Clinical Trials on Trial: Medical Studies Still Exclude Women and People of Color to Dangerous Degree

If you consider yourself a feminist — or even if you don’t like the label but do like equality — the Health Equity and Accountability Act is a thing that you should care about.

Not familiar? Here’s the rundown:

• As you’re no doubt aware, per the patriarchy, the “default” population our society caters to is white men.
• When this pattern is repeated in medical research, we wind up with clinical trials that primarily focus on white, cisgender male bodies and fail to consider the physiological differences in other populations.
• Without adequate medical research on different types of bodies, women and racialized people unnecessarily face worse health outcomes when the results of this medical research roll out full scale.

These problems are well documented, and women’s health advocates have been pushing to improve this situation for several decades. An important victory was won in 1993 with the National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act, a law mandating the inclusion of women and racial/ethnic minorities in clinical trials funded by NIH. The Food and Drug Administration also issued its “Guidelines for the Study and Evaluation of Gender Differences in the Clinical Evaluation of Drugs” that year, informing the pharmaceutical industry on how to evaluate data on women included in drug-development trials. In 1998, the FDA required that anyone enrolled in clinical studies be identified by gender, age and race, and that safety and effectiveness data be evaluated to identify differences based on these categories. Yet despite some progress, women and racialized people are still vastly underrepresented in clinical study data.

How many grams of patriarchy per pill, do you suppose? Via Shutterstock.

Last year, Ambien became the first and only prescription drug on the market with different recommended dosages for men and women. Although the sleeping medication had been approved and in use for over two decades, a series of high profile incidents led investigators to discover that the active ingredient, zolpidem, metabolizes differently in male and female bodies. By this time, thousands of women had received inappropriately high dosages — almost double what most female-assigned bodies need! — putting them at higher risk for adverse reactions such as “sleep driving.” In spite of this, the FDA still does not require sex- or race-specific analysis in the drug approval process, even when making dosage recommendations. They merely offer guidelines.

Alarmingly, the Ambien dosage debacle is just one example among many in which marginalized populations were exposed to significantly greater risk. Even for diseases which disproportionately affect women (such as lung cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s and depression), the only available medical treatments have largely been tested on men. For example, even though lung cancer is the top cause of cancer deaths among women and women now account for almost half of new cases and deaths, only 32% of lung cancer trial patients are women. And even though African Americans smoke less, they develop lung cancer at higher rates than white people — yet still represent less than 2% of lung cancer trial participants.

In an FDA report released August 2013, analysis of demographic subgroups showed that clinical trial participants were overwhelmingly white. Data via FDA.

As is often the case in STEM, the exclusion of women and POC from studies may relate, in part, to the demographics of investigators. Yet disparities between different stages of clinical trials and a closer look at the history of such studies reveals a much more complicated picture.

Modern scientific methods for clinical trials — including the use of placebos, blinding and comparison of effects between groups of individuals — were developed using new statistical methods during the 1930s and ’40s. Corresponding ethical guidelines, however, were not formally established for another few decades. During this period, numerous experiments were carried out without the knowledge or consent of participants. While this is far from an ideal situation for anyone, the results were particularly devastating for racialized populations, whose lives and bodies were often viewed as expendable pieces of public property.

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study, for example, has become an infamous example of racist and unethical medical experimentation. Beginning in 1932, the United States Public Health Service began providing free “health care” to 600 African American men from rural Alabama, 399 of whom had syphilis. The men were never told that they were infected, nor were they ever treated, even after penicillin was established as a standard, effective treatment for the fatal disease in the mid ’40s. During the course of the study, researchers regularly lied to participants about what they were doing, and even orchestrated placebo treatments so as to continue unimpeded observation as the disease progressed. This continued until 1972, when a leak to the press turned the project into a public scandal.

What are the options for treatment that aren’t based in centuries-old oppressive systems? Via Shutterstock.

Outcry prompted new federal regulations, such as the creation of institutional review boards to govern the ethical conduct of research on human subjects. Interestingly, ethical principles outlined included justice, specifically in fairly distributing the benefits and burdens of medical research. (Clearly, it’s still a work in progress.)

One unintended consequence: broad interpretation of these guidelines meant that female-assigned people of childbearing age were excluded outright from clinical trials. This included people using contraception, as well as those who stated that they were not having sex with male-assigned people. For researchers, the “vulnerable population” in need of protecting was not women, but fetuses and potential fetuses. (That women’s health would suffer on the whole seemed not to be an issue.)

Today this legacy continues, with women vastly underrepresented in Phase I clinical trials. It is during this phase that dose-ranging activities take place, with researchers determining the optimal amounts that will provide the most benefit without unacceptable toxicity.

Via “Increasing Participation of Women In Early Phase Clinical Trials Approved By The FDA.”

Meanwhile, underrepresentation of people of color is most prominent during later stages. Although the most prevalent explanation for this is widespread distrust among POC communities, studies have shown that this is less of a factor today than in the past. While it is true that some POC may (reasonably!) feel wary based on knowledge of past medical atrocities, accepting this as an immutable fact places blame on the wrong target. Clinics can overcome such barriers by focusing on building strong patient-clinician bonds and providing transparency.

In fact, there is already a high willingness among POC patients to participate in clinical research when asked — many are simply never made aware that studies are going on. For one thing, POC are less likely have access to health insurance, which is a prerequisite for gaining access to many medical facilities and some Phase III clinical trials (the stage at which patients undergo long term testing in blind, controlled studies). Due to economic oppression, POC are more likely to be seen by a variety of physicians who are unfamiliar with them (such as emergency room doctors), and who are therefore unlikely to enroll them in clinical trials. Even when POC have consistent primary care physicians, biases about racial groups may leave physicians less likely to suggest POC for clinical trials out of belief that they will not comply with difficult therapeutic regimens over long periods of time. (This in spite of the fact that “perfect” adherence is significantly more important in Phase I and II trials.)

Yet even when clinical trials include appropriate numbers of women and racialized people, a recent report by the FDA revealed that shortfalls remain in meaningful subgroup analysis. In other words: although data about women and POC may have been collected, the results were not separated out. Without subgroup analysis, medical professionals are not able to understand the full extent of effects or efficacy of products on different population groups. The best they can do in these situations is to either assume that the results are equally representative for everyone, or make an educated guess otherwise.

I’m so proud of my #HEAA2014 bill, which will promote #HealthEquity for all Americans! pic.twitter.com/9FcXmtSmIh

— Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (@RepRoybalAllard) July 30, 2014

So what’s being done about this?

As required by section 907 of the 2012 Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act, the FDA is currently assembling an Action Plan to provide recommendations on how to improve women and minority representation, subgroup analysis, and the availability to accurate information to doctors and consumers. The report will be released within the next month. However, given the limited resources the FDA has for enforcement, legislative action is critical to drive action.

On July 30, Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard introduced a bill called The Health Equity and Accountability Act, which provides a strategic plan to eliminate health disparities across racial, ethnic, ability, language, and gender groups. It would make federal resources available to target inequitable health care access, create federal guidelines for data collection and reporting, increase culturally and linguistically appropriate health care availability to communities of color, and even increase access to comprehensive sex education.

Although it takes a long time for the results of clinical trials to be realized, the NIH Revitalization Act passed over two decades ago, and our health care system is still far from equitable. When population groups are excluded from clinical studies, they are exposed to harm that could easily be avoided through more inclusive practices. Lack of information makes it impossible for women and people of color today to make fully informed decisions about their health, and denies them the right to advocate for what happens to their bodies. In 2014, this should no longer be acceptable.

The HEAA is supported by multiple POC advocacy groups, including the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, and the Congressional Black Caucus. For opportunities to get involved, check out #HEAA2014 on Twitter.

Notes From A Queer Engineer: Debunking OITNB’s Deadly Poison

Header by Rory Midhani

Orange Is The New Black Season 2 has been out for almost two months now, and there’s something I’ve been dying to talk about. Is now a good time? I know we’re still far from the end on Autostraddle’s incredible recaps, but I just can’t wait anymore. If you haven’t made it to episode 13 yet, just skip the next paragraph.

Okay! So in the final episode, there’s this great scene where [Spoiler] Norma is shown furtively collecting apple seeds in the kitchen in a plot to poison another inmate. When kitchen boss Gloria notices, she quickly puts a stop to it. “You know how many seeds you’re gonna need to make a lethal dose of arsenic?” Gloria smugly condescends. “More than all the apples ever given to any teacher that you’ve ever known. And then you’re gonna need a blender, you’re gonna need lye, and you’re gonna need an airtight container. And then you’ve gotta get it down Vee’s fucking throat. Ay, Mama, you didn’t think this one through.” Norma bows to Gloria’s wisdom, and together the two hatch a new plan of attack. [End spoiler]

While it’s certainly true that one would face numerous logistical difficulties in carrying out murder via poison inside a prison, the rest of the advice in this segment is, um, hit or miss. Apple seeds do not, in fact, contain arsenic — and there’s nothing you can do to them with only a blender, lye, and an airtight container to create it. But apple seeds do contain a powerful poison with a long and lethal history of its own: cyanide.

Via Chemistryland.com.

Actually, apple seeds contain amygdalin, a cyanogenic glycoside which is basically poison just waiting to happen. When the apple seed cells are damaged by chewing, the cyanogens are mixed with a plant enzyme that breaks them apart and releases hydrogen cyanide. While accidentally swallowing a few seeds probably won’t kill you (the hard shells allow the seeds to pass through your digestive system without breaking down), purposeful poisoning is definitely possible. And the means are all around us.

Cyanide is abundant throughout nature and is actually believed to be one of the main progenitors of life on Earth. Back when our planet was one big mess of primordial soup, HCN is thought to have combined with water and ammonia to produce adenine, one of the bases needed to construct DNA. HCN also likely acted as a condensing agent to turn amino acids into long chains of polypeptides, important building blocks for complex proteins.

Today, there are at least 2650 species of plants that produce cyanoglycosides. Apricot, peach, and plum pits all contain more amygdalin than apple seeds; bitter almonds and quince contain less. Cyanide is found oozing in the secretions of centipedes, floating in ponds of blue-green algae, and wafting through the air in puffs of cigarette smoke. It’s everywhere!

Cyclosia midama, a mimic moth, which stores HCN in its body and can excrete it in defensive droplets. Via The Butterfly Diaries.

But just because cyanide is naturally occurring doesn’t make it any less lethal. Victims of cyanide poisoning meet a quick and gruesome end, ultimately dying of asphyxiation. In The Poisoner’s Handbook, Deborah Blum explains,

Cyanide’s action is murderously precise. It attaches with stunning speed to protein molecules in the blood — called hemoglobin — that carry oxygen throughout the body. The poison is quicker at forming the attachment than oxygen and it binds more tightly to the hemoglobin. The blood is so tightly bound up with cyanide that the body is starved of oxygen. Cellular respiration suffers an instant “paralysis,” as [toxicologist Alexander Gettler] once put it, and the body begins to die. Enzyme production is stymied, electrical signals falter, and as muscle cells and nerve cells explosively fail, body-rattling convulsions frequently result.

After death, bodies poisoned by cyanide often appear to have mottled blue appearance due to oxygen deprivation. Other telltale signs include extremely dark red blood, engorged veins leading from the lungs to the heart, a faint scent of almonds, and, of course, elevated levels of cyanide in the body.

Via Tales from the Poisoner’s Handbook cyanide story, PBS.

In spite of this, cyanide’s use as a poison throughout history has been prolific. In ancient times, Egyptians were believed to have carried out judicial executions known as the “penalty of the peach” by distilling cyanide from peach pits and leaves. During the Roman empire, “the cherry death” served a similar function. Centuries later, when Prussian blue paint was mixed and heated with an acid solution, industrial hydrocyanic acid (from the Greek words “hydro” for water and “kyanos” for blue) and gas was born. HCN gas was employed in the trenches during World War I, and in Nazi gas chambers circulating “Zyklon B” during WWII. In the 1970s, cyanide laced with purple Kool-Aid killed hundreds in the mass suicide known as the Jonestown Massacre. And today, three states in the US still authorize the use of HCN to carry out death penalty executions by lethal gas, in spite of court rulings that have found the practice inhumane, cruel and unusual.

Fortunately, cyanide poisonings are relatively infrequent today. Cyanide, like many other toxic chemicals, has been diligently removed from household product chemical formulations, and industrial cyanide is closely tracked and difficult for the general public to obtain. While it is possible to extract or create cyanide from natural sources, surreptitiously slipping it in someone’s food without detection is highly difficult. Cyanide has a strong, bitter flavor, and the benzaldehyde that cyanogens produce has a distinctive odor, like almond extract.

That pile of seeds is probably not enough to kill the target, but it’s getting there.

So back to the poison plot. While the exact dosage required to kill someone depends on their individual body composition, it would probably take the seeds of somewhere between 18 apples and a bushel. Even if the potential victim is on a diet of prison food, they’re probably going to notice that something is up before they ingest enough poison to do permanent damage. And if they do survive, that horrible feeling of suffocation and organs shutting down isn’t something they’re likely to forgive or forget.

As Gloria advised in Orange Is The New Black, “There are other ways.”* A wise person would do best to seek them out before resorting to cyanide poisoning.

*Like, talking to people. Or reporting them to the guards or other authorities. Don’t poison people!

Notes From A Queer Engineer is a recurring column with an expected periodicity of one month. The subject matter may not be explicitly queer, but the industrial engineer writing it sure is. This is a peek at the notes she’s been doodling in the margins.

Make a Gooey Thing: Oobleck!

Welcome to Make a Gooey Thing! In which I walk you through these weird substances I regularly make in my work with kids. This week, we’re making Oobleck.

