#science writing

[treesah]

My mom is in a science writing course and needs responses to a questionnaire about experiences with acne and acne treatments. If you could comment, reblog, or send me your responses in an ask, I would appreciate it very much!

First Name: (Feel free to make up a first name; I just need something other than your Tumblr username so I don’t have to explain to my mom how I got in touch with someone named ghostpenis or whatever)

Occupation:

1. What changes to your lifestyle and/or routine have you made due to acne, if any?

2. Does acne negatively impact your life, and in what way(s)? What would you gain if your acne were improved or eliminated (eg in terms of time, money, health, social, professional, or other considerations)?

3. What skincare products, medications, or other remedies do you currently use for acne? Where do you get these remedies from (brick-and-mortar store, online, prescription, etc)?

4. What skincare products, medications, or other remedies for acne have you tried in the past? Why did you stop using them? Are there any skincare products, medications, or other remedies that you know of that you’d like to try in the future?

5. Are you satisfied with the remedies you are currently using to manage your acne? If so, what do you like about the products you are using? If not, what improvements or changes would you like to see in those products?

6. What kind of promises about results, safety, ease of use, etc would get you to try a new acne product or treatment?

[greenteacology]

why did they name it PNAS. who thought that was a good name for a scientific journal.

[grison-in-space]

*squinting out at Tumblr* ah. so y'all do want to hear me banging my stick and yelling. okay. my reward for assembling all the pieces of the K99 my boss wants me to try and write for October, with word budgets, will be a span of uninterrupted time in which to write dopamine 101: what all DOES dopamine do? which will also include a long and crabby discussion of receptor/ligand dynamics, because I'm me and I miss working in the endocrine system more. (the ventral pallidum and perseveration post is its own reward. it's still coming but writing it will also force me to do a lot of reading, so CHECKMATE, BRAIN.)

should really set up a Standard Notes tag for drafting in, if Tumblr eats one more biology post I'm going to lose my entire brain and never stop screaming

[somelocusts]

One thing that blatantly fascist governments like to do with absolute and unchecked power (read: The upcoming and all-too-likely Trump regime) is to impose strict censorship laws. Laws like this will apply to all social media platforms based in the United States, including Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, etc., and will effect US hosted archives such as AO3 and Archive.org, as well as physical media repositories such as libraries and archives. Censorship targets will include science media, anything expressing leftist politics, anything expressing criticism of the United States and its allies, anything expressing criticism of the Trump administration, and content created by or featuring lgbtq+ people, people of color, or anyone else one might consider "woke".

We know this is coming, but we still have at least a few months. Start downloading. Start archiving. Physical copies if you can. Especially if you aren't from the US. Make it harder to forget.

[strangebiology]

Science Writing Resources

There are TONS of resources for science journalists and science communicators out there. In fact, I only have room to make a list of lists of resources for science journalists. Here they are: 

The Open Notebook's Science Writing Resources (elsewhere) That We Like (includes my group, Authors of Nonfiction Books in Progress)

Council for the Advancement of Science Writing's Connector, "a library of resources for science journalism & communication." 

SciCommers Community Resources

Science Writers News Roundup (newsletter)

The National Association of Science Writers' Write that Book!. A list of guides and resources viewable by NASW members.

The ultimate science writing resource guide by Shel Evergreen 

If you're not already aware, The Open Notebook and NASW themselves are great.

[o2studies]

The next Sci Journal entry has been published!

@elu-xx has written about wind turbines: where they can be located, their main parts, how they produce energy, and some more!

This one's a quicker read but just as interesting and informative!

Hope youse enjoy it and thank you for your continued support 💕

[judgeitbyitscover]

The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence by Carl Sagan

Random House 1977

Cover art by Donald E. Davis

Dr. Carl Sagan takes us on a great reading adventure, offering his vivid and startling insight into the brain of man and beast, the origin of human intelligence, the function of our most haunting legends—and their amazing links to recent discoveries.

[ninja-muse]

I've found my first review-worthy book of the year!

Eve by Cat Bohannon is a female-focused history of human evolution and a synthesis of pretty much every research field as it pertains to women. It's also readable and witty and one of those rare science books where I actively had to stop myself reading because I had to, say, go to bed.

Simply taking all the scientific research and turning it into layperson language would get this book praise. (You should see how many studies get cited.) Taking that research, relating it readably, and then drawing overarching conclusions? For instance, studies on how and when cis-female bodies produce sex hormones, and studies on how sex hormones affect neurology, and then saying something like, "this is why pregnant people are moodier"? That takes the whole thing to another level.

