Hi, I'm Deboki and this is okidokiboki, and today I am back with some
recommendations for some science shit to
read around the internet.
So basically in this video I'm going to be getting into
just like a handful of science articles
that I think are worth your time. If you
do want more kind of frequent updates on
like science things that I think are
worth reading, I have a newsletter it's
at okidokiboki.substack.com, you
can subscribe there it's kind of
basically like this channel, I just kind
of ramble a little bit about some
science things and pop-culture things,
but I've been including a section of
like recent science things that I've
been reading, just for yeah...to get like
some more recommendations out there. So
if this is something you like and
you want more of, you can subscribe to
that newsletter. For this video I've got
four articles that I want to talk about.
All these articles I will link down
below so you can check them out if they
sound exciting to you. For our first
article, let's talk about Monsanto.
Monsanto has become sort of this
quintessential
evil scientist corporation, they're like...
their most popular--popular's maybe not
the right word.
Infamous, maybe? Or most notorious
product is Ready Roundup. Their company
is built around GMOs geared towards
farming, so obviously that's kind of like
a controversial subject to begin with. But on top of that they've made a lot of
questionable decisions around their
technology, and they have a shady degree
of influence that I think is part of a,
like a big part of why there's a lot of
suspicion around them in general. I'm
going to like fully admit to both my
biases and my ignorance here: I'm a bioengineer by training, in particular I
worked in genetic engineering so I am
like generally pro the idea of
genetically modified organisms and
genetic engineering in general. However,
my work was with engineering human cells
for cancer therapy, not agriculture, so
when it comes to discussing the role of
genetic engineering in farming and food,
I don't know really nearly as much, and I
have a lot of ignorance in that arena.
And that brings us to the first article
I want to talk about today, which is
"was lured into Monsanto's GMO crusade
here's what I learned." This article was
written by Kavin Senapathy and was
published on Undark
in June this year. In the article, Kavin
talks about her experience as an
advocate for GMOs, which kind of like
naturally put her in a position where
she was like allied with Monsanto, which
you know as this GMO company, is also
pretty pro-GMO. Through that advocacy she
came into contact with Monsanto, and in
particular with their then so-called
Director of Millennial engagement Vance
Crowe. And based on their similar
priorities they seem like natural allies.
But as Kavin breaks down in the article,
she kind of got to a point where she
realized that she was increasingly
uncomfortable with some of the choices
they were making in their communication
strategy, like one instance that
she highlights in particular was a
fireside chat that they held with Jordan
Peterson. And as she sort of assess those
questionable choices, she started to kind
of like reassess the ways that they had
like created a connection with her and
maybe kind of like used her as a way to
maybe broaden their platform in a way
that she was also increasingly
uncomfortable with. This article, when I
read it, really struck me in part because
like of my own brief interaction with
Monsanto. Like I said, I'm a bioengineer by training, my lab was part of
a consortium of labs that work in this
field, and so at one point we were
visited by the Monsanto Director
of Millennial Engagement Vance Crowe.
That meeting for me was really
illuminating, and a lot of what Kavin
says and her article about how like
Monsanto kind of created this
logic where to be pro-sciencem that must
mean you're also pro-Monsanto, that
was in line with a lot of what I felt
like they were doing in that meeting. I
went into that meeting pretty neutral
about Monsanto, like I knew a lot of
people had with strong opinions, but like
I said, I don't really know that much
about farming and food so I kind of just
went into that meeting like wanting to
learn about you know who they are and
kind of to get a sense on how
they were responding to a lot of the
controversy. A lot of what struck me was
the way that they used that meeting to
kind of construct this narrative, like I
said, like we're sort of like on
the same side, like we're all pro-science.
