Virtual Author Visit coming to a Public Library

Our own Lindsey Carmichael, author of over 20 books, will be doing an author visit at North Vancouver Public Library on Wednesday, March 2, 2022 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm. This is great news, not only for people in North Vancouver, but anywhere -- because this author visit is online!

 

As Lindsey notes on Facebook:

I'm doing a virtual author talk for the North Vancouver Public Library's Red Cedar Book Club. It's free but you have to register: https://nvdpl.ca/event/virtual-author-visit-red-cedar-award-nominee-le-carmichael

This online event is geared for children, particularly students in Grades 4 through 7. Families are welcome. You can click on the link to learn more about the book, the author, and how easy it will be to attend the event.

C is for Climate: Three Ways to Celebrate Science Literacy Week!

by L. E. Carmichael

It's Science Literacy Week - woohoo!!!!

For those unfamiliar, Science Literacy Week is an annual event that celebrates the messy, astounding, wonder-filled thing that is the scientific method and all the knowledge it gives us. It's a time to learn about science, do some science, and - you guessed it - read science books to improve our understanding of what science is and how it works.

It's a science writer's favourite time of year.

The theme of Science Literacy Week 2021 is C is for Climate, which works out beautifully, because this year Science Literacy week overlaps with National Forest Week AND National Tree Day! All of which make this the PERFECT time to officially launch the Million Tree Project.

Here are three ways you can join me in celebrating Science Literacy Week while taking concrete action to fight the ongoing climate crisis.

Read The Boreal Forest

Especially if you are participating in the Red Cedar Awards this year, because The Boreal Forest is on your reading list! And it's chock full of both gorgeous art and amazing facts about the world's largest land biome and Canada's biggest forest - including the way this forest traps and stores carbon dioxide, slowing the pace of climate change.

Participate in the Million Tree Project

The Million Tree Project is a brand new, Canada Wide Experiment brought to you by Science Rendezvous. Its goal is to spark a million conversations about trees and ALL of the things they do for people and the planet. Spoiler alert: slowing climate change is only one of them!

I am super stoked about the Million Tree Project because I am the author of the official Resource Guide for the initiative. The guide is available in print and online. It's totally free, and it's jam-packed with both forest science AND practical tips for tree planting. But don't stop there: check out all the of the additional goodies on the Million Tree Project's official website, including tree-themed lesson plans written by teachers and aligned with Canadian curricula.

If you're really digging it (see what I did there?) you can even watch this recording of a virtual presentation I did during our soft launch in the spring. Watch out for sky-diving ducklings!

Explore Wáhta Teachings

Wáhta Teachings is also launching this week! This free, multimedia resource places Traditional Indigenous Knowledge and the science of the sugar maple side-by-side, and is also full of cross-curricular information and activities. Working on this collaborative project was an honour and a privilege - to learn more about it, check out this "how-to" video where I tell you all about it! And be sure to hop on over to the website to see if for yourself.

Want More?

Visit the websites for your local universities, libraries, and science centres to see what's going on. Or check out the Science Literacy Week website for more ideas on ways to celebrate and get involved, this week, and all year round.

The (Missing) Link Between Smartphones and Horns

by L. E. Carmichael

Last weekend, suffering from an airplane cold and soaking my coughing muscles in a hot tub while listening to old episodes of The Daily Show on Sirius on Demand, I heard an incredible story about how smartphone use is causing millennials to grow horns. Here's the link to coverage at the BBC.

Image by Shahar D. and Sayers M., Scientific Reports, 2019/CC BY 4.0

Hacking up my second lung, my first thought in reaction to this story was, well, sure. Because I use the internet regularly and have therefore been exposed to a lot of conversation about the evils of both millennials and smart phones, so the equation

millennials + smartphones = inevitable emergence of inner demons

seemed completely logical.

My second thought, emerging from my life-long exposure to both the sciences and oft-times sketchy science reporting, was that this story was indeed incredible, in the  sense of "impossible to believe."

