Laboratory) the brainchild of series editor Bora Zivkovic and 2012 edition guest editor Jennifer Ouellette. The collection gets my sincere recommendation – if you have any interest in being a science blogger, you should check it out. Reading the posts in the collection inspired me, and reminded me how important it is to worry less about what you think everyone wants to read, and more about what you want to say.
The sheer diversity of topics, of styles, and of voices in this book is pretty astounding, and drives home the point that writing about what excites you is so important to having a successful blog. Reading all of those posts didn’t make me want to blog about any of the topics, but it did make me want to emulate every one of those writers’ ability to draw on what interests them and write about it in a way that is beautifully their own. Whether than means giving a voice to a fungus fairtale, telling us a tragedy worthy of Romeo and Juliet, or getting pissed off about the way the media ran with a story – all of the writers in The Best Science Writing Online 2012 gave me a piece of themselves in their posts. They are all great writers to be sure, but what makes the posts effective, makes them resonate, is the excitement and interest that they have in their subject whether they are writing about sperm, gin or pirates (really, you should read this collection.)
If you want to write a blog, find the time to read. I get ideas from other writers and other blogs all of the time. It’s never about copying the subject matter, the inspiration comes from putting my own twist on trends and ideas and figuring out what I want to say. I want to talk about what I read, so I write book reviews (even grossly out of date ones) and have started collecting weekly links of my Media Consumption. I want to share my passion for science so I interview researchers for Science For Six Year Olds. When I wanted to talk about grad school, and the job market, I did. When I wanted to write about pengiun sex (and then mention it in a job interview) I did. You don’t have to write about current science news to have ideas that are relevant and worth talking about. Reading other science blogs is the best way I’ve found to figure out what kind of science blogger you want to be and to figure out what fits for you. The Best Science Writing Online 2012 is a great place to start.
If you were to go back in the archives of my blog and see what I wrote about when I first started, it is really nothing like the Science Decoded that I have today. I started out writing a daily post about a science story plucked from the media. I almost never do that anymore. These days I blog more about issues related to being a blogger and a writer than I do about actual topics in science. I think this shift happened because right now I feel more passionate about sharing my experience as a writer than I do about actually doing more science writing (I am priviledged enough that science writing is my day job, afterall.) That’s not to say that I won’t shift back to writing more about scientific research, or to writing about current science news. There is absolutely a need for that type of analysis and for having those conversations online, but I’m not going to force myself to have an opinion about something when there are so many other topics that I actually do have an opinion on. As The Best Science Writing Online 2012 reminded me, your blog should never be a chore. If you always write about what interests you, it won’t be.
SFSYO: Scientist of the Month Pete Etchells
Science For Six-Year-Olds (SFSYO for this school year) is a recurring segment on Science Decoded for Mrs. Podolak’s first grade class at Lincoln-Hubbard elementary school. This year the posts are inspired by #iamscience (also a Tumblr) and #realwomenofscience two hashtags on twitter that drove home for me the importance of teaching people who scientists are and what they really do.
Hello first graders! Happy New Year! I’m so excited to start 2013 with our January scientist of the month. This month we have Dr. Pete Etchells, a psychologist. Like I did with our other scientists I asked Pete some questions to find out more about what he does. I hope you will enjoy learning more about him. Below you can read our interview, and if you’d like to ask him any questions, be sure to leave them in the comments!
Erin: What type of scientist are you?
Pete: I’m a psychologist, which means that I’m interested in how the human mind works. More specifically, I’m a biological psychologist, which is a broad area of psychology that uses biology to understand human behavior. My research covers all sorts of things – from how we make eye movements when looking at things that are moving, to how people perceive the way others walk, or how video games might influence our behavior when we’re growing up.
Erin: What did you study in school and where did you attend?
Pete: I studied for all three of my degrees at the University of Bristol in the southwest of the United Kingdom. My undergraduate degree was in Experimental Psychology, and I loved it so much that I stayed in the same department for a Master’s in Research Methods and then a PhD in Psychology. All together, I spent seven years in University!
Erin: Where do you work, and what does a typical day at work entail?
Courtesy Pete Etchells
Pete: I’m actually about to start a new job as an assistant professor at Bath Spa University, but I’ve been doing a bit of teaching there since September. My main job for the past two years has been as a research assistant at Bristol University. I’ve been working on a really cool project looking at why certain types of walking movements might be seen as attractive by others, and whether or not parts of someone’s personality can be seen in the way that they walk. For example, if I rate myself on a questionnaire as being a really anxious person, if I showed someone a video of me walking along, would they similar think that I looked anxious? It’s a really big project, so an average day might involve collecting data from participants in the morning – I work in a motion capture lab, which is the sort of technology that they used when filming movies like Avatar! Testing someone takes about 3 hours, and after that we have a lot of video, motion capture and questionnaire data that we need to collect together and tidy up, so I’ll probably be in my office doing that at my computer. Two days a week, I teach classes at Bath Spa University on Biological Psychology, so I’ll head over there in the daytime to give the class, and then rush back to Bristol to finish off my work for the day. It’s pretty hectic!