And it covers so much! It starts with the first mammals, moves through early primates and hominins, draws in studies of mice and apes and history and economics, talks about language and aging, and ends with the evolution of social relationships and thoughts on the future. There's a lot that I found enlightening, engaging, and validating, and a lot of moments where she reframed something and changed my thinking. And she's very comfortable calling out cultures and researchers and ways of thinking (and ducks and chimpanzees) for how they treat their species.

But like all books, it isn't perfect, though with such a subject, it probably couldn't be. For instance, because Bohannon is focusing so much on the average (i.e., cis-perisex) female body, trans and intersex folks don't come up much, though she's very clear that trans women are women, trans men are men, and intersex conditions are not problems. (Also, I'm sure the lack of info correlates strongly to a lack of studies, but she only mentions this a time or two.) *

More importantly, though, given that this is science writing and one expects scientists and writers to back up their claims, she doesn't always. Most of the time when she doesn't, it's clearly speculation or synthesis or some form of "if X, then Y" but sometimes it's less clear. I keep going back here to her statement that the first hominin culture with midwifery had exclusively female midwives. I would absolutely buy this, especially based on some of her points later in the chapter, but she never says why there couldn't have been the odd male. After all, later in the book she also mentions how men-who-help-women could have shifted the dynamics of the band/tribe/group closer to what we see today and that this probably started around the same time. To be fair, jumps like this are fairly rare but they do make me question if there were others I missed or more statements I should have questioned.

So basically, I'm saying this is an important book, and a good book, and a book that should be read by a lot of people, but also a book to read a little critically. Bohannon makes a lot of really great points and relates a lot of intriguing facts and tells some compelling stories about who we are and how we got here. She's done good work with this book and should be proud of it. But also, there might be some spots where her arguments could be tighter. *she also prioritizes words like "she" and "mother" and "woman" over words like "parent" and "person", which I can see not being great for some trans people even though I understand that she's trying to upend the notion that the average human is a cis male and show that female/afab bodies are pretty important.

[tetw]

20 Great Articles by Philip Ball

He's one of the best science writers around -- he seems to be interested in everything and has an amazing ability to make any subject fascinating. Click through for 20 of Philip Ball's best articles from around the net.

[rebeccathenaturalist]

Hi Rebecca! I'm a recent(ish) graduated student interested in pursuing a career (or any other form of involvement) in environmental education. I was curious how you built your writing portfolio, especially writing for other sites/organizations? What first steps would recommend someone take (particularly if they're already graduated) to get into environmental education and scicomm? Thanks so much, love all your writing!!

Hi there, @misopossum! So I am a pretty atypical case. I have a BA in English, but I mainly used it for technical writing/editing (and personal journaling) for a number of years.

Most of the scicomm folks I know are either A) scientists who also have good writing and interpretation chops, or B) are science journalists who went through a formal journalism program in college/grad school. You haven't mentioned what your area of study was, but your department may have some resources to draw on if you haven't already spoken with them. Check with related departments as well, as they may have ideas too. You're a recent grad, but that doesn't mean that you can't still make use of those connections if they exist.

If you want to go a more traditional scicomm route, good places to start are The Open Notebook and the National Association of Science Writers. ScienceBites may be a good spot for you to start pitching a short article here and there to build up your portfolio, too. And this article from CrossTalk is a pretty good summary on how to get started with science writing.

Other people get involved with environmental education programs like forest schools, summer camps, and the like; some conservation nonprofits also may run these, and you can even check with state and federal parks, National Wildlife Refuges, and other governmental entities who may be in need of volunteers (or occasionally seasonal staff) for environmental ed programs.

You didn't mention where you are, but here in the PNW US there are a lot of these, especially in the Portland and Seattle areas. Depending on what your education level is you may not find the pay to be what you expected, and a lot of these programs are primarily in summertime. But if you can at least get in as a side gig, that will get some experience started.

A lot of what I do is meant for a general audience and not just specific to one locality. I do a lot of blogging online, to include articles on my website, plus some shorter form commentary on various news articles I find online that I think are worth exploring, and I have my quarterly chapbooks that let me dive deeper into various topics. These get me a pretty broad audience, beyond just my local area.

But I really got my start as a nature writer several years ago by writing pieces for the nonprofit Friends of Willapa National Wildlife Refuge, from Facebook posts to 2-3 minute radio segments for their Willapa Nature Notes segment on our local public radio station. I've also helped with other scicomm efforts they've run, from our 4th grade environmental education program in local schools, to giving talks and tours at our annual Wings Over Willapa birding and nature festival. And later this track record helped me get in as a regular columnist with the Coast Weekend paper (and occasionally a longer piece for related publications.) These are all incredibly local to where I am in the Columbia-Pacific region, but they've been good experience and they've helped me get my footing in my local community, which has helped me to facilitate other regional efforts like my independent guided tours.

