In conjunction with the Uncommon Alliance: Women in STEM conference in Washington, DC (8-9 March 2013), there was a social media push (#DCSTEM) in conjunction with International Women’s Day to get professionals in the sciences to provide 140 characters of encouraging young women to go into STEM fields. I encourage, in my own way, but I can’t shake the uncomfortable feeling that I’m being a bit disingenuous when I do so.
Continue reading “Recruiting under false pretenses?”
Author: Josh Witten
http://www.thefinchandpea.com
The Well-Rounded Scientist
Grad students know sayings about the importance of being well-rounded only apply to tenured faculty with funding. We aren’t going to worry about how our hobbies make us better scientists, but about how being scientists makes us better at our hobbies. On St. Patrick’s Day (BYOB), Neuroscientist, opera soprano, and Point of Inquiry host Indre Viskontas will be hanging out with the staff of The Finch & Pea on Google+ to chat about how her scientific background informs her approach to singing. Josh will also, invariably, talk about rugby.
When: 17 March 2013 @ 9PM Eastern (6PM Pacific)
Where: Google+ Hangout
NB: Indre has also agreed that she will not hold it against us if we trick her into singing Irish drinking songs.
Right Answer, Wrong Question
Author’s Note: Post was written without access only to the abstract, not the full text, of the journal article in question. Note that the argument is not with the methods or results of the research, but with how the research question has been presented.
University of Chicago Medicine & Biological Sciences tweeted the following tweet on Twitter today highlighting the work of post-doc Laure Ségurel on genetic risks for Type 2 Diabetes:
The work itself is interesting in its own right. Investigating the population genetic history of genetic markers associated with Type 2 Diabetes risk could have multiple applications, beyond the high level of intellectual interest.
The question used to frame the research, however, troubles me, because it plays to general misconceptions about the evolutionary dominance and efficiency of natural selection in humans:
Why is this deleterious disease so common, while the associated genetic variants should be removed by natural selection? –Ségurel et al (Eur J Hum Genet. 2013 Jan 23. doi: 10.1038/ejhg.2012.295)
Have Science, Will Travel – The Google Map
Do you know what is very useful for mapping out the places you have visited? Maps. That’s why we have started plotting out the places we’ve visited and written about here on our handy Have Science, Will Travel Google Map.
World Book Day
In honor of World Book Day, here are a few books that we’ve reviewed and found interesting in the past year:
The Finch and Pea 