It was in Uganda that I encountered one of Africa’s most dangerous predators. I was counting chimpanzees in the Ugandan jungle, when I felt a sharp pain on my forearm. I pushed up my shirtsleeve. Attached to my skin was a giant ant the size of my toenail. Its head was so big I could see the serrations on it pincers that had dug halfway into my skin.
I flicked it with my other hand. It didn’t move. I brushed it, harder. It just wiggled all six legs and bit more deeply. I started to panic. I grabbed the ant between two fingers and pulled as hard as I could. Its body came off in my hands and its head was still firmly embedded in my arm, blood pooling around its knifelike jaws. As if on cue, a thousand kindred mandibles sunk themselves into my flesh. I looked down. I was covered in them.
And so I learnt one of Africa’s most valuable lessons: ignore ants at your peril. (more…)
In the latest New Scientist, I have a lengthy review of the following new books, which couldn’t be better timed in light of the recent devastation of the Wakefield paper that started the whole autism scare:
You can’t read the full review online unless you have a subscription, but suffice it to say that these are both great books and they’re actually quite different and complementary as well. Mnookin is more of a narrative writer. Offit is devastating on the science, and on the incredible risk now posed to innocent children by those who fail to vaccinate. If you care about science and reason, both should be in your library.
I want to add something else: Please go to Amazon and see all the one star reviews that vaccine denialists are giving to Offit’s newest–and it doesn’t seem like they’ve even read the book. Guess he touched a nerve. After you read it, I recommend going over there and balancing the score.
I’m also going to be having Mnookin on Point of Inquiry tomorrow. Stand by for that.
I’m on three fantastic panels next weekend at ScienceOnline2011 alongside some of my favorite bloggers and authors! I’d like to address each topic initially at the “unconference” and later in more detail here on the blog. First, I’ll introduce the key ideas below and invite readers to share any thoughts, questions, or points you’d like to see addressed as the discussion grows in comments (please specify which panel if you do). Chris is coming too and sessions will be webcast. I’ll post the details about that when I have them.
1) Blog as a (book-)writing tool – Brian Switek, Sheril Kirshenbaum, Maryn McKenna and Seth Mnookin
A popular science book: using the Web from the initial idea to pitching to writing to selling your book. Why not extend this idea also to magazine/newspaper articles and other media, as well? Make it about using blogs as a springboard for other forms of science writing and engagement rather than just books alone – blogs as labs to grow as a writer, etc.
2) Blogging on the Career Path: Opportunities emerging out of the blogosphere – Sheril Kirshenbaum, Janet D. Stemwedel, Greg Gbur and John Hawks
Many academic scientists are on the tenure track — a career path that poses both challenges and opportunities for blogging and other forms of science outreach.
How do you turn your online presence into opportunities for your research and publication record?
How do you convince your colleagues that your blog/website is worth the time and effort?
How do you quantify your online work for administrators?
3) Perils of blogging as a woman under a real name – Sheril Kirshenbaum, Anne Jefferson, Joanne Manaster, Maryn McKenna and Kathryn Clancy
Being a woman scienceblogger has its own set of challenges, writing under your real name a few more. Readers may want you to be beautiful, to be their mommy, to be accessible to them in a way they don’t expect of other bloggers. They also may hold your decisions and lifestyle to a different standard. “There just aren’t any good women science bloggers out there.” “She was picked just because she was a woman.” “I would cure cancer just to capture your heart.” “You are a terrible mother if your baby is in daycare and you are in the lab.” These statements exemplify the sorts of unwelcome comments that women science bloggers can face, and reflect broader issues of cultural and institutional sexism. How do we navigate those issues, and ensure our own safety, while covering the science that we love? How do we get our writing noticed when people claim we don’t exist? Panel members and attendees will tackle these issues and others as a way to move towards a solution in the issue of gender representation in science blogging.
Here’s CNN doing some really impressive science and medical journalism–although notably, it’s Anderson Cooper, not Sanjay Gupta.
The occasion is still more debunking of the study that started it all–Andrew Wakefield’s 1998 Lancet paper accusing the MMR vaccine of causing autism through a novel (and implausible) pathway. Now, the British Medical Journal is calling the work an outright “fraud” based upon a series of reports it is beginning to publish by investigative journalist Brian Deer.
All the details can be found at those links, and you can evaluate them yourself–but at this point, I think it’s fair to say that no open minded person who surveys the evidence can conclude anything but that vaccines are overwhelmingly safe and the real threat to public health are the activists, and tiny handful of scientists, who tried to convince us otherwise. (Not that they would, like, change their minds or anything.)
