Socrates famously declared that "the only thing we can know is that we know nothing." Descartes created four rules in order to avoid making specious claims to knowledge:
"I thought the following four [rules] would be enough, provided that I made a firm and constant resolution not to fail even once in the observance of them. The first was never to accept anything as true if I had not evident knowledge of its being so;…
Women are massively under-represented in physics and other STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects, at all levels, firstly I will explain why this matters, then I will discuss what we can do about it. What's the problem? In the UK, female students made up about 20% of all those studying A-level physics (a qualification which is needed for most university level physics courses.) More worryingly, almost half of schools have no female students who continue to study…
As The Toast searches for its one true Gal Scientist, we will be running a ton of wonderful one-off pieces by female scientists of all shapes and sizes and fields and education levels, which we are sure you will enjoy. They’ll live here, so you can always find them. Most recently: On Dry Ground and in Floods. When I was sixteen, my parents were still able to convince me to attend “Bring…
What looked like a slurry of chocolate milk was pouring through the tunnel under a road near my home in Boulder, Colorado. This was on September 12, 2013. A couple of days earlier, this tunnel contained a dry creek bed, a bike path, a few shady characters and a strong smell of pot. My dog and I regularly walk through it en route to a park on the Rocky Mountain foothills. But on September 12…
Let’s talk about Zombie Marie Curie. In 2011, this xkcd comic did the rounds of the feminist science community. A woman thinks that, if she applies herself, she could be the next Marie Curie. And, lo, Zombie Curie herself appears, asking to please not be the “one token lady scientist.” I love xkcd, and there’s a lot more to the comic, but it’s Zombie Curie I really want to tell you about, the one…
As The Toast searches for its one true Gal Scientist, we will be running a ton of wonderful one-off pieces by female scientists of all shapes and sizes and fields and education levels, which we are sure you will enjoy. They’ll live here, so you can always find them. Most recently: The Little Blind Bookworm in Your Brain.
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Interpreting a research study can be daunting, and no matter how involved…
Preface: The Amedi lab, whose 2012 work I'm profiling here, struck again just last week with a similar finding about the extrastriate body area. I hope, if you have already been struck with fresh wonder by their latest, that this post serves to deepen your interest. Kind of like when I discovered RuPaul's Drag Race in its second season, and quivered with anticipation when I realized there was a whole first season that was still…
It’s four-thirty am, and everything is dark and quiet in the Sunshine State. The people here won’t wake until the rays hit their faces, reminding them to play their morning round of golf. I jot down Google Maps’ perilous journey in my Rite-in-the-Rain field notebook, and set off. My road companions are 18-wheelers shipping cargo, giants next to my small white rental sedan. In the darkness, their headlights are my only reassurance that I’m not…
Males are waste to Wolbachia. These tiny bacteria live inside the cells of many different kinds of insects, and as their hosts reproduce the Wolbachia can hitch a ride from generation to generation. But Wolbachia are only transmitted in the female’s egg cells; sperm are much too small to fit any bacteria inside. This means that for Wolbachia, males are a dead end, unable to transfer any bacteria on to the next generation. To maximize…
1. Good: A professor at the University of Bedfordshire has deciphered the Voynich Manuscript, a fifteenth-century illuminated manuscript that was long believed to be indecipherable. The partial decoding puts to rest theories that the manuscript was a hoax, or was written by aliens as some have speculated. Rather, Linguistics professor Stephen Bax believes it is “a treatise on nature, perhaps in a near Eastern or Asian language.” (I don't mean to knock, because it's so easy to knock, and…
I do Bad Mommy science. Well, it’s a little more complicated than that. I am a doctoral student in epidemiology and biostatistics, and my particular area of research is in reproductive and perinatal pharmacoepidemiology. This means that I study medication use in pregnancy and its possible effects on both the mother and her children. I’m especially interested in medications that affect the central nervous system, like psychiatric meds and some pain medications, and their possible effects on…
Last summer, halfway through a trip across South India, I spent the night in a tiger reserve. It was unusual for me - I like nature, but only if it's easy to find, easy to understand and unlikely to do me any harm. A museum would probably have been a better choice. There's not a lot to do in a nature reserve after sundown, so we ended up chatting to one of the few other…
As The Toast searches for its one true Gal Scientist, we will be running a ton of wonderful one-off pieces by female scientists of all shapes and sizes and fields and education levels, which we are sure you will enjoy. They’ll live here, so you can always find them. Most recently: On the Honeybee and Her Friends and Relations. It’s a question I get asked with great frequency. Sometimes, it’s a question…
