May Newlsetter

New Topics to Demystify: "Changing Science"; The real sex discrimination in science and cannabis tales.

Hello Demystifying Science subscribers. It’s been awhile since I’ve written and I wanted to send out a May Newsletter, highlighting some of the topics I’m planning to cover over the next few months and weigh in on some of the newsworthy events on the biomedical science front.

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“Changing Science”: We are hearing the self-appointed god of the pandemic response, Anthony Fauci, move away from his own lockdown and school closure edicts, denying that he ever played a role in these disastrous policies. Rochelle Walensky, the chief public health doomsayer, stepped down from her post as director of the CDC, leaving her successor with a plan to modernize the CDC so that it “better disseminates health information to the public”. Have any of these public health leaders acknowledged the damage of the policies they supported? Have they apologized for censoring and disparaging those scientists, physicians and public figures who challenged (correctly) their COVID policies? Have they apologized to members of the general public that dissented from the narrative, for calling their behavior selfish and tantamount to murder? Of course not. They are trying to maintain that their actions were correct, given what was known at the time because the “science changes”. This deceptive little turn of phrase conflates what we infer and what is true; it blurs the lines between hypothesis and conclusion.

Can science change? It depends on the aspect of the scientific process to which you are referring, but the short answer is NO. Your understanding and your conclusions can change, or the available experimental methods can change, but not the scientific facts that you are seeking to elucidate. The proper scientific method involves testing a hypothesis that is falsifiable, meaning it can be either proven or disproven. That hypothesis can certainly be driven by something like epidemiological modeling or by historical observations of similar scenarios- as we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic. But your hypothesis does not become “the science” the minute you suggest it, and “the science” hasn’t changed when your hypothesis is disproven. It doesn’t matter how many people with credentials believe your hypothesis and it doesn’t matter what your opinion is of the people who pose a different hypothesis. The hypotheses were formulated based on observations. It’s not so surprising that the pandemic tyrants who forced lockdowns and mandates on the population were wrong. They based their hypotheses on flawed epidemiological models. Many of those advocating for the more moderate approach, of protecting the vulnerable and treating those were sick, based their hypotheses on analysis of data from previous respiratory viral outbreaks. If you pose a hypothesis and data disprove it, even while supporting the hypothesis of someone you don’t like, you’re wrong and they were right. The science didn’t “change”. A little humility goes a long way in preventing this type of embarrassment. If you believe yourself to be superior to your peers, and see every idea that finds its way to your forebrain to be pure genius, you may have trouble distinguishing between your hypothesis and “the science” -and you may be prone to believing science changes rather than the simpler explanation that you were wrong.

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“It’s just weed”: Back in the early 2010s, when my kids were in middle school and I heard some of the parents fretting over sending their kids to the local public high school because of all the cannabis use, I dismissed the concerns as absurd. Having attended high school in San Francisco in the late 70s/early 80s, and then lived in the UC Berkeley student co-ops, I was no stranger to kids smoking weed or to the existence of the stereotypical stoner. As a scientist studying G-protein-coupled receptors, I was no stranger to how THC exerts its effects on the cannabinoid receptors. But I hadn’t paid much attention to the increasing potency of today’s cannabis, or to the array of designer THC concentrates, nor had I really noted how insistent those in the legalization movement were on the medicinal wonders of cannabis. Back in 2016, when I voted in favor of legalization for adult recreational use, I viewed weed like alcohol-not particularly good for you, but an acceptable vice that adults can handle. As the use of high potency weed becomes normalized, I see that many people use it much differently than alcohol, and seem to view it as a nutraceutical of sorts. Furthermore, for the pro-Cannabis lobby, it is not enough for adults to be able to legally get high on a Friday night after a long week; we are supposed to view cannabis use as a positive healthy activity. We are asked to support the loophole that allows people under 21 to gain access to the drug via medical cannabis cards. The statement promulgated by many in the pro-cannabis camp that THC is not addictive is absurd on its face -as a “stoner” is obviously akin to an alcoholic. Just as not everyone who drinks becomes an alcoholic, not everyone to uses cannabis becomes a stoner- but some people clearly do. The idea that opposition to uncontrolled cannabis use is part of some antiquated racist agenda is equally absurd-cannabis is neither the most dangerous nor the most harmless mind-altering substance, and there are plenty of justifiable reasons to have age limitations and regulation of dosage. While there are substantiated medicinal uses for cannabis, such as palliative pain management and reducing nausea, it is not a panacea, nor is it without its own risks. Over the next few months I will dissect some of the recent studies on high potency THC and break down the evidence for its medical uses and associated risks.