Erin: Why did you decide to become a scientist?
Pete: I don’t think I ever decided to be a scientist – I think I’ve always been one. You don’t need any qualifications to be a scientist, you just need to be interested about how the world around you works. I’ve always been excited by trying to figure out how stuff works, so doing a science degree at University was a natural choice for me.
Erin: What is your favorite thing about your job?
Pete: The best part of my job is that it’s so varied – some days I might be in a dark lab running experiments, while other days I might be in a coffee shop working on a paper. It means that I don’t get stuck doing one thing for too long, which I think would make me bored. Also, I love teaching – I love giving classes on how the brain works, because it’s such a huge and fascinating subject that’s relevant to everyone listening.
Erin: What is something about your job that might surprise us?
Pete: Lots of people think of scientists as stuffy old men in white coats who never leave their labs. One thing that you might find surprising (apart from the fact that we don’t look like that!) is that we get to go all over the world to talk about our work. Every year, we have conferences where scientists in a specific area get together and tell each other about what they’ve been researching over the past year. Since I started my PhD, I’ve been lucky enough to go to Naples in Florida, Albuquerque, Philadelphia, Montpellier in France, Laussanne in Switzerland, Holland, and lots of other exciting places! In 2014 I’m hoping to go to a conference in Brazil, which would be brilliant because I’ve never been.
Erin: What are some of your favorite things to do for fun?
Pete: I’m a gamer, so I play lots of video games in my spare time – Halo, Professor Layton, World of Warcraft, all sorts of things! I also play guitar to relax and unwind. I also have two lovely little kittens called Louis and Molly, who spend a lot of time causing trouble that I have to clean up afterwards.
***
What do you think first graders? I think Dr. Pete has a really interesting job. Is there anything you’d like to ask him about his research or being a scientist? Be sure to leave any questions in the comments!
For my adult readers you can catch Pete on twitter @DrPeteEtchells, and if you are interested in being a scientist of the month feel free to DM me @erinpodolak. Thanks so much for volunteering Pete!
Crowdfunding A Library
Before you read this you should know that for this post I interviewed a personal friend, Cassi Elton, whom I have known since the sixth grade (we’ve come a long way since 1999.) I’ve supported her project financially, so obviously I’m not an impartial voice. However, the purpose of this post isn’t to raise funds for the Antelope Lending Library – it is to take a closer look at the structure of the project. With grants harder and harder to obtain, harnessing the power of the Internet as a community is playing a larger role in taking a project from enthusiasm to reality. Crowdfunding is something that is already being done to support science research, education, and other community projects so I asked my friend to share her experience.
First things first, who is Cassi Elton and what is the Antelope Lending Library? I’ll allow her to explain using their fundraising video:
Elton is a graduate student in the School of Library and Information Sciences at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa. She saw a need in her community for a library on the southeast side of Iowa City – located closer to several schools so that students can go there regularly rather than needing parents to take them downtown to participate in events at the main library. As you can see from the video, the people involved in this project are certainly not short on ideas and excitement – or on books. They already have stacks of donated books. What they need is a physical space. So where does the money for that come from?
While there are grants and funding opportunities for educational, community based projects, according to Elton they usually support programming. So, it is a lot easier to find a grant that would support classes for STEM education, than it is to pay for a building to hold them in. This is something that I’ve heard echoed by scientists and researchers as well – not that they need a building, but that getting started is becoming harder and harder because to get a grant for research you need to have already done research. A lot of work goes into getting to the point where a project could compete for a grant. It reminds me of the employment dilemma so many of us are facing today: to get experience you need to already have experience. To get financial support, you need to have proof that your research or project is worth funding.
So if a grant isn’t an option to fund the physical space needed for the Antelope Lending Library, what else is there? Private philanthropy is a possibility, but the Antelope Lending Library is a small endeavor. These are graduate students trying to do something to make an impact in their local community. Finding a philanthropist willing to give the library $20,000 as a lump sum is highly unlikely, I mean how many people do you know that would give that kind of cash to a library that doesn’t actually exist yet? What is far more probable is that if Elton, along with her fellow graduate students and members of the community start reaching out to their personal networks the sum needed for the library’s rent can be cobbled together from smaller gifts – everything from $10 to $1,000. That’s where the Internet comes in.