I think the best choice I made overall was teaching non-credit community education classes through various community colleges, as well as municipal parks and recreation departments and libraries. It's a great way to connect with people who aren't pursuing a degree, but just learning for the fun of it. You do need some credentials of some sort, but expertise counts if you can show that you know your stuff--for example, the people teaching art classes don't all have art degrees, but they may have X number of decades' experience in their art medium. I don't have a degree in the natural sciences because my math skills are terrible, but I am a certified Oregon Master Naturalist and I also have a lifetime of experience of exploring nature and learning how to identify the living beings around me. It doesn't pay a lot, but it's a lot of fun and I get to meet a lot of new students every semester.

Be aware that people like me who take a more unorthodox route usually end up doing like eight different things for a living, rather than having one (1) career path. If you are going to do more of a "professional potpourri" like I am, you're going to need to seek out multiple niches, and perhaps create a few yourself. You're likely going to be very busy, and there's not going to be a lot of payoff immediately (as opposed to a regular job, where you start at a particular rate immediately and hopefully gets raises as things go along.)

On the bright side, having multiple professional directions means that if one of them isn't really active, I can often put more time toward another to make up for it. For example, I'd like to expand to writing for more varied venues that aren't just based in the PNW; it's just a matter of making the time to prep some cold pitches to publications and websites. This time of year I'm really busy with the tours business, so writing tends to be emphasized more in the off season. And either way you slice it, I'm still very much in the "building" process.

Aaaaanyway. That is my very long, rambling answer to your question. Please feel free to let me know if I can clarify anything for you, or if you have further questions.

[familiarquotation]

I will confess that I have no more sense of what goes on in the mind of mankind than I have for the mind of an ant. Come to think of it, this might be a good place to start.

Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell, Notes of a Biology Watcher

[protoslacker]

This universality made it impossible for Pitts to provide a model of the brain that was practical, and so his work was dismissed and more or less forgotten by the community of scientists working on the brain. What’s more, the experiment with the frogs had shown that a purely logical, purely brain-centered vision of thought had its limits. Nature had chosen the messiness of life over the austerity of logic, a choice Pitts likely could not comprehend. He had no way of knowing that while his ideas about the biological brain were not panning out, they were setting in motion the age of digital computing, the neural network approach to machine learning, and the so-called connectionist philosophy of mind. In his own mind, he had been defeated.

Amanda Gefter in The Open Notebook. Storygram: Amanda Gefter’s “The Man Who Tried to Redeem the World with Logic”

The following story diagram—or Storygram—annotates an award-winning story to shed light on what makes some of the best science writing so outstanding.

Brendan Maher posted it and interviews Amanda Geter. The story was origionally published:

“The Man Who Tried to Redeem the World with Logic” Walter Pitts rose from the streets to MIT, but couldn’t escape himself. By Amanda Gefter, Nautilus Published February 5, 2015 (I replaced a not-working link to Nautilus story with one working today.)

[house-rat]

I keep seeing that post going around about the irony of an article titled “The growing inaccessibility of science” being stuck behind a paywall and this is maybe a ridiculous nit to pick (which is why I’m making this its own post) but the article itself isn’t about its inaccessibility from a material standpoint but from a linguistic standpoint.

Like the entire article is an analysis of the jargon used in scientific journals and other scientific literature and how it has increased significantly over the 20th century, making research findings intelligible to a smaller and smaller niche. Its methodology is a little iffy but the conclusion is that there’s been a dramatic loss in forms of scientific communication that are intelligible to the general public. You can read the entire thing here, it’s a short paper.

(Also just as a fun bonus fact: part of the methodology involved creating a scale to measure the lexical difficulty of a given text; the lowest ranking was farm workers talking to dairy cows which scored -59.1 on the scale).

[xerxesxerxesxerxes]

https://alteritas.net/GXL/?p=5189

[tenmongakusha]

I promise I am writing a book about outer space.

I promise.

It's just - I wanted to know when the flower was invented. And it's roughly 130 million years ago.

The oldest bee diverged from wasps 120 million years ago and it looks like the modern bee was around 100 million years ago in the fossil record, but then - how old are WASPS?

and apparently wasps have been around for 270 million years?

Which means those beasties survived the Permian extinction 250 million years ago, aka the largest mass extinction in the fossil record, wiping out 90% of marine species, and 70% of terrestrial species, aka The Great Dying.

but not the wasp.

[science-simplified]

First Infographic of the Blog!

The aim of these is to be short and sweet, but informative and easy to understand.

Please give me any feedback you have!