Social Justice

On happy little squares, thought experiments and visualizing social systems

Elon Musk’s vision for the humanity and colonizing Mars makes me incredibly uneasy. It’s not that Elon Musk has said very many inappropriate things, it’s that so much of the dialogue about colonizing Mars – inspired, initiated and often influenced by Musk – uses language and frameworks that are a little problematic (and I’m being [...]

The annual ScienceWriters meeting is a joint meeting of the National Association of Science Writers and the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing.  It is a meeting for science writers, by science writers, with content to appeal to both the newest writers and seasoned professionals.

On Friday, I saw people responding to reading a New York Times Op-Ed piece (published September 18, 2014) about the Sexual Assault Problem in Science.  In late July several major news outlets reported on this problem, too.  Women in the Sciences Report Harassment and Assault (July 24, 2014) is the most ground-breaking and important research [...]

To anyone who follows infectious disease outbreaks, it is no great surprise that the most immediate, looming threat, Ebola, has received scant attention until recently.

News is rapidly changing regarding Ebola. Even as I've been writing this post, we've gone from "There is no treatment except supportive care" to NIH's Dr.

Researchers estimate that more than 340 U.S. inmates that could have been exonerated were sentenced to death since 1973

I must extend a very, very big thank you to Ben Lillie and Erin Barker of The Story Collider and giving me a chance to share my personal experiences in and with science.

In late October, the Yale Rudd Center got a visit from Olivier De Schutter, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right To Food. He began his talk, Reforming the Food Systems: Making the Transition Succeed,  by painting a bleak picture. There are three areas in which our food systems are failing us, De Schutter said: ecological limits, social [...]

When Danielle N. Lee, a PhD biologist, was likened to a whore last week for declining to work for free, I was furious. She and Scicurious proposed a series of posts on diversity in science and I reached out, asking if my perspective as a woman physician might be of interest.

So even after Affirmative Action, there still weren’t very many Blacks and Mexican students enrolled in selective colleges and universities.

In celebration of Black History Month, I will be sharing stories about the African-American experience in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).