The Antelope Lending Library is hosting their fundraising on Indiegogo – which some people who read this blog may already be familiar with, since it is the website used by Matthew Inman of the Oatmeal to raise over $1 million for a museum dedicated to Nikola Tesla. But Indiegogo is just one platform for launching a project like this. Kickstarter is another popular crowdfunding website. For scientists there is also PetriDish, and RocketHub which hosted evolutionary pharmacologist Ethan Perlstein’s successful campaign to crowdfund a methlab (for science, of course.) One of the things Elton says she likes about Indiegogo is the fact that through flexible funding the Antelope Lending Library will still get whatever funds are raised even if they don’t hit their $20,000 goal. Although, with more than $6,000 raised to date the question of what to do in that situation is a complicated one, “It is stressful because if we don’t reach our goal then what are we going to do with the money we get?” said Elton, “Push forward or try to come up with a different project? We’re responsible for these donations and we take that seriously.”
When I asked what the experience of trying to raise rent money through crowdfunding was like, Elton has positive and negative feedback. On the positive side, putting the project on the Internet took the community from individuals in Iowa City, to individuals across the country. “Something really great about the Internet is that the community can extend beyond your physical location,” said Elton, “A lot of the donations are people from all over the country who value books and libraries so it’s great to get their support for a project that isn’t in their town – but that they still value.”
Although, Elton was quick to point out that calling on existing relationships was the first thing they did to start getting the word out about their campaign, “We have gotten donations from strangers – at least they are strangers to me, but the majority of the donations so far have come from people that I or my family contacted,” said Elton.
Another positive (or negative, depending on how you look at it) aspect of crowdfunding the library on the Internet was the ability to make in impression using multimedia. If you watched the video above, you’ll see that Elton shot it herself at home – but even this homemade endeavor is more appealing than a simple block of text. “The multimedia aspect is really great, but it was really intimidating to make a movie,” said Elton. “To make a movie is easy – to make a GOOD movie, that is harder.” Elton says it took roughly two months to get the movie together in part because volunteers balancing timing with other commitments presents a challenge, but also because a video itself is a project and trying to be ambitious and do a great job with it can consume a lot of time.
“The video isn’t the only way you are letting people know about the project, so it’s not the end all be all you are also letting people know what other sites to go to, and the written summary is also important,” says Elton. “Let people know through your own social media, the video is a part of it, but it’s not all of it.”
While incorporating multimedia was its own rewarding challenge, Elton says there are some downsides to fundraising on the Internet. According to Indiegogo it can take seven interactions with a cause before an individual will consider donating. So, the Antelope Lending Library has to get their campaign in front of people over and over to be effective – but they also have to balance getting out there with being overwhelming or annoying. “It’s hard to ask people for money,” says Elton. “With this you have to ask them for it several times that can be a lot.” Elton also says that with a campaign that spans 60 days, building up momentum and continuing to be excited, getting the word out, and keeping those who have already given up to date on the campaign’s progress is a big time commitment.
Another tip Elton has for anyone interested in crowdfunding their own project, is to make sure that when people ask you, “Why are you doing this?” (Which they inevitably will) you have a solid answer ready. It is also important to have an open conversation with other similar organizations in the area. The public library in Iowa City is aware of the Antelope Lending Library and has no opposition to a library opening on the southeast side of town – especially since the public library doesn’t have the resources for a location in that area. “Keep conversations going and stay open to collaborations,” says Elton. It makes it easier for the community to support a project that they know other organizations in their community also support.
Elton also highlighted social media – their website is hosted on Tumblr, they also have Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter pages – for getting the word out about the project. “Ultimately, I think that person to person outreach is the most effective,” says Elton. “As you get people on board, they talk to people so it’s still a one on one interaction but it expands.”
With grants more competitive than ever, I think we’ll see more and more projects like this turning to the public for help. The Antelope Lending Library project is just one example of how crowdfunding can work – if you’ve been involved in a project that used the Internet to raise funds, I’d love to hear about your experience.
SFSYO: Scientist of the Month Anne-Marike Schiffer
Science For Six-Year-Olds (SFSYO for this school year) is a recurring segment on Science Decoded for Mrs. Podolak’s first grade class at Lincoln-Hubbard elementary school. This year the posts are inspired by #iamscience (also a Tumblr) and #realwomenofscience two hashtags on twitter that drove home for me the importance of teaching people who scientists are and what they really do.
Hello first graders! I’m so excited to introduce you to our December scientist of the month. Remember our November scientist, Philipp? Well he enjoyed telling you about what he does so much, that his sister Anne-Marike decided to join us this month to tell you all about being a neuroscientist. Like I did with Penny and Philipp I asked Anne-Marike some questions to find out more about what she does. I hope you will enjoy learning more about her. Below you can read our interview, and if you’d like to ask her any questions, be sure to leave them in the comments!