Oobleck, traditionally made in middle school science classrooms from cornstarch and water during units on phases of matter, is a non-Newtonian substance, like quicksand or Silly Putty. It’s not a solid OR a liquid! Scientific American explains:

Applying pressure to the mixture increases its viscosity (thickness). A quick tap on the surface of Oobleck will make it feel hard, because it forces the cornstarch particles together. But dip your hand slowly into the mix, and see what happens—your fingers slide in as easily as through water. Moving slowly gives the cornstarch particles time to move out of the way.

You can make a whole lesson about this if you want, or make up a story that it’s a secret substance from space. Or not. The six-year-old I made this with thoroughly did not care about the phases of matter represented in her hands, but she have a thoroughly good time. The point is not really to make anything with the Oobleck. It’s just a cool substance to feel and play with. The one thing you can make is a mess, but it cleans up really easily.

As I said, Oobleck is just cornstarch and water, plus optional food coloring for maximum fun. This box of cornstarch from Stop and Shop cost $2. It’s a gluten-free activity, because it’s made from corn, if that matters to you. Lay out some newspaper to cover the table to minimize clean-up. Make it in some sort of baking dish. Cake pans work really well.

Mix the cornstarch and water together. You’re going to use a roughly 1:1 ratio, but add as needed until you reach a consistency that isn’t too watery, but is liquid-y enough to be able to run your hands around in.

Now let the small human have at it.

When the small human has begun to understand the ridiculous fun that this substance is, dig out whatever food coloring you can find. Put a few drops in, and let them mix it around. It makes very cool designs.

The small human’s hands will be whatever color the food coloring is afterwards, but it will come off with some scrubbing, some time in a chlorinated pool or just by waiting it out for a little bit.

They can make it rain Oobleck.

They can have fun spattering it over the newspaper.

This is a stroke of brilliance and I played no part in making it happen.

And you can send cute pictures to their parents.

We saved it in a ziplock bag to play with again, which was definitely the hardest part, because non-newtonioan substances don’t really pour so well. But it worked eventually, and the next day we added some more water and cornstarch and food coloring, and we were right back to where we were the day before.

Science Will Not Save Us: Medicine, Research Ethics, and My Transgender Body

Earlier this year, Dr. Keith Ablow — a member of Fox News’ “Medical A-Team,” whatever that is — argued that, in his estimation, there is no scientific evidence supporting the existence of gender dysphoria. “I don’t believe,” he wrote, “we have definitive data… that any male or female soul has ever in the history of the world been born into the wrong anatomic gender.” Days later, writer and activist Brynn Tannehill took to The Huffington Post to refute Dr. Abbow’s claims, pointing to more than a dozen studies that suggest there may, in fact, be a biological basis for feelings of discomfort with one’s anatomical or assigned sex. As Tannehill argues, “the body of evidence showing biological origins of gender dysphoria, of having a mis-matched brain and body, is overwhelming.”

Indeed, the proliferation of research confirming a biological foundation for gender dysphoria (the diagnosis of which is often a necessary prerequisite for hormone therapy and other supervised medical interventions for trans folks) has become a staple of trans advocacy, both formally and informally. Agreement in the scientific community on a biological foundation for gender dysphoria stands to give trans folks its own “born this way” argument; it offers, at least superficially, vindication of the familiar trope of trans folks feeling “trapped in the wrong body.” The science is on our side, I’ve been told. The growing “body of evidence” emerging from biological and medical research, according to some commentators, speaks loudly and clearly: transgender people exist, science says.

Of course, we already knew that. On a deeply personal level, I’ve never needed a “body of evidence” to confirm the existence of my own transgender body.

In saying this, I do not mean to seem anti-science — I’m actually a big science fangirl! I marvel at my friends who are neuroscientists, awed by their ability to navigate the complexities of the human brain. I devoured recent stories covering the successful implantation of lab-grown vaginas, fascinated by regenerative medicine and its benefits. With regard to my trans sisters and brothers, I certainly do not deny the value of a robust scientific understanding of our particular medical needs. Research that points towards more effective interventions (hormonal or otherwise) is vital to improving the trajectory and quality of our lives. Moreover, I actively welcome any defensible “body of evidence” that can help persuade gatekeepers of all sorts that access to appropriate mental and physical care is necessary to alleviate the pain and anguish that marks many of our lives, as was the case with the recent overturning of Medicare’s ban on transition-related healthcare.

But, like any good fangirl, I am also critical of the enterprise. I’m especially critical of any overreliance on scientific evidence to validate the existence of trans identities — not because science is bogus, but because science (like any professionalized endeavor) is defined, in part, by what it excludes. It relies on certain practices, discourses, and “ways of knowing” in order to distinguish itself from, say, religion or the humanities. Or, you know, alchemy. But these “ways of knowing” do not appear out of nowhere — they are the result of centuries of social, political, and historical development. Simply declaring “science is on our side” flattens an otherwise diverse terrain of politics and history that inform different branches of science and its sub-fields. Any responsible approach to folding science into advocacy efforts should not only understand what scientific research says, but how and why it came to say what it does. For those interested in trumpeting a biological basis for gender dysphoria, this means understanding the history and limits of medical research in particular.

“Ontological” Limits of Medical Research

One of the limits of medical research for understanding trans people is ontological. If you went to college, you might remember being terrified by the term “ontology” and its metaphysical connotations (The Study of The Nature of Being and All Existence or Whatever). In less intimidating terms, an ontology is a particular way of identifying things and describing how those things relate to one another. Different domains employ different ontologies to make sense of the world — they name and arrange things in different ways, they allow for certain relationships and not others, and they render invisible those concepts or objects that do not fit into its scheme. In short, ontologies represent conditions of possibility: they set rules for what can and cannot possibly be within a given domain.

But ontologies are not born out of nothing. Instead, they emerge from (and are shaped by!) the active, open-ended, and everyday practices of the world they purport to describe. Annemarie Mol has referred to this process as one of “ontological politics” that influence how “problems are framed, bodies are shaped, and lives are pushed and pulled into one shape or another.” In the context of medical research, trans bodies are shaped by a variety of practices and tools — they are enacted through data gathered by researchers, as well as the instruments, languages, paperwork, statistical methods, and work structures that allow medical researchers to make sense of their data. In the clinic, trans people are shaped through a different set of practices and tools. In this setting, my transgender body is still shaped by instruments and paperwork, but they’re different instruments and paperwork. Rather than dealing in more or less comprehensive datasets, there’s just the one data point (me, waving “hello!”).

Of course, these different ways of shaping trans bodies are not mutually exclusive — they frequently come into contact with one another, like when my hormone levels are evaluated according to “standard” (or “desirable” or :: shudder :: “normal”) levels as determined by medical research. If my hormone levels fall into a desirable range, then the clinic and the research lab coincide. But if my hormone levels fall outside this desirable range, the two different contexts come into conflict — and it is in this conflict that different possibilities do or do not present themselves. If I don’t match some standard set by the research lab, I might want to make adjustments to my medication in order to move closer to a desired range. Or, if I report feeling great and being happy with my progress in spite of my hormone levels — and if my doctor confirms that there is no other immediate threat to my health — we might decide not to change anything, in which case I will continue on with my life despite falling — hormonally, at least — outside of a “standard” or “normal” range.

These same continuities and conflicts play out when it comes to research into the origins of gender dysphoria. If I were to report feeling like “I have a girl’s brain trapped in a boy’s body,” then my account is roughly continuous with medical research suggesting that, indeed, a brain can follow a developmental pattern similar to that of females while the rest of the body develops along a path typical of males. If, however, I were to reject that familiar trope and instead say that “I didn’t hate being a boy but I like being a girl better,” the connection between my own account of my identity and scientific descriptions becomes less clear — in fact, it might even be seen as conflicting with the understandings that emerge from medical research. Put another way, the former description is easily reconciled with the ontology of medical research while the latter comes into conflict. But a problem arises when we seek to reconcile this conflict: which account “counts?” Which account is considered valid? Which one is dismissed?

Dominance of Scientific Explanations

Most often, the account offered by medical research wins out. Science — of which medical research is only a part — carries a lot of currency in our post-Enlightenment world. It is built on proven methods, employs transparent procedures of evidence, and is confirmed through rigorous testing and peer-review (ideally, at least). And this certainly isn’t a bad thing! Our lives and understandings of the universe have been greatly improved in some ways (she says, estrogen pill dissolving under her tongue as she types on her laptop computer). Of course, “bad science” gets through, but we’ve got people looking out for that (as Julia Serano so excellently does). But, as feminist discussions of science, technology, and knowledge have long pointed out, being critical of science goes beyond simply challenging “bad science.” It also also means attending to the ways in which established methods, procedures, and peer-review structures might be otherwise biased. As Sandra Harding has put it, we need to pay close attention to “the problematics, agendas, ethics, consequences, and status” of science as it is commonly understood. As a student of both moral philosophy and science and technology studies, I’ve watched and cringed as scientific explanations for my transgender identity have been picked up and wielded without complication, without regard to consequences or ethics.

One consequence of adopting scientific explanations is that other, non-scientific accounts either need to be reconciled with science or they get pushed out entirely. Perhaps no recent example better illustrates this than when the otherwise awesome Neil deGrasse Tyson dismissed philosophical inquiry and “deep questions” as “distracting” for the contemporary scientist. If humanistic speculation or questions of ethics get in the way of scientific progress, Tyson seemed to be saying, they should be left behind.

But, while scientific discourse is often totalizing, its understandings of the world aren’t total. Nonetheless (and as evidenced by Tyson’s comments), science tends to obscure or reject those things or explanations that don’t fit its ontology. To demonstrate just how forceful scientific explanations can be — and what they are capable of obscuring — consider Greg Grandin’s recounting of the aftermath of the voyage of the Joaquín, a Portuguese slave ship that saw the death of 270 kidnapped East Africans while sailing between Mozambique and Uruguay in 1803:

“City officials convened a commission of inquiry to explain the deaths…, calling on the expertise of five surgeons — two British doctors, a Spaniard, a Swiss Italian, and one from the United States. The doctors testified that before boarding the Joaquín, the captives would have felt extreme anguish, having already been forced to survive on roots and bugs until arriving on the African coast emaciated and with their stomachs distended. Then, once on the ocean, crowded into a dark hold with no ventilation, they would have had nothing to do other than listen to the cries of their companions and the clanking of their chains. Many would have gone mad trying to make sense of their situation, trying to ponder ‘the imponderable.’ The surgeons decided that the East Africans had died from dehydration and chronic diarrhea, aggravated by the physical and psychological hardships of slavery — from, that is, what they called ‘nostalgia,’ ‘melancholia,’ and ‘cisma,’ a Spanish word that loosely means brooding or mourning.”

Note that the scientific explanation for the deaths was dehydration and chronic diarrhea — not, you know, being forced into slavery and made to cross the ocean under inhumane conditions. While the explanation given by the surgeons is clearly rooted in prevailing racist attitudes, it also demonstrates a consequence of adopting scientific explanations for things: medical descriptions move to the fore and social or political explanations are pushed out. Later, Grandin also shows how “slavery helped in what might be called the disenchanting of medicine, that is, how concepts like melancholia cited by the surgeons were taken “out of the hands of priests, poets, and philosophers” and given meaning in a medical context (Ann Cvetkovich has offered a similarly enlightening discussion of melancholy being medicalized as depression). And this is the risk of an overreliance on scientific explanations: in order to preserve its ontology, science forestalls, co-opts, or transforms understandings that do not square with the ways in which science makes sense of the world.

Uneven Distribution of Science’s Benefits and Burdens

It must be pointed out that my choice of illustration above is a challenging one. As a white transgender woman, it would be disingenuous of me to summon or co-opt an example of racialized violence in order to support an argument that isn’t specifically about communities of color. Recognizing this challenge, however, reveals a further problem posed by the appeal to scientific explanations for justifying trans identities: it is a bad foundation upon which to build solidarity within the trans community, which includes people of color and the history of violence enacted upon them in the name of scientific inquiry.

Trans folks exist at the intersections of many different identities — racial, ethnic, sexual, socioeconomic, and beyond. Further, our trans identities relate to these other identities in complicated ways that are overlooked by any blanket appeal to scientific explanations. Not only does science have a tendency to muscle out other ways of knowing, but the benefits and burdens of scientific research (and medical research, in particular) have not been fairly distributed. Most often, marginalized racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups have shouldered a larger share of its burdens and reaped fewer benefits. Simply claiming that science is on trans folks’ side sweeps aside the ways in which the pursuit of scientific knowledge has been harmful to marginalized communities.

As the voyage of the Joaquín starts to suggest, modern medicine was built, in part, on the exploitation of enslaved populations. But you don’t have to reach back as far as the 18th and 19th centuries to find other examples; medical research has a rich tradition of exploiting certain populations well into the 20th and 21st centuries. Released in 1978, The Belmont Report — which sets out some basic ethical principles for research involving human subjects — was issued, in part, as a response to the horrors of the 40-year Tuskegee syphilis experiment. In the experiment, which exploited vulnerable populations of African-American men from 1932 to 1972, researchers sought to better understand the natural progression of syphilis in the human body — and it continued even after penicillin had been identified as an effective cure for the disease. Afflicted participants were denied access to the drug and, instead, researchers watched and took notes as many men suffered and died. Perhaps even more egregiously, the study continued even after the Nuremberg Code (an international code protecting the rights of research subjects formulated in light of the horrors of Nazi medical experiments) had been articulated at the end of the 1940s. Many of those complicit in the study’s continuance participated, in the words of John Heller, Director of the Public Health Service’s Division of Venereal Diseases, for “the glory of science.”

Even more recently, researchers at Arizona State University were reprimanded and fined for exploiting genetic material obtained from blood samples of the Havasupai Indians in the early 1990s. The samples had originally been gathered in an effort to better understand the devastation diabetes was causing the tribe. Later, however, samples gathered for the original study were reused for various other purposes, including “theories of the tribe’s geographical origins that contradict their traditional stories.” Again, scientific explanations risk squeezing out other ways of knowing. For the Havasupai, unsanctioned research into their DNA threatened to override and supplant native understandings of the tribe’s origins and history.

