The Internet, Science, and Society

Keep in mind, I haven't done any research on this topic, so all of this is just me... pontificating, I suppose.

There is a culture in today's society in which the internet is blamed for things - the short attention span of people in my generation, their lack of communicating with others, a greater ignorance of their surroundings, and general "the internet is terrible and does terrible things to the young generation."

The thing is, though, that the internet has done more in terms of good things than it has ever done in terms of bad. The internet creates a wider access to information. I know much more now than I ever would have before the internet, because I can easily access books, journal articles, and even the opinions of scientists on the internet. I am kept in the loop on research without really having to pay a cent.

This extends to things like politics. It's not wonder that the internet age has seen the rise of LGBTQIAAPN+ culture (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer, Intersex, Asexual, Aromantic, Pansexual, Nonbinary) in just visibility as well as acceptance. The internet is a safe space, where individuals can communicate with one another, discover their identities, and realize that they are normal - that they are not freaks. Women, people of color, the disabled, what have you - all can access the internet and communicate and understand each other.

Friendship, additionally, is no longer a function of convenience. We are not just friends with people who are close to us in location, regardless of what we have in common with them. Long distance relationships are not only feasible, they're practically easy. You can make friends with individuals on the internet who share interests with you - who understand you - who accept you. You can keep in touch with those friends you made in High School, College, that one job in that one city that you have since moved out of, what have you, so much easier. With the touch of a button you can see what your pal is doing in Baltimore, or what your internet friend who is just as in to Night Vale as you is doing off in London. The world is more cosmopolitan, more connected, more understanding.

We are more aware of the political situation in Nepal. We are more aware of opportunities in science in Germany. We know, now, why someone from Brazil would be offended by what you just said. We are understanding each other better. We are becoming closer. We are becoming a global population now more than ever.

It is truly a second Columbian Exchange, and hopefully this one will lead to the prevention of genocide, rather than the initiation of genocide.

And the established status quo - people who benefit from a lack of widespread information, a lack of communication, a lack of connectivity - they hate this.

So they mock us, and ignore us, and call us a generation glued to our phones and not actually talking to other people... when we're the generation who have done that more than any that has come before us.

On Being Busy and Scientific Literacy

Hello Everyone:

Important Note Number 1: I was eaten alive by exams

Important Note Number 2: Today I had a rant on ADAD about scientific literacy. I have put the post for you to read below.

noddytheornithopod

It will be hilarious if people like me suddenly get people being all “STOP COMPLAINING ABOUT DINOSAURS, IT’S JUST A MOVIE, NOBODY CARES“ over stuff like Jurassic World and The Good Dinosaur when so many on this website actually do value the impact media has on us all and are willing to call out things like racism, ableism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia whenever they see them. People representation isn’t the only thing that matters -representation of current scientific knowledge does too. When the most reliable method of obtaining information and its findings is consistently ignored, we end up with a very misinformed society.

spinosaurus-the-fisher

Tumblr is indeed a very social justice centric platform - this comes at a cost for the perpetration of correct perceptions and attitudes in other fields (science, in particular, as demonstrated through the Neanderthal post). It’s a tough environment for scientific advocacy to thrive in and be widely recognized in whilst there are other major discussions occurring that completely eclipse the true significance of science.

a-dinosaur-a-day

Like I get that social justice affects people’s lives and trust me you only have to spend five seconds on my personal blog to see I agree it’s important. But really, caring about scientific accuracy is actually in the same general problem that society has with information. 

Opinion is valued greater over fact. 

Whether it be “dinosaurs with feathers are uncool” or “I just don’t think bisexual individuals face persecution,” people like to think that their opinion - their perspective on the world - is more important than what can be tested and observed with data and fact. Yes, things can be biased, and it’s important to be able to detect bias in research and understand it - but people often completely disregard statistics and data by saying “oh you’re just biased” because it’s something they disagree with. You have to look at the research methods and underlying assumptions that they worked with before you can say that - and you have to say why they’re biased, to boot. 

A lot of things aren’t biased. Dinosaurs had feathers, whether you think it’s cool or not. That isn’t biased. Bisexual women have a 46% of experiencing sexual violence compared to lesbian women at 13% and heterosexual women at 17%. That isn’t biased. And yet, people who want their pre-supposed worldview (that dinosaurs didn’t have feathers and bisexuals don’t face persecution, in these examples) will ignore this and say that the person stating these statistics is biased or wrong. 

