Finding the lead, beating the bushes, and other journalism-speak

It all started with this blog as a way to refresh my non-academic writing skills. I found that I have enjoyed writing about science, albeit it to a somewhat muted audience, even more than I thought I would. It has become ever clear that I enjoy writing about science much more than doing the science. And with the uncertainty in lab research I realize that I should at least pursue an uncertain field that I love.

In January I started working as an unofficial intern (ie volunteer) with the UIC Office of Public Affairs, science staff. It has been a great experience so far and I have learned a lot about interviewing other scientists, writing headlines, and how to write for the public.

Most recently, I wrote my first article for the UIC science blog. While I know science writing and communication is a crazy competitive field and hard to break into, I am at least have to try my hardest. Wish me luck and stay tuned both here and at http://uicscience.tumblr.com/.

She works really hard but he’s a genius! Why women are less represented in certain fields.

While there is often a call to get more women in the STEM fields, in reality one must look at the different sub-fields rather than the whole. By 2008 women earned more Ph.D.s in biology than men, but that number drops to less 20% for physics or computer science. The results of a study published January in Science help explain why certain fields within STEM and the humanities have much less women than others.

The authors started with three competing hypotheses and used questionnaires (a total of 1800 faculty, postdocs, and students) to determine people’s attitudes within the particular fields. The other variable was the percentage of women Ph.D.s in that field in the U.S. While the other two hypotheses, that the more time-demanding the field, the less women or the more selective the field, the less women, did not hold up, the third showed a strong positive correlation: The higher the emphasis on the need for brilliance to succeed in that field, the fewer women earned Ph.D.s in that field.

Fig 1 from Leslie et al. (2015).  Expectations of brilliance underlie gender
distributions across academic disciplines. Science, 347 (6219).

The general public rarely hears a call for more women in the humanities or social sciences, but this area has a large distribution within the sub-fields. While women are the majority of those getting Ph.D.s in education and psychology, less than 35% of degree-earners are women in economics, philosophy, and computer science. These three fields, as well as physics and computer science are fields that more highly valued giftedness over dedication.

Questions such as, “Even though it’s not politically correct to say it, men are often more suited than women to do high-level work in [discipline],” examined biases about women’s intelligence in the different fields. Indeed, those fields that highly emphasized brilliance were more likely to hold these biases and therefore are likely less welcoming to women.

Interestingly, the same trend held true for African Americans, who the authors state are also stereotyped as lacking inherent intelligence. As a control, the authors showed that the trend was not true for Asian Americans, who, for better or worse are often stereotyped as the “model minority.”

The authors’ recommended that, “academics who wish to diversify their fields might want to downplay talk of innate intellectual gifted-ness and instead highlight the importance of sustained effort for top-level success in their field.”

This supports my previous argument, and post, for the role of imposter feelings in dissuading women from pursuing certain fields. Studies have shown that women are less likely to see themselves as brilliant and more likely to attribute their success to hard work. While I focused on science as a whole, it makes sense that insecurities over being an “intellectual fraud” would be magnified in disciplines where raw intelligence, rather than diligence, is emphasized.

Therefore it seems we need to target the fields themselves with a de-emphasis on “brilliance” (this will be hard to do as those within the field probably like to think of themselves as such) and put more emphasis on women’s intelligence from a young age.

UPDATE to “Informing the public: what is the responsibility of scientists and doctors?”

 Earlier this month I posted about the gap between scientists and the general public. The post centered on the current vaccine “controversy” though there shouldn’t really be any controversy at all. And that was the question posed: as nearly all scientists and doctors agree that the vaccine is safe, what should and can we do to communicate this information to the general public?

Well, since that post I have learned of one school that is offering a free, online course on vaccination. The course, called “Vaccines” is offered through the School of Medicine at University of Pennsylvania and will cover such topics as the science of how vaccines are made and the actual and perceived risks of vaccination. This is a great idea though the cynical side of me thinks those who need the information in the class the most will not give it a chance, especially as the “recommended” reading is “Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All and Vaccinated: One Man's Quest to Defeat the World's Deadliest Diseases” authored by the instructor of the class.

Still, I can’t criticize Dr. Paul Offit too much, especially since it is clear he is trying to defeat these preventable diseases.

If anyone tries to sign up/takes the class (which is 2 hours/week for I don't know how long) please let me know how it goes.

Carl Djerassi: scientist and renaissance man dies at 91

Picture from the IMBA

While to many he was “the father of birth control”, I knew him as the author of Cantor’s Dilemma, an assigned novel in a formative science fiction class. The book is science fiction in that it is fiction set within the world of science. The main characters are Dr. Cantor who runs a competitive research laboratory, his protégé postdoctoral assistant, and their dreams of the Nobel Prize. It was my first glimpse into the human side of scientists, the day-to-day frustrations and promise of glory in a career in science. The author was also an example of what a scientist could be: not just a narrow-focused, socially awkward, perpetually stressed, ivory-towered shut-in, but a person with diverse passions and interests.

