Heroes of the Zombieverse: Ed Yong

I had intended to cover some more researcher heroes of my world before switching over to the brilliant science communicators. But then Ed Yong posted about the most recent dog domestication research, and he did it so brilliantly that I had to write about him now instead of later.

Ed Yong (image from Not Exactly Rocket Science)

Most people aren’t going to read the original studies for all the science they’re interested in. This is partly because it’s hard to keep track on your own of everything that's happening in the world of science and partly because not everyone has access to all the brand-new studies and partly because not everyone can understand them. (I understand some of them in some fields, but there are certainly more out there that I don’t fully get than that I do.)

So we rely on science journalists (and video makers and podcasters and others). We rely on these people to find the interesting stories. We rely on them to tell us why the stories are interesting. And we rely on them to put the right spin on the story: to not blow it out of proportion.

Ed Yong excels at all three of these things. He says that he covers “the wow beat,” meaning stories that are weird and unexpected. But he covers the usual fare as well, and he does so exceptionally well. He finds the humor and keeps you reading, but he doesn’t fall prey to the temptation to suck you in by over-hyping the story he’s covering. He puts the story in the right context, and that’s just really hard to do for someone who isn’t a researcher in the field. Ed isn’t a researcher in any field and yet he manages to cover many fields with insight and panache.

Yesterday Ed published a story in which he covered a recent paper about where dogs were domesticated. Most journalists cover these papers (which come out several times a year) with the breathless report that now, finally, we have found the birthplace of the dog! Ed, however, takes a step back and tells us how this newest paper fits into the long history of other papers which have pinpointed the origin of the dog on several continents and across tens of thousands of years.

I forwarded the story to a fellow graduate student, who reads dog papers every week with me and who does her own research into canid domestication. She commented: “He is my new favorite science writer - totally nailed it.”

• Twitter: @edyong209
• The Atlantic
• Not Exactly Rocket Science (blog)

Veterinary super heroes!

V-FORCE from the AVMA

I was tickled to discover that the AVMA published a comic book. V-Force! Veterinarians to the Rescue! Did you know that veterinary superheroes have x-ray vision and use it to diagnose leptospirosis? Did you know that some of them (us? can I say some of us?) even have microscopic vision so that they can see microbes and diagnose infection with West Nile Virus? Why didn't I get these super powers when I graduated?

My favorite scene bar none is the one in which the doctor (that is doctor-of-humans not doctor-of-animals) says "I'm just glad the veterinarian was around to help link the cause of the disease." Words spoken by no doctor ever. More fantastical than teleporting veterinarians?

The point of the comic is to leave it lying around in veterinary waiting rooms for small children to pick up, so that they learn a) some of the alternate careers vets can have besides working as small animal clinicians and b) that veterinary medicine isn't just about helping animals, it's about helping people, too. (OneHealth to the rescue! I want a super hero named OneHealth Man!)

I like this effort by the AVMA to communicate some important information about veterinary careers, but I do wonder if a somewhat heavy-handed comic is the best way to do it. You're not going to get a lot of bang for your buck with it (although on the other hand it probably didn't cost all that many bucks to produce, relatively). Hey, AVMA, are you listening to me? (AVMA reps have commented on my blog posts in the past when I've made enough noise, so consider my voice raised now.) I have an idea.

Did you see the recent SyFy show Helix? Which actually starred a veterinary pathologist, and yet didn't do a great job of portraying what veterinary pathology is really like or why it's an exciting career. I think the AVMA, if they are serious about this goal of getting the public to better understand what veterinarians are capable of, should be trying to get more veterinarian characters on TV shows and in movies, and make sure they are well characterized. I suggest one way to do it is to offer a liaison service to Hollywood: the AVMA would provide a veterinarian consultant appropriate for the particular role, and would pay their salary and expenses for the job. The consultant would help the writers make the role realistic.

I'm completely serious about this: I think Hollywood (or part of it) is starting to realize that a realistic depiction of scientists is something its audience is actually interested in, but it's got to be hard to find someone who can speak to the daily life of a veterinary pathologist. Make it easy for them. Because a favorite character on a TV show is something that makes kids, and even adults, consider their future career options in a different light, not a comic book with a clunky story.

Generation Anthropocene: a review

The Generation Anthropocene podcasts, interviews of Stanford faculty by Stanford students, were published back in May. I didn’t get around to listening to them right away; I was busy finishing up veterinary school. I did listen to the compilation overview, which includes snippets of interviews from all 14 podcasts, in May, which incited me to download the whole lot onto a thumbdrive. During the 21 hour drive from Massachusetts to Florida, I stuck the drive in my car stereo and listened to it. I loved the podcast so much that when I got to Florida, I handed the thumbdrive to my husband and told him to listen to it. Of course, he has not gotten around to it, so this morning I played him the first part of the overview to get him psyched.

Listening to the overview again after listening to all the interviews has been an interesting experience. The compilation podcast originally left me feeling that humans are affecting the planet in even more ways than I had realized before, and that we are plunging towards a crisis which it may already be too late to avert. I’ve heard that before and, as with so many listeners before me, sometimes avoid the details of our imminent destruction. But there were snippets in the compilation that I really wanted to know more about, mostly from people interested in sustainable agriculture. And exploring the variety of answers to the question asked in every interview — “When do you think the Anthropocene began?” — intruiged me.

The first thing I noticed when listening to the individual interviews was the genders of the interviewers and the interviewees. The compilation mixes the interview snippets together, removes all comments from interviewers so that it appears to just be free association from a bunch of Stanford professors, and draws heavily on particular interviewees, one woman in particular. When I listened to the actual interviews, I was struck by the fact that 12 out of 14 of the interviewers (the students) were young women, while 12 out of 14 of the interviewees (the faculty) were men. The gender bias hadn’t been at all apparent in the compilation, but it was an interesting one, since one of the themes of the podcast is how the next generation will live in a world that differs so much from today’s. The next generation, apparently, will differ too: many more faculty will be women. Or, as my husband suggested, perhaps faculty gender ratios will not change, and the two male students are the only ones on track to get PhDs. (In fact, if I recall correctly, the only graduate student on the podcast was one of the men.)

The second thing I noticed was how almost universally optimistic these experts in their fields were about their future. There were exceptions, but for the most part I did not come away from the interviews feeling alarmed about our future. I felt energized: there’s lots to do! And we have lots of tools and lots of smart people with which to do it! Let’s get going! Before listening to the podcast, I felt that humans needed to back off and leave the world alone a little more. My appreciation for the value of thoughtful stewardship has increased enormously.

So when do I think the Anthropocene began? I would have answered differently before listening to these interviews, but now I will confidently say that I think it began when humans ventured out of Africa and began affecting environments which were not prepared for them. Long before the Industrial Revolution (a favorite starting point of the Anthropocene for many), we were already causing mass extinctions with new hunting methods. And we were creating new species using domestication. We’ve been changing the face of the world for a very long time.

I loved listening to these interviews. I would love to see more like this: more interviews between students and faculty at other schools, on other topics. Want to communicate science to the world, but don’t have the time to start a blog? Get interviewed by a student and let them publicize what you have to say. There’s lots to talk about, so let’s get going.