Beyond the Bench: Poetry Edition

In college I took a poetry writing class for fun. I really enjoyed the writing and editing process though now I can't bring myself to read my poems about smoking Pall Malls and rebelling against gender norms. During an office visit my wonderful professor recommended that I use my unique background in science as inspiration in my poems. But I was not really in a place scientifically and as a fledging poet to fully realize her vision. But what I took away from her suggestion was the possibility to merge my two interests – how science and poetry are not inherently polar opposites.

I have heard, mainly in abstract terms, how art and poetry can change the way one thinks and approaches science. As someone who enjoys painting and writing, I also unfortunately struggle to imagine how this is done practically – I think about science and then when I need a break, I paint. Sometimes I paint about science and technology but I have not found a way, consciously at least, to bring art into science (aside from some nice Illustrator images for presentations).

And so I have come to highly respect and appreciate those who can merge the two worlds and by doing so, enrich both. In that vein, I will be posting about some poets who were also scientists (or scientists who were also poets) or who brought scientific themes to their poetry.

Margaret Cavendish Lucas was a philosopher, writer, and scientist of the seventeenth century. In 1667 she sparked a debate by asking to attend a session of the Royal Society of London and was eventually allowed to attend to see Robert Boyle demonstrate several experiments. She wrote about topics such as the scientific method and how the matter that makes up humans, rather than a divine God, enabled us to think. Below is one of her more famous poems.

Of Many Worlds in This World

Just like as in a nest of boxes round,
Degrees of sizes in each box are found.
So, in this world, may many others be
Thinner and less, and less still by degree:
Although they are not subject to our sense,
A world may be no bigger than two-pence.
Nature is curious, and such works may shape,
Which our dull senses easily escape:
For creatures, small as atoms, may be there,
If every one a creature's figure bear.
If atoms four, a world can make, then see
What several worlds might in an ear-ring be:
For millions of those atoms may be in
The head of one small, little, single pin.
And if thus small, then ladies may well wear
A world of worlds, as pendants in each ear.

Her writing strikes me as straightforward for the time – less than 50 years after Shakespeare was producing the works that would perplex middle and high schoolers for centuries. The poem encapsulates the excitement of scientific discovery. Things at the cellular level may be just as exciting as the planets and space, which seems to capture the imagination of the general public much more. With the line: “A world may be no bigger than a two-pence,” I envision a bustling cellular city in the vein of London circa the industrial revolution: people pushing their wares on carts along axon tracks, the protein patrolmen monitoring the streets for people in the wrong place, and the occasional bacterial thief that threatens to disturb the whole society.

The last lines, “ladies may well wear a world of worlds, as pendants in each ear” evoke the aristocracy to which Cavendish belonged. And just as we may be blind to the cellular and atomic worlds underlying our being, aristocrats were blind to the troubles as well as essentiality of the working class. The line “our dull senses easily escape” could be a critique of her class and the dullness of being a woman in a time when women had no access to science. Though I could be misinterpreting it through my modern lens, “Nature is curious,” suggests that it is in human nature, which also encompasses women, to be fascinated by the world around them.

Genetic factors associated with autism also linked to higher intelligence

From “Rain Man” to the BBC’s “Sherlock Holmes”, popular culture portrays autistic people as having astounding abilities in areas of memory and deduction while lacking basic social skills.  While most people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are intellectually impaired, research supports the idea that they can have increased cognition in non-verbal areas.

But a study published yesterday by researchers from University of Edinburgh was the first to find a link between genetic factors for autism and higher intelligence in people without the condition.

ASD  is a developmental disability that causes behavioral, learning, and social communication disabilities. One out of 68 children are reported to have ASD in the U.S. according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Up till now it was impossible to rule out that cognitive defects seen in autistic individuals were simply did not come from the environment, driven by the social and communication challenges of autism.

At this point, it is helpful to have a brief refresher on genetics: Our genes encode the information that tells our cells what to do. While everyone has the same genes, we have slightly different versions, or alleles, of the genes that help make us different from each other. These versions are passed on to our children.

Sometimes a single rare mutation can cause disease, such as in Cystic Fibrosis. But often it is more complex with mutations in different genes working together or with the environment to cause disease.