It’s all about people being unable to modify how they see the world in favor of their own personal comfort and complacency. People don’t like to change (I tried to find a good paper on this but they were all paywalled). They don’t like to think that the natural world is something other than what they thought - in the case of science - or that society is something other than they thought - in the case of social justice. They want dinosaurs to be scaly (and you can apply this to a lot of scientific misconceptions - they want birds to not be dinosaurs, or climate change to not exist, or evolution to not be real, or vaccines to be dangers, etc. etc.etc.), and they want bisexuals to just be whiny (and you can apply this to any oppression - they want black people to just be thugs, homosexual people to just be sinners, Islamic people to just be terrorists, women to just be inferior to men, etc. etc. etc.). They don’t want to change their opinion in the light of evidence, and our society encourages them to not, by prioritizing the opinion of people over facts - celebrities, politicians, what have you.  

It’s, ultimately, the same exact problem, so why not fight for both? Why make fun of people for being passionate about one side, but so staunchly defend the other? Why cut corners trying to make lives better for people by spreading scientific misinformation (the neanderthal post) when that has the same underlying human-nature problem as societal oppression? Science, when done right, is on the side of truth, and ultimately, supporting science will help support the rights of oppressed individuals, because it is truth that they are oppressed. Support scientists for being passionate about their work, because they’re helping fight the good fight. Don’t make fun of them. 

Also, I think that this probably contributes on some level (meaning they don’t know enough about the scientific topic so they just make fun, and they are more passionate about their well-researched social justice causes [especially when the problems directly affect them]), but I haven’t done a study, so take this as an opinion: 

tl;dr: Scientific illiteracy is a huge problem in society and needs to be solved, and solving it will help with things like fixing societal systems of oppression, so if any group should be in favor of scientific accuracy, its social justice people. 

~Meg

Dinosauria

On the Skewed View of Dinosaurian Diversity

So I have promised the followers of ADAD a "cladocircle" (meaning, cladogram diagrammed as concentric circles, rather than a tree) for Dinosauria for about a month now.

And I really, really, really want to get it right.

So I've been plotting it out, and thinking it through, and putting way too much effort into it. And here's the problem.

There's no way to make an unbiased, accurate circle that isn't way too cluttered or not cluttered enough. The thing is is that the bulk of the clades of Dinosauria are in Theropoda - but, if you diminish Ornithischia and Sauropodomorpha, you elimate most of the morphological diversity. So what do you favor? Morphological diversity over numeral diversity? And what do you do with everything more derived than Avialae?

It's a problem with Dinosauria in that it clearly is impossible to truly showcase the diversity of the group in one graphic. I've been torn since I started the project. And the importance of accuracy, at least for me, means I do not want to cut corners. I want to show that Allosaurus and kin are more closely related to birds than Carnotaurus is. I want to show that the group including Diplodocus and Apatosaurus is actually relatively sparse compared to the horror that is Titanosauria. I want to showcase that Triceratops and Maiasaura are slightly more closely related than they are to Ankylosaurus. I want to demonstrate that Kulindadromeus is a fairly advanced Ornithischian and the fact that it had a full coat of floof is amazing.

How can I do all of that, realistically, in a diagram? You can do it in a tree, you can't do it in a circle.

So I'm stuck, but I won't give up.

I've sketched out a circle for the entirety of Dinosauria, but I know full well I'll have to do ones for other groups - zooming in on each level.

Surprisingly, showcasing the diversity of birds, specifically, is not nearly as hard as Dinosauria. Neornithes is the least of my challenges.

~ Meg

Living Apart

Lately, I have been going through a tough time.

I had a repressed memory of a trauma that was unearthed on Sunday due to a cacophony of circumstances that I had little to no control over.

One day I will reveal this trauma here, perhaps, at least in part, at least to discuss my emotions about it. However, this is not that day.

What I will discuss, however, is how this has affected me in a palpable way.

I am in a relationship. I have been for a long time. I love him, much more than I thought possible. Currently, I am in Chicago for graduate school.

He still needs to find a job out here. He lives in Duluth, Minnesota, and so I haven't seen him since graduation in May. Being apart from him has been painful to say the least. My summer has not been a good one as a result, but I got used to it after a while. After a while I could pretend I didn't miss him as much as I did, or at least forget how much I missed him.

This un-repression of a memory has changed everything.

I can't ignore it anymore. I can't ignore how much I miss him, how much I wish he was with me. It's almost as painful as the memory (but not quite). It hurts, every day, to not have him in the same place as me. To not be able to touch him, or talk to him, or just be near him.

I feel lost when he's not here.

I honestly would give anything for him to be here with me, but I don't have anything to give. Not money, not plane tickets, nothing I could sell to get these things, nothing. So I have to wait until he gets a job here, or at least an interview.

My mental health has taken a downturn and it's only gotten worse. I hope going to counseling will help me. I don't want to screw up graduate school.

There's nothing I can do, because there's not really a way I can stop missing him. So I can only hope I see him again, and soon.