My second thought was the way to go, as this plain-language article from PBS outlines in some detail.

TL/DR version: the authors of the original study didn't actually measure cell phone use in their subjects, meaning they are blaming a skeletal anomaly on a specific behaviour based on... absolutely no data.

Another red flag? The authors recommend preventative postural education, and one of them runs an online store that sells posture-correcting pillows.

In science speak, that's called a conflict of interest. It doesn't necessarily mean that the results of the research are biased, but it absolutely means that readers should apply an extra filter of critical thinking before accepting them.

I encourage everyone to read the PBS article, because it's a great primer on scientific literacy that provides tools for assessing all science reported in the media. In the meantime, you can probably stop poking your skull in search of horns.

What are your thoughts on this story? Do you have other favourite examples of incredible results to share?

Why You Should Be Following #Fieldworkfail

by L. E. Carmichael

It's #FF (Follow Friday) over on Ye Olde Twitters, and if you're not already following #Fieldworkfail you should really get over there and get on that. Like right now.

When scientists write journal articles, they make it sound like they knew what they were doing every step of the way. #Fieldworkfail reveals the truth - they're making it up as they go along, pretty much like the rest of us.

Just with more bears.

While you're at it, hop over to this online shop where you can buy the hilarious book for 75% off. Also right now, because the sale ends today.

Happy Friday giggles, and have an awesome long weekend!

Move Over SUE, There's a New T. rex in Town

Photo by Claire Eamer

by L. E. Carmichael

Of all the dinosaurs in all the world, SUE the T. rex might be the most famous. The most complete T. rex skeleton ever found, SUE is likely also the most well-traveled. Her bones, or at least casts of them, have been displayed all over the world. The casts I saw in Nova Scotia came with bilingual displays written in English and Arabic!

But there's a new king of the dinosaurs in town, and his name is Scotty.

Named after a bottle of Scotch the scientists toasted his 1991 discovery with, Scotty is only 65% complete, compared to SUE's 90%. But he stands out for another reason - as far as we currently know, he's the biggest carnivore ever to walk the earth.

As any forensic anthropologist will tell you, there's a certain amount of instinct and guess-work involved in reconstructing height and weight from nothing but bones. But measurements of Scotty's femur (the long, heavy bone from his thigh) suggest he was in the ballpark of 19,500 pounds - almost a ton more than SUE.

He was also a senior citizen - at approximately 28 years old, Scotty lived longer than any other T. rex we currently know about. And he was a tough old dude, surviving a broken rib, fractured tail bones, and an infected jaw. Those injuries showed signs of healing, meaning they likely weren't his ultimate cause of death.

Now that Canadian palaeontologists have had a chance to study him, Scotty will be making his public debut at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum this May.  No word yet on whether he'll be joining his cousin SUE on tour!

A Sleighful of Science About Reindeer

by L. E. Carmichael

No matter which winter holiday you celebrate, we here at Sci/Why wish you the very best of the season. For those raised in the Santa Claus tradition, here are some festive facts about reindeer!

By I, Perhols, CC BY 2.5, Link

1) Reindeer and caribou are the same species, Rangifer tarandus. Some people use the common name "reindeer" for the European subspecies, and "caribou" for the North American subspecies. Others prefer to use "reindeer" for domestic herds, saving "caribou" for wild herds. For our holiday purposes, I will stick with reindeer!

2) Yes, there ARE domestic herds! Reindeer herding has been practiced by Indigenous peoples across Europe and Asia for thousands of years, and now occurs in Alaska, too. Reindeerherding.org is a fantastic resource if you want to know more about these peoples and their cultures.

3) Recent research suggests that the Saami, one of the Indigenous herding peoples, have more words for snow and ice than the Inuit. This is because, in addition to the words referring to snow and ice themselves, they have an additional vocabulary that references how snow and ice will affect the safety and nutrition of the herds that are central to their culture and survival.

