#real cosima

[unrealcosima]

Ask Cosima: What’s Up with Kira? | BBC America

Kira is another way to explore one of the fundamental themes running throughout the 'Orphan Black' narrative: chance, contingency, and the events that we just can’t see coming!

The question we *really*  have been asking all along.

[maudnewton]

Although she’s an atheist, Herter is especially critical of the science-religion duality that’s emerged in Western culture. “That they are somehow two different magisterial domains that can’t cross each other is just so fundamentally untrue.” Many early scientific practices emerged from religion, and even now “many, many scientists also have deep-seated beliefs, right? Some things they are driven to look for and to contemplate and investigate come out of these kinds of questions, like ‘what does it mean to be you?” She understands the issues, “especially as somebody who is not religious, who is very much an atheist. At the end of the day I will put my faith in science more than I will put my faith in god, but I will also recognize that it doesn’t have all the answers.”

Religion has, as its critics say, wrought intolerance and violence, but “we are equally and often as oppressed and exploited and done violence to by science. We forget that anything that we give explicit and uncontrollable authority to has a power to be oppressive and violent and is often used for these purposes. Science is not neutral and we endow it with authority by calling something that is science neutral because then you give it a power to be whatever anybody wants it to be. You’ve invested it with its own supernatural status.”

I agreed. “The thing that fascinates me as a complete layperson about science,” I said, “is that the moment a scientific concept turns out to be untrue, it is no longer science. So science has a built-in way of sidestepping accountability for mistakes made in its name.”

She noted the tension between science as “a set of methodologies that we practice” and science as an epistemological framework...

One of my favorite parts of the conversation(s) I had with Cosima Herter, orphanblack​’s super-smart science advisor. 

[maudnewton]

Metafilter’s Orphan Black Profiles Wishlist

I’m enjoying these (inspired by “Science, Chance, and Emotion with Real Cosima,” my profile of the show’s science advisor, Cosima Herter): 

"Boyfriends, Sestras, and Scorpions with Real Helena"

"Soap-making, Electioneering, and Body Disposal with Real Allison"

"Police Investigation, Train Schedules, and Impact Trauma with Real Beth"

"Kicking Ass, Negotiating with Crazies, and Wearing Black with Real Sarah"

[thebegats]

“BBC America’s Orphan Black seems so immediate, so plausible, so unfuturistic, that Cosima Herter, the show’s science consultant, is used to being asked whether human reproductive cloning could be happening in a lab somewhere right now. If so, we wouldn’t know, she says. It’s illegal in so many countries, no one would want to talk about it. But one thing is clear, she told me, when we met to talk about her work on the show: in our era of synthetic biology — of Craig Venter’s biological printer and George Church’s standardized biological parts, of three-parent babies and of treatment for cancer that involves reengineered viruses— genetics as we have conceived of it is already dead. We don’t have the language for what is emerging.” 

I learned so many fascinating and scary things from Orphan Black’s Cosima Herter.

[pharmaceutical-entrepreneur]

Misfolded Proteins

Hi Cosima I'm a biotechnology student and I can't sleep because of this question:

We know that a prion is an infective misfolded protein that propagates itself by leading to the misfolding of other proteins. It is shown that the girls which have been with a Castor boy Gracie for example, seem to be infected with the same misfolded protein.

Now, Dr. Virginia Coady said “Castor and Leda have the same disorder”             Is it a prion what is infecting the Castor and Leda subjects?

If so, can the girls transmit it just like the Castor boys do?

[great-unwashed]

Ask Real Cosima (Cosima Herter)

how can the castor clones transmit something that makes proteins misfold? or do they just give the misfolded protein to the women via normal fluid transfer and the protein, which is foreign in the women, makes their ovaries melt? 

[geekspiralling]

Two final projects completed. Just one more and it's back to your regularly scheduled Geekspiralling. I have so many OB projects to get out of my system during break!

[geekspiralling]

I just got off the phone with (Real) Cosima Herter and let me be the first (millionth?) to tell you: she is an actual magical person. I’m seriously gobsmacked. There are no words. She’s officially guests 1-6 on my dream dinner party list.