Tag Archives: Lecture

Sciobeantown At the New England Aquarium

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The Aquarium at night, courtesy of my cell phone.

The Aquarium at night, courtesy of my cell phone.

Last night I posed a question to a few sciobeantown folks asking what was their “gateway science” – the topic that got them interested in science in general, the thing that hooked them. It seemed to me that the most common answers were either space or had something to do with animals, whether on land or at sea. This got me thinking about how if animals are the gateway, then zoos and aquariums are really the gatekeepers – the ones with the ability to open up a whole world of science.

This is a fairly fitting observation, since sciobeantown had just left the New England Aquarium when this conversation took place. I quite unabashedly love the aquarium, and its affiliated IMAX theater; it is where I spent my 25th birthday, because I am a grown up. The reason sciobeantown decided to take it to the Aquarium for our October event was because we wanted to give our group a little taste of ScioOceans, a conference going on in Miami geared toward communicating online about, what else, ocean science.

The Aquarium recently reopened several exhibits after being under construction (the penguins are back!) Additionally, they moved their public lectures out of their classroom space and into the IMAX theater – because power points are more acceptable when they are epic IMAX power points. We attended their most popular event of the year the John Carlson Lecture presented by MIT’s Lorenz Center. The topic for this talk was Sea Ice, Climate and Observational Mathematics and was given by John Wettlaufer a professor at Yale and Oxford.

Lectures are so much better in IMAX!

Lectures are so much better in IMAX!

I was fairly impressed by the turn out, it seemed to me that there was a real range of people, from students to retirees who seemed interested and engaged. Like all things, the talk had some positive and negative things. I loved that Wettlaufer took the time to explain what it means to be a scientist, and how science is so many different things all adding their own value. I also loved that he addressed uncertainty and spoke a bit about the perception of science. I felt like he went into a little too much detail about his research itself – by all means, show us what you do, but the screen of equations at a public talk was a little much for me.

Overall I thought it was a great experience, and I’m glad we were able to attend and bring our livetweeting skills. I’ve put together a storify of our tweets in case you’d like to know more about exactly what was covered in the talk. Special thanks to the New England Aquarium for having us, I’m looking forward to coming back to check out the new exhibits! Also, if you are interested you can follow the Aquarium on twitter @neaq and follow along with @ScioOceans #ScioOceans.

Sciobeantown at Midsummer Nights’ Science

Cancer, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Genetics, Science, Sciobeantown, , , ,

sciobeantownOn July 17, Sciobeantown headed over to the Broad Institute in Cambridge, MA to join in on their four week lecture series: Midsummer Nights’ Science. Members of Sciobeantown took to Twitter with the hashtags #broadtalks and #sciobeantown to livetweet the event, which featured a talk from cancer genomics researcher Levi Garraway.*

If you missed the event, a video of the talk called, “Exploring the genome’s dark matter** what frontiers of genomic research are revealing about cancer” is now online. You can also check out Sciobeantown’s contribution to the Twitter discussion with this Storify of the event by Amanda Dykstra. Thank you to the Broad Institute for setting aside space at this event (which filled the room to capacity) so that Sciobeantown could participate!

*Dr. Garraway is a researcher at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, in addition to his work at the Broad Institute and Harvard Medical School. I do cover his melanoma work as part of my job at Dana-Farber.
**Using dark matter as a metaphor for the non-protein coding portion of the genome has been the subject of some science writer snark (possibly from me…okay, from me) but the title of the talk is the title of the talk, folks.

We’re All Worth $20,000

Blogging, State of Journalism, The Internet, Twitter, ,

If you’re a science writer chances are you’re pissed off right about now. I am. What has me and so many other writers pissed off is this: The Knight Foundation recently paid disgraced journalist Jonah Lehrer $20,000 to speak about how he lied, plagarized and basically stomped all over journalism.

His speech was a lousy apology. I mean, it’s not his fault he made so many mistakes, he’s just too smart for his own good guys. I agree that watching him talk while a public flogging took place on Twitter on a screen behind him was awkward, but are we really supposed to just look at the situation and say, welp, everyone makes mistakes? No. That time I killed the dinosaurs several million years too late because I forgot the zeroes on a date was a mistake. A mistake that came from sloppiness, that I apologized for, and learned from. I was forgiven for that mistake (which was even in an article I wasn’t paid to write.) Fabricating quotes, plagarizing, and lying in multiple publications, for a prolongued period of time, that isn’t an, “everyone makes mistakes” scenario. That is a, you have fundamental character flaws that should prohibit you from doing this job, scenario.

A lot of the science writers I know, young, new, established – it doesn’t matter – were and still are up in arms about the Knight Foundation paying Lehrer $20,000 for his “apology” speech. I’m mad too, I’m mad for every single good journalist out there staring at their bank account wondering if they’ll be able to pay this month’s rent. I’m mad because $20,000 could fund a lot of amazing journalism and the Knight Foundation paid it pretty much just to get people riled up and talking about the Knight Foundation. I’m mad because good journalists are giving up because they can’t make enough money to stay alive in this business. Giving up. But we’re going to keep Lehrer’s career alive. That’s insane.

