A Natural Scientist

I recently learned that Ben Barres died at the end of the year . When his article about gender came out in 2006, I was in grad school at ...

Dear Readers, there have been THINGS going on. (I have three small children.  There are always THINGS, frankly.) I weaned Sweetpea two m...

The very intelligent and determined Biochem Belle recently posted a link to Jo Handelsman's depressing study on gender bias  among scien...

There are currently three young women in Dr. S's lab.  All three are grad students, and one just joined.  (There are several not-as-youn...

BELLE and I, out walking, meet my COMMITTEE MEMBER (male) pushing a stroller full of BABY, his SPOUSE (female), and a GRAD STUDENT (male) fr...

I read this moderately moronic column today. Steam immediately issued from my ears. Here is all of it that you need to read: So far, t...

I spent several years in my lab feeling invisible. There would be two or three days in a row when literally all anyone said to me would be ...

Today I read an article from 1999. The authors have since, of course, moved. So I searched for the last author's last name on PubMed. ...

I used to scoff at the idea of a biological clock that went DING and suddenly the young woman in question had an overwhelming desire for a s...

Your nut of an advisor (see below), recently returned from sabbatical, has a Bright Idea. It is the exact same thing that your spouse (in ...

Choose all that apply: Your spouse of one month gets two postdoc offers at [Top Labs in X] in Cities A and C, and wants to go to A. Do you: ...

Sometimes one decides to give up something for a certain gain. One lives in a superbly dreadful town, for example, in exchange for getting ...

Or: Free-Range Mentoring Sometimes people ask, 'So where do I find mentoring?' I have two answers: 1) Wherever you can. 2) Everywher...

Or: Networking Is So Important In my lab, there are N people, where N>10, and 2 women. The men spend a lot of time together outside lab. ...

Edited: My expand-post script isn't working. Here's the whole thing. A correspondent, Nice Post-Doc, writes (I summarize): 'I...

Mr. S was recently at a conference. His field has many famous female scientists- in part because back in the day, it was considered trivial...

My dear spouse wants to teach and do research: he wants it passionately. He loves it. He wants a job that also happens to be a career. His a...

I just finished reading The Price of Motherhood , which everyone should read. I am disturbed. I am the very most disturbed by the chapter ...

This is what I wear every day: jeans, knit shirt; khakis, polo shirt; knit shirt, denim knee-length skirt. Oxford shoes. Earrings. Lab coa...

And now for more of our regularly scheduled women-in-science programming. Themes: You Can Do It, We're Getting Better, and Keep Trying. ...