Erin: What type of scientist are you?
Ann-Marike: I’m a neuroscientist. This means I look at how our brains work. I’m interested in how the things we see and hear make the brain learn to expect what to see and hear. For example, when you listen to a song you know, you will know what sounds and words come next. I study what the brain does if we see something that surprises us: when does the brain change it’s expectations? For example, if your friend always sings a wrong line in a song, does your brain expect his errors?
Erin: What did you study in school, and where did you attend?
Anne-Marike: I studied Psychology in Bochum in Germany and Neuropsychology in Masstricht in the Netherlands. I also did some work in a lab in Dunedin in New Zealand. After that I did my PhD in Neuroscience in Cologne in Germany. Erin: What type of scientist are you?
Erin: Where do you work and what does a typical day at work entail?
Anne-Marike: I work in the Psychology department at Oxford University in England. I spend most of my time either at my desk or in a laboratory running experiments with my students. The experiments I do to study how the brain learns are very much like computer games. So when I’m at my desk I write these computer games or read about what other scientists who study similar things have done. Sometimes, I spend my time in a center where they have a scanner that I can use to see what the brain does during these computer games.
Erin: Why did you decide to become a scientist?
Anne-Marike: I think I loved biology at school and then decided to become a scientist early on, in my first year in college. Some of my friends think it’s the thing I’m cut out for and predicted that I would become a scientist when we were at school. They say I wouldn’t be as good at anything else, maybe they are right.
Erin: What is you favorite thing about your job?
Anne-Marike: I very much enjoy coming up with new theories that I can put to the test. I love deciding on questions and on how the questions could be answered. I find it very exciting to look at the results of my experiments, like the images of brain activity.
Erin: What is something about your job that might surprise us?
Anne-Marike: When you find something interesting and can try it out, then thinking about it is actually a lot of fun. I thought even writing my PhD thesis was a really cool thing to do.
Erin: What are some of your favorite things to do for fun?
Anne-Marike: I go horse-riding and sometimes play touch rugby. I try to spend a lot of time with my family and I meet my friends as often as I can. We often get into great discussions, that I enjoy. When I was still living in Cologne, I’d also spend a lot of time at the zoo.
***What do you think about Anne-Marike’s work as a neuroscientist? What do you think about the fact that she studies how the brain works using tests that are like computer games? I think she has a pretty great job, and has a good time being a scientist too! If there is anything you’d like to ask her about being a neuroscientist be sure to leave your questions in the comments!
For any of my adult readers, if you enjoy these posts and would like to be the scientist of the month yourself, send me an email or DM me on Twitter, I’d love another volunteer!
The Question of Code Revisited: I Think I Can, So Can’t I?
“All of the true things I’m about to tell you are shameless lies.” Is it ever acceptable to walk into an interview with a mentality straight out of the Books of Bokonon from Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle? In addition to being what is possibly my favorite literary quote ever, I think the idea of telling true lies really epitomizes an issue that so many science writers trying to break into the business are facing: when asked what our skills are, is what we feel comfortable knowing, all that we really know?
I’ve been turning this over in my brain for a couple of months now. In September I wrote a blog post about whether or not learning to code should be required for journalists. Since I admittedly can’t code, I took the position that it doesn’t need to be required. I also said that in interviews it is totally unacceptable to claim that you can code when you can’t. I didn’t expect that statement to be a part of the post that would get any discussion going, but as it turned out it became for me the most interesting part. When the #sci4hels got talking about it, what seemed like a black and white issue (of course you shouldn’t stretch the truth in an interview!) became a lot less clear and a lot more complicated.
Degrees of truth
A lie is a lie, right? As journalists don’t we value the implicit requirement of honestly above nearly all else? Doesn’t this extend from what we say in a piece to the way we conduct ourselves professionally? So then, can you sit in an interview and when asked if you can code, edit video, make a podcast, etc. say that you can when you’ve never done it before? Is the skill that you have the ability to code or is the skill that you have the ability to learn to code? Learn quickly. In a way so that your potential employer never finds out that the moment you told them you could code you actually couldn’t. Is stretching the truth about your abilities lying? Even if it is lying, is it wrong or is it just a smart business move?
For me, the idea of claiming to know code when I don’t is absurd. Mostly because I don’t stand a chance of learning code in the time between getting hired and needing to use it on a professional level. I know, I know code isn’t THAT hard. I’ve heard that argument, the “you can do if you try” talk. I’m not scared to try, I just know myself enough to know that I’m not going to learn to code in a day. It took several weeks of my seventh grade school year for the Pythagorean theorem to make sense, and that’s not exactly hard. I try, but I’m not always a quick study. Maybe as far as being a millennial goes this puts me in the minority, but I know that if I sat in an interview and promised to code at a professional level in a days time I’d be telling a Vonnegut style shameless lie.