4) Reindeer are the only deer species in which both males and females have antlers. They drop and regrow them every year.

5) Reindeer can survive temperatures as low as -50C without shivering or increasing their metabolic rate to raise their body heat.

6) Reindeer have oleic acid in the marrow of their leg bones. This acid acts as an antifreeze, preventing frostbite.

7) In North America, reindeer live in two major habitat types - the barren grounds (tundra) and the boreal forest. Most populations of forest reindeer, commonly known as "woodland caribou" are threatened or endangered in Canada, due to habitat loss and increased predation.

8) Woodland reindeer depend on old growth forests, habitats that have existed long enough for lichens to grow. They prefer ground lichens ("reindeer moss"), but will also eat arboreal (tree-dwelling) species like horse hair and witch's hair lichens, when ice covers the ground.

9) Climate change has increased the chances of alternating snow/rain events, or freeze/thaw cycles, that cause ice to build up on the ground. These "lock outs" prevent reindeer from digging down to their food - in bad years, both domestic and wild herds suffer from starvation.

10) Lichens contain usinic acid, which protects them against UV radiation. It also makes them unpalatable and difficult for most herbivores to digest. However, recent research shows that reindeer have a special gut bacterium, Eubacterium rangiferina, that breaks down usinic acid, allowing them to digest this unusual food. In some cultures, partially-digested lichen from reindeer stomaches is considered a delicacy. Consider adding that to your holiday feast!

This is Your Brain on Cannabis

Teens who use pot have to engage more
brain resources to complete complex tasks.

By L. E. Carmichael

Confession: I recently tried cannabis for the very first time. My back had been in spasm for five days - five days in which I'd levelled up from hot baths and ibuprofen to prescription anti-inflammatories to prescription narcotics, without even the slightest improvement. I had three days more days to go before I could get in to see a therapist, so in desperation, I tried the pot.

Why had I waited until I was 40 to do a thing a lot of people experience as teenagers? First of all, until last Wednesday (October 17, 2018), cannabis was illegal in Canada. Second of all, I am "the smart girl" and have been my entire life. Being "the smart girl" - and a writer - requires a functioning brain, and the idea of deliberately ingesting things that could mess with my brain made me deeply uncomfortable.

So what does science tell us about the impact of cannabis on the brain?

There aren't a lot of conclusive studies, in part because it's hard to do controlled research on illegal substances. Our knowledge will probably improve over the next few years. That said, the data we do have on impacts of young brains is troubling, to say the least.

Studies suggest that smoking pot during pregnancy can influence the baby's brain development. Possible effects include poor impulse control and difficulty evaluating possible consequences of different decisions. Brain scans show that kids whose mothers smoked use their brains differently than kids whose mothers didn't. The implications of this aren't entirely clear, but we do know that THC and other cannabis compounds can pass through a mother's breast milk to her child, which could compound the problem.

Our brains continue developing until we're about 25 years old, which means cannabis use in young people could also have long-term consequences. Research on teens who use pot suggests similar impairments to "executive function" - decision making, goal setting, impulse control - as in babies exposed in the womb. But there are also troubling links to altered brain anatomy, permanent reductions in IQ, and an increased risk of developing schizophrenia. In fact, some studies suggest that teens who smoke pot are six times more likely to develop the mental illness. This link might be due to genetic mutations that are risk factors for both drug-use and schizophrenia - more research is needed.

Conclusive data or not, lighting a joint seems a whole lot like playing with fire.

As for my first experience? My back spasm improved... for all of 15 minutes. Then the pain rushed back in. Making matters more irritating, I didn't feel the slightest buzz. In other words, not even remotely worth it. Your mileage may vary.

How do you feel about the legalization of marijuana?

Big Pharma is Not Suppressing the Cure for Cancer

by L. E. Carmichael

Courtesy of Doug Wheller via Flickr Commons

Lately my Facebook feed has filled up with memes and videos about miracle cures for cancer that THEY don't want you to know about. I've avoided commenting on them, because I don't want to offend my friends, but every time I see one of these things, I spontaneously combust.