We're all frustrated with the ways that
people like kind of fearmonger around
science--in our case, fearmonger around genetic
engineering. And the way that
meeting had happened, it's like, "Oh
we're all frustrated with the same thing,
like we must be on the same side." And it
was weird to me because it was like this
conflation of like corporate food
engineering with like grad student
project. And like I'm very proud of my
project, I think there's a lot of meaning
to it, but like these are not the same
things. And I just came out of that
meeting with kind of like an icky feeling,
but like not really quite knowing
how to fully articulate what made me so
uncomfortable about it. I just really
like this article for being able to kind
of like basically give a clear solid
framework to what Monsanto's
communication strategy was and why it's
such an issue, and like why it led them
to create like these really weird
choices downstream. I could go on and on
about this, but I recommend just reading
the article, it's a relatively short read
but I think very concise and to the
point in a way that like still fully
conveys what so like the
Monsanto strategy was at the time
Let's move on to an article from Wired called
"The unseen victims of the opioid crisis
are starting to rebel." This article was
written by Michele Cohen Marill and
published in May this year, The opioid
crisis is...it's a lot. It's very complex,
and it's a lot to examine about the
pharmaceutical industry about medicine,
about addiction, about how we treat
people who are dealing with addiction.
And I think one of the things that's
hard about it and that's complicated about
it, but that maybe doesn't get seen as
much in these conversations is that
there are people whose lives have
benefited from opioids, and it's a really
hard thing to address because opioids
have been this huge destructive force
and so like it's something that we need
to be more cautious about, it's something
that doctors need to be more cautious
about, but there's a question of like
well like...there are people who do need
these, like these are medications, they're
something that have made people's lives
like more livable. And how do we balance
you know, this real challenge of people's
whose lives were made better by opioids
and people's whose lives from a
drastically worse. This is a conversation
I've kind of heard rumblings of from
different corners of the internet,
particularly from people who do have
chronic pain and who have had a really
hard getting the medications they need
because doctors are becoming more
cautious about how they prescribe opioids.
If I seem like I'm rambling or I'm kind
of like equivocating, it's because I'm
very new to kind of understanding
the opioid epidemic and kind of like how
to like best talk about it, so like I
apologize if I'm approaching this in
kind of way that's like insensitive,
or if I'm saving something wrong, please
let me know. But I wanted to highlight
this article just because I really
appreciate how it's able to give voice
to the specific challenge--this one
specific challenge of the opioid
epidemic that I don't often hear as much
about, except from like the individuals
who are experiencing it. I think it
always helps to have an article
kind of synthesize a bunch of different
voices into like one overall message,
and I think one of the things that the
this article did was kind of
highlight like you know if you're
dealing with chronic pain, being able to
do this kind of advocacy is like, it's
even more challenging so I think this
article kind of like is really necessary
for being able to bring light to those
voices,
while like illustrating the complications
of being able to address all of these
issues at once. Okay we're gonna move on
to the next article um, and we're gonna
talk about the CRISPR babies. So if
you're unfamiliar, CRISPR is a technology
to basically let us edit the DNA of
organisms. It's not the first technology,
but the reason why it's garnered so much
attention is because it's one of like
the easiest and cheapest to use in a way,
and it's really really hard to
understate how shocking it was last year
when we all collectively learned around
the globe, that a scientist had decided to
ignore the pretty standard wisdom that
maybe we shouldn't really be editing the
DNA of humans yet, and just decided like
"hey I'm gonna edit some embryos." CRISPR
and like other DNA editing technologies
they have a lot of promise, and people
have been exploring them in so many
different ways. There's a lot of really
cool technologies out there. I'm gonna be
honest and admit that like I hate CRISPR,
but only because I was a grad student
when it came out, and so like like when
CRISPR happened, it was like everyone was
like, "Shut up we're gonna edit the DNA of
everything now."
Except embryos, because again everyone
was just like hey, obvious red line there.
So there's still a lot of work that just
needs to be done to be
sure that like you know, these different
ideas are safe to apply, and like just
what are the ethics around applying
them. He Jiankui is a scientist who sort
of just bulldozed through all of that. He
came out of nowhere and was just like
"hey I'm gonna use germline editing to
create so-called like 'HIV-proof babies.'"
There were so many things wrong with
this, from the questionable medical basis
for his approach, to the actual quality
of his work, to the pure fucking
recklessness of it. But beyond that has
just been this ongoing question of how
he managed to do this. Like science is
rarely actually just some like lone mad
scientist in his underground lair, there
are teams of people--there are
collaborators, there are people who you
run ideas by--and it's been hard to
fathom the idea that this huge of a
project could have just come into being
without anyone knowing. And that's what
this article is about. "The untold story
of the circle of trust behind the
world's first gene-edited babies" was
written by Jon Cohen and published in
Science earlier this month.
