Category Archives: science

New project: Surveying LGBTQ folks working in science

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Rainbow leds Photo by Julio Martinez.

I’m pleased and excited to announce that a project I’ve been working on for the last few months is finally ready to launch: A new, nationwide survey of queer folks working in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

You may recall that back when I hosted the first Pride Month edition of the Diversity in Science Carnival, one of the recurring themes was that, although we know lesbians, gay men, and bisexual and trans* folks work in STEM fields, our presence isn’t very visible. A few months ago, I started poking around the peer-reviewed literature, looking for studies of LGBT folks in science. I didn’t find much. Studies of LGBT folks in academia either focus primarily on undergraduate students, or consider faculty and staff across all academic disciplines as a group, or they consider very small, localized samples. And careers in STEM extend well beyond the campuses of research universities—what about folks outside the ivory tower?

I brought this up with my friend Allison Mattheis, who just happens to be the perfect person to talk to about this kind of thing: she’s just finished a Ph.D. in Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development, and who is starting a faculty position in the College of Education at California State University Los Angeles this fall. Together we decided that, yes, there’s a real gap in the existing literature—and we want to close that gap.

So, in our not-very-considerable spare time, Alli and I have been putting together the first stage of a study to answer the questions we have about queer folks in STEM: who we are, what we study, and how our identities have shaped our interest in science and our experiences of working in research. That first stage is an online survey, which we’re hoping to distribute as widely as possible using a strategy called (heh) “snowball sampling”—asking folks who take the survey to pass it on to their friends and colleagues.

As of today, that survey is live and accepting responses at a dedicated website, QueerSTEM.org. If you’re lesbian, gay, bisexual, or trans*, have at least a Bachelor’s or technical degree, and are currently working in a STEM field in any capacity—from grad school to tenure-track faculty to corporate R&D to government employees to teachers—then we want to hear from you. Go take the survey, and then help us spread the word by sharing the short-link http://bit.ly/queerSTEM on Facebook and Google Plus, tweeting it (with the hashtag #QueerSTEM, if you please), or e-mailing it to folks who should contribute.

The plan is to leave the survey open for sampling until we’re satisified that we’ve collected a large, thorough sample of queer folks working in STEM in the U.S. I’ll share prelminary results as they become available—both here and on the blog at QueerSTEM.org—and, with any luck, we’ll ultimately publish what we find in an appropriate scholarly journal. We’re very excited to see the picture of sexual diversity in scientific careers that emerges from this work.◼

Carl Zimmer on the evolution of feathers, animated

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Clever, informative, beautiful.

Via CZ, and many of the more discerning parts of the Internet.◼

Carnival of Evolution, May 2013

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London eye Photo by Never House.

I am reliably informed that the monthly round-up of online writing about evolution is available now at DNA Barcoding. Reserve a nice long block of time to peruse the links—this month’s carnival is bigger on the inside.◼

Science online, meddling Congresspeople and deceptive orchids edition

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United States Capitol at night Getting all “House of Cards.” Photo by drewgstephens.

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Felony experimentation

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This story is, rightly, blowing up the science-y internet:

Kiera Wilmot got good grades and had a perfect behavior record. She wasn’t the kind of kid you’d expect to find hauled away in handcuffs and expelled from school, but that’s exactly what happened after an attempt at a science project went horribly wrong.

Wilmot apparently mixed some “household chemicals” together inside a small plastic bottle, producing a reaction that caused the bottle to explode. She told police that she meant it as a scientific experiment—clearly she was curious to see what would happen, which makes it an experiment in spirit, even if it didn’t take place in a lab. The chemicals involved aren’t specified, but anyone who grew up among nerdy teenagers probably remembers doing exactly this, and probably can recall the recipe. Trouble is, Wilmot did it on school grounds, outside of a supervised science class. And the response of the folks who run her school was totally fucking disproportionate:

After the explosion Wilmot was taken into custody by a school resources officer and charged with possession/discharge of a weapon on school grounds and discharging a destructive device. She will be tried as an adult.

One of the people who might have something to say about this said this:

“She made a bad choice. Honestly, I don’t think she meant to ever hurt anyone,” principal Ron Pritchard told the station. “She wanted to see what would happen [when the chemicals mixed] and was shocked by what it did. Her mother is shocked, too.”

And now a sixteen-year-old girl with no prior behavioral problems and good grades is at risk of acquiring the kind of criminal record that screws up job interviews, credit checks, and applications to college. All for setting up an experiment you can see performed in any number of YouTube videos.

And, oh yeah, Kiera Wilmot is African American. DNLee digs into the sad, infuriating racial component of this whole sad, infuriating mess over at Scientific American, and this is really her wheelhouse. My only contribution to that part of the conversation is: I grew up in a rural, predominantly white, predominantly middle-class school district. Among my friends, when I was sixteen, were any number of white, male, middle-class kids who set up “experiments” far more dangerous than what we’re told Kiera Wilmot did. They set off explosions with household chemicals, firecrackers, model rocket engines—and none of them were charged with felonies.

I’m pretty sure none of them would’ve been charged with felonies even if they’d set off one of these experiments on or near school grounds. Yes, they might’ve been suspended a day or two, or made to attend a safety lecture, but no one dismissed the destruction of their future with the blandly hateful accusation that they “made a bad choice.”