Look, I get it. I lost my mother to cancer in 2009, two days before her 56th birthday. I have lived the rollercoaster of pain and grief and desperation that cancer causes, and I would have given anything for a miraculous Australian plant to implode her tumours in one tasty and side-effect free treatment. So would she, believe me.

I'm not an oncologist or a cancer researcher, but I am a geneticist. And since cancer is a genetic disease, it got covered at length during my schooling. Which means you can trust me when I say that Big Pharma is not suppressing the cure for cancer. Even leaving aside the logistics of maintaining a conspiracy on that scale, it's just not possible, because there is no single cure for cancer, and there never will be.

Because cancer is complicated.

We call it cancer as though it's a single condition, like Type I diabetes or ALS, but "cancer" is actually an umbrella term for dozens of further categories of disease. They all have one thing in common - the mechanisms that control normal cell division in our bodies (the kind that seals that nasty paper cut) break down. Without those controls in place, the cells just keep on dividing, forming tumours and rampaging through the body. But here's the thing. Although the end result - out of control cell division - is the hallmark of cancer, the pathway by which cells lose control is always different. Always.

That's because the systems that control cell division are encoded in our genes. And the mutations that destroy those systems are accidents. They are random. Mutations can happen in any gene at any time. Acquisition of a collection of mutations that cause the failsafes to break down is completely coincidental.

Which means that every single cancer patient's cancer is unique. And that's why it's so difficult to treat. Cancer doctors and researchers have no choice but to play the odds - to attack the things that different cancers often have in common. But they can't account for the endless variation, no matter how hard they try. And they can't prevent cancer cells from continuing to mutate, becoming resistant to treatment - just like bacteria become resistant to antibiotics.

And that's why there will never be a magic bullet cure for cancer. It's not because cancer researchers aren't motivated - many of them choose to study cancer because they've lost loved ones of their own. And it's certainly not because there's too much money is keeping people sick (which is patently ridiculous - every economist will tell you that sick people cost money). "THE CURE" will never be found because cancer is a moving target, and worse, it's a target that's embedded so deeply within us, it can never be fully eradicated.

So stop with the memes, please. Just stop. And if you want to know more about what cancer medicine is really up against, do yourself a favour - read Siddhartha Mukherjee's The Emperor of All Maladies. It will make you grateful that cancer medicine has come as far as it has.

Gene Therapy: Embryonic Engineering and the Future of Human Evolution

by L. E. Carmichael

Welcome to Part 3 of my series on gene therapy and genetic engineering. If you haven't already, I'd suggest reading Parts 1 and 2 before you continue:

Introduction to Gene Therapy: It Sounds Simple, But It's Sure Not Easy

Gene Therapy: Vectors, Viruses, and Why CRISPR Will Change Everything

Today, we're talking about the second major challenge with gene therapy - getting replacement DNA into EVERY affected cell in a patient's body - and why that problem leads to the central ethical debate in this field.

Who Are the Patients?

Gene therapy is designed for patients with genetic diseases. The word "patient" implies a couple of things. First of all, a child or adult that has multiple cells... hence the crux of the gene delivery problem we discussed earlier.

The second critical implication is that patients are autonomous human beings who are capable of understanding the treatment, including its risks and benefits, and are also capable giving their informed consent. Many genetic diseases strike during childhood, and in those cases, parents or guardians are legally permitted to give consent for their children's care.

Carry that thought to its logical extension, and it implies that parents could also have the right to consent to gene therapy on behalf of unborn babies - and specifically, single-celled embryos.

Embryonic Gene Therapy

In September, Chinese scientists announced that they had used CRISPR technology to edit a disease gene in human embryos. If those embryos had been implanted and allowed to develop, they would have been born as disease-free humans. It was an incredible breakthrough... and it opens up a lot of questions.

