How does Science get done?

 Hello World!

This is a companion blog for a podcast series- "Through a Scientist's Eyes"

Here I'll go a little deeper than the spoken word. 

Place some interesting research results that helped me shape episodes. 

The genesis of this is 2 parts:

1 My frustration with how little depth there often is to explaining scientific discoveries to the general population [see Rant]

2 A friend of mine, mentor really, sent me this episode of This American Life. Where David Kestenbaum interviews several "lesser known" scientists in the race to create the vaccines that have recently gone to market.

Rather poignant for me; a former scientist- I have written extensively on blogs most recently here; back in 2017 when I last had a bout of melancholy regarding my career change. It reminded me what the public doesn't see:

The long hours that it takes to discover something new, the commitment to the unknown and the recognition that if you fail you may be out of a job, a career and source of income for the only thing you know how to do.

The fact that politicans really have no idea about science, the process and nor the humanity of the people that create life saving cures, vaccines, treatments

That scientists have a vastly different idea of fast versus the business world.

The fact that it never is a single "dude" in a lab coat, it is always a team of scientists

The stress of failure, the resilency of spirit that it takes just to be hopeful that it might work this time.

In a perverse way it makes me want to be back "in the game"- but it also makes me want to tell their story to help explain the science, to take the time that the average scientist doesn't have to inform the public of "the process" in hopes that the time that I have spent in marketing, consulting and outside of science has made me a better communicator.

Anyways, listen for your self- hopefully it humanize and brings a new respect for the scientists who laid the foundations for our exit from the pandemic...https://anchor.fm/s/45339c7c/podcast/rss (

Google Podcasts

Spotify

Popular posts from this blog

What is a cell= the short version

Image
 Cell Biology 101 In my upcoming Podcast (now published: Spotify  and Google ) I'll go through some background for what an mRNA vaccine is:  I want to do is take you a little deeper as I mentioned if you listen to the trailer my goal here is talk about the iceberg behind what  what  we see in the traditional media.   What I want to share here is a simple whiteboard session that goes through the basics: I do want to start off with is when we look at a  mammalian  cell or A to use the fancy term a eukaryotic cell it's broken down into  into  zones and regions the two major ones that most of us have heard about is the is the cytoplasm and the nucleus so the nucleus is the central part of the cell it's kind of the  the  central processor to steal a computer term of the cell and the cytoplasm is where all the action happens and this is all bordered by two lipid structures and so when I say lipid structures way that I  I ...
Read more

How an iPhone copies molecular biology

Image
Now that I have your attention:  In cell biology we have this really interesting set of problems where we need to pack a lot of information into a small space yet have a logical way to get to what we want....kind of like an iPhone and the zillions of Apps that most folks have 😉 So...how does the cell map its "Apps [genes]"? well thats a deep subject. I cover the why its important in my most recent podcast: [ Google Podcasts ,   Spotify ,   Anchor ] Here I want to go through a little of the "Why should you care?" How a cell goes from a naïve cell "baby cell" to neuron "brain cell".  It's important to remember that no cell defines its own identity in a vacuum. It's surrounded by other cells that are also making decisions and there there's a lot of developmental biology I won't go into here but suffice it to say what happens is that at some point there's enough cells that have all made the same decision. There are a lot of varia...
Read more