Books to Consider
A few months ago, I participated in Facebook's #Readtolead Program, sharing some of my favorite books of 2017. The response was so enthusiastic, I decided to write some new posts about books I've been reading. For the foreseeable future, I'll be posting them each Friday.
So far, I've written two. The first is about Stalin and the Scientists by Simong Ings. I had grown interested in Soviet science as a result of the research I did on the Stalnist biologist Trofim Lysenko and his crackpot notions about heredity for She Has Her Mother's Laugh. I read more about Lysenko for a lecture I gave in September on journalism, science, and democracy. Only last month did I come across Ing's 2016 book. Primed as I was, I blasted through it.
Yesterday I posted my second piece, on Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande. I reverse engineer the book to see why it succeeds. I also explain why a cat is a useful reading companion for the book.
Storify Is Dead. Long Live Storify
Sometimes the ongoing conversation on Twitter produces an exchange I'd like to save. I used to use a site called Storify to preserve them, but Storify is now shutting down. I'm trying out a new service called Wakelet, which seems to work pretty well. Earlier this week, I asked Twitter whether math is discovered or invented. Mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers shared some interesting tweet-length thoughts, which I've preserved here.
It's been a couple weeks now since scientists published a study on a mysterious, tiny mummy from Chile, debunking suggestions that "Ata" (a k a "the girl from La Noria") was a humanoid belonging to another species. It kicked up quite a controversy, and things have not settled down yet.
--In response to the uproar from the Chilean scientific community about the ethics of the study, the scientists published a statement. So did the journal Genome Research, where the study appeared.
--Those statements did not quell critics. Three Chilean anthropologists published an essay this week on the right and wrong ways to study human remains. They are not impressed by the justification from the Genome Research scientists about their work: they didn't know at first whether the remains were human or not. As the anthropologists note, a Chilean newspaper has confirmed that the owner of Ata's remains asked a forensic scientist to look at them five years before the DNA study began. The forensic scientist concluded the remains were of a human fetus. (The story, in Spanish, is online here.)
--Meanwhile, I'm getting emails and tweets from UFO fans telling me my reporting is a giant fraud and part of a massive coverup. If you are both curious and masochistic, you can watch this 112-minute interview with the producer of a documentary about UFOs, who supplied the scientists with a sample of Ata's bone marrow to study. I'm left wondering why my huge check from the CIA has not yet arrived.
Introducing A New Series on The Future (and Past) of GeneticsI've long been a fan of Retro Report, which produces fascinating videos that set today's news in the long arc of history. I was delighted to team up with them to create a three-part series on genetics called "The Code." We take a look at today's headlines about precision medicine, genetic tests, and genetic editing, and discover how, in some ways, we've been here before. You can watch the first episode now over at Stat.
After a lull, I'm putting together a bunch of events over the next few months, mostly to talk about She Has Her Mother's Laugh. Here's the list so far--updates to come.
April 27, 2018 "The Library of Babel: On Trying to Read My Genome" Yale University, Applied Data Seminar
May 2, 2018 "From Ebola to Dinosaurs to 23andMe: Writing about the Science of Life" Columbia School of Journalism
May 3, 2018 MIT, Knight Science Journalism seminar
May 17, 2018 "Exploring the Complexity and Controversy of Heredity" Keynote Lecture, Bio-IT World, Boston
May 21, 2018 "Biotechnology and Its Future Impact on Greater Boston" (panel discussion) Boston Athenaeum
May 30, 2018 Harvard Book Store
May 31, 2018 RJ Julia Bookstore, Madison CT
June 6, 2018 Kramerbooks, Washington DC
June 20, 2018 Denver Museum of Nature and Science (details to come)
September 20, 2018 University of Bath (UK), Evolution in the 21st Century (details to come)
October 19, 2018 CSICon, Las Vegas (details to come)
October 25, 2018 Mount Holyoke College (details to come)
You can find information and ordering links for my other books here. You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads. LinkedIn, and Google+. If someone forwarded this email to you, you can subscribe to it here.
Best wishes, Carl
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