Why was this the bane of my middle school existence? Via Wikimedia Commons
But, I’m not everybody. If the light bulb in your brain turned on a little bit faster when you were twelve and learning that a² + b² = c² then maybe you can learn to code in a day. Maybe code is the most logical thing you’ve ever seen and you will be its master by dinnertime. If you tell a potential employer that you can code, and you are completely sure of your ability to be able to deliver when called upon to use those skills, are you telling a lie? Is knowing what you need to know in order to know how to code the same as just knowing how to code?
I said before that I wasn’t afraid of code, but by sitting in an interview and swearing to the things I can’t do, am I selling myself short? Some of us might just be hiding behind a list of things we can’t do or won’t do and simultaneously shrinking our career prospects. Self sabotage, as it were. Is it principled, or pathetic? Being honest might be a one way ticket straight to the rejection pile. If I communicate the fact that I’d like to learn to code, and would gladly rise to that challenge enough to make someone want to hire me?
I have no faith in common sense
How do you know whether what you know is enough to claim that you know it? As #sci4hels were discussing this issue, what came up over and over was that you have to use common sense. You have to walk a thin line between what you know, what you know you can learn and how you present yourself and your abilities to your employers. If you claim to know something, and you fall flat on your face and don’t deliver the goods, you could do some real damage to your career. Not just because you’ll make your boss angry, not just because you might lose your job, not just because it might be embarrassing; but also because when you fail to deliver what started as a stretched bit of truth unraveled into a shameless lie. Getting caught in a lie in this business is a nail in your career’s coffin.
Sure, telling a lie about your ability isn’t the same as telling a lie in a story. I’m not saying that getting caught lying to an employer about what you can do is going to send your career to Lehrer type depths, but it isn’t going to help you get hired anywhere else. You run the risk of ending up labeled as someone who can’t deliver. Getting paid jobs as a science writer is hard enough, getting them once a pissed off editor tells all their connections not to hire you because you aren’t going to produce the work you say you will is going to be impossible.
This is a business about connections, if you start burning bridges so early in your career, you can really back yourself into a corner. It also speaks to character, doesn’t it? If you’ll lie about your abilities, what else will you lie about? How is anyone supposed to know where your professional ethics fall when you establish yourself as someone for whom a lie isn’t a lie it’s really more of a gray area.
So should we be telling young journalists that it’s okay to claim to be a master of science communication so long as you don’t fall flat on your face? It’s okay to lie, as long as you don’t fail and get caught. Is that really the lesson here? I have zero faith in advising journalism students to use common sense. Zero. If common sense were a clear boundary we wouldn’t still be spending entire class periods discussing what is Facebook appropriate (yes, even that cute picture of you playing beer pong with your Grandma probably doesn’t convey that you are serious about your career) and I’ve sat through those classes so I know very well what kind of questions students are asking. Use common sense doesn’t satisfy.
It’s raining code, and apparently we’re in the Matrix. Via Shutterstock
So then what are you supposed to do? The only answer that doesn’t present an ethical dilemma is to just learn code and then you’ll know you know it and you won’t be in a position where stretching the truth even comes up. Even someone with my stance has to agree that code is a nice skill to be packing in your arsenal. But this goes further than code. It could apply to any kind of program or web application; you can’t be an expert in everything. There are definitely going to be jobs that you might want where you don’t know the technology that is being used. It comes down to a personal risk vs. benefits assessment.
There is a lot to lose if you get caught claiming you can do things and not rising to the challenge – your reputation and your future prospects to name a few. There is also a lot to gain by forcing yourself to rise to the challenge to learn new things, get the job and stay competitive in this field. Maybe what new and young science journalists need is the kick in the rear that promising to deliver upon a skill brings. Maybe if I put myself in that situation I’d find that code isn’t nearly as bad as the Pythagorean theorem, and a lot of doors for future job prospects would get opened. Maybe I would torch my promising young career in a blaze of gray area glory.
Common sense is itself a gray area. If we are going to advise journalism students of anything, I’d say informed decision making is probably the way to go. You should be aware of the risks you take when you climb out on a limb with no safety net, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still climb. It has to be a personal case by case call, which really doesn’t help much. Hopefully though, if you think through the risks and the benefits of how you can present your skills, you’ll come to a decision that is the right one for you and your career. So proceed with caution.
On Admiring Moustaches and Hating Children
I don’t actually hate children, there is a story attached to this title. Please don’t send me angry emails. Also, since I’m about to rant about charitable giving for full disclosure you should know I work for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. There will also be sarcasm, so read accordingly.
