Shoe-fari for the #sbFAIL Diaspora

As you may have heard, ScienceBlogs had some issues last week. Bloggers have been changing sites faster than I can edit my links. We have finally heard from the pseudonymous goddess who got me hooked, Isis the Scientist:

So, after the events of the last couple weeks, what is the reality of Isis the Scientist?
I've had a lot to consider.  But, after speaking with Adam Bly today, I get the impression that he is still passionate about trying to continue this conversation and I believe that he is engaging with us, the folks who provide content to the site, in good faith.  I think he is vested in seeing this enterprise succeed and in working together collaboratively.  I can only take him at his word, and so On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess will remain at Scienceblogs.  Here, I'll continue to blog about the practice of being a woman in science.  After all, science is culture and all that.  If some of the ideas discussed today with the powers that be come to fruition, this could still be a groundbreaking place to watch.

Just as I have felt the need to have two creative outlets, the goddess has chosen a similar path. However, she still hasn’t blogged any shoes for a couple of weeks. (I know she has been distracted by pepsigate and shitbubbles and all…)

Today I am feeling particularly bad-ass, so I offer these to my online community:

Lorissa, by Sam Edelman, sells for #200.95 at Zappos. They also come in white. My husband would absolutely FREAK about what those studs could do to the carpet floor mats in my car. But they do look tough. Think what you could do to someone with a backward kick! Hmmmm. Maybe my daughter needs a pair…

Philanthropy Begins With Me

The local United Way campaign just kicked off, and the folks over on ScienceBlogs started up their Donors Choose program (click on over and help Isis win). As the leaves fall, so should dollars into important programs.

I decided to become a philanthropist shortly after taking my first faculty position in 1991. The funding climate, similar to today, was brutal for a new PI. I knew my best chances were with private foundations, especially local groups. So there was some self-interest in my initial volunteer efforts; however, I figured that it was my job to enable biomedical research, even if I never saw a dime.

Eventually, I did get some of that money, and it led to bigger and better grants. I still believe in keeping up the efforts. In the current economic climate, those same organizations and foundations are the only source of funding for many new investigators or for those whose idea isn’t quite ready for prime time (the NIH).

That’s why I am giving to enrich elementary science programs. That’s why I dragged my butt out of bed on a cold, soggy morning yesterday to volunteer at the local American Diabetes Association Walk (the balloon release at left kicked it off). That’s why I made time Friday to do a promotional interview about the Nebraska Kidney Association. This stuff is important, both now and tomorrow.

So click on over and support tomorrow’s scientists at ScienceBlogs.

Cylinder artwork courtesy of PhotoXpress.

Don’t Blame Estrogen

Over at Dr. Isis’ blog there has been much discussion about another blog on “civil argument” in the blogosphere. Isis took exception with some of the issues raised on another blog, and a commenter  to her blog suggested that the good goddess was on the rag (OTR). She went on to apologize for her judgment being clouded by blood flowing from her vagina. She goes on to say:

“Then, just when I thought I had cleared enough of the estrogen from my girl brain to understand…”

As a female and a scientist who deals with the onset of puberty, I feel obliged to point out that estrogen cannot be the bad guy during menstruation. As shown in the diagram (which accompanies an article on faqs.org – click on the diagram to link there) estrogen levels are at their lowest during menstruation!

Estrogen rises steadily and peaks just before ovulation, with a secondary rise around day 21 when the body is thinking it might need to sustain a pregnancy. Progesterone has its big peak at that time as well. If pregnant, these hormones remain elevated; if not, they drop off and menstruation ensues.

If people want to ascribe behavioral issues associated with menstruation (AKA OTR syndrome), they cannot really blame female hormones. Perhaps it is the lack of these hormones, their withdrawl, that explains things. Perhaps it is cramps and having to carry around “protection.” Perhaps the men around us are jerks when they know they won’t get any. It is not estrogen mucking up a girly brain!

Perhaps men only see us as “logical” when estrogen peaks at ovulation and we are most likely to have sex… I will leave that exploration to another time.

I would like to point out that estrogen is a really important hormone in the central nervous system. One of the lessons we have learned from knocking-out its receptors in mice is that male neuroendocrine feedback in the brain is estrogen mediated. Seems testosterone is converted to estrogen which then signals in the brain of the male organism.

So the Big E is just as likely to be screwing up his brain as hers.

More Questions Than Answers

I wrote my weekly “What I’m Reading” post and scheduled it to publish on Sunday… July 26. The bad news: I wanted to push it out there on July 19. The good news: there will definitely be a post this coming Sunday since I can’t figure out how to reschedule its publication date!

I follow a number of bloggers on ScienceBlogs. Recently a tidal wave of “discussion” about Unscientific America has left me dismayed by the lack of civility and the comments by people who haven’t read the book.

I downloaded the tome to my new iPod Touch with Kindle reader, and whipped through it in a day. My reaction overall is mixed. I do not see the problem as a lack of science literacy (has the general public ever really understood much about science? Or history? Or literature?) No, I see a lack of respect for science and scientists as the real issue. We need to regain public trust!

Adding communication classes to PhD work seems unlikely to solve the problem of a lack of respect for science. As much as I loved the work of Carl Sagan, having his clone about today would probably do little to reassure the general public. We were promised “better living through chemistry.” While DDT could zap mosquitoes and eliminate malaria, it had detrimental effects on the environment. The green revolution that has allowed the overpopulated world to be fed has taken its toll on the land. People now mistrust the agribusiness industry. In medicine, it seems like papers trumpet polar opposite results; the public can’t decide what to believe, and thus decides to believe no one.