In deferring to the work of science and medical researchers, trans people and advocates run the same risk: we make our own forms of evidence vulnerable to the totalizing effects of scientific discourse. Uncritical appeals to medical research ignore the relevance of trans folks’ diverse and complicated racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic identities. Turning to scientific explanations in a quick or thoughtless manner alienates us from our own stories. Most importantly, the claim that “science is on our side” fails to account for the uneven ways the benefits and burdens of medical research have historically been distributed. If you’re affluent and white, then, sure, science has (usually) been on your side — if you’re not (if you’re black or indigenous or poor, for example), not so much.

Preserving Diverse Understandings of Ourselves

As Laverne Cox has consistently and forcefully reminded us: “There’s not just one trans story. There’s not just one trans experience.” Practically speaking, however, when we defer to science to validate the identities of trans people, we bulldoze diverse understandings of our bodies and our experience in favor of medicalized explanations of our existence. We risk supplanting our community’s own explanations for scientific ones. Ultimately, while medical research holds out the promise of new understandings and new therapies to improve the quality and trajectory of our lives, too heavy or too dogmatic of an appeal to science to validate our existence runs the dual risk of pushing out alternative ways of explaining ourselves while simultaneously hindering the development of solidarity throughout the trans community.

Notes From A Queer Engineer: Can Inanimate Objects Be Sexist?

Header by Rory Midhani

“Is the Oculus Rift sexist?” That was the provocative question posed in a March 28 Quartz article outlining an investigation that computer graphics programmer danah boyd undertook during the late ’90s to investigate why 3D immersion environments made her female colleagues physically sick while male peers were unaffected. After a few years of cross-disciplinary research (including visual psychology experiments and interviews with trans people undergoing hormone replacement therapy), boyd concluded that there are two types of depth perception: motion parallax (which male-assigned bodies tend to prioritize), and shape-from-shading (which female-assigned bodies tend to prioritize). That virtual reality systems address the former but not the latter is an example of design bias which largely favors men — in a word, sexism.

As you can imagine, reactions to the article were very strong.

What struck me as I read the through long list of objections from commenters is that hardly any of them had to do with boyd’s research. Most of the complaints were in actually directed at boyd’s implicit position on the following two questions:

1. Is intent necessary for something to be sexist? (boyd says no.)
2. Can inanimate objects be sexist? (boyd says yes.)

I think there are some really interesting elements at play behind these assumptions, and I’d love to hear more queer/feminist perspectives on this. So let’s talk about it!

YouTube “My 90 year old grandmother tries the Oculus Rift” by Paul Rivot.

First up: is intent necessary for something to be sexist? I find this question interesting because I think it’s symptomatic of some of the massive anxiety people have around the language of feminism. In other contexts, the answers seem fairly straightforward. Do people sometimes do things they didn’t intend to do? Obviously yes. If an action done unintentionally has caused harm, even unintentionally, do participants hold responsibility for fixing it? Again, most reasonable people would say yes. So why do we get so stuck on these points once we enter the realm of sexism?

I think people recoil from the term “sexist” because they hear it as a shrill, denunciatory attack on the character of whoever is responsible. But here’s the thing: sexism doesn’t require malicious intent, and the problem doesn’t begin and end with Sterling, Cooper, Draper and Pryce. There are a million tiny ways that good people — myself included — can and do perpetuate sexism all the time, without even thinking. Calling something someone did “sexist” has nothing to do with said person’s character, because sexism is the default setting in most areas of our society. Even here, by focusing on intent rather than results, what we’re saying is that the offender’s perception of the situation is what really matters. This normalizes sexism and reinforces male privilege. Subverting sexism is usually the thing that requires conscious intent, not the other way around.

Laverne Cox dropping wisdom at the GLAAD Media Awards. Different context; still applicable.

So if intent isn’t required for actions to be sexist, does that mean that inanimate objects can be sexist too?  Going back to boyd, she responded to criticism on her blog:

Sexism is prejudice or discrimination on the basis of sex (typically against women). For sexism to exist, there does not need to be an actor intending to discriminate. People, systems, and organizations can operate in sexist manners without realizing it. This is the basis of implicit or hidden biases. Addressing sexism starts by recognizing bias within systems and discrimination as a product of systems in society…. I think it’s important to grapple with the ways in which sexism is not always intentional but at the very basis of our organizations and infrastructure, as well as our cultural practices.

That seems to make sense. boyd makes an interesting case about virtual reality systems demonstrating sex-based discrimination, but I think many people have difficulty relating to it simply because the technology is a) uncommon, and b) use optional. For our discussion, let’s take a look at something more broadly used: cars.

Although women have been riding in automobiles for about as long as they’ve existed, car safety features have historically been designed and optimized for male-assigned bodies only. In a 2011 study published in the American Journal of Public Health, researchers from the University of Virginia’s Center for Applied Biomechanics found that female drivers wearing seat belts were 47% more likely to suffer a serious injury than male drivers in comparable crashes. According to the study authors, this is likely due to sex-based differences in neck strength and musculature, stature, and preferred seating postures, which were not sufficiently taken into account in car safety feature designs. Disturbingly, this study is considered the first to formally assess how a vehicle’s design affects male and female drivers differently; prior to 2011, most gender-based studies had focused on differences in driving patterns and risk-taking behaviors.

Last month, Gothenburg researcher Astrid Linder won the EU Champions of Transport Research Competition for her work developing a female crash dummy, as well as the first computer crash dummy based on the average woman. Via VTI.

In fact, there has been a long history of struggle between safety advocates and automakers over how much consideration should be given to different body types. The debate began in the late 1950s, when the emerging consumer safety movement began scrutinizing government regulation of the auto industry. They argued that regulatory focus should be put on improving car designs in addition to policing consumer behavior. Following the release of Unsafe at Any Speed, Ralph Nader‘s high profile exposé on automakers’ unwillingness to make road-safety improvements, public outcry lead to the passage of the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966 — the first nationwide automotive safety standards. Automakers pushed back, particularly against Standard 201 for Interior Occupant Protection, which required the use of mannequins to check impact points during car crashes.

The standard called for the use of two models: one to represent a very large male body, and one to represent a very petite female body. Although the male model had already been developed (“Sierra Sam,” created in 1949 under a contract with the Air Force), no female model existed yet. Automakers argued that creating a second dummy was too complex and costly, and in 1973, federal regulators agreed. When full body crash test dummies were mandated, the two “extreme” models to show a range of body sizes were no longer required; instead, one model sized to represent the average male body was deemed sufficient.

A female crash dummy did not become a mandatory part of frontal crash tests until 2011. Because of long development cycles — and even longer consumer purchasing cycles — it will be years before the effects are fully realized on the road.

Left: Le Corbusier’s “Modulator” design created in the 1940s to set standards for the human body in architecture and mechanical design.”Human” here is presented as a 1.75 meter man. Right: The 70kg male body is often used as a standard reference model in anatomical textbooks. The 2004 edition of Gray’s Anatomy details anatomical features using the male body, showing female bodies only to show where they deviate from males, especially in primary and secondary sexual characteristics. Via Gendered Innovations.

As some have pointed out, “manufacturers and designers used to be all men,” so it’s certainly possible that female bodies were unintentionally overlooked. It’s an unfortunate but familiar output of the patriarchy, wherein straight, white, nondisabled, cisgender men are the catered-to norm, and everyone else is an afterthought (and the further an individual deviates from the standard model, the less consideration they receive). Cisgender men dominate the field of engineering, and they also hold most control over who receives funding and how said funds will be allocated. Is it any surprise that this system produces results prioritizing the wants and needs of cisgender men? Even so, does the fact that the logic is somewhat understandable make it okay? Does the fact that male privilege is ubiquitous also mean that it is right?

The bottom line is, harm is disproportionately being done to women. That’s sexism. I wish virtual reality systems and cars were the only relevant examples I could think of, but there are countless others.

So next question: what are we going to do about it?

Notes From A Queer Engineer is a recurring column with an expected periodicity of one month. The subject matter may not be explicitly queer, but the industrial engineer writing it sure is. This is a peek at the notes she’s been doodling in the margins.

30 Sexy Dinosaur Facts For When You Can’t Think of What to Say in Bed

by Mey and Grace
Ever have one of those times when you’re in bed with your special someone and you find yourself at a loss for words? Well, as everyone knows, nothing makes for better pillow talk than dinosaur facts. Here you go, and you’re welcome.

The archeopteryx, which may or may not be one of the earliest birds (it’s complicated). copyright Stacey Burgess

1. Modern day birds are actually dinosaurs! In fact, a T-Rex is more closely related to a turkey than a stegosaurus.

via xkcd

2. That’s because there were two main groups of dinosaurs: saurischian (lizard hipped) and ornithischian (bird hipped), and modern birds evolved from the saurischian group, which includes the T-Rex, and are evolutionarily closer than saurischian and ornithischian dinosaurs.

What even is that?!?! (It’s a Quetzalcoatlus) via about.dinosaurs.com

3. Even though modern birds are dinosaurs, flying reptiles (like Pterodactyls and the ridiculously awesome Quetzalcoatlus) that lived in the time of the dinosaurs were not dinosaurs.

Liopleurodon via carnivoraforum

4. Neither were aquatic reptiles like the Plesiosaur or Liopleurodon.

via fossilmuseum.net

5. Neither were Dimetrodons. Dinosaur refers to a specific set of land-dwelling reptiles who couldn’t fly and had a specific type of hip bone.

via astronomy-to-zoology.tumblr.com

6. The Brontosaurus isn’t a real dinosaur at all. It’s just what happened when people accidentally put the skull of one sauropod on the body of another (also when people were being jerks and fighting to quickly “discover” as many new dinosaurs as they could).

via Bookbyte Blog

7. It’s possible that the Triceratops didn’t exist either! Although there’s still a lot of debate going on, some paleontologists think that Triceratops skeletons are just young Torosauruses.

8. The Therizinasaurus had the longest claws of any dinosaur, which grew to be about three feet long.

via The News

9. T-Rex had the biggest teeth of any carnivorous dinosaur at 12 inches long.

10. Velociraptors in real life weren’t very much like the ones in Jurassic Park at all. In reality, they were only a few feet tall, weighed about thirty pounds and where covered in feathers. So that annoying kid is pretty much right, except instead of  six-foot turkeys, they were more like three-foot turkeys.

via Discovery News

11. Actually, a lot of dinosaurs were likely covered in feathers or protofeathers (which were basically short fuzzy feathers).

via wikipedia

12. There’s a dinosaur named for the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (Dracorex hogwartsia, which means “Dragon King of Hogwarts”).

via National Geographic

13. There’s evidence that suggests that Tyrannosaurus Rexes sometimes ate each other, which: gross but also cool?

via Land Before Time Wiki

14. Hadrosaurus foulkii (Duck-bills in “Land Before Time”) was the first mostly complete fossil ever found in North America. They showed a plaster casting of it at the 1893 World’s Fair, but now we know that the original hypothesis of what it looked like was totally wrong.

Astrodon, Maryland’s State dinosaur.

15. Most states have state fossils, but some states have designated state dinosaurs.

via MSN

16. The classic dinosaur movie “The Lost World” (1925), whose plot supposes that dinosaurs aren’t extinct after all, was the first feature-length movie ever to feature stop-motion animation.

Sue via Encyclopedia Brittanica

17. The largest, most complete T-Rex fossil is currently in the Chicago Field Museum. Named “Sue” after paleontologist Sue Hendrickson, the fossil is 40 feet long and 13 feet tall.

17a. Sue the T-Rex was discovered in South Dakota, and if you go to the Field Museum with someone from South Dakota, that’s literally that only thing you need to know.

18. T-Rexes usually lived to be about 30 years old, so they were basically permanent millennials. Imagine a T-Rex watching Girls. I bet T-Rexes would be total Shoshannas.

19. Parasaurolophuses moved in herds. They really did move in herds.

via screenrant

20. It is unlikely that dinosaur eggs were ever larger than two feet across, even for the biggest dinosaurs.

21. It’s suggested that the smartest dinosaurs were Troodons, who were maybe about as smart as modern birds.

via Dinosaur Planet

22. There were totally toothless dinosaurs; “HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON” WAS REAL

A team unearthing dinosaur fossils in Antarctica. via The Antarctic Sun

23. Dinosaur fossils have been found on every continent, including Antarctica.

via Extreme Tech

24. The only thing I remember from my astronomy class is that basically everything major that happens is because of giant space stuff running into other giant space stuff, so I feel like the hypothesis that a giant impact wiped out the dinosaurs is probably true based on that class I took freshman year of college.

via Wikipedia

25. You can make road trips more fun if you point out that the car is about the size of a Stegosaurus and that the walnuts that you obviously packed in order to have this conversation are approximately the size of a Stegosaurus brain.

via Fog’s Movie Reviews

26. Some plant-eating dinosaurs swallowed rocks in order to help them digest their food.

via Wikipedia

27. Megalosaurus was the first dinosaur (not counting modern birds, which, I’ll remind you, are dinosaurs) to be officially named based on fossils back in 1824.

This is not at all what an Iguanodon looks like. via Cabinet

28. The next was the Iguanodon in 1825. They’ve got a famous thumb spike, but that spike was placed on its nose like a horn by the first  scientists who classified it.

Mary Anning and her weird dog. via Wikipedia

29. Mary Anning was a famous early paleontologist in England, who discovered some ichthyosaur and pterosaur skeletons and the first ever plesiosaur skeletons. Although none of those are actually dinosaurs, she deserves a spot on this list, because she was a working class woman making scientific breakthroughs about prehistoric reptiles during a time when the only scientists were upper class men.

30. Jurassic Park is one of the All-Time Best movies ever made and Dr. Ellie Sattler is a total badass whom I want to be/marry.