Because they were white, teenaged, middle-class boys in a rural school district, and blowing things up was just what white, teenaged, middle-class boys did. Everyone knew that.

There is, at least, a Change.org petition. I’d suggest that you sign it.◼

Science online, green-blooded rat ticklers edition

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tickled Stress relief. Photo by dolanh.
  • This week, at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! Does science promote morality?
  • And at The Molecular Ecologist: I demonstrate how to make species distribution models in R.
  • Good luck! Physicians at the University of Minnesota are going to try to cure another patient of HIV infection using a bone marrow transplant.
  • Best experimental treatment ever? Need to de-stress your rat? Try a daily tickle party.
  • For a general audience—but most of this also applies for scientific ones. David Dobbs on how to write about science.
  • “So, we have red blood because Nature started making O2 with chlorophyll.” The biochemistry of blood in science fiction movies.
  • Definitely significant. Or trending that way, at least. A list of statistical weasel-words.
  • “That was the only way we could get them to pay attention.” How a groundbreaking book about the AIDS crisis spread a lie about the diseases’ origins.
  • Seriously, this is asinine. How not to treat your graduate students, episode 2,573.
  • And they don’t look that much nifty-er. “Forests” planted on the terraced sides of skyscrapers cost a lot more than actual on-the-ground forests.
  • Clever girls! Groupers use gestures to coordinate their collaborative hunts with moray eels.
  • Or, Jeremy Fox aims for the head. A couple of new papers help to slay the zombie of the local-regional richness relationship.

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Nothing in Biology Makes Sense: Science and morality

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NDU stained glass detail Photo by jhritz.

Over at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense, Amy Dapper takes a look at a new study suggesting that thinking about science might promote moral behavior.

In all four experiments, the authors found exposure to scientific thinking led to more moral behaviors. Study participants that were exposed to the scientific priming (or in the first experiment, that had greater previous exposure to science) reported date rape as being more wrong, were more likely to report that they would participate in prosocial behaviors and divided the $5 more evenly between themselves and the anonymous participant.

Of course, I’m flabbergasted by these results, because all of the scientists I know are selfish, amoral hedonists—that’s why we’re all clamoring for cushy, overpaid jobs on the tenure track. But maybe you should go read the whole thing and see what you think.◼

The Molecular Ecologist: Using R to model the spatial distributions of species

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Environmental variation across the range of Joshua tree. Image via The Molecular Ecologist.

This week at The Molecular Ecologist, I’m showing how to use the popular open-source statistical programming language R to estimate species distribution models.

Species distribution models (SDMs) are handy any time you want to extrapolate where a species might be based on where you know it actually is. Maybe you’re trying to figure out where would be fruitful to do more sampling; maybe you want to know where your favorite critters probably lived back during the last ice age; maybe you want to know what regions will be suitable for your favorite critters after another century of global climate change.

Given how widely useful SDMs are, it’s very nice to be able to estimate them using multiple methods implemented within a single open-source framework. To get a taste of the capabilities provided by R and a select set of add-on packages, go read the whole thing.◼

Science online, two months to Snowbird edition

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Cecret Lake - Alta Utah Are you going to Snowbird? Photo by Al_HikesAZ.
  • This week at Nothing in Biology Makes Sense! We’re looking ahead to the Evolution meetings.
  • And, at ProfHacker: I review a book about teaching science.
  • Maybe! Does your brain know whether you’re reading a piece of paper or a screen?
  • Not that we couldn’t do a lot better. U.S. policies for reducing carbon pollution are a scattershot mess, but they seem to be working.
  • No, really. Why we should treat science and math literatcy more like basketball.
  • With a lot of money on the line. The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments this week in a case that could decide whether it’s legal to patent a human gene.
  • So to speak. Even when you have all your publication-ducks in a row, how do you decide which ducks go first?
  • Yum! Scicurious review’s Mary Roach’s new book Gulp.
  • In a lineage this young, are we surprised? Human origins are turning out to be more of a mosaic than a clean-cut family tree.
  • No kidding. For more students to go into science careers, maybe there need to be more science careers?
  • Well, Earth-scale-ish. Kepler space telescope finds evidence of not one but two Earth-scale planets orbiting in another star’s “habitable zone.”
  • More on E.O. Wilson vs. math. Maybe what he really doesn’t understand is how collaboration works.
  • Aww. Zoobooks! The journey to field studies of lions in Kenya starts with a subscription to Zoobooks.

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I read a book!

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Scheikundeles / Chemistry class Chemistry lab. Photo by Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands.

It’s called Making Scientists: Six Principles for Effective College Teaching (buy it over on Indiebound). It’s about teaching science to undergraduates, which is a thing I’ve been trying to do, lately. And I wrote a review for ProfHacker.

In their new book Making Scientists: Six Principles for Effective College Teaching, (Harvard University Press, $24.95) Light and Micari argue that undergraduate education in the sciences should go beyond imparting a basic set of knowledge, and make learning science more like the experience of doing scientific research.

If teaching science to undergraduates is also a thing you do, may I suggest you go read the whole thing?◼