Photo by jby.So this week, these things happened: Biologist and Scientific American blogger Danielle N. Lee called out a deeply disrespectful editor at the website Biology-Online, only to have SciAm take down her post. In response to widespread outrage and agitation, SciAm‘s editor-in-chief relented and more-or-less apologized.
And then Monica Byrne and Hannah Waters came forward to report that Bora Zivkovic—the SciAm blogs editor, co-founder of the ScienceOnline conference, series editor of the Open Lab anthology, and all-around godfather of online science communication—had sexually harassed them. Bora’s confirmed Monica Byrne’s report, apologized, resigned from the board of ScienceOnline, and is apparently taking leave from SciAm.
Not a good week for some leading institutions of science outreach—but also, one hopes, the first steps toward doing better.
Also these things:
- This week at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! How circumcision changes the microbial ecology of the penis.
- And at The Molecular Ecologist Modeling genetic drift in phenotypic evolution.
- Meeting the press. The Queer in STEM study was covered in Bitch Magazine and The Minnesota Daily
- But what will the delays cost? The U.S. Federal Government is finally open for business again, including the science–related bits.
- Interesting. Estimates of the genetic contribution to intelligence are significantly affected by cultural context.
- More like a shuffling, undead buffet. The zombie apocalypse wouldn’t be so apocalyptic for the animal kingdom.
- Because indoor lighting is … too dim? Myopia is on the rise, and it’s probably because kids are spending too much time indoors.
- Best reading between the lines ever. That time an invertebrate biologist extracted a worm from his own cheek and published it as a case study.
- Worst side-effect of time in orbit you’ve never heard about. Spacesuit gloves are horrible for fingernails.
- Wow. Genome-wide search-and-replace.
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