Notes From A Queer Engineer: Silicone Is Sexy

Recently my work brought me to China for two weeks of training, lab tours and factory inspections. Aside from the extra special daily adventures in miming, menu-pointing and general miscommunication (I wish I spoke Mandarin or Cantonese!), my two biggest takeaways of the trip were:

1. Hong Kong is just as crowded, overpriced, terrible and captivating as New York.
2. Silicone is so fucking cool.

I really wish I could show you the actual videos I took at the factories, but alas, I don’t want to be fired. Suffice it to say that the company I work for uses a lot of fun colors in their products, so when you walk through a silicone workshop, all the WIP (Work In Progress) looks like candy. Or sex toys. Combine this with several hundred industrial machines running at the typical fever pitch pace of a factory and the effect is totally mesmerizing.

This roll mill is used to mix and soften material. I believe the material shown here is rubber, but the same process is applicable to silicone. Now use your imagination to color the material radiant orchid.

So what are silicones? Chemically, they’re polymers with long chains of alternating silicon and oxygen atoms. These industrially created materials are generally known for resistance to chemical attack, impermeability to water and consistent performance even in extreme heat and cold. However, different types of silicones can be created by attaching different organic groups to the terminal silicon atoms. It’s a pretty exciting field right now because even though silicon has long been known for the easy and stable bonds it forms with oxygen, it’s really only in the last century that scientists began to explore the effects of binding different organic compounds.

Silicone with three methyl groups (-CH3) attached to the terminal silicon atoms. By substituting other organic groups for the methyls, properties such as solubility in organic solvents, water-repellence and flexibility can be altered. Via Principles of General Chemistry.

Silicone properties can also be changed by altering chain length and the amount of cross-linking between the chains. Without cross-linking, silicones are waxes or oils. With cross-linking, the material is a flexible solid with countless familiar applications ranging from cookware to Silly Putty. Silicone is also frequently put to work behind the scenes; for example, modern passenger planes each use about 1000 pounds of silicone in gaskets and sealing rings for jet engines, ducting, sealing strips, vibration dampers and insulation equipment.

Because silicone’s essential properties are determined by the molecules and the way they’re linked together, it requires few additives. Unlike other elastomers that require curing accelerators or retarders, organic plasticizers or antioxidants, silicone is very pure and can be made in forms that are unusually chemically compatible with the human body. This makes it perfect for food contact, medical applications, and – “oh joy” – sex toys!

Via What We Bop.

Unlike food contact and medical sectors, the materials used in sex toys are highly unregulated. This seems like the obvious work of the patriarchy if you ask me (consider: what kinds of bodies are associated with sex toy usage?), but today’s unfortunate reality is caveat emptor, buyer beware. And when health conscious consumers do their research, they often receive the following advice: invest in quality and buy silicone.

Silicone is a great material for sex toys because it’s durable and warms to body temperatures. As previously mentioned, silicone requires few additives, so there’s a smaller likelihood of chemicals such as phthalates leaching out of toys and into bodies. I say “smaller likelihood” because if there’s one thing I’ve learned from working in manufacturing, it is that maintaining a clean environment to prevent cross contamination is a lot of work.

Luckily, many silicone sex toys are actually made in small workshops where industrial chemicals (one of the most common culprits for contamination) are used sparingly or not at all. For example, while a large factory might spray their molds with a variety of questionable chemical aids to make the product come loose, it’s obvious from the peel, pull and pop process starting around 1:35 that the main mold release agent Vixen Creations employs is elbow grease:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qopMnrfwP3Q

Through material selection (remember all those different organic groups that can be attached to the terminal silicon atoms?) and proper production control, silicone porosity can be controlled or entirely prevented. This is great news for silicone sex toy users because it means that there are no unexpected nooks and crannies for liquids to be absorbed and bacteria to grow. Because of silicone’s high heat resistance, toys can easily be sanitized by running them through the dishwasher or by putting them in a pot of boiling water for a few minutes. (Note that this only applies only to 100% silicone toys; if there are electronics or other types of plastic in the design, avoid high heat and stick with a body safe spray cleaner.) Diluted bleach solution is another common cleaning method, although you should read up first so you don’t overdo it.

Silicone has good chemical resistance — meaning it can be exposed to a variety of chemicals without changing its consistency — but it’s far from invincible. As with all polymers, silicones will dissolve in solvents whose solubility parameters are not too different from their own. This “like dissolves like” rule is why many advise categorically against using silicone lubricant with silicone toys; the actual reaction, however, depends entirely on the material formulations at hand. Here’s one example of what a silicone-silicone reaction can look like, products courtesy of Babeland:

Left: stock image of Tantus dildo before silicone lube exposure. Notice that the dildo is uniform in width, right up to the end. Right: photo of Tantus dildo after two weeks of exposure to silicone lube. Notice the change in profile due to the swollen tip.

For more, check out this video of my experiment:

Header by Rory Midhani

Notes From A Queer Engineer is a recurring column with an expected periodicity of one month. The subject matter may not be explicitly queer, but the industrial engineer writing it sure is. This is a peek at the notes she’s been doodling in the margins.

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Notes From A Queer Engineer: My Top Five Beautiful Things in Science

We’re celebrating Autostraddle’s Fifth Birthday all month long by publishing a bunch of Top Fives. This is one of them!

1. Fractals

Although self-similar patterns have been around forever, the term “fractal” wasn’t coined until 1975. Mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot created the word from the Latin fractus, meaning fragmented and irregular. Appropriately, fractals are non-regular geometric shapes that have the same degree of non-regularity on all scales. They appear as “worlds within worlds, ” where greater complexity is revealed as the pattern is enlarged.

Via Fractal Foundation

Via Fractal Foundation

Once you know what to look for, you start to notice these trippy patterns everywhere. There are fractal patterns in broccoli, lightning, blood vessels, river networks, neurons, nautilus shells, frost patterns… the list goes on. But it makes a lot more sense in pictures than in words, so I’ll stop talking now and just show you some!

Fractal fern. (See how each of the smaller branches are similar to the larger fern shape?) Via Artefactos0618

Lightning over Roswell, New Mexico Via AP Photo/Roswell Daily Record, Mark Wilson

Aerial of Canada via Paul Bourke

My soul is spiraling in frozen fractals all around… Frost via Draw and Shoot, Karen McRae

Romanesco broccoli via Fourmilan Fractal Food

2. DNA

Unlike fractals, DNA is not very visually appealing – it actually looks like a string of snot – but the amount of information it contains is totally bonkers. DNA is like Hermione’s charmed handbag, except that a) it’s real, and b) the cargo it carries is even more important.

Via Online Education

3. The Moon

As a large, glowy object lighting up the night sky, the moon is already pretty damn cool in my book (melancholy singing mice or not). But have you heard about the many ways this celestial body effects life here on Earth?

The two sides of the Moon. Via LRO / Universe Today.

For example:

• For a long time scientists believed that without the moon’s stabilizing influence, harsh seasonal excursions would have prevented complex life from evolving. Recently this theory has been called into question; however, it remains undisputed that moon-induced ocean tides play an important role in the food chain and the intertidal ecosystem lineages that ultimately gave rise to human beings. What I’m saying is: no moon, (possibly) no people.
• Many animals have biological processes linked to lunar and tidal cycles. The entire species of Pacific palolo worm, for example, breeds on a single night in autumn when the moon is in its last quarter. The Samoans have developed an intricate monitoring system of this process, involving close observation of flame tree flowers, whose emergence appears to be synchronized one week prior to the palolo’s mating ritual. On the day the engorged, swarming worms rise to the surface, waiting islanders scoop them up in masses to feast on.
• Efforts mounted to get to the moon propelled countless technological advancements, but my favorite, by far, is desktop computing. During the space race, NASA drove the miniaturization of information technology crucial to the development of modern computers. The 70-pound onboard Apollo Guidance Computer developed at MIT made a safe landing on the moon possible in 1969. Today, my trusty 3-pound laptop helps push messages straight from my brain to your eyeballs.

Pretty neat, right?

Aww yeahhh

4. Elemental Origins

Via Geek Is Awesome

As Cosmos’ Carl Sagan famously put it, “The earth and every living thing are made of star stuff.” I’m super psyched about the show’s reboot with Neil deGrasse Tyson, and we should all be super psyched about the origins of the elements. In short: everything can be traced back to the stars.

Here’s the answer deGrasse Tyson gave in a 2008 interview with Time magazine when he was asked to share the most astounding fact about the universe:

5. The Scientific Method

I love puzzle solving and I love standard processes, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that I’m a big fan of the scientific method (and its close cousin, the engineering method).

I also love that when you input “scientific method” to Google image search it’s an insta-rainbow pride parade. Via Science Buddies.

What’s so fantastic about the scientific method is that it breaks the world down into a series of solvable puzzles. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn writes,

Bringing a normal research problem to a conclusion is achieving the anticipated in a new way, and it requires the solution of all sorts of complex instrumental, conceptual, and mathematical puzzles. The person who succeeds proves themself an expert puzzle-solver, and the challenge of the puzzle is an important part of what usually drives them on. … What then challenges them is the conviction that, if they are skillful, they will succeed in solving a puzzle that no one before has solved or solved so well.

Exactly. (Okay, it was originally written “man” this, “him” and “he” that. I fixed it; not sorry.)

As Kuhn points out in his work, there are limitations to the scientific method  — namely, that progress is almost always limited to incremental gains within an established paradigm, and that this model resists revolutionary change. That criticism is fair. But it doesn’t negate what I  love most about science, which is this: at its core, science is a willingness to believe that the universe is knowable. That if we ask the right questions and follow the evidence, we can get to the bottom of how things are, and why. That we can know the truth about everything.

That’s about the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.

Notes From A Queer Engineer is a recurring column with an expected periodicity of one month. The subject matter may not be explicitly queer, but the industrial engineer writing it sure is. This is a peek at the notes she’s been doodling in the margins.

Notes From A Queer Engineer: Yuna Kim And The Physics of Figure Skating

Header by Rory Midhani

Happy Hunger Games Olympics! Have you braced yourself for the next lurching round of naive/misguided vs. brave/wonderful athlete comments on LGBT people and Russia? It’s going to be gruesome, I can already tell. So today we pause, momentarily, for a half-step sideways into the intersection of two other awesome international spectacles intermittently fraught with weird political controversy: science and the gayest Olympic sport since the International Olympic Committee dropped wrestling.

Yes, today we’re talking about the physics of figure skating.

Helping us out today will be my favorite lady skater of 2014, Yuna Kim. Going into the Sochi Games she will be defending her 2010 Olympic gold. Among numerous other titles, Kim is the reigning two-time World Champion, a three-time Grand Prix Final champion and a six-time South Korean national champion.

Coincidentally, she’s a total heartthrob dreamboat cutie pie:

So lace up, and let’s talk some science!

FYI, it’s also okay if you just want to look at these gifs and follow the links for videos of Yuna Kim. Did you know she’s also a singer?! Gif via Daum Blog.

Let’s start at the very beginning: ice. Frozen water. A material that’s perfect for skating on because it has such little friction — scientifically, the force that occurs when two objects slide against each other and dissipate their energy of motion.

Ice skates are designed to take advantage of this with their grooved blades that are only one-eighth of an inch thick. Because of the minimal contact with an already low friction surface, skaters find little resistance as they slide against the ice and can glide smoothly.

Yuna experiments with friction. This was from the 2009 Festa On Ice, where Yuna performed in a group routine to “Dancing Queen” and “It’s Raining Men” with Johnny Weir.

Skilled figure skaters propel themselves across the ice in controlled motions by taking advantage of Newton’s third law of motion: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

For example:

Michelle Kwan and Yuna Kim hold hands going into a T-stop at the 2010 All That Skate LA.

At the start of the movement when Yuna angles her right foot outwards and extends her knee behind her, the broad edge of her blade hits the ice creating friction. When she pushes to make the edge exert a force, the friction propels her forward. In other words, when Yuna pushes against the ice, the ice pushes back. This is how she and Michelle are able to perform their T-stops at the end — by using friction to push in the opposite direction of their motion.

The same action-reaction principle also comes into play during jumps: when a skater forcefully pushes down, the ice forcefully pushes up, launching the skater into the air to perform whatever feat their heart desires.

Closeup of Yuna’s skates during a triple lutz – triple toe loop combination. I like when the jumps are slightly imperfect because it reminds you how absurdly difficult they are. Gif via Kodemari Sakuraweb.

When figure skaters jump, their entire bodies become projectiles (objects upon which the only significant outside force acting is gravity) moving both vertically (up in the air and back down again) and horizontally (across the ice). The key concept here is Newton’s third law, inertia: a body in motion tends to stay in motion. Because the only force in play mid-jump is gravity, the motion path is that of a parabola (an inverted, stretched out “u” arc).

Ignore the spinning for a minute and check out the path Yuna’s body follows:

Yuna executes a flawless double axel at the 2009 Grand Prix Final Gala. Love those sparkle pants. Gif via Naver Blog.

Moving across the ice, Yuna’s horizontal velocity (speed in a particular direction) stays more or less constant throughout the move. Compare this to her vertical motion (Yuna goes up a certain height, stops, and reverses as gravity pulls her back down) and you can see that the forces are independent of each other (meaning that changes in one are not necessarily mirrored in the other).

Here’s another jump with some freeze frames:

Combination triple lutz triple toe loop at 46th Golden Spin of Zagreb. Gif via YunaKimFan.com.

Now let’s take a look at the rotation — which, scientifically, is measured via angular momentum (the amount that a body is rotating about a point).

Observe Yuna’s arms throughout the jump:

Triple salchow at Summer 2012 All That Skate.

Just as she did in the previous jumps, Yuna starts her salchow with her arms reaching out like she’s getting ready for a giant bear hug. As the jump begins, Yuna swings her outside arm around in front of her body. As she goes up, she pulls both arms in close to her body and does a few quick turns in the air; then at the end of the jump, she extends them out to either side again.

