2.17: Of Identity and Diversity with Devon Collins & Molly Liu
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This week we look at science through the lens of identity and diversity in an interview with neuroscientists Devon Collins and Molly Liu. In our interview we discuss working at the intersection of neuroscience and social justice, the formation and mission of PRISM (People at Rockefeller Identifying as Sexual Minorities), and the personal and social realities wrapped up in self-identifying as a scientist.
Want more info about Devon, Molly, and PRISM?
Devon on Twitter | Molly on Twitter | PRISM on Twitter | PRISM’s Website
Want more info about Bold Signals and John?
Bold Signals on SoundCloud | Bold Signals on iTunes | Bold Signals on Twitter | Bold Signals on Facebook
John on About.Me
Links and Show Notes
The cover art for this episode is “Electric Prisms, 1914” by Sonia Delaunay.
This episode’s title is taken from a chapter of John Locke’s “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” which, when described very broadly, argues that personal identity is derived from consciousness rather than biology.
No really, California Digital Library really is a Poke Stop. This piece from Glen Weldon is probably the best thing to come out of this Pokemon Go business.
The article “A Multi-Level Bayesian Analysis of Racial Bias in Police Shootings at the County-Level in the United States, 2011–2014, which was first published in November of 2015, was widely discussed on social media after the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. The highly contentious article that supposedly shows a lack of bias in police shootings (spoiler alert: It’s a bit more complicated then all that) was widely discussed online after the shooting in Dallas and the publication of an irresponsibly oversimplified piece in the New York Times.
Not to denigrate the value of data, these visualizations of the statistics of gun violence from FiveThirtyEight are absolutely devastating.
Science Soapbox, the podcast Devon hosts alongside Avital Percher and Maryam Zaringhalam was the subject of the previous episode.
No seriously, as evidenced by this now-viral image, members of the the Vosshall lab really do stick their arms into boxes full of mosquitoes for science. If, for some inexplicable reason, you want to know more about this process, it is discussed further in this New Yorker profile.
Devon’s day-to-day lab work involves giving mice oxycodone and looking at their place preferences.
Molly gives a more detailed description of her research midway down this page.
The caudate and the putamen together make up the striatum- an area of the brain that has been widely investigated for its involvement in drug abuse and addiction.
Devon’s advisor, Mary Jeanne Kreek, was part of the team led by Vincent Dole and Marie E. Nyswander that developed methadone maintenance as a treatment for opiate addiction. Almost fifty years later, between the recording and release of this episode, the senate finally approved a bill to address America’s opioid addiction crisis.
For various historical and logistical reasons, the vinegar fly (a.k.a. the fruit fly, a.k.a. Drosophila melanogaster) is among the most widely studied model organism in biology and medicine. For everything you ever wanted to know (and more) about the genetics of the vinegar fly, check out FlyBase.
For obvious reasons, the history of mosquito research is closely tied to the history of malaria. However, the mosquito has also played a non-insignificant role in the history of art. Just days after discovering that the malaria parasite is transmitted by mosquitoes, Ronald Ross wrote a poem on the subject.
With tears and toiling breath I find thy cunning seeds O million-murdering death.
Based on his comic strip on the same subject, Windsor McKay also depicted mosquito feeding in one of the very first modern animated films.
WiSeR stands for Women in Science at Rockefeller. Check out their website and Facebook page. Like PRISM, WiSeR also recently collected some data about life on campus at Rockefeller.
Jokes about scientists deciding to collect data as a first step in starting a new group aside, the PRISM survey results provide a valuable snapshot into what life is like for LGBTQ people at a research university like Rockefeller.
The APS report on the climate for LGBT people working in physics can be read here. Its distressingly unsurprising findings include the facts that many LGBT physicists feel coerced into hiding their identity and over a third of LGBT physicists considered leaving their department or workplace last year. For more information and lots of useful links, see this page.
The blood samples collected by Laboratory on the Biology of Addictive Diseases as part of their work with intravenous drug users was used to trace the initial spread of HIV in New York City.
The most level-headed analyses of the most recent statistical crisis to hit fMRI research come from Wired and Neuroskeptic. The authors of the article detailing the crisis have since unsuccessfully attempted to change some of its most widely misinterpreted statements.
This week’s Bold Signals Book Club book is, in another example of speculative fiction colliding headlong current events, The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead. This is a book about elevators- elevators rising, elevators falling, and elevator inspection. It’s also about race, politics, belief, and about a million other things. Despite the fact that a reified metaphorical elevator is the book’s central McGuffin, The Intuitionist isn’t parody, it’s allegory.
It’s perhaps a terrible comparison, given that one is a piece of fiction about how elevators, politics, and philosophy interact with race in a Crying of Lot 49-esque world while the other is a documentary series about how sports, media, and murder interact with race in America, but The Intuitionist is a bit like OJ: Made in America. Both use a single event to explore a number of systemic social issues. Both are excellent.
For a slightly less incisive exploration of social issues that leans more heavily on the tropes of science fiction, take a look at Zone One, Colson Whitehead’s literary take on the zombie apocalypse.
If you’d like to purchase any of the books discussed in the book club and support the podcast at the same time, take a gander at our Amazon store. The podcast also has an Amazon wishlist if you’d like to donate a book. The full list of book club books is here.
Music in this Episode
“Enterprise 1” by Languis
“Be Kind" by Kesta
”Starday“ by Podington Bear
”Chromatic Sins" by Th.e n.d.
DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.3490151
Special thanks this week to Phil Borghi for passing along a reminder that impostor syndrome is not unique to science or academia.