From a technological standpoint, embryonic gene therapy is absolutely the way to go:

1. If you're doing gene therapy on a fertilized egg - by definition a single cell - the whole problem of delivering functional genes to every affected cell just goes away. Because "every" is now "one."
2. Every cell in the eventual human body descends from that fertilized egg. So every cell in the human being that egg becomes carries the therapy gene. The cure is permanent.
3. That human being's own eggs or sperm will also carry the functional gene. In other words, the cure is not just permanent, but heritable. It will be passed down to the person's own children, meaning one treatment could wipe out the disease from an entire future family tree.

Now We Know We Can... Does That Mean We Should?

The heritability of embryonic gene therapy is the reason that the vast majority of scientists have long considered such procedures unethical - or at the very least, warranting serious discussion. It is one thing to permanently alter the health of an existing human being - we've been doing that for centuries, using medical treatments as diverse as vaccines and surgeries. And indeed, if we have the power to improve someone's life and relieve their suffering, don't we have a moral obligation to at least try?

Altering the genomes of theoretical future humans is another thing entirely. First, because it's much harder to predict the consequences of actions on that scale, and second, because theoretical humans cannot consent to the alteration of their DNA when they do not yet exist. What right do we have to take those choices away? And while it's hard to imagine why someone would want to live with a disease when they didn't have to, our potential to impact the human genome, and therefore the course of human evolution, doesn't stop there.

After all, DNA is DNA. And CRISPR works on ALL the genes, not just the ones that can cause disease.

Embryonic Engineering and "Designer Babies"

Thanks to the Human Genome Project, we have a better understanding of our DNA than ever before. We're finding genes linked to all kinds of interesting traits, like eye colour and height and muscle development and intelligence...

Chinese scientists have genetically engineering dogs with over-developed musculature. Want your kid to be an Olympic power lifter, a soldier, a firefighter? Why bother building the necessary physique with diet and exercise when you could hard-wire their DNA? Ditto if you want your kid to get into Harvard or win a Nobel Prize.There have already been stories about parents undergoing IVF treatments who choose traits like the sex of their unborn child. With genetic engineering, the possibilities are truly becoming limitless.

The Ethics of Gene Therapy and Genomic Engineering

Just because a technology is potentially limitless, doesn't mean it has to be used to its full potential. We have an obligation to decide what uses of gene editing techniques are acceptable and what uses are not, and a further obligation to enforce whatever standards we agree upon.

The ethics of genetic engineering have been debated since the 1970s, when it became possible to manipulate DNA directly for the first time (before that, we had to do it the old fashioned way, using selective breeding). The debates will continue, and in light of these recent Chinese studies, likely intensify. And that's as it should be. Like so many technologies before them, gene therapy and genetic engineering have enormous potential for good, and enormous potential to be abused.

The choice will be up to us.

I hope you've enjoyed learning more about these topics, and I hope you'll continue following news reports about CRISPR and genetic engineering in the news. In the meantime, I'd love to know your thoughts on these issues. Please share and comment!

Gene Therapy: Vectors, Viruses, and Why CRISPR Will Change Everything

by L. E. Carmichael

Welcome to Part 2 of my series on gene therapy! If you haven't already, I recommend that you read Part 1, Introduction to Gene Therapy: It Sounds Simple, But It's Sure Not Easy, before continuing with this post.

Ready? Here we go.

Viruses: FedEx For Genes

Gene therapy involves repairing or replacing a faulty gene that has led to disease. In order to do that, one major hurdle must be overcome: getting new DNA into the patient's cells. Cells, however, are designed to keep things out. That's why they have wrappers, called cell membranes. Scientists needed vectors: gene delivery systems capable of crossing the membrane.

In the early days of gene therapy research (by which I mean the 80s), the obvious way to cross the membrane was to use a virus. Viruses are highly efficient invaders - they have to be, because they are not capable of copying their own DNA. In other words, the only way a virus can reproduce and spread is to invade a host cell, hijack its equipment, and force the cell to package new viruses that can carry on the cycle of infection.

