What is pseudoscience?
In the course of reviewing a manuscript I’d submitted to a journal, a referee inquired about what I’d meant when I invoked the term “pseudoscience.”
Rain Did Not Follow the Plow
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in settlement-era U.S. as well as in parts of the Canadian and Australian territories, homesteaders were encouraged
HOW LEARNING ABOUT BUGS CREATED A SCIENTIST
I started writing my last blog post (the one about some of my favorite Arizona arachnids) a few days ago, but felt uncomfortable publishing what
Rattlesnakes in the Sonoran Desert: Close Encounters With The Venomous Kind
Spring weather is here in the Sonoran Desert and, although I haven’t seen any, I hear that the rattlesnakes are out.
Oh those leafcutter bees!
A Garden Mystery Solved (previously published in the Green Valley News and Sahuarita Sun – reprinted with permission) Every spring in the Sonoran Desert a
A Lethal Dose
Scientists who work with toxic substances, as well as people who keep (or whose family members keep) venomous animals are (or should be) familiar with
Spillover
In Spillover, David Quammen takes on “the next big human pandemic,” which could very well be a “spillover” disease originating in animals, eventually infecting human hosts. The characteristics of this next new plague could resemble Ebola, SARS, bird flu, Lyme disease or any one of a number of zoonotic plagues, diseases that transfer from animal host to human.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
In 1951, doctors took samples from Henrietta Lacks’ cervical cancer and grew the cells without Lacks’ consent. These cells, the sales of which constitute a multi-billion dollar industry, are still used in thousands of experiments around the world.
A Scientific American
My father didn’t go to college, but he was a scientist. After he died, I inherited his old copies of Scientific American—dating from the 1960s to the early 2000s.
The Moth Hunters
Bathed in violet light, two men search the white expanse of cloth, oblivious to their surroundings. Disoriented insects of various shapes and sizes swoop around the men’s heads. Many of the insects eventually land on the sheet. With a deft motion, one of the men captures a specimen and examines the vial in which a pale-colored moth flutters.