A few weeks ago I was checking out at a national grocery store chain that shall remain nameless. I had stopped in after work and was rooting through my giant bag for my wallet when I got asked the standard “would you like to donated $1 to fill in the blank” in this case it was “healthy school lunches.” My answer, as I was swiping my card, was “no thank you.” Not because I don’t think children should have access to healthy meals through their schools, but because I had no idea what this charity was. Sure, I could have peppered the woman at the check out with questions about which organization the money was going to benefit, what schools did it work in, what kind of food were we talking about, but if I demanded calorie counts would she have known? On top of that I, and I’m sure everyone behind me in line, had somewhere to be. I was in a rush. I donate to other things. If I gave my obligatory $1 every time I got asked, I’d be giving away money every day. I had reasons for saying no so I expected that to be the end of the exchange.
It was of course not the end of the exchange. As I was swiping my card, the woman at the register responded to my “no thank you” with “why, you hate kids?” Yes. Obviously. That’s it. Little bastards needing all that nurturing and attention. It’s not like they’re the future of America or anything, they definitely don’t deserve healthy lunches. Let’s just give everyone the physical and emotional burdens of obesity! Nothing like a little diabetes to set the kids straight. Come, on! Just because I don’t want to fork over my $1 for an unknown charity doesn’t make me a child hating monster. I don’t work with kids regularly, but I’ve made it my mission this year to write a blog post every month introducing first graders in my hometown to different scientists that I’ve met on Twitter. I care about education, and yes I care about issues like obesity and access to healthy food.
In retrospect, I should have done more than just fix the woman working the register with my best dirty look, but I didn’t. Upon seeing my reaction she quickly covered with “just kidding” which for me just amounted to, “please don’t ask to speak to my manager.”As I said, I was in a rush so while still pretty ticked I just grabbed my bag and walked out of the store but this whole incident bugged me. I’m blogging about it weeks later, so clearly it has lingered.
It wasn’t just that I thought the women was rude. Or the insinuation that because I won’t give to that specific cause, I hate children. It has much more to do with how we give to charities as a whole. The give $1 to support fill in the blank model works. It works very well. Just look at places like St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital who raise millions every year doing just that. But St. Jude’s is recognizable, I’m more inclined to say yes to them because I at least have some idea that they are legitimate. But a completely unknown charity, no thank you. So why was the response to my “no” public shaming? When did we become a culture where taking the extra 30 seconds to think through the request to give was cause to embarrass me at the register?
Coming through the months of October and November, marked for breast cancer and prostate cancer awareness respectively, I think we can all identify with feeling a little bombarded by pleas to donate. But donate to what exactly? Buy a cookie, buy a bracelet, buy a pair of windshield wipers. Particularly with breast cancer awareness month, everything turns pink, and we are supposed to believe that our consumption of these products is helping cancer patients. But is it? I saw many examples of the ways that all of this product consumption doesn’t help the people you intend it to chronicled on twitter – especially with the hashtag #pinknausea started by Xeni Jardin of Boing Boing. Why aren’t we more careful with our money when it comes to supporting causes? There are any number of cancer charities or research organizations you could donate to when October or November roll around. But we keep buying the cookies and the bracelets, despite warnings to “Think Before You Pink.”
Is the worst that we are doing just spreading apathy toward doing our duty to ensure that our money goes to a responsible place where it will have an impact? Is “slacktivism” relatively harmless? I’ll answer my own question here with no, it’s not. When you support an awareness campaign, don’t you wonder what their action is going to be? What is the increased awareness actually going to do?
This brings me to the moustaches. You may have spotted many of your male friends or relatives sporting a little excess facial hair this month, I certainly have. It is November, also known at Movember a month dedicated to moustaches…and prostate cancer. Although what moustaches and prostates have to do with one another I’m not sure exactly, I suppose it is the association with manliness. Regardless, the Movember campaign encourages men to grow a moustache for a month to help raise awareness, and funds, for prostate cancer. Now I admire moustaches as much as the next gal, although sometimes things just go too far (oh, the things that can’t be unseen!) but really are the men out there growing and grooming their facial hair doing anything for prostate cancer?
The issues associated with Movember and prostate cancer screening are summarized really well in this post by Gary Schwitzer on HealthNewsReview.org (and reading it is what really motivated me to write this!) Essentially, when it comes to prostate cancer sometimes routine screening can lead to unnecessary treatments and procedures that can do some harm. There are also benefits to screening. In general when it comes to screening the answer is to talk it through with your doctor and figure out what is right for you. Still, these are not clear cut issues and even doctors have different opinions. The New England Journal of Medicine featured prostate cancer screening in their Clinical Decisions column which pits opposing medical views against each other and asked readers to vote on them (see here and here, though I’m not sure about your access situation.) The results came back in favor of screening with the prostate cancer specific antigen (PSA) test. But, it wasn’t a landslide.