This had nothing to do with science, dinosaurs, or similar topics. And I apologize. But I had to write this down somewhere.

~ Meg

Why Lectures Matter

Sitting in lecture, this topic came to me as a rather useful one to have.

Lectures and classes are the typical vantage point individuals have into new topics. Taking a class - either in high school or at the intro level in college - can be the make or break situation for an individual in continuing with that subject. An intro class should not be poorly taught, under any circumstances.

Here's the deal: it is not fair to students to "test" their commitment to a subject by making the intro class difficult or boring. In college, intro biology was considered "weed out" - we had extremely difficult labs and tests that made our grades go in the crapper very quickly. On top of it, none of the lecturers were engaging. It was well known that to be landed with the job of teaching intro bio was a a dreaded prospect by the faculty. They did not want to be there.

I get it, honestly. I do. Specific topics in biology are much more interesting than the general overview.

But if you're bored, then I'm willing to bet, your students are also bored. I certainly was.

Boredom leads to not paying attention (or even, in some cases, not coming to class). Boredom leads to worse grades. Worse grades (exacerbated by the extra difficulty in the class) leads to not continuing in the subject - or even dropping the class.

This is not the way to teach a subject.

I understand why weed out may be necessary, but I don't think intro classes are the location to do it. You want to reassure students that the subject is interesting and one that they could enjoy continuing on with. Weed out is a job for secondary classes - things taken just after the intro class - and at the very least, they can't be boring. Boring + Weed Out = not fair to students.

I love biology. I am supposed to be a biologist. But my intro class almost weeded me out. How many students like me did this happen to, because the lecturers didn't care and couldn't hold their attention? Because their grades were so poor due to being bored in the class and then doing badly on the extra-hard tests? How is this system fair to them?

Perhaps I am overestimating students. That may be true. In biology especially, many students join with the mindset of "I'll be a doctor! I'll always be employed AND make a lot of money!" Those students need to be weeded out. I acknowledge this.

I just don't think we should be losing other students in the process.

When you lecture, you have to be excited about it. You have to have passion for the subject regardless of what it is and regardless of what time of day. You have to be enthusiastic. You are essentially trying to gain a student's interest - you are competing with the internet and television and everything else as you teach. You don't need to do a lot, since the students presumably want to do well - but you can't just drone on in monotone.

Also, you can't just read off what the slide says. That's just unfair to the students. You're wasting their time. They can read the slides on their own. Use the slides as a backbone and have the bullet points direct your thoughts, rather than using them as a script.

Needless to say, my lecturer for my first graduate class utilizes the "monotone, power point as script" format, and it's not a good way to start off my graduate education. At least there will be a new one for this class in about two, three weeks.

My goal is to never lose a student to boredom. Science isn't boring, and no one should think it is.

~ Meg

Tales of a Graduate Student in Biology

So I'm not entirely sure why I am doing this. Perhaps because coming to graduate school has been a legitimate roller coaster? At any rate, I felt compelled to start this.

I am a first year graduate student in the biological sciences. What am I interested in? Biology, obviously. Genetics, genomics, how gene expression works, especially in embryonic development. I'm also extremely interested in evolutionary biology and studying evolution through genomics and gene expression, especially macro patterns of evolution.

I also have an amateur's interest in paleontology for similar reasons as my interest in macroevolution. 

Beyond scientific topics, some of my major career interests include research, education, and scientific communication. I believe having people well trained in all three topics will lead to a better era of scientific understanding in our society. The internet has created new tools with which to teach science to the public, and to show the public new scientific discoveries. I believe it should be utilized. I believe that it's important people like myself - people who are interested in research - should also be able to communicate about their discoveries to other scientists and laypeople alike. This includes both at large scientific communication, and education. It's the difference between a good professor and a bad one that leads to someone understanding such important concepts as evolution and climate change.

It's time we take every single avenue we have to better enlighten our society.

I run a popular dinosaur blog called A Dinosaur A Day on Tumblr, and it's one of the accomplishments I have I am most proud of. However, Tumblr apparently appears to be going off the deep end.

So what will I use this blog for?

Discussing topics in science, for one. I will probably put up some of my more popular rants about paleontology and dinosaurs here. Furthermore, I'll talk about science in general, as scientific communication is extremely important, as I said above.

I'll also probably talk about my own life, be it adventures in graduate school, and personal musing. I have a unique position in life, and I have had a wide variety of experiences. I believe they are, potentially, worth sharing. At least, writing may help me process better than anything ever has.

So here goes it. If tumblr eventually becomes completely unusable for how I run ADAD, I'll also move over here. Hopefully such drastic measures won't have to be taken.

~ Meg