Gentlemen and Scholars: How science is for everyone

When you think of a scientist, it’s probably someone in a white coat working in a laboratory, chemical bottles labeled on shelves, and computers displaying complex graphs and figures. Perhaps you might think of a biologist or a geologist out in the field collecting samples to bring back to a similar lab to analyze. There’s…

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Not so marginal annotations

How sharing notes could be best practices in open peer review When I was in middle school, I remember checking out a book from the YA section, opening the cover eager to start reading it to find something truly horrifying: the word “HI” etched onto the title page in bright pink gel ink. The whole…

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Half-Digested Clues

Originally published on Hektoen International’s Journal of Medical Humanities. Submitted to their summer essay contest. On a warm spring day in Denmark in 1950 two brothers, Viggo and Emil Hojgaard, ventured out into the marshlands to gather peat to make fuel. With hefty sharp spades, they cut out earthen bricks of decayed organic matter to…

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The Private Side of Scientific Research

Context in Privatizing Science The amount of funding going to science research with respect to the federal budget has been reduced greatly over the past few years. This may or not have lead to the increase in private organizations funding, but either way more projects and research institutions have been entirely sponsored by philanthropists and…

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