July 23, 2013

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Research Realities: New Blog Mini-Series

By Kate Clancy

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This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American

I just finished the first recruitment for a local, integrated research and education project with adolescent girls. It was a fantastic experience, but the process of getting there… let’s just say there were challenges. I’m going to share some of those in a mini-series over the next few weeks to make scientific research – particularly human subjects research – more transparent to students and layfolk. Here is the basic outline of the posts I plan to write, which may change depending on how much I decide I need to anonymize as I go:

  • Issues with school-based research

  • Issues communicating interdisciplinary research

  • The importance of mentors who give a crap

  • Building relationships and finding great people to work with

  • Mentoring students

  • Executing your research plan, and what to do when nothing goes according to plan

I’m also going to put discussion questions at the end of each post, for anyone who wants to use this as part of a professionalization or research methods course. This also might be instructive to journalists and any other folks who want to know what we do all day. If you have any questions ahead of time, or particular issues you want me to cover as I go, just comment here or contact me in the usual places (Twitter, email).

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I am Dr. Kate Clancy, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. On top of being an academic, I am a mother, a wife, an athlete, a labor activist, a sister, and a daughter. My beautiful blog banner was made by Jacqueline Dillard. Context and variation together help us understand humans (and any other species) as complicated. But they also help to show us that biology is not immutable, that it does not define us from the moment of our birth. Rather, our environment pushes and pulls our genes into different reaction norms that help us predict behavior and physiology. But, as humans make our environments, we have the ability to change the very things that change us. We often have more control over our biology than we may think.

More by Kate Clancy

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