Aside from looking elegant, these arm movements actually serve the purpose of speeding up and slowing down Yuna’s rotation via the principle of conservation of angular momentum.

The idea here is that that when rotational inertia decreases, rotation speed increases; or when the rotational speed decreases, the rotational inertia increases. There are no outside forces causing Yuna’s body to rotate after she initiates her spin, so practically, pulling in her arms in reduces her rotational inertia and causes her to spin faster.

You can see the same principle in action with her free leg, particularly in jumps assisted by the toe pick, such as the flip and the lutz. Pulling it in helps her to rotate faster.

Boom. Triple flip at the 46th Golden Spin of Zagreb. Gif via Kodemari Sakuraweb.

Similarly for spins performed on the ice, Yuna’s speed increases as she pulls her limbs inwards, making her body more compact. She slows herself down by doing the opposite, unfurling her limbs.

Watch her change her speed:

Zagreb again. This full routine, set to “Send in the Clowns,” is what she’s expected to perform at the Olympics. Gif via Wikitree.

And here’s Yuna doing another spin, because why not:

Yuna in a layback spin at the 2009 Ice All Stars group closing number. No speed changes to be seen here, but isn’t it beautiful? Gif via Happy Skater YunA Kim.

Enjoy the Olympics, everyone!

Notes From A Queer Engineer is a recurring column with an expected periodicity of one month. The subject matter may not be explicitly queer, but the industrial engineer writing it sure is. This is a peek at the notes she’s been doodling in the margins.

Holigay Gift Guide 2013: Urban Explorers

I’m a city transplant, and even though I like where I am, I miss a lot of things about the rest of the world. The occasional reminder that there’s more to life than concrete, commutes, and humans does me a lot of good. Here are some great ways to get yourself (or someone else) deep into whatever outdoors you happen to have, and to condense the vastness of nature so it’s more apartment-sized!

For Bringing the Inside Out

One recharging activity that I really enjoy is packing a book and a lunch, biking as far as I can and then stopping whenever I land at a park, shore, suburban trailhead, or other picnicable place. These reusable Cuppow Mason Jar Lids turn a household staple into a de facto water/coffee/smoothie bottle (and no, your jar won’t shatter, especially if you tuck it into the water bottle holder of the Bike Rack Bag where you packed the rest of your stuff). I stole my picnic blanket from an international flight, but YOU can get this Picnic Time one that is water-resistant and turns into a tote bag. Avoid getting lost (and give yourself a soundtrack) with this Smartphone Bike Mount.

Even if you’re just getting from one place to another, having something to pay attention to while you do it can make all the difference. The various US City Bird Guides will help you get to know your more feathery neighbors — they’re pretty old, but there’s one for most major cities. For first-time trackers, The Urban Tree Book might be even better, because your subjects can’t run away. Although it’s got a limited intended audience, Leslie Day’s Field Guide to the Natural World of New York City is actually a cool read for anyone. And after the sun sets, the Star Map 3D app can help you memorize some nearby constellations while you’re waiting for the train. Cute girls love constellations.

For Bringing the Outside In

Having a few green guys around can really bring some air into your life, literally and figuratively. Beginners might want to start out with an all-in-one Moss Terrarium Kit, while those who are ready to go it alone can choose from a variety of options, like this space-sensitive Hanging Terrarium (which comes six to a pack!) or this larger Glass Cloche. If you’d like to get more practical (read: delicious) use out of your plants, and you’re willing to raise them from  infancy, try out this Seed-Starting Tray, which comes with watering and seed trays, growth pellets, and fertilizer.

If you’d like to spend your time indoors imaging what once grew where your apartment used to be, check out Manahatta, which traces the natural history of New York back to “the forests of Times Square, the meadows of Harlem, and the wetlands of downtown.” If you’d rather project a semi-apocalyptic future, The World Without Us is a total mind trip. Both these books are pretty heavy, so even things out with a Goats in Trees or Extraordinary Chickens calendar.

Sometimes your laptop screen is the best portal to the outside world. Planet Earth is the obvious choice for a reason, but if you’ve watched jumping baby ducks one too many times, I can also personally recommend Human Planet and Blue Planet, both from the same production team. I also really love Microcosmos, which instills insect lives with high drama. And if you’d rather go huge, there’s always Carl Sagan’s galactic classic Cosmos.

For Remembering Everything

There are lots of ways to remember your adventures, keep track of succulent growth, and plan for the future. If you want to use more than just your brain, I recommend this set of 12 Rainbow Notebooks. I’m also intrigued by this Oregon Scientific Movie Camera, which I think is technically for children, but is inexpensive, seems durable, and looks like it could affix easily to my handlebars. As for pictures, this iPhone camera kit comes with three different lenses and a mini-tripod, so it’ll be like shooting fisheyes in a barrel.

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Notes From A Queer Engineer: GoldieBlox and the Feminist

Notes From A Queer Engineer is a recurring column with an expected periodicity of one month. The subject matter may not be explicitly queer, but the industrial engineer writing it sure is. This is a peek at the notes she’s been doodling in the margins.

Header by Rory Midhani

It’s time to change / We deserve to see a range /’Cause all our toys look just the same / and we would like to use our brains / We are all more than princess maids / Girls to build the spaceship / Girls to code the new app / Girls to grow up knowing / they can engineer that.

Sound familiar? Set to the tune of the Beastie Boys’ “Girls,” these lyrics played over GoldieBlox’s viral “Princess Machine” video, in which three little girls build a Rube Goldberg machine to change the channel on the TV. The company pulled the song after a legal kerfuffle over copyright infringement, but not before close to a million people saw the ad for the girly construction set and book intended to “introduce girls to the joy of engineering at a young age.”

Though the video was adorable, I have to admit that I winced when I saw it. As a woman in engineering, I knew what was coming next: a vigorous debate about why there aren’t more women in STEM fields. Cringeworthy comments about innate differences between the sexes. Lots of speculation on the best way to fix the problem of women wussing out on worthwhile careers involving math and hard science.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIGyVa5Xftw

I hate to play into the angry feminist stereotype, but the first thing I feel when these discussions transpire is resentment. Irritation. Although these supposed advocates of women’s equality may be well intentioned, it frustrates me to see them wholeheartedly buying into the sexist way our society assigns value to different professions. In our society, fields that have been traditionally occupied by men (including engineering) are seen as much more prestigious and worthy of financial compensation than those traditionally occupied by women (such as child care and social planning). It strikes me as highly suspect that only those performing “men’s work” are taken seriously, and it aggravates me to see this paradigm so rarely questioned.

As a working industrial engineer, I benefit from this system. I’m well paid. Nobody belittles my career choice or makes negative assumptions about me because of it. Strangers knowing nothing more about me than my my job title say things like, “Wow, you must be really smart.” But what if I had taken my love of science and used it to inspire kids as an elementary school teacher? What if I took my organizational skills and became an office administrator or a secretary? What if several years from now I jump ship to become a stay at home mom? Why should I be afforded less respect?

I think the root of the problem is that our society immediately writes off anything perceived as feminine or relating to women. While funneling more women into STEM fields may produce marginal gains, it actually leaves the underlying issue — male privilege — largely untouched. Although I wish I could say otherwise, the most cynical part of me thinks that women dominated fields will never garner the respect they deserve until there are more men working in those positions. That’s how screwed up our society’s value system is.

Via GoldieBlox

That having been said — yes, duh, of course I’d love to see more women engineers. By the nature of their work, engineers have the power to change our world for the better. They play an important role in building the future, and it’s idiotic that only half the population is routinely encouraged from childhood to pursue this career path.

With hyper-gendered toy aisles reinforcing outdated gender roles, it’s refreshing to see even a subtle twist. I actually really like that GoldieBlox is girly looking rather than “gender neutral,” because this ensures it will be put in the pink princess glitterbomb aisle at every toy store. When frazzled parents and imprudent gift givers go to pick out “gender appropriate” gifts for their little angels, GoldieBlox will be right there. Though this may seem insignificant, over time, toys brought into the home send an important message to kids: These are the things we want you to have. These are the traits we value over others. You have a particular place in the world, and this is how we see it.

Is one lone engineering toy amidst a sea of princess dolls is enough to make a difference? Probably not — or at least, not enough. As others have noted, you can’t buy equality, and there are myriad reasons why a girl or woman might leave a STEM career or choose not to pursue one. But it’s a start, you know? GoldieBlox is one data point. Let’s follow it up with another so we can make a line. Before long we’ll have a trend, and from there, the possibilities are endless.

Via Funny Junk.

Evolution’s Rainbow: Joan RoughGarden Explores Queer Sex in Animals

A few days ago a small cardboard box arrived, leaning precariously out of my mailbox. Now, this is somewhat of a common occurrence, because I have no sense of self-control when it comes to buying books. But this was no ordinary book — it was Joan Roughgarden’s Evolution’s Rainbow, which several of you commenters have mentioned before. Well, I finally got it, and I am so glad you all told me about it!

Roughgarden is a professor of biology at Stanford University, and author of several other books on the intersection of evolutionary biology and social mores. A transgender woman, she discusses how she kept her job at Stanford during her transition but had to relinquish many administrative duties; she used her newfound free time to research the diversity of gender and sex across species and cultures. She wrote Evolution’s Rainbow both as a catalogue of diversity across the natural world in sex, gender, and sexuality, and also as an “indictment” of all academic fields for suppressing or ignoring the diversity that we see.

The book features a sunfish on the front, a species which has four genders and is native around Roughgarden’s home town (via theguardian.com)

This is an incredible book. It’s a brick, yes, clocking in at 407 word-filled pages, but its text is accessible, well-written, and insightful. Every page or two elicited a ‘holy cow that’s so awesome!’ from me, and all of you — biologists and non-biologists and poets alike — you all should read it. In the meantime, while you wait for your own copy to arrive, I’ll try to summarize what I took away from the book — with the important caveat that I am no evolutionary biologist, or even a life scientist in general.

Her premise, as I see it, is that there are hundreds (or more) of species that don’t exhibit behaviors consistent with Darwinian sexual selection theory, suggesting that it is not the universal truth we take it to be. Further, our current insistence on sexual selection theory leads to incorrect conclusions as well as dangerous societal implications, which I’ll discuss more in a bit.

A little bit of background: Sexual selection theory states that the basic building blocks or templates for a species are male and female, and that each sex has built-in traits —the male is the assertive, passionate one, and the female is shyer and coyer. Males compete for the attention of females, and the female generally chooses the most successful-looking males to mate with, thus ensuring strong and successful offspring. Roughgarden writes:

“This theory [sexual selection theory] that social life boils down to a selection for showy traits is both inaccurate in its universalist claims and inadequate to address the diversity of bodies, gender expression, and sexuality that actually occurs in nature. Furthermore, the theory has been corrupted by evolutionary psychologists and others to naturalize injustice and deny freedom of expression.”

The author, Joan Roughgarden (via ai.eecs.umich.edu)

In a section entitled “Sexual Selection Corrupted,” Roughgarden argues that the problem with this general theory of reproduction, apart from the possibility that it is over-generalized and incorrect, is that it leads both to a disparaging of any member of a species that is not the “alpha-male” type, and that it naturalizes male aggression and domination of females. In modern times, a corrupted take on sexual selection has long been “used to perpetuate ethically dubious gender stereotypes that demean women and anyone else who doesn’t identify as a gender-normative heterosexual male.” I’m sure you’ve all heard of evolutionary psychology, and how it attempts to normalize aggressive and promiscuous sexual behavior in males, while consigning women to passivity and a lack of sexual assertiveness themselves. In its worst manifestations, evolutionary psychology asserts that rape is an evolutionarily inherited behavior by males: historically males who couldn’t find a mate in other ways could also reproduce through rape, and thus “rape genes” were passed from one generation to the next. It leads to the dubious conclusion that “all men are therefore potential rapists, although they do not necessarily act on this potential.”

Instead, Roughgarden advocates “social selection theory,” which emphasizes species-wide teamwork, not sex-based competition. In this theory, animals evolve traits that lead to inclusion in groups that can more effectively provide food, safety, and resources to successfully raise offspring. And all along the way, as she argues her point, she offers as evidence a wide array of diverse animal sexual behaviors to show that, contrary to common belief, sexual behavior does not adhere to any one norm.

This includes homosexual behavior in animals. She lists hundreds of species that engage in some level of homoerotic or homosexual behavior, from reindeer to African elephants to marmots and vampire bats. Almost all male bighorn sheep, for instance, engage in “homosexual courtship and copulation”; she lists their progression from nuzzling, to genital licking, to anal sex. This section was fun to read on its own merits, the book is peppered with delights of sentences like this: “No genital-genital contact has been reported among female vampire bats, but male vampire bats hang belly to belly licking one another, both with an erect penis.” But it also addressed some evolutionary implications of homosexuality. Under the Darwinian sexual-selection model, same-sex sexuality should not be evolutionarily successful because it does not in itself lead to more reproduction. The fact that we see it today must be explained away as an anomalous genetic mutation or social invention.

The bighorn sheep, a symbol of rugged outdoorsiness, has predominantly same-sex sex for most of the year (via animals.nationalgeographic.com)

But under Roughgarden’s social-selection model, same-sex sexuality has a range of other functions, all of which do become evolutionarily advantageous within a cooperative species: to secure a position within a social group or to ease camaraderie and teamwork between species members. Male bottlenose dolphins, for instance, often pair-bond as adolescents, and maintain a constant and life-long relationships as monogamous sexual partners and companions. And female red squirrels occasionally form life-long bonds, jointly raising a litter of young and having sex. In both of these cases, the teamwork between two individuals within a species leads to a longer life span and better reproductive outlook for offspring, no matter whose offspring it is. Roughgarden spends a significant amount of time discussing sexual behavior in bonobos, for whom strategic sex with any partner can facilitate sharing of food and resources, reconciliation, bond and coalition forming, all of which are important in a species that relies heavily on community.