I’ve known that my friends grew moustaches in November for at least two years. I’ve known that this had something to do with prostate cancer for about three weeks. Shame on me I guess, but clearly this is a problem for an awareness campaign, and it isn’t the only one. While some people are out there growing moustaches just for the awesomeness, for people who do take Movember seriously when we say we want to raise awareness of prostate cancer, what are we advocating for? More screening? Prostate cancer screening, like most screening, is a giant kettle of worms.
So does that mean we shouldn’t give to Movember when our moustached brethren ask us? No, if you want to support the Prostate Cancer Foundation or LiveStrong, then you should. But you should at least know that those are the organizations that Movember supports. We need to think more critically about these awareness campaigns, and what we are doing when we agree to give $1 to any charity that asks. All of this – my grocery store I don’t hate children episode, the pinking of America, and all the moustache growing – all come together with one main point. It isn’t enough to just participate or toss in your $1. You need to know and understand what you are giving to and why. Supporting cancer research is so important, especially in these days when funding from the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute is so hard to come by. All the more reason why if you are going to give, you should give intelligently. Make sure it matters.
I said at the beginning of this post that I work for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. This little fact makes me undoubtedly biased when it comes to charitable giving, so I’m not going to give you any recommendations about where to give. Your money is yours, and you should make those decisions yourself. That’s what I do. But, since I’ve spent this whole post ranting about giving smarter I am going to recommend that should you find yourself interested in giving to cancer research or healthy lunches or veterans or anything else you check out where your money is going. Charity Navigator is one tool that I really like to help sort through which organizations handle their money well and might help you figure out where you can do some real good.
In the meantime I’ll just be over here ranting, admiring moustaches, and hating children.
SFSYO Scientist of the Month: Philipp Schiffer
Science For Six-Year-Olds (SFSYO for this school year) is a recurring segment on Science Decoded for Mrs. Podolak’s first grade class at Lincoln-Hubbard elementary school. This year the posts are inspired by #iamscience (also a Tumblr) and #realwomenofscience two hashtags on twitter that drove home for me the importance of teaching people who scientists are and what they really do.
Hello first graders! I hope you are all okay and back at school after hurricane Sandy. Now that it is November we have a new scientist of the month. I am so excited to introduce you to Philipp Schiffer who is finishing up his PhD at school in Cologne, Germany. Like I did with Dr. Penny, I asked Philipp a bunch of questions to find out more about what he does. I hope you will enjoy learning more about him. Below you can read my interview with Philipp, and if you’d like to ask him any questions, be sure to leave them in the comments!
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Erin: What type of scientist are you?
At work in the lab. Courtesy of Philipp Schiffer.
Philipp: I’m an evolutionary biologist [this means he studies genetics, DNA, and how different living things came to be,] currently I’ve morphed into a computer geek but I’m hoping to move away from the computer screen a bit more in the future.
Erin: What did you study in school, and where did you go?
Philipp: I studied Biology, majoring in Zoology with minors in Genetics and Palaeontology. I did most of my studies at the University of Cologne, Germany with some time in Australia studying and catching wombats. I’m currently finishing my PhD thesis in Cologne, but I’ve also studied at the University of California Riverside where I was learning about nematodes. I also got to spend some time in Edinburgh in Scotland.
Erin: Where do you work and what does a typical day at work entail?
Philipp: It’s called the Cologne Biocenter, in the middle of Köln am Rhein. At the moment I am spending most of my working hours in front of my computer, doing science in-silico, which means I am analyzing data from the genome sequencing assays I conduct. In between I hop over to the lab to study the nematodes, look at their DNA or run some other experiments.
Erin: Why did you decided to become a scientist?
Philipp: I have always liked to think about things. I guess when I was in the 9th or 10th grade I wanted to tackle the big problems/questions like finding a cure for diseases. Now of course, I do something totally different, which I actually like better!
Erin: What is your favorite thing about your job?
Out of the lab. Courtesy of Philipp Schiffer.
Philipp: There is a new and intriguing question to answer every day, more than one on most days. That is the main thing, I am really interested in answering questions about life – why it is the way it is and how did it become like that? Why are species different and how does it happen. There is a woo hoo! moment when things finally click into place and make sense, which is really cool. It is also really nice to work with people around the world – I like the exchange of thoughts and ideas in different cultures. I enjoy talking to colleagues very much, and working with students. It is also fun to be able to listen to music when working, and so much more.
Erin: What is something about your job that might surprise us?
Philipp: There is no magic in science, actually most ideas or experiments don’t work the way you think they will, and once something really works the main thing is to wonder why did it work this time? So there is a lot of frustration in being a scientist, but then there is also a lot of fun. Still, the first thing is the most important, science is hard work.
