If you want to get young women excited about science, show them how awesome science is and show them the real women who do that science. Show them the women who have dedicated themselves to helping others succeed and learn. Not a bunch of nearly naked women posing like they are auditioning for the next Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. Because science is not a “girl thing”. It’s a really awesome thing.
An interesting read, but this idea that scientists create a myth about themselves is nonsense. First hand experience tells me that most scientists either try really hard to explain science or don't really care about what other people think about it. Scientists are just people with jobs like anyone else.
The trouble is, those who are already fans of science lap it up while everyone else shrugs – and nothing has really changed.
While this post at Depth First is about learning to code as a chemist, it's generally applicable to anyone. Some great quotes too.
Identifying good problems - problems that when solved will yield profitable outcomes - is one of the most difficult and valuable things we do in our careers as scientists. This is equally true in software.
Finally, you can only learn so much from a lecture or book.
It takes a lot of work to be ignorant. Most humans develop a sense of fairness as toddlers and spend the rest of their life working hard to become asshats.
See this and this for more detail.
Funny but true
...there is a tendency to examine the traits of one or a few non-human species and to draw conclusions about the origin of human traits purely from these observations.
—T. Ryan Gregory
From Derek Lowe at In The Pipeline:
The world as we know it wins the tiebreakers in science.
An entertaining post about bad Pharma company names. But, as usual, the comments on Derek's site are some of the best around:
silverpie:
Umm. what business does a site called Xconomy have talking about other entities' weird names?
Previously, one of my biggest pet peeves was the expression "chemical free" with second place going to "organic".
Over time, and as I became more thoughtful about how science is viewed by the average person, I softened. I became more pragmatic. Language exists to communicate ideas. When the meaning of a word or expression becomes commonly used and accepted by a majority in a group, then the definition changes. Holding on to the original meaning is futile and a waste of effort.
Looks exactly like the kind of app I would have drooled over before I became a jaded ex-chemist. A bit pricey at $5 but incredibly cheap in the world of chemistry software. 1
Affiliate Link. ↩
A good summary with plenty of references at In the Pipeline. Lower LDL is proven to be good. Higher HDL, not so proven.