When bonobos are presented with a large quantity of food, bonobos will routinely engage in about ten minutes of sex before eating – facilitating good relationships and sharing (via cnn.com)

I’m still hung up on Part 1 of Evolution’s Rainbow — I’ve been reading aloud and quoting it to friends all week with seemingly inexhaustible sentences beginning with, “Well, did you know…” But the second and third parts promise to be just as interesting, in different ways. The middle third of Roughgarden’s book is dedicated to exploring, in similar ways, the biology of human sex, sexuality, and gender development. She discusses the difference between diversity and disease, and the disservice that the medical and other communities have done to genetic diversity by harming or stigmatizing anyone who doesn’t conform to an undefined and amorphous sense of “normal”. And in Part 3, she expands her biologist’s lens to include social sciences of gender and sexuality variations across cultures and history. She particularly spends time looking at diversity and equality from a Biblical standpoint, because she recognizes that there are some people for whom the Bible and church teachings are the ultimate arbiters of what constitutes morally right and wrong —no matter what scientific conclusions we come to.

I have been basically glued to the pages of this book since I received it, even to the detriment of writing this article about it. But in articulating all this to you, I think what feels so valuable about it to me is the way it discusses gender and sexuality variance from a standpoint of biological variance – a different angle than we usually get to see. Though I work in a totally different field of the natural sciences, I know that my worldview is to a large extent shaped around this identity of “scientist,” and my academic training has led me to particularly appreciate argument based on scientific reasoning. Much of the argument I see in the world about queer issues is on a more philosophical or religious basis, or – my favorite – opinion couched in pseudoscience. It is this pseudoscience that she most effectively takes down in this book, by providing a well-researched, well backed-up scientific rejoinder. What I’m saying is that she speaks my language, and I love it.

It’s a book big enough and detailed enough that there’s no way to mention every insight — but for those of you who have read Evolution’s Rainbow, what else did you feel particularly drawn to? What were your favorite parts? What have I left out that shouldn’t be missed?

Queered Science is a series of profiles meant to highlight queer science and tell you what you need to know about it, for your intellectual edification and so you don’t feel excluded from a major and predominantly heterosexist subset of academia and industry.

Header by Rory Midhani

Emily Graslie Wants More STEM Ladies on YouTube; Here Are 32 To Start

Emily Graslie of The Brain Scoop is one of the best human beings on our planet. Her YouTube channel is so entertaining that even though I have very little background in science, I am super invested in what she has to say. She spends a lot of time at the Field Museum of Chicago (where she works as Chief Curiosity Correspondent), and it’s like that dream you had as a kid where they locked you inside the museum at night and you got to run around and look at everything in depth and on your own, but really intelligent people come along to explain things to you. Oh, that was only my dream? Oh, okay.

Anyway, Emily has been dealing with some really misogynist comments on her videos, dissecting her appearance, hitting on her and even claiming she couldn’t possibly have written that Skyrim reference herself (why can’t girls play Skyrim, hmmm?). It’s no secret that STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) largely comprise men and that sexism plays a huge role in the technology industry in particular. So what can we do to encourage female content creators in the STEM fields? Here’s Emily’s answer:

It starts with an acknowledgement from both men and women that these are serious issues that need to be discussed. We can’t idly sit by and tolerate Internet bullying in any form, because that’s what this is, this is internet bullying. Help us make it widely known that this kind of apathetic attitude is detrimental and unacceptable. We need to make sure we’re making it possible for people of all genders to feel acknowledged for their contributions and not feel held back by something as arbitrary as their genetics or appearance.

But how do we encourage more women to be content creators? It starts by supporting our fellow creators, recognize we’re all going to undergo a learning curve in the beginning and to not let it end there because of unnecessary pressure or negativity. In the end, we stay committed to a mission of making quality educational content in order to provide for more women role models to fill these spaces.

This is where our list comes in. I’ve stolen it right off of Emily’s video’s informational section and gone through each one to tell you a bit about it and why you should watch it. Let’s find some awesome new YouTube channels and support women in the STEM fields.

Science (biology)

1. Claire, Brilliant Botany

Claire of Brilliant Botany makes weekly YouTube videos bringing you interesting topics in plant science (it is 10,000 times better than you would think). I really liked her video about why she became a scientist. Her passion for plant science and affinity for gorgeous plants in videos makes me really like this channel.

2. Sally Le Page, Shed Science

The first video I watched from Shed Science was one where Sally caught a tiny grass snake and geeked out about how cute it was. The rest of the series is just as delightful.

3. Julia Wilde, That’s So Science 

“That’s So Science” is a really great channel for fun scientific facts, like information about coffee, beer and slime mold. Yes, really.

4. Dr. Bondar

Dr. Bondar’s “Adventures in Biology” series has dolphins and flora and other awesome things that make you dream about a nerdy vacation. She also has an approachable and interesting Fracking series, which explains the process of fracking and its effects.

5. Lindsay Doe, Sexplanations 

Dr. Lindsey Doe is a Clinical Sexologist. Need I say more?

6. Laci Green, Sex+
Super funny videos about sex from a queer woman! Here’s one with Hannah Hart talking about sex!

7. Annie Gaus, Pick your Poison
Annie Gaus investigates different poisons that will kill you. Yes, it really is that awesome.

8. Vanessa Hill, BrainCraft

To be honest, there’s only one video on the BrainCraft YouTube channel but it’s so. good. that I had to include it. Can’t wait to see what she puts up next!

9. The Penguin Prof
The Penguin Prof is the biology professor I wish I had in college. She makes tutorials and gives historical framework and tells interesting background stories for scientific discoveries that you will actually remember. Here’s my favorite by her, featuring cats!

10. Amoeba Sisters
Basically science + cute = the Amoeba Sisters. Looking for videos about how cells like the common cold work but you want pink and purple and MS Paint-style explanations? They’re your girls.

Queered Science: Historic Women Pioneers

Queered Science is a series of profiles meant to highlight queer science and tell you what you need to know about it, for your intellectual edification and so you don’t feel excluded from a major and predominantly heterosexist subset of academia and industry.

Header by Rory Midhani

The New York Times recently profiled a new exhibit showcasing 32 pioneering women scientists – including Florence Nightingale and Sofia Kovalevskaya, among others. It’s been three years in the making by three science historians — one woman, two men — and is now on exhibit until this weekend. Obviously I wish I could go see it — too bad I don’t live anywhere near New York, nor can I fly there. But reading about it is almost as good. The New York Times writes, “The exhibition celebrates their accomplishments, and makes it plain that they are all the more extraordinary given the deeply entrenched biases they had to overcome.”

I remember reading The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir in my early days as a feminist —at a time when I was trying to explain, to myself, and to others — how it was that, if women were equal to men, why we didn’t see more of them acting in history. I had my own vague ideas about why — or notions, really, or feelings — but I couldn’t articulate them adequately. And then she explained it with quotes like this:

“One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius; and the feminine situation has up to the present rendered this becoming practically impossible.”

Simone de Beauvoir, what a bamf, posthumously still winning arguments about sexism (via philosophy.uoregon.edu)

And then I was like, yes, those were the words I was looking for! It has nothing to do with the innate characteristics of women (because that idea is a fallacy if ever there was one) but rather the way people who are identified as “feminine” by society are treated, or not treated: the stories they are told about themselves.

All that philosophizing aside, de Beauvoir explains in detail the ways — at least up to her time, in the mid-1900s — that women of equal intelligence were kept away and turned down from institutions of higher learning.

And the women highlighted in this exhibit are some of the few who transcended, for whatever reason, those gender-related societal constraints on their intellect.

I personally love thinking about historic figures in science — envisioning what the cultural melee might have been around them at that time, envisioning how I would have acted in their situation. For instance, Hertha Ayrton, an electrical engineer and a suffragist, sent back her 1911 census form with these words scrawled across the paper: “How can I answer all these questions if I have not the intelligence to choose between two candidates for parliament? I will not supply these particulars until I have my rights as a citizen. Votes for Women.” Basically, I’m a badass, let me vote already. If you were in her shoes, what would you have done? Of course, she had already been denied membership in the Royal Society of London, and wasn’t even allowed to read her own work at one of their meetings. She changed her name as a teenager from Phoebe to Hertha, the name of a goddess. So maybe she’d grown a thick skin by then.

the 1911 Census form she refused to fill out (via: nytimes.com)

Or what about Mary Jacobi, born in 1842: she left a disappointing women’s college in New York for Paris, hoping to be allowed to study medicine. They apparently grudgingly allowed her to participate, but she had to enter the classroom by a separate door and sit alone near the professor. That must have been awkward, to say the least — I can imagine the feeling of all your classmates’ eyes staring at you behind your back, wondering what you’re doing here, feeling always unwelcome, but sticking it out anyway. What kind of emotional fortitude must she have had, in addition to her intellect?

Dr. Jacobi eventually went on to win a prize from Harvard in 1876 where she proved scientifically that, in contrast to popular belief, women’s intelligence was not impaired when they’re on their period. Next time someone tells you your legitimate anger is “just PMS,” (hopefully never?) thank Dr. Jacobi in part that you can prove them wrong.

Mary Jacobi: she does not look very happy. Probably because she’s been made unwelcome in every medical establishment she’s tried to join (via green-wood.com)

It’s often almost impossible to definitively identify queer figures in history, especially queer women. Sexual or romantic attachments between women were often easily overlooked by those writing history. “Romantic friendships” were common between women, and could mean many different things. And you could argue that definitions of sexual orientation are a modern and socially constructed concept – so maybe the point is null and void anyway.

But, nevertheless, you might like to know about two of the scientists featured in the exhibition, Florence Nightingale and Sofia Kovalevskaya, who are also featured on NOGLSTP’s list of queer scientists of historical note. Nightingale never married, and strongly rejected offers of marriage more than once. She often referred to herself in the masculine, as “a man of business” or “a man of action,” but kept up intimate emotional relationships with women her entire life.

Anne-Charlotte Edgren-Leffler and Sofia Kovalevskaya. Anne-Charlotte herself was an important feminist author in Sweden.

Kovalevskaya’s marriage was well known to be a marriage of convenience; she needed written permission from either her father or a husband to study abroad, so she wrote up a “fictitious marriage” contract with a young paleontology student, and they both moved to Germany. But after her husband committed suicide, she lived the rest of her life in a “romantic friendship” with the actress and playwright Anne-Charlotte Edgren-Leffler.

The exhibit is up right now at the Grolier Club (47 East 60th St, New York) and if you have time in the next few days, go see it! And then please come back and tell me how it was!

Queered Science: Ms. Dr. Joseph Digs Derby and Dragonflies

Queered Science is a series of profiles meant to highlight queer science and tell you what you need to know about it, for your intellectual edification and so you don’t feel excluded from a major and predominantly heterosexist subset of academia and industry.

Header by Rory Midhani

Hi everyone, for this week’s profile we have one of your very own: Ms. Dr. Joseph L. Simonis, Autostraddler, roller derby player, and population ecologist at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. She just emerged from graduate school and got a job she enjoys in the field she studied, and has some good advice for other science-minded queers who are navigating the paths of grad school and research and careers and life goals and all of those angst-inducing choices.

The best part about environmental science work: summer field work. Joe at her graduate research field site, 2012 (via josephlsimonis.com)

Joe also writes extensively about being trans* in academia, and has a lot to say about being out at work as a scientist. She hates “coming out” as a process on its own, but says that:

“As a visible trans* and gender non-conforming person, I kind of end up being out without coming out at all…I mean, it’s pretty obvious when people see my name and then hear someone refer to me as ‘she’ or see me use a restroom or meet me in person that I’m queer. I try to really make that not be an issue at work, which I realize I can do because of a lot of other privileges that I have, but it’s a position that I’m hoping to use to make the general cultural dynamic be one where queerness isn’t an issue at work unless it should be…I mean, my queerness doesn’t directly affect my research or my ability to perform it, so to me, it shouldn’t be an issue.”

A self-proclaimed “total nerd” in high school, Joe has always loved math and science, and also spent time hiking and camping with her parents as a kid, so the stage was set early for an interest in ecology. She graduated undergrad from the University of Illinois: Urbana-Champaign with a degree in Integrative Biology.

But things were really cemented for her when Joe did an REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) internship in Michigan. Now, if you’re interested in science, and you’re an undergrad, you should definitely know about these. Basically, the National Science Foundation funds undergrads every summer to work with researchers at major universities on their research projects. And this is no making-coffee-and-copies kind of internship. The REU program makes a point of really involving their interns in the research process, so by the end of the summer you really accomplished something for whatever research project you were with, and interns often come out with a really solid idea of what they want to study and how to continue that work in grad school or as a career. For instance, Joe ended up publishing two papers from her work that one summer – a big leg up in the research world.

I also was an REU intern for a summer a few years ago, and I spent the summer thinking about what sea ice conditions in the Arctic probably looked like about a hundred years ago. And – like I said – that experience really formed for me a sense of what I wanted to study (and actually, even the fact that I wanted to continue in research at all). If you’re interested, look them up; I think deadlines are in a few months, more or less, so you still have time to apply!

Anyway, Joe did an REU in Michigan for a summer, with a project “looking at host-parasite interactions in a freshwater crustacean.”

“It was a pretty awesome project in general, but I also happened to be working with a post-doc who was very quantitative-minded and was developing mathematical models to describe the system and its behavior, but he was using data to construct and evaluate those models…it just really clicked for me then, that doing mathematical biology was something I was really interested in, and probably well suited for, given my personal history and education. But I didn’t want to just do the mathy side of things (be a strict theoretical ecologist), because I like the biology side as well, and I realized through this experience that it was possible to ‘sit in the middle’ and work with data and models.”