And just in time for Seth Mnookin’s and Paul Offit’s newbooks–my review of which will be out very soon!
Update: I was unfair to Sanjay Gupta, he did a tough interview with Wakefield too–not nearly as tough as Anderson Cooper, but still fairly tough.
The year is very young, but author Sheril Kirshenbaum is already way ahead of the pack for brilliant nonfiction book moves of 2011. As a science writer, Kirshenbaum has penned thoughtful and engaging articles about science literacy, environmental science, and education for the likes of Salon, The Huffington Post, and Mother Jones. As a research associate at the University of Texas’ Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy, she works to enhance public understanding of energy issues. She is an adviser to NPR’s Science Friday and co-hosts the Discover magazine blog The Intersection. But for all her accomplishments and accolades, her latest project borders on the super genius. For the past two years she has been investigating the biology, anthropology, psychology, and cultural history of osculation. It’s called embrasser in French, besar in Spanish; any online translator can offer you the appropriate character translations in Arabic, Korean, Japanese, and Pashto. You’ve probably known it since childhood simply as kissing. That’s right: A little more than a month before Valentine’s Day and a few months before spring begins its flirtatious winter thaw, Kirshenbaum’s The Science of Kissing: What Our Lips Are Telling Us (Grand Central) hits bookshelves. Which means at some point in the very near future some member of the print, online, or TV press is going to identify Kirshenbaum as a “kissing expert.” It’s amazing somebody hasn’t written this book already.
The dashing and talented Seth Mnookin—author of the upcoming smash hit The Panic Virus—is holding a contest surrounding my new book!
Sheril Kirshenenbaum’s The Science of Kissing — a great book with arguably the cover/title of the year — was published today. For anyone who has ever made snap judgments based on the books people are reading on the train/subway/bus/plane — well, think of all the possibilities if someone saw you reading this:
In addition to being a great book, The Science of Kissing is also the first book published this year by a ScienceOnline 2011 author. (I believe the second one is coming out in a week. I’ll give you a hint as to what it is: the author’s last name begins with the 13th, 14th, and 15th letters of the alphabet.) You don’t need to take my word for it — you can check out Greg Laden’s ScienceBlogs review, which contains this awesome line:
“The Science of Kissing: What Our Lips Are Telling Us, a new book by Sheril Kirshenbaum has a bunch more about kissing, and is a must read for anyone who wants to try out kissing (you may like it) and keep it scientific.”
In honor of Sheril’s achievement, I’m going to offer a free book by any single one of the SciO11 authors to the person who gives the best one paragraph explanation for why they liked The Science of Kissing. You don’t even need to select The Panic Virus! (A list of authors is here — and there are lots of good ones to choose from.)
Here are the rules: You need to actually buy TSoK — this part works on the honor system. You need to explain why you liked it in the comments (here). You need to do all of this by next Thursday, January 13th, which is the start of the conference.
Greg Laden’s got the first science blog review of The Science of Kissing. He begins with a sweet and funny personal kissing story (a must-read for anyone who knows Greg!) followed by a thoughtful and detailed response to the book. Here’s an excerpt:
The Science of Kissing: What Our Lips Are Telling Us, a new book by Sheril Kirshenbaum has a bunch more about kissing, and is a must read for anyone who wants to try out kissing (you may like it) and keep it scientific.
You would think that kissing is pretty basic. A few different animals seem to do it, and we’ve all seen the pictures of chimps kissing. So, humans have always kissed, and it’s a basic feature of our species and we all do it and it’s kind of wet and messy and what else can you really say about it? But if that is what you are thinking, then you need to do two things: a) get more curious and b) remove your Occidento-normative Western Unthinking Cap and learn yourself some perspective.
Kissing is not a human universal. Not all cultures do this. The history of kissing is complex and interesting, to the extent that we know about it. Kissing may or may not be a signal for quality or ability in relation to other activities such as sex. Science has something to say about the efficacy of lip-enhancing behaviors such as gloss and colorizing. And did you know that men and women do not necessarily like the same kind of kissing, at least in some contexts?
Sheril’s book is a fun read and there is no way you will not find it informative. Gender issues and sexuality is an interest of mine (as an evolutionary biologist) so I know a lot of this stuff, but I learned a great deal reading The Science of Kissing. And, it made me think.
Guest post by Vanessa Woods