Erin: What are your favorite things to do for fun?
Philipp: Science IS fun. I also like wind surfing and sailing, I like rugby too and wish I had more time to do that. I also read about history, politics, and the world in general as much as I can. I very much enjoy chatting with friends over coffee.
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What do you think first graders? I think Philipp has a pretty cool job, and he’s gotten to go to school in so many different places, can you find them all on a map? If there is anything you’d like to know about his research, make sure to ask him questions in the comments.
For any of my regular (adult) followers you can catch Philipp on Twitter @evolgenomology. If you’d like to be featured as a scientist of the month send me an email or DM me on twitter, I’d love more volunteers and thank you Philipp for lending us your time to share what you do!
Medical History is Biography
The title of this post is a very elegant summation provided by Siddhartha Mukherjee of a talk that he gave at Harvard Medical School (HMS) last week. I was lucky enough to be at HMS (in the overflow room, sadly) to listen to Mukherjee’s talk. You may remember that I recently read and reviewed his Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. I leapt at the chance to see him talk about his work because I loved the book so much, I gave it a full recommendation for everyone with no caveats, which doesn’t happen often.
Mukherjee was the speaker for the 37th annual Joseph Garland lecture, honoring the former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine 1948-1968 and former president of the Boston Medical Library. Mukherjee is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Columbia University, but he earned his MD from HMS and thus spent many hours in the Countway Library, which is the merged effort of HMS and the former Boston Medical Library. Mukherjee is every bit as eloquent when speaking as when writing, and I enjoyed hearing him articulate the thought process that went into his book.
The talk was called “Four Revolutions and a Funereal” and walked briefly through the history of cancer research (as much as one can in an hour) to arrive at present day. The four revolutions represented the greatest breakthroughs in the understanding of what cancer is: 1. Cancer is a disease of cells, 2. Cancer is a disease of genes, 3. Cancer is a disease of genomes, and 4. Cancer is an organismal disease. The fourth I found particularly interesting, and it is worth repeating Mukherjee’s explanation of how he defines organismal, “of or pertaining to an organism as a whole including its physiology, environment and interactions.” From everything I’ve learned in the last three months writing on a cancer biology beat, I feel like that statement certainly hits the nail on the head.
From the 1800’s when cancer was thought to be a disease caused by black bile and an imbalance of cardinal fluids, which Mukherjee jokingly called the “hydrolic theory of pathology,” our understanding of cancer has come a long way. But it seems like with every bit of progress made the field almost becomes murkier. The more we tease the problem apart, the more complicated we realize it is. From cell division, to genes that drive the process, to the proteins that control gene expression, it seems as though the smaller you go into the cell processes the more numerous the possibilities about what could go wrong get. Mukherjee closed his talk by saying that cancer is a disease of pathways, and that figuring out how to alter aberrant communication and information processing as it goes on within a cell is the future of cancer research.
Throughout the talk I was struck by the way Mukherjee managed to engage with a audience, perhaps a third of which was sitting with me in a room across the quad from where he was presenting. I was so captivated by his talk, which I thought was pretty impressive for watching a live stream. Just like in his book, he interspersed his talk with annecdotes that brought to life his personal quest for understanding which is what I think from listening to him really drove him to write the book in the first place.
An example of this is how he dedicated his book to Robert Sandler (1945-1948) a little boy who achieved a temporary remission from leukemia under Sidney Farber’s care at Boston Children’s Hospital. Though Sandler ultimately died of the disease his place in history was solidified by that landmark medical study. When Mukherjee was trying to track the identities of Farber’s early patients all he could come up with were the initials R.S. He never was able to find the identity through available records in the United States. He discovered who R.S. was while visiting his parents in India, the information was in the hands of a neighbor of theirs who was a historian and had a roster of Farber’s first chemotherapy patients. Mukherjee dedicated the book to the little boy, and after the book was published, he got a phone call from Robert Sandler’s twin brother who had seen the book in a store, opened to the dedication page and noticed his brother’s name.
This story hits at the heart of what Mukherjee meant when he said that “medical history is biography.” This holds true for science history in general. Discoveries made, research conducted, experiments performed, trials carried out – the personal narrative underscores everything. We always say that being able to craft a compelling narrative is critical to effective science communication, and this is why. People want to hear stories about other people, and science including medicine is inherently a story about people. As a speaker Mukherjee was able to do exactly what I admired so much in his book; he explained the science and told us where it was going, but he did so in a way pulled at our emotions, perceptions, and our ability to relate to other people. He made it human, driving home the idea that good writing doesn’t just serve to explain. Context is everything, and as writers our challenge is to make sense of science, to connect people with science through a context that they can understand.
If you haven’t read Emperor of All Maladies yet, you might want to get on that…