Joe is now a postdoctoral fellow at the Lincoln Park Zoo, where she works on using the data they have on threatened/endangered species to “manage them so they have as viable populations as possible in the long term.” For example, she’s developing a population viability analysis (PVA) model for an endangered species of dragonfly native to the Chicago area.

The endangered Hines Emerald Dragonfly (via onearth.org)

“In reality, this means I stare at my computer most of the day, but I also get to look out of my office window at hyenas!” But she definitely didn’t always expect to be here. Coming to the Zoo was a really conscious choice to get out of academia; when she went to grad school, at Cornell, Joe assumed she wanted to be a professor and academic as a career. I mean, why wouldn’t you? She was good at science, loved the process of getting to “ask and answer” research questions that really interested her, and she’d found a niche that really worked with her interests. But by the end of her Ph.D., she realized she needed a job that had some more strict external limitations.

“I was working ~70 hours a week just to keep on top of the class, [a graduate-level biostatistics class she created and taught] but every time I sat down to write lecture notes my brain would be on a grant proposal. My work suffered and I was miserable. Even during the few hours a day I was not working, my brain was thinking about work. At a time when I could have really used some personal space, my personal life suffered and I was miserable for it. Suffice it to say that my personality type and work habits don’t work well in an academic environment, and I figured that out first hand.”

The Lincoln Park Zoo hyenas: what a cool office-window view (via  dynamicecology.wordpress.com)

Happily, her decision to get out of academia was completely supported by her advisors and academic mentors; while sometimes deciding to leave the academic world can be seen as something of a cop-out, none of her peers or mentors took it that way, and neither did she. Obviously Joe could cut it in the academic world, but she had decided to opt for something different. And that was fine. “Now, I work 35 hours a week and get shamed for staying late. And I get to occupy all of my time with other things. Like derby and queers.”

She says the most important thing about her job search was just talking with people – anyone who was in a career something like what she wanted. “Introduce yourself to people at meetings, send random e-mails, ask your advisor if they know anyone doing what you’re interested in…whatever you need to do, find the people that are working in the field that you’re interested in, and talk to them!” After her position here, she could of course return to academia if she wants, but that’s a pretty far ways into the future. For now, she’s just happy where she is.

Joe: I’m so glad I’m playing derby instead of writing lecture notes…what a good decision. (photo credit: Gil Leora)

As for being queer in the sciences, Joe says she takes a relevance-based, limited approach to coming out: “I only bring up my trans*ness in situations where I feel like it’s directly relevant.” She points out that being trans* doesn’t in any way affect her views on “spatial food-web dynamics in rock pools,” or any of the other topics she works on, and so she sees no real reason to explicitly come out in the work place. She’s also happy to report that both in her old Ph.D. department and here at the Zoo, she’s felt supported by her mentors, advisors, and peers. Being open at out at work isn’t any harder than just being out in life in general.

Which is awesome. This is where we’d like to see all work places get, eventually: a place where being queer is neither an issue of extra importance or focus, nor something hidden and silent and nonexistent. Where people just are who they are and that’s that, now let’s go back to talking about spatial food-web dynamics already.

Disclaimer: The views expressed by Joe are hers alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of her employer.

Queered Science: Sexism Is For Everybody!

Queered Science is a series of profiles meant to highlight queer science and tell you what you need to know about it, for your intellectual edification and so you don’t feel excluded from a major and predominantly heterosexist subset of academia and industry.

Header by Rory Midhani

Hello all you science queers! I’ve found you an awesome talking point for your next social setting where you want to sound smart and informed (so…always?) A few weeks ago on Oct 3, The New York Times published a long article about women in science by Eileen Pollack.

Pollack has spent the last few years traveling across the country to different universities and talking to women and professors about the persistent dearth of women in science; she herself graduated with honors in physics from Yale, but didn’t pursue a graduate degree. “At the end of four years, I was exhausted by all the lonely hours I spent catching up to my classmates, hiding my insecurities, struggling to do my problem sets while the boys worked in teams to finish theirs.” Of course, she’s now a professor of creative writing at the University of Michigan, so her career path didn’t turn out that badly. But she always wondered in the back of her mind what would have happened, or how things would have turned out, if she’d continued on to a physics grad degree. Because even with all her success, she felt like a failure. “I locked my textbooks, lab reports and problem sets in my father’s army footlocker and turned my back on physics and math forever.”

Now, you may remember an article from this series a few weeks ago about Dr. Ben Barres, who was catalyzed to speak out about misogyny in the sciences after Lawrence Summers, then the president of Harvard University, said some really sexist things about innate differences in aptitude along gender lines. Well, Summer’s comments also made Pollack angry, and her indignation started her quest to learn more about the barriers that women come up against in the sciences. Funny, how the most abrasive and offensive instances of bigotry often springs a leak in the dam (a leak in the dyke, aahhh!) and starts groundswell of activism and lead to longer-lasting, change-making movements. So thanks, I guess, Dr. Summers.

From Pollack’s article comes this picture: attendees of the Solvay Conference in 1927. Look for Marie Curie in the front row; she was the only woman in attendance.
via nytimes.com

In many ways Pollack’s article was important and timely. Discrimination in the sciences is an issue that direly needs more publicity and honest discussion, so I don’t want to discount her well-researched and articulate piece. But in many ways, from a queer-feminist perspective, it was a total disappointment. She missed a critical opportunity to widen the discourse when she said flatly, in her one and only mention of the queer population: “The lesbian scientists I talked to…reported differing reactions to the gender dynamic of the classroom and the lab, but voiced many of the same concerns as the straight women.” Other than this single mention of “lesbian” women alone, she does not include or provide room for any alternative gender or sexual identities.

Much of her language reveals a disappointingly essentialist view of gender that all of our lovely queer biologist and geneticist readers would quickly eschew. Also, she spends paragraphs talking about girls not doing science because of fears that boys won’t want to date them. She discusses shows like The Big Bang Theory, in which the scientist girl is depicted as geeky and undateable – and what girl would want to consign herself to that?

I don’t actually watch this show but as an aside, geek culture as shown by The Big Bang Theory has already been thoroughly debunked in feminist circles: that it welcomes male geekery with open arms, but can’t quite get around to allowing its girls the same thing.
via feminspire.com

Ugh. Obviously not all women want to date boys, and in a world of far greater concerns, is this really a question deserving of that much attention? What about the constant head-chatter of internalized homophobia and sexism as we walk through classes with no one who looks like us, day in and day out? Or the overt discriminatory remarks of classmates or, at times, professors? If you asked some of our earlier profiles, like Dr. Donna Riley or Rochelle Diamond, I doubt they’d say that wondering who would date them was even on the list of their worries. Diamond was fired after a co-worker sabotaged her work, and assumed for years it was simply reflective of her own lack of ability. Riley experienced written anti-gay micro-aggressions on the clothing of her classmates, and has repeatedly been insulted by other faculty solely on the basis of her bisexuality. Even you guys, in your comments on these articles, have some real and intense stories of sexuality-related discrimination and harassment. So in limiting her scope of attention to only heterosexual, cis-gendered women, Pollack unwittingly marginalizes a large segment of the very population whose marginalization she’s trying to highlight.

That large problem aside, many of her points are important and valid, and you should still know about them. For instance, she writes: “I was dismayed to find that the cultural and psychological factors that I experienced in the ’70s not only persist but also seem all the more pernicious in a society in which women are told that nothing is preventing them from succeeding in any field. If anything, the pressures to be conventionally feminine seem even more intense now than when I was young.” This is a problem that this series has highlighted: that there are still huge barriers to people of any minority status succeeding in the field — but they’re hidden, invisible, tucked away in professors’ and peers’ preconceptions and latent biases. We’re told there’s nothing holding us back, so if we don’t succeed it’s our own damn fault. And this, I believe, leads to the exact problem she described earlier: just as women are told there should be nothing standing in their way to success, the general silence around queer struggles leads the casual observer to believe that there is nothing standing in the way of their success.

Dr. Meg Urry, professor of physics and astronomy at Yale, spends much of her time working against sexism in science.
via news.yale.edu

And yet, there are huge obstacles. Dr. Meg Urry, a professor of physics and astronomy at Yale, wrote in an essay published in The Washington Post that women leave science academia in droves not because they are incapable, but because of the “slow drumbeat of being under appreciated, feeling uncomfortable and encountering roadblocks along the path to success.” But there is no single event that you can name and get righteously angry about. And, frankly, if you’re a smart woman or queer, and you know you can do better and be happier elsewhere in the work force, why would you stay?

Happily many of you have stories of being pleasantly surprised at feeling none of this; in our open threads I have been increasingly happy to hear those stories, that you feel nothing but acceptance and support from your advisors and peers, about your sexuality or gender or whatever. But some of you, also, have mentioned the exact kind of feelings of isolation or exclusion that Dr. Urry discusses. And this is the overriding strength of Pollack’s article: it discusses the persistent strength of latent biases, and that in and of itself is constructive and important. She is currently working on a book about women in science, and I hope that she will include more knowledge and understanding of all womens’ experiences, not just the cis-gendered heterosexual ones.

Author’s Note: After I published this piece, I contacted Ms. Pollack herself to ask about the dearth of attention paid to queer women scientists in her article. I appreciated her quick and polite response, and she explained to me that the article was only a small portion of a book with a much larger scope. Sections in which she did discuss issues of queer scientists were cut out by the Times at the last minute in the interest of brevity, and she herself was also “horrified” that the final product ended up being so heterocentric. We have discussed other queer scientists to potentially mention or reference in future writing on the topic, and all in all, it’s been a great communication! At the end of this article I write that I hope in her forthcoming book she includes a greater diversity of women’s experiences, and she has already done just that.

Queered Science: NOGLSTP’s Rochelle Diamond Forged A Path For All of Us

Queered Science is a series of profiles meant to highlight queer science and tell you what you need to know about it, for your intellectual edification and so you don’t feel excluded from a major and predominantly heterosexist subset of academia and industry.

Header by Rory Midhani

Rochelle Diamond works at Caltech (the California Institute of Technology) as the applications specialist and lab manager of the Flow Cytometry/Cell Sorting Facility. She is also the chair of the National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals, (NOGLSTP) which we’ve mentioned before as an important step young queer scientists can take to get connected to others.

Rochelle Diamond (via sciencemag.org)

We talked on the phone the other day and I asked if I could ask her some personal questions along with the professional ones – she laughed and said absolutely, she’s an open book. Which is a good thing, because if any of you have ever experienced homophobia in the workplace or queer-related adversity in your personal life and moved on (ahem, way too many of us) then you need to know her life story. She grew up and forged a career for herself in the sciences – first as a closeted lesbian, then as an out activist, in a time when LGBT rights were in their nascent stages.

She likes to joke that she had a real coming-out — as a 16-year-old debutante in Phoenix, Arizona, where she grew up.

(via its.caltech.edu)

She was always the black sheep of the family; the youngest child, she couldn’t be swayed from her tomboy ways. Her parents tried putting her in charm school, but she proceeded to fail out: “I didn’t want anything to do with it – they gave my father his money back.” Instead, she was much more interested in science. “My brother would bring home his microscope and we’d go jump the fence to grab some pond water and look at it together.”

In her senior year of college, she got married to her best friend, a man just returning from Vietnam. He had Krohn’s disease and needed health insurance; she had health insurance and good connections in the medical field. Besides, her mother was soon to die, and she wanted to reassure her. “I wanted her to know I’d be ok. Of course,” she laughs, “she still wasn’t pleased because he was Jewish.” But at least this unruly tomboy daughter was respectably married.

Diamond’s husband was aware that she loved women, and for the most part, he didn’t mind. They were married for 10 years until Diamond fell in love with her first serious girlfriend; they realized their marriage wasn’t working and they divorced. And they remain friends today, “He calls for medical advice sometimes, and if he ever needed anything, of course I’d be there,” Diamond says. In 1974 she graduated from UC Santa Barbara with a dual bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and molecular biology.

Diamond says she basically always knew she wasn’t straight, but she waited until both her parents were deceased and she was well-established in adult life to come out to her family; she was fairly sure that revelation wouldn’t go well. And it didn’t, really. “I was 26 or something, when I finally decided to tell my brother. I told him in the car while we were on the freeway — I thought he was going to crash.” Over time, the younger brother and his family grew to accept, if not approve of, her sexuality. Her older brother never has, though. When her younger brother told him, his first instinct was to institutionalize Diamond. “My [younger] brother called me up and said, ‘Make sure you don’t put your address in the phone book’,” just in case her older brother decided to go looking for her.

Diamond got interested in activism from experiences of homophobia of her own. While she was out to some family and close friends, she was definitely not out professionally. But while working at the City of Hope Research Institute a few years later — in the same lab with her husband — a co-worker found out that she was having an affair with another woman in the department, and began to sabotage her work slowly but surely. She was let go soon after because she wasn’t making any progress. The worst part of that is that she didn’t know at that point why her work was going so badly — it just was, so she accepted the decision and assumed the failure had to do with her personally.

“Then my ex-husband called one day, though, and he’d had lunch with some people, and Jim [the co-worker] had a few too many margaritas and told everyone how he’d basically run me out of the department.” That was the first she knew of intrigue. “I thought, oh, you know, I wasn’t an engineer, maybe that explained it…so when I learned I got really, really angry.” And so while she began a new job working at UCLA, she also started going to lesbian and gay scientist meetings in Los Angeles. “I never want to think that anyone else will get fired for their sexual orientation like I was,” Diamond says.

This happened in 1981, and there was no legal recourse for such a situation. Now, you might be thinking it’s a good thing we’re in 2013 now and things like that can’t happen anymore! But you would actually be wrong. The Employment Nondiscrimination Act still has no mention of sexual orientation or gender identity, even though such a clause gets brought up every year, so there is still no national-level protection against LGBT-related discrimination.