This article is a super super in-depth
look at the timeline of this project, as
well as like who kind of came in, who
kind of came out, who was like
encouraging, who was discouraging along
the way, and it's a long read but I
highly highly recommend it if you're new
to like this whole story. Like if you've
never heard about CRISPR babies
before, I would recommend this article
because I think it's both like a good
introduction, like a good
overview and if you are not new to it, I
also think that this article is really
worth reading because it gives a lot of
detail, it kind of fills in a lot of gaps.
For me this article is really similar to
my experience of reading Bad Blood by
John Carreyrou. I had been super obsessed
with the Theranos story before that book
came out, and when that book came out,
even though I knew so many details, I
really appreciated it because it gave me
so much more information. And I think
this article is sort of like the
equivalent of that, and that brings us to
our last article. Last month the
Washington Post and the BBC reported on
a research paper that came out claiming
that smartphones are giving millennials
horns. I am NOT going to be sharing that
article. Insteadm the article I'm going to
be sharing is
why that paper is wrong. Click-baity
science is usually frustrating for
pretty much everyone.
Most scientists hate it because they
want their work to be kind of assessed
on the terms that it actually is built
on, most science writers hate it because
they don't want their own reporting to
be called into question, and most readers
hate it because yeah, you know, you want
to read about what's actually happening.
And the problem of click-baity science is
magnified by the fact that like most
readers of popular science articles
might not have access to the original
research, or they might not have like the
background they need to fully parse it,
so they're relying on scientists to be
honest about their work, and they're
relying on science writers to do their
due diligence when they're reporting on
it. In the case of this paper--in the
case of like this article about how
we're all growing horns--the scientists
actually did a very very awesome thing
though, they published their research in
an open access journal, which means that
anybody can access it. So in Nsikan Akpan
from PBS Newshour posted a twitter
thread where he challenged people to
find all the issues with the studies, and
then he went one step further and
basically wrote a whole article
outlining these specific issues. And it's
a great article. What the article is, is
basically a step-by-step breakdown of
what it means to kind of read a
scientific article, and how to sort of
parse through what it's saying. Peer
review is great, like it's a cornerstone
of a lot of how science is done at the
moment, but it's also not foolproof,
especially when you take into account
how things are translated beyond the
original scientific paper. Peer reviewers
on their own, you know, they might let
things slip, like things might get past
them. And then when it gets reported
out to the public, there might be things
that get kind of translated incorrectly.
If you're not used to reading scientific
papers, you might not be entirely clear
on what it is you should be looking
for. and that's why I love this article.
Akpan goes through everything from like
what the study is measuring, to like how
it's measuring it, to like details that
might seem like mundane, or like
they're just technicalities but that
actually have a huge impact on how you
interpret the result. I think this
article is really great kind of no
matter where you are on the experience
spectrum, or like the knowledge spectrum.
If you're new to science articles or
even if you have like zero plans to ever
read one, I really recommend
this article to get a sense for what
scientists and like what science writers
should be looking out for because it'll
just help you a lot in terms of like
being able to parse critically what kind
of details are relevant. Of you are
someone who reads a lot of science
papers, I think this is also a good
article to go through because it's
always good to get a refresher, to kind
of remember what kind of things are
worth reading and kind of like worth
looking out for. There's a lot of details
in scientific papers, and it can
sometimes be overwhelming even if you're
used to it. So yeah I think it's a really
great article. I think it's a great
article for breaking down not just like
a scientific concept, but just like the
actual act of understanding and
critically assessing science. So ,highly
recommend this article along with
everything else I've talked about today.
So yeah thank you guys for watching, I
hope you guys enjoy these articles. Let
me know what you think about these
articles. Again this is something that I
kind of want to get back to doing a
little bit more regularly, so if there's
a certain type of article that you like,
you're on the lookout for, if there's
like a certain kind of topic that you've
been wanting to learn more about but
just kind of don't know where to start
in terms of like what kind of science
writers or like what kind of outlet or
something, let me know down below what
sort of topics you'd love like like for
me to find more articles to cover, and I
will make sure to get to them in future
recent science reads for you. And yeah thank
you guys for watching. Bye!