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Introduction to “The Princess Scientist”. As a female and mother who navigated the world of academia in the biomedical sciences, I have been working on a book that talks about the real “sex discrimination” I encountered. Here is the introduction to the book as a little teaser. I plan to release some chapters as essays on my substack over the next few months.

The concept of “The Princess Scientist” came up at dinner during a very male-dominated scientific conference in 2017. During a discussion about encouraging more women to enter academic science, one male professor proudly announced that he had bought his daughter a t-shirt that said, “I don’t want to be a princess; I want to be a scientist.” Everyone at the table applauded him.  I asked him, “What if she wants to be both? Why are they mutually exclusive?” He looked astonished. Even some of the women seemed puzzled by the idea of a cliché gender role being consistent with a career as a scientist. No one was able to answer the question. For decades, we spent so much time trying to avoid stereotypical gender roles- like girls being princesses and boys being firemen- that many failed to see how the “gender neutral” model often disparages female stereotypes, while embracing all that is stereotypically male. In the pursuit of eliminating gender stereotypes that purportedly hold women back, we have created a new stereotype that subtly discriminates against women-not all women, but a lot of women. I should mention that I am not a princess, but if I decided I want to wear a pink ball gown to the lab, and I wasn’t working with anything flammable or radioactive that day (or doing anything that would make excessive flounce and lace an incumbrance), I should be able to do it without anyone judging me. And to be honest, the pink ballgown isn’t the aspect of the princess story that is most at-odds with a career in academic science. It’s the “married happily ever after and raising a family” part.

If a woman chooses to prioritize her family along with her job, she should not be judged as less of a scientist, but she often is. There are surface level efforts to help young mothers in academia, such as campus daycare and offering an extra year for tenure review to new parents, and I will be the first to praise these efforts as they make life easier during the early years of child rearing. However, they don’t help when children are school-age, with after-school activities and homework.  This is the point where the flexibility of an academic science career could blend seamlessly with child rearing, as so much of one’s job as a professor running a research lab involves reading papers, writing grants and papers, and preparing lectures or talks. It’s easy to work on these things from home, or on a laptop after taking your children to various activities. Certainly, it’s easier to be productive if you lock yourself in your office all day but the multi-tasking mom/professor can still be an eminent scientist. The problem is that the entire system-from merits and promotions to funding- favors those who prioritize job over family.

In academic science, time away from your family is rewarded. Burning the midnight oil in your lab and working on weekends are treated as a sign of dedication. Taking speakers to dinner, attending out of town conferences and organizing campus activities are implicitly mandatory for a university professor. For some women this is not a problem and there are a variety of factors that can make immersion in this career either more or less difficult.  For many women, however, these implicit requirements for success present a choice between family and career. The sexual “discrimination”, if we must use that word, that I observe is not women being paid less for the same job, or women being denied advancement because of their sex, but a metric for merit evaluation that favors traditional male roles and encourages women to embrace those roles in order to succeed. I’m not blaming anyone for unequal representation of women in academic science, or for any hurdles I encountered in my own career. I chose the career path I did, and I chose my own life priorities. What I decry is the narrative that there is some sort of patriarchy forcing women into traditional family roles that hamper their career advancement, rather than a movement to marginalize women who prioritize their families. You can argue by exception all you want, and point to the superwoman with the perfect support system that has time for her kids, publishes hundreds of papers in high impact journals, and is dean of her department, but statistics support my thesis that the system favors women who do not prioritize family. Women constitute nearly 50% of the workforce, but only 27% of those in STEM related jobs. Of those women in academic science, only 50% have children, compared to 72% of men. The institutional support provided for women with families is aimed at helping them spend more time away from those families. “The Princess Scientist” delves into some of the hurdles that women and moms face in an academic science career.