The major complaint about the book over on ScienceBlogs regards religion. Mooney and Kirshenbaum take PZ Myers (Pharyngula) to task for “crackergate.” I have only been hanging out in the blogosphere for about 6 months, so I missed the original escapade. Basically, PZ, an atheist, showed photos of a defiled communion wafer on the blog a few years back. I remember hearing a bit about this in the mainstream media at the time. My reaction: (1) I guess he really wanted to piss people off; and (2) don’t the people whining about his “blasphemy” have something bigger to worry about? The chapter also discusses others in the blogosphere who are referred to as “the new atheists,” an in-your-face breed of nonbelievers. I have to agree with the contention that aggressive atheists turn off the holy rollers, especially when their faith is mocked. That is not the way to earn their respect; however, even if Carl Sagan came back from the dead to poetically tell them that the beliefs of their faith (creationism, etc) are wrong, it is unlikely that they will budge.

Ultimately, two antithetical forces are at work here. Science demands testable facts to support its theories. Religion is based on faith which requires belief without proof. Having grown up in the bible belt, I can tell you that new earth creationists are not swayed by the fossil record or any other evidence you present regarding the reality of evolution. They believe.

The book raised some interesting points and gave me things to think about on the airplane. It’s a good starting point for the discussion on attitudes toward science in the US, but I don’t believe it provides the complete answer we seek.

Why I Take Time To Blog

Isis over at ScienceBlogs posted yesterday about blogging and one’s career. Her post first discusses Alex Coturnix and his rules for blogging: (1) A blog post is not a scientific publication; (2) It doesn't count if you publish your data in a blog post; and (3) Your blog usually doesn't generate novel data.

These are important points to keep in mind. While I am a physician-scientist (see photo for proof) I do not discuss my data in Golden Thoughts. If you want to know about my science, you can pull my papers. Or email me, cause I will talk about my hypotheses till the cows come home. Given the frustrations of obtaining funding and running the reviewer mill, no one does science for kicks. Science is a labor of love.

I have on occasion done the “lay science” thing when a topic grabs my attention, and I present it for a different, more general audience. Some folks do this regularly and well (see Uremic Frost for a fine example in Nephrology).

Ultimately, a blog is a personal thing. I love to write. Here I can tell tales or expound on the injustice of the world without annoying anyone (my drinking buddies are quick to point out that my bar stories are waaaay too long). Readers can just click away from my page when they get annoyed. My blog gives voice to thoughts in my head that get in the way of everything else. In a way, it helps me get focused by letting that other stuff out.

I don’t blog everyday because I wish to remain employed. I have stuff to do if I want to be clothed and if I want to eat. But I can’t imagine life without Golden Thoughts anymore.

Who Am I?

I don't mean this quesion in the literal sense. I blog & comment with my real name, and the links at right will take you to more information about me than you probably want. This is more of a rhetorical question about the many identities I have, including wife, mother, scientist, doctor, and editor.

I bring this up because there has been some discussion about attempts to "out" one of my favorite bloggers, Isis, over at ScienceBlogs. This woman has kept her real identity a secret and has some very good rules for pseudonymous bloggers. She is trying to keep her online life separate from that as a scientist and her wife/mother roles.

I came down on the other side of this issue, in part I believe, because of my "advanced age" when I started this blog. About the time I hit 40 I realized that no one could really do that much to hurt me in life. I shouldn't be evil because then I would deserve retribution, but I could generally state my mind in most professional situations with little fear of the consequences. It takes a lot of energy to maintain separate identities, and I didn't see much advantage for me to do that.

I had my first identity issue when I got married. The question was whether or not to change my last name. I had not yet published anything but an abstract in a local proceedings in an unrelated field. Part of me was violently opposed to the patriarchal supposition that I would take my husband's surname. However, I started talking with those who had already walked the path. First there was the "keep your maiden name group" who found this choice was really awkward when the kidlets came along. Did mom want to be the only one in the family with a different last name? The teachers were confused, and most women were "Mrs. Daddy's Name" when the school called, just to keep everyone from thinking they were divorced. Kids taking mom's name alone is pretty rare still, and I could not bring myself to dump a hyphenated name on my offspring. What about hyphenating my own name? One friend pointed out the difficulty that presents with forms and other documents. I had other friends who used their given name professionally and their married names personally. Talk about confusion! I have been introduced to women at parties where it took 20 minutes to figure out we shared patients! In medicine and academia, the personal and professional lives overlap substantially.

In the end, I took my husband's last name. Of course, I couldn't do anything easy. See, my birth name was Ann Pascale Hammond, but no one had ever called me Ann. Compared to a hyphenated last name, using your middle name is pure hell in this country. It is not your legally recognized name! I ended up dropping the "Ann" and becoming Pascale Hammond Lane. It was the right mix for me, even though I had to jump through a bunch of hoops for a common usage name change. I like that my family has the same last name, even though it wasn't the one I was born with.

I suspect my daughter will not change her name, but you never know. Just as I had to debate myself for a few months, Jen will have to make her own decisions. We all have to make our own decisions about who we want to be and how we will balance roles as professionals, partners, and parents.