After a year of “craziness” at UCLA, Diamond submitted her resume to a new position as a lab manager for a new, very young woman researcher, Dr. Ellen Rothenberg. They talked for five hours in her interview, and Diamond came out explicitly then and there: “I am a lesbian and an activist, and if this is gonna be a problem, we should stop right now.” She was unwilling to go through another situation like she had at City of Hope. But Rothenberg shrugged and said that was not a problem; her last lab manager was gay and he was great, so she didn’t see why it should matter.

Dr. Rothenberg (via caltech.edu)

And from the way Diamond tells it, her work life has been nothing but unicorns and rainbows ever since. They just got a paper published in Science, and another in Blood. “We’re finally starting to solve some problems.”

Diamond has also been happily married for over 30 years to another chemist, Barbara Belmont, the President of American Research and Testing, Inc.

Barbara Belmont (via sciencemag.org)

Belmont was just made a fellow of American Chemical Society for her work on diversity in chemistry. They met in the Los Angeles queer scientist activist world, first as friends involved with other people, but eventually fell in love. Funny how that happens, huh? And they are both in positions where they can be very out and very active without fear of negative repercussions. “I’m kind of more of a flaming lesbian than Barbara, I guess – but both of us, we’re just who we are,” says Diamond.

But they’re both very committed to filling the pipeline with other queer scientists. “We’re out here trying to get other people to come out and not be afraid and push visibility, because that’s what’s going to change the climate.”

They say, “It’s important to understand that if you do come out you will know where a good place to work is and is not. And if you feel uncomfortable after coming out then you shouldn’t be in that place. The point is to be yourself as much as possible. You want to feel safe in your own skin.”

And this is where NOGLSTP comes in. Its mission is to empower lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals in the STEM professions, and to educate their surrounding communities about LGBTQ issues. They also manage the popular Queer Scientists of Historical Note list, and run a popular mentoring program where young students or scientists can talk to an older role model. They give out two $5,000 scholarships every year and facilitate communication through the queer science community. They just collaborated with over 20 other STEM professional organizations to apply for a grant for developing a National Research Mentoring Network, that would include LGBTQ students in a larger and more intensive mentoring program. And they coordinate a gay scientist conference every other year called Out to Innovate; the next will be in 2014 in Atlanta, so if you’re interested you can start planning to go now!

Scientists Make Progress Engineering Artificial Blood In Lab; Sexy Vampires Imminent

On Monday, October 28. a team of researchers in Romania announced that they had created a new type of artificial blood that could one day be used in humans without negative side effects. By Thursday, hordes of sexy vampires worldwide had came “out of the coffin,” revealing their existence on the basis that they no longer need to feed on humans to survive.

…Okay, just kidding about the vampires. Probably. But the blood thing is true!

I wanna do real bad things with you, even/especially if you are a 500 year old vampire queen. Via True Blood Wikia.

Created by researchers at the Babeş-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, the artificial blood (not Tru Blood, but you can think about it that way if you want to) is made of water, salt, albumin and a special protein – hemerythrin – extracted from marine worms. This stress resistant protein is unique to the research and has been key in creating a stable product that can be used in transfusions. According to lead researcher Dr. Radu Silaghi-Dumitrescu, previous attempts at artificial blood have ended in failure because the blood has been unable to withstand mechanical and chemical stress, often creating toxic byproducts under real life conditions.

So far, the hemerythrin-based artificial blood has had very encouraging results in tests with laboratory mice. “Mice treated with this ‘Made in Cluj’ artificial blood did not experience any side effects, and this is precisely what we want, not to display signs of inflammation or disease,” said Silaghi-Dumitrescu. Although human testing is “a very delicate topic,” the team is committed to further exploration of the possibilities, with the ultimate goal of creating artificial blood that will be accepted by the human body in a state of shock (such as surgery). In time, they hope to create “instant blood,” a mixture of salts and protein that can easily be transported and which will turn into artificial blood when water is added.

Dr. Florina Deac, one of the chemists on the research team. In her right hand she holds a vial containing the marine worm protein; in her right hand, hemoglobin derived from cow’s blood. Via Adevarul.

The biggest hurdle for the team right now, Silaghi-Dumitrescu explained to Adevarul, is “administrative predictability.” Since the project’s start in 2007, he has found that even when funding is approved “on paper,” bureaucratic impediments can get in the way of actually purchasing equipment necessary to continue experiments. However, the team remains optimistic about the prospects. Silaghi-Dumitrescu estimates that it will take one to two more years of research with animals before they can move on to human trials, which would take another two to three years minimum. From there it would be passed to a manufacturer and undergo further testing before potentially going to market.

If everything goes as planned, Silaghi-Dumitrescu and his team would almost certainly be in the running for a Nobel. Today’s human blood donation system is plagued with supply chain issues, not to mention the persistent and sensitive questions regarding who is and is not allowed to donate. Gay people are often excluded, for reasons rooted in legitimate concern about the spread of HIV, but complicated by ignorance, homophobia and inefficient screening techniques. An artificial blood supply could remove many of these issues from the equation and ensure a steady supply of life-saving blood for humans and vampires alike.

(Again, just kidding about the vampires! …Probably.)

Queered Science: Jeremy Yoder, Allison Mattheis and Surveying Queers in STEM

Queered Science is a series of profiles meant to highlight queer science and tell you what you need to know about it, for your intellectual edification and so you don’t feel excluded from a major and predominantly heterosexist subset of academia and industry.

Header by Rory Midhani

One of the main drives behind this series, as you might have already figured out, is to introduce smart science queers to all the other smart science queers who exist. Now, you might be thinking, shouldn’t there already be some statistics about us — some kind of survey or self-reporting count? The Internet exists, it couldn’t be that hard, right?

And if you were thinking that, you would be right, we could indeed self-report and count ourselves, and that has just been done by two smart science queers named Jeremy Yoder and Allison Mattheis. They just finished gathering data in a nationwide survey of sexual diversity in science, technology, engineering and math professions, called Queer in Stem. This is the first study of its kind, and the first research focused on scientists above the undergrad level.

The illustrated Yoder and Matthies, hard at work among wildflowers. (via Anna B. Hall)

Jeremy is an evolutionary ecologist doing his postdoc research on natural selection on the genetic code of a Mediterranean wildflower at the University of Minnesota. He did his Ph.D. at the University of Idaho. He’s gay, and out “in pretty much every context you can name. I grew up in a religious background, and I came out relatively late in life, only after I’d started my Ph.D.—starting grad school was when I actually started to meet and make friends who were gay. So my experience in science has really been that it was a place where I was free to be myself.”

Allison is an educational researcher, and just finished her M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota. She says, “I’m queer and anyone who spends any time with me will probably find out pretty quickly (people often read me as straight, however, because I’m a cisgender woman). I get that ‘what, you’re gay?!’ kind of reaction a lot which is annoying. As a middle-class white woman who works on issues of intersectional identities and social justice, I try to use that experience to remind myself not to make assumptions about other people, and also recognize the privilege(s) I have and use it to speak up.”

The two met and became friends when Allison hitched a ride to work with Jeremy’s carpool one day. Jeremy had been wondering about issues of LGBTQ equality and inclusion – he did some preliminary hunting on Google Scholar and couldn’t find any studies looking at people past the undergrad stage. (You might remember our article on Dr. Erin Cech and her study on LGB undergrad engineering students’ experiences — and her study was the first of its kind as well). Allison had done some work on queer issues previously, on “discrimination in school settings, transnational queer migration, and identity development.” So Jeremy asked Allison what she thought about the idea of a survey of a nation-wide sample of queer scientists – as a social scientist, did she think results like that would be publishable? “I responded, ‘are you asking me to teach you about doing research with human subjects? Sure!'”

They just published the preliminary results of the Queer Stem survey and answered some questions for me about what they have seen so far.

What have you learned from your results so far?

We’re only just starting to crunch the numbers, but what we’ve seen right off the bat is, there are actually quite a lot of queer people working in STEM fields. Over 1,400 people participated in the online survey, from every major region of the U.S., and even quite a few from overseas. We have representation from every major STEM field, and participants of all ages and career stages. And we have good representation of folks identifying outside the gender binary—11% of participants identified as trans* and almost 16% identified as genderqueer.

From their preliminary results, the self-reported identities of those who answered the survey. via queerstem.org

We’ve also begun preliminary analysis of the open responses and interview data (in addition to the survey over 140 people responded by email to ten open-ended questions and we interviewed 60 people individually). The quantitative and qualitative data both suggest that there are some very specific things that can make a big difference to people’s experiences, for good or bad — like whether there’s formal institutional support for LGBTQ people, or whether people are able to identify mentors or role models with similar experiences.

Again from their preliminary results, the STEM fields we work in. We’re everywhere, you guys! (via queerstem.org)

What are the most interesting leads/threads you’ve noticed either in the analysis of your data or in carrying out the study itself?

Jeremy: Across STEM disciplines, we saw people are mostly very out in their personal lives, but less out to colleagues or students. Interestingly, the factors that seem to predict how out people are in professional contexts aren’t the size of the school where they work, or whether they work at a private or public institution, or even the part of the country or the size of the town where they live; what makes a difference is whether they rate their workplace as safe and welcoming, and whether their employer provides benefits and support for queer folks.

Interestingly, the question is: do people come out because they feel safer to do so, or does the work environment feel safer because they, and others, have come out? (via queerstem.org)

Allison: I’ve begun identifying particular issues that seem relevant to most of the participants and those that are more specific to particular people’s experiences. For example, whether or not respondents report having regular interaction with a supportive queer community outside of their professional work is an external factor that impacts both personal and work life. Individual characteristics like gender identity, a racial or ethnic minority, age, and religion are significant for some participants and less so for others.

How have your peers/advisors/etc. in academia responded to this study?

Jeremy: My boss has been very supportive, and interested in what we’re seeing. That’s been my experience in talking to straight colleagues across the board, really. And, in fact, I’ve been asked to present results from the survey as part of a seminar and discussion series on diversity in biology that’s been organized by the College of Biological Sciences at my university.

Allison: The response has been great and people are very interested in learning more about our findings, both in my field and beyond— I’m that person that tends to meet you at a party and then talk your ear off about research.

Caption: Yoder and Mattheis – last-minute survey recruiting at the Twin Cities Pride Festival earlier this year (via Jeremy Yoder)

Where do you hope to go from here?

Jeremy: We’re hoping that we, or someone, will be able to do a follow-up version of the online survey in the next couple years. That would let us start to estimate how many queer-identified folks are actually out there working in STEM, and how representative our sample is. There are also all sorts of new questions we’d like to ask, or questions we’d like to ask in a different way, now that we’re starting to look at the survey results in depth.

Allison: We have had many people (both respondents and other researchers) write and tell us how excited they are that we’re doing this study and that has been really great. In my new position as faculty, I’m also looking forward to being able to mentor graduate students with interests in these issues, and to hopefully involve students in our ongoing analysis and writing. [Allison just accepted a position at California State University, Los Angeles in the division of Applied and Advanced Studies in Education, so if you’re anywhere near there, watch for new work from her!]

What do you hope for in the future of academia and social justice?

Accessible to people of all identities, ethnicities, and economic backgrounds. Science works best when it’s informed by a wide diversity of perspectives. We also hope that queer research and advocacy efforts will be enhanced by greater recognition of how many LGBTQ individuals are out there doing innovative and valuable work in STEM fields!

CERN After Dark: Where Particle Physics and Comedy Collide

Welcome to the fiftieth installment of  Queer Your Tech with Fun, Autostraddle’s nerdy new tech column. Not everything we cover will be queer per se, but it will be about customizing this awesome technology you’ve got. Having it our way, expressing our appy selves just like we do with our identities. Here we can talk about anything from app recommendations to choosing a wireless printer to web sites you have to favorite to any other fun shit we can do with technology.

Header by Rory Midhani

I knew I had to alert you all to this when the first comedian pulled a Cara and started talking about Google search auto-complete. Like any other nerd out there, I have a healthy obsession with CERN. You may have heard of it – it’s been in a Dan Brown novel, after all. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is an international organization operating the world’s largest and most sophisticated particle physics laboratory.

via Ask A Mathematician

If you haven’t heard of CERN, here is the extent of their science chops – via their about page, “What is the universe made of? How did it start? Physicists at CERN are seeking answers, using some of the world’s most powerful particle accelerators.” Damn. Those are some big, meaty questions.

If you have heard of CERN, you probably didn’t know they were also funny people – their website has a section for CERN employees. It’s not called that. It’s not called “employees.” It’s called “CERN People.” I never thought I’d find a phrase on the website for the leading particle physics lab that also sounded like it could have been written on Autostraddle. And apparently, they also host comedy nights.

I wish I could embed this here for you, but I can’t because it’s a slide presentation plus comedy show. But you can click on this link right here and enjoy three and a half hours of scientists and professional comedians alike being nerd funny. You’re welcome. This show is in English, but has moments of French. They have also have moments assuring the people of the internet that unicorns are real. You heard it at CERN, folks. (Spoiler alert: unicorns aren’t real, they’re just being funny people). Not everyone and everything is funny, but it has super charming moments: “Physics is like sex. It has practical applications. But that’s not why we do it.” And there’s a guy that sings about particles accompanied by an acoustic guitar.

CERN’s also done a couple of other cool things lately. Here’s a few of them –

+Google Street View now lets you take a tour of CERN, supposing you can’t just pop in.

+This dance company performed their piece, called Quantum, directly above the CMS particle detector that inspired the work. If you live in Paris, you could see this performance live during the first week of November. If you live in New York City, you might be able to see it some time next year.

+Jan Peters is the new CERN filmmaker in residence. That’s a thing that exists now.

+CERN invented the world wide web in 1990 and they’re really into preserving the first website that ever existed and preserving that experience as well.

+CERN is also having a quilt exhibit  in May 2014 – it’s all Kate Findlay’s work! She’s got a series of quilts inspired by the Hadron Collider.

via Kate Findlay