This more complicated version is the case for ASD. Last year it was shown that many gene alleles that are risk factors for autism are actually common in the general population but a combination are needed to cause autism.

The researchers wanted to see if these common risk alleles for autism were linked to cognition. They examined nearly 10,000 adults in the general population (i.e. without autism) and tested their cognitive performance on four tests as well as analyzing their DNA for alleles known to be associated with ASD.

They found a positive correlation between the presence of ASD risk-alleles and general cognitive performance. Specifically, those with the ASD-associated alleles did better on tests for verbal fluency, logical memory, and vocabulary.

The researchers suggest this finding will give insight into why some autistic people display incredible intelligence in certain areas and help understanding of how genetic factors for autism change brain function.

Clarke, J-K., et al. (2015). Common polygenic risk for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is associated with cognitive ability in the general population. Molecular Psychiatry. doi: 10.1038/mp.2015.12

“She’s strong for a girl”: The Negative Impact of Stereotypes About Women

This week I had the privilege of writing a guest post for the SciLogs Blog, The Next Regeneration. The link for the article is here, but I have also included it on Bench and Beyond as one of the great things about SciLogs is that writers retain editorial control. 

We have all heard the stereotypes: women can’t drive, they don’t understand computers, and how many blondes does it take to screw in a light bulb? But those are all in good fun, right? But what if gender stereotypes actually bring about the observed differences between men and women that supposedly underline these stereotypes? A recent study by the psychologist Marina Pavlova at the University of Tübingen tested this idea.

While previous studies have supported the idea that negative stereotypes hinder women’s athletic and cognitive performance on a range of tests, those studies all looked at tasks with preexisting stereotypes. For example women score worse on math tests when reminded of old “adages” about women and math.

Pavlova and her colleagues instead wanted to see how stereotype impacts an area where no gender difference exists. Could a fabricated stereotype change the way women and men perform on a test?

They chose the event arrangement (EA) test, used on certain modern IQ tests to measure nonverbal reasoning skills. Participants arrange cards depicting scenes, such as a man fishing, cooking over a campfire, and preparing for a trip, in a logical order to create a story. Scores are based on the number of correct sequences and amount of time required.

117 college students were split into three groups and given different instructions for the test. The first group was given standard instructions on the task. A second group was additionally told: “females usually perform worse on this task” while the third group was told: “males usually perform worse on this task.”

Men and women performed equally well when no stereotyped messages were given. When the group was told that women usually perform worse, women’s scores on the test decreased. In contrast, men’s scores actually increased, perhaps reflecting that their confidence was boosted by the perceived weakness of women. helped boost that they thrived on their perceived advantage.

The most surprising findings came from the group that was told that men usually do worse on the test. Men’s performance was diminished as expected, but instead of improving women’s scores, they dropped just as much as men.

Pavlova and her colleagues also looked at positive messages. Telling participants that women are usually better at the EA test modestly improved women’s scores without affecting men. However, the opposite was not true. Women’s performance was even more hurt by being told that men are better at the test than the more explicit message that women are worse.

What clearly emerges from the study is that women are more susceptible to stereotyping than men. The only time men’s performance declined was when given the explicit negative male message.

Why are women more impacted by the stereotypes than men? Although controlling for preexisting stereotypes on this specific test, researchers cannot escape society’s influence on women, which begins at an incredibly early age. Women are constantly under the threat of stereotype. And women who break stereotypes face harsh criticism not faced by men, such as criticism of working mothers who use daycare or the perception of women who speak up as being aggressive or bossy rather than being leaders.

The researchers suggest that since women have a history of being typecast, they may misinterpret the message “males are usually worse” to mean that if men have a hard time with the test, women will have an even harder time. 

More and more studies confirm the existence of subtle forms of bias against women at all levels of society. It is a major finding that these subtle biases can have even greater psychological consequences than more blatant and bygone forms of sexism. Interventions are needed to combat existing stereotypes at an early age.

Pavlova, M., Weber, S., Simoes, E., & Sokolov, A. (2014). Gender Stereotype Susceptibility PLoS ONE, 9 (12) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0114802