I have a full time salaried science writing job – it makes me feel lucky on a daily basis that I’m getting paid to do something that I enjoy. Still, as a science writer for a cancer center I’ve been told that I’m a sell-out. I’ve been told that I can’t consider myself a journalist anymore because my objectivity and integrity is tainted by being associated with an organization. Any organization. It doesn’t matter if it happens to be a decent, hell even a good, organization. I took a job in science communication rather than chasing a career in pure journalism because it makes me happy. While in graduate school I started having serious doubts about whether my personality was cut out for journalism. I took a long hard look at what I loved about science writing and decided that the act of communicating, of explaining, of seeing the impact of helping people understand was most important to me. It wasn’t a decision made based on money, but obviously the fact that I could get a paying job doing communication when there are no guarantees in journalism made the decision easier. The decision I made still gets to me sometimes though. It REALLY gets to me when I think about the fact that people contend I can’t consider myself a journalist anymore, but Lehrer can. Lehrer gets to be a journalist. Really?

Where do we even start to try to address the problem here? Can we ever even hope to convince the people who have the money to pay up for writers that are actually worth $20,000 (and really so much more?) I don’t know. But, I think the science writing community did a great thing by reacting to the whole $20,000 debacle by tweeting the names and articles of good writers using the hashtag #worth20k. The suggestion came from @vero_greenwood and was Tweeted by Ed Yong – who is worth far more than $20,000 himself – and ended up creating a list of pretty fantastic writers who deserve a lot more financial support for their work than they’re getting.

I wanted to add my two cents, but twitter is a medium for brevity and I feel like I need to explain WHY the fact that the following people exist means the science communciation ecosystem doesn’t need someone who lies, plagarizes, and then tries to tell us it’s just because he’s so smart. And arrogant. Can’t forget the arrogance. I could never list everyone whose work is worth20k, so this just a few people who inspire me, or have had an impact on my career in some way. I hope you’ll check out the hashtag itself for more, and as Bora Zivkovic said on twitter the whole SA Incubator is a list of people who are worth20k, so editors – help a new science writer out!

#worth20k (and so much more)

Jennifer Ouellette – I’ve been pretty open about the fact that I’ve never taken a physics class, barely scraped my way through high school chemistry with a D, and never took a math class higher than Algebra III (which I and everyone else in my high school knew was math for the dumb kids.) I’ve pretty much always wanted to write about science, but there was a moment in there when I wanted to be a scientist, (straight A’s in biology might have had something to do with it) – but I decided against science itself because I didn’t think I’d ever be smart enough to pass the classes. When I was just starting graduate school for Journalism focused on science writing I was really intimidated by writing about things I’d never studied. Enter Jennifer Ouellette. She came to UW-Madison as the science writer in residence and talked to us about how she taught herself physics. She blogs at Cocktail Party Physics and has written several books on physics and calculus. Whenever I start feeling like I’m in over my head and I’m just not going to get something right, I think about that talk. I dive back into the paper, or look up the answers and I figure it out. I remember that I can do this. I remember that I’m smart enough. TELL ME THAT’S NOT WORTH $20,000.

Steve Silberman – Last year UW-Madison hosted a conference on Science Denial. I was just sitting pre-session drinking my coffee when Steve Silberman sat down next to me. As we started up a conversation in my head I really couldn’t help thinking, “this is the most unassuming guy ever” because he clearly had no idea that I’d been trying to think of something inteligent to say to start up a conversation with him since the conference started. I’ve admired his writing for a while now, I always enjoy his PLoS blog and am so looking forward to his book! He always impresses me with the bravery and honesty in his writing. He tackles issues that might make people uncomfortable or be controversial and he does so with grace and eloquence. Worth $20,000.

Maggie Koerth-Baker – Maggie is someone I only recently got to meet (cheers, scio13) but whose work I’ve admired since I came across this fantastic explainer she wrote following the Fukushima nuclear incident. Nuclear Energy 101: Inside the “black box” of power plants is an awesome example of how to explain something that can be really complicated so that people take away the key information they need. I write a lot of explainers in my job, and I come back to this piece often as an example of how to get things right. Worth $20,000.

Rose Eveleth – The fact that since Science Online I have had people say to me, “wait, so you actually KNOW Rose?” totally just shows how amazing and admired Rose Eveleth is in the science writing community. She is a thoughful and creative science journalist who is busting her ass to make the science communication ecosystem better. You know what I would like you to do? I would like you go put her Kickstarter for Science Studio, a project with Ben Lillie and Bora Zivkovic, over the $8,000 goal so that they can sort through the best science audio AND video for us. Please. Only needs $8,000 but is SO WORTH $20,000.

Ivan Oransky – The man behind Retraction Watch and Embargo Watch, Ivan inspires me as a science writer because he saw a need in science communication and he did something about it. He started the blogs, and they’ve become a great resource and forum for talking about serious issues in science and communication. He made something, that we needed and benefit from – and he just does it so well. Be inspired. Create new, awesome things. Worth $20,000.

The rest of #sci4hels – Bora Zivkovic, Lena Groeger, and Kathleen Raven – All of you, and of course Rose, leave me pretty much feeling honored that I get to be associated with you. Whenever I talk about our panel at the World Conference of Science Journalists and people ask me “so why are you going?” I always reply with “I have no idea” because I really don’t feel worthy compared to all of you. I admire all of you so much, I did before all this #sci4hels killer science journalists of the future business, and I know I’ll continue to admire you after. Bora – our brave leader and the blogfather, not afraid to say what needs to get said, a never ending source of support and one hell of a writer. Check out his post on commenting threads, just the latest in a long line of awesome, thoughtful posts. Lena – her work at Propublica consistently impresses me, check out the awesome data visualizations used to track oil and natural gas pipeline accidents. I always love reading Kathleen’s articles, just one example is David Blaine’s Electrical Stunt Could Create Harmful Ozone. You are each worth $20,000 and then some.

Medical History is Biography

Cancer, Good Writing, , , ,

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…