I was in my last years of college majoring in science with no direction, having just ruled out med school.  I was having a hard time committing to single career, especially what I conceived of would a boring job in science. I enjoyed my poetry and anthropology classes much more than biochemistry and physiology. Yet I was determined to get a “useful” degree. But Djerassi allowed me to believe that I could have it all – a stable and lucrative career as a scientist and the creative outlets of writing in my spare time. So maybe I didn’t realize that science funding was already on the decline from a 2003 peak, making science anything but a stable career – that’s beside the point. And I certainly have no regrets.

It is difficult to describe Djerassi without using “renaissance man.” He was a poet, playwright, novelist, and esteemed scientist. Sparked by the death of his artist-daughter in 1989, he established an artist’s colony on his ranch in California. [He made mad bucks in investing in the company that produced the pill].

It is perhaps ironic that he was called the father of birth control as numerous scientists over much time contributed to the invention of the pill. It had already been known that high progesterone and estrogen levels prevented pregnancy. He and his colleagues synthesized a progesterone that was used in the earliest contraceptive pills. It is ironic because his writing reveals the dangers of trying to chase accolades and prestige in science. He broached this idea in a 2000 interview, “But identifying scientists is really only a surrogate for identifying the inventions or discoveries…I’m certain that if we didn’t do our work, then someone else would have come along shortly afterwards and done it.”

Perhaps that is the fulfillment he got from writing – he offered unique perspectives on the politics and ethical concerns involved in doing science. Indeed, he saw his writing as a way to bridge science and the public: “I think that we as scientists should educate the public about the scientific and technological advances so that society can decide how best to use them. This is my missionary obsession."

Informing the public: what is the responsibility of scientists and doctors?

 Last year, the U.S. had a record number of measles cases and in January there were over 84 cases in 14 states. According to the Center for Disease Control the majority of these cases were in unvaccinated people. There has been a lot of press coverage of late on the increasing number of people choosing not to vaccinate their children. In California, which has had outbreaks in the last two years, eight percent of kindergartners are not vaccinated against measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR).

A 1998 paper published in a reputable British journal The Lancet, fueled the anti-vaccination movement. The study, led by Dr. Andrew Wakefield, claimed a link between the MMR vaccine and autism and gastrointestinal disease. However the study only looked at 12 children and had no control group. Researchers were not able to replicate the results and numerous studies have not found any link between autism or GI disease and vaccines^1,2.

The evidence against the paper and specifically, Wakefield, is clear and damning. An investigation found numerous conflicts of interest: he received research money from lawyers representing parents suing vaccine companies. He patented an alternative measles vaccine that would benefit if the MMR vaccine were found unsafe. In 2010, the paper was retracted by The Lancet and Wakefield was disbarred from practicing medicine in the U.K. because of his intentional falsification in the study and endangerment of children.

A study just published by the Pew Research Foundation found that 68% of American adults say childhood vaccines such as the MMR should be required. In contrast, 86% of scientists thought they should be required³. So – what is a scientist or doctor to do when they still hear the Wakefield paper being bandied about as evidence against vaccination? What is our responsibility when doctors swear an oath and nearly all scientists receive taxpayer dollars?

We are all familiar with the skepticism about climate change so it is easy to dismiss the chasm between scientists and the general public as a conservative problem. But the measles outbreak is occurring in affluent, liberal areas whereas Mississippi has the highest vaccination rate of any state. (Granted, this is because the rest of Mississippi’s healthcare infrastructure is so poor as to necessitate strict vaccination guidelines.) A guest on a last week’s episode of the Diane Rehm Show stated the problem well: mothers who don’t vaccinate their children aren’t uninformed, they are misinformed.

Additionally, in the Pew Research study, the largest gap in opinion was not on climate change, but on a liberal issue: the safety of eating genetically modified (GM) foods. 90% of scientists said it was safe to east GM foods while only 37% of non-scientists did.

Another problem that is often cited by scientists is the public’s mistrust of science. While an attractive theory, because it removes our responsibility to bridge that gap, the Pew study paints a somewhat different picture. 75% of adults polled said government spending on basic science pays off in the long run and 79% of people say science has made life easier, having a positive effect on things like health care.

So if we can’t blame it on Republicans (as academics are sometimes wont to do) and we can’t blame it on blanket mistrust of science, then perhaps, we, as scientists need to look at our role in educating the public. Should we go on to parenting message boards and whenever the Wakefield study is cited – and it still often is – respond with a barrage of rebuttals? While I don’t know what would be most effective at bridging the gap, I think it is important to at least raise the question that we may have this responsibility.

References:

1. Madsen KM, Hviid A, Vestergaard M, et al. (November 2002). "A population-based study of measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination and autism". N. Engl. J. Med. 347 (19): 1477–82.

2. Black C, Kaye JA, Jick H (August 2002). "Relation of childhood gastrointestinal disorders to autism: nested case-control study using data from the UK General Practice Research Database". BMJ 325 (7361): 419–21.

3. Pew Research Center, January 29, 2015, “Public and Scientists’ Views on Science and Society”