It was a usual week at LWON: questions and opinions shot off like bottle rockets, unexpectedly and in all directions. Virginia gets on the phone to interview neuroscientists and realizes that most of them are men. Then she gets on the phone about a hot new neuroscience and realizes that almost-most of her interviewees are […]
Miscellaneous
Ever since I reviewed Ignorance: How it Drives Science, a charming new book by the Columbia neuroscientist Stuart Firestein, I’ve been thinking about ignorance. And I tell you, it’s been a bit of a headache. Firestein teaches a popular science class at Columbia, also called Ignorance, in which he invites scientists from different disciplines to talk […]
May 21 – 25 This week was LWON’s second birthday. To celebrate, we rounded up some of our favorite comments of the past year and threw them a little party. Cameron told us why abalone are like Neil Gaiman, just putting his ideas out there, never knowing what would be read, what someone might respond […]
Monday, we marked LWON’s second anniversary. I was not one of the original contributors to this blog, but a year ago this week, Tom Hayden invited me to contribute my first post. Since becoming an official LWON contributor last June, I’ve written almost 30 posts, about one every 12 days. For this work, I’ve received […]
May 14 to May 18 “Most people in counterintelligence are unlikely.” Read Ann’s story of Harry Baig IMMEDIATELY or I will come to your house, tie you to a chair and read it aloud to you. (This sounded a lot more threatening before I typed it out loud…) Heather laid down some capital-S science to […]
Cassandra, for Richard: How do we know the laws of physics are universal? Why can’t there be a far-off galaxy where our laws of physics don’t apply? (Is that a really stupid question?) Richard, for Cassandra: We don’t. There can. (It’s not.) Such was Cassie’s contribution to LWON’s first anniversary post last May. As part of […]
Michelle and Jessa converse about the reasons we chose to stop at one child. Jessa: So let me check I have it right: you’re an only child yourself and have an only child as well? Michelle: That’s right, and I always thought that if I became a parent I would have an only kid. I […]
Who is a scientist? Well, there’s the reality. And that has been nicely documented recently under the #iamscience hashtag on Twitter. (Storify version of its origins here.) But then there are the perceptions. The preconceptions. The stereotypes. And because scientists are nearly as prone to mirror gazing as journalists are, it’s perhaps no surprise that […]