But what if scientists could replace some of the virus's DNA with a therapy gene? The virus would invade a patient's cells as per usual, but instead of causing infection, deliver some healthy human DNA. Sort of like molecular FedEx. Some viruses even contain DNA sequences that match sequences found in human DNA. These complementary sequences would prompt the host cell to incorporate the therapy gene into its own genome. Not only would the patient be cured, but the cure would be permanent.

What's that line about how it seemed like a good idea at the time?

The Problem With Viruses

For starters, they are viruses. The human immune system is designed to find and destroy viruses, before they invade the body's cells. This happens all the time, without our even realizing it. But sometimes, the immune system gets a little carried away.

That's exactly what happened to Jesse Gelsinger in 1999. The 18-year-old was part of a clinical trial of a gene therapy for a genetic disease known as OTC. When he received the treatment, his immune system had a massive over-reaction to the viral vector and began attacking his own cells. He died just a few days later.

The Other Problem With Viruses

Remember I said that some viruses can insert their own DNA - or therapy DNA - into the human genome, making a therapy permanent? Early gene therapy research occurred before we sequenced the entire human genome. Scientists didn't realize that complementary DNA sequences could occur in more than one location in a person's DNA... or that some of those locations were inside other genes. No good providing DNA to cure one genetic disease if your cure is going to knock out another gene. Especially if that gene helps to controls cell division... because uncontrolled cell division leads to cancer.

That's what happened to a number of young patients during an early clinical trial for the immune system deficiency SCID. And since those kids had compromised immune systems, they had no natural defences against the cancer their cure had created.

A Light at the End of the Tunnel

After these tragedies, scientists spent a lot of time searching for viral vectors that would NOT cause such horrific side effects. One type belongs to a family of viruses known as AAV. A gene therapy for Leber congenital amaurosis is built around AAV. It replaces a faulty gene in retina cells that causes children to go blind. And after decades of research, it looks as though this therapy will soon be available to the public. Developed by Spark Therapeutics, the treatment just received a unanimous endorsement from an FDA review panel, meaning approval for the therapy could be just around the corner - a literal light at the end of the tunnel for these patients.

So What is CRISPR, and Why Is Everyone So Excited About It?

A major downside of AAV viruses is that they do not incorporate their genetic package into the patient's existing genome. Which means they don't cause cancer, but also that the therapy gene can't be reliably passed on to daughter cells. That's OK for retinal cells, which don't divide. It's a lot less useful for treating diseases in other parts of the body.

CRISPR, on the other hand, works in all types of cells. It allows scientists to edit a patient's existing genes - correcting the typos that cause disease - and the changes are permanent. Here's how it works and why it's such a big deal.

Here's another really great video explaining CRISPR and its applications that unfortunately I was not able to embed.

And yes. You still have to get the components for CRISPR into the cell in the first place. One group of scientists has just found a way to do this without using viruses. They used gold particles instead.

As you can see, CRISPR could lead to incredible breakthroughs, and not just in gene therapy. But there are concerns as well. Stay tuned for Part 3, where I will explore what's perhaps the biggest one.

Introduction to Gene Therapy: It Sounds Simple, But It's Sure Not Easy

by L. E. Carmichael

Muscular dystrophy, hemophilia, Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA), cancer... they all have one thing in common. They are genetic diseases, ultimately caused by missing or malfunctioning genes in the patient's DNA. Until recently, we could treat the symptoms of many genetic diseases, but not the causes. There was no way to reach inside a person's genes and repair the faulty code that started the whole problem.

Research into gene therapy aims to change that.

What is gene therapy?

Genes are blueprints for proteins. A complete set of working proteins makes a working human. In contrast, missing or malfunctioning proteins sometimes lead to disease. Many genes and proteins have to be affected to lead to diseases like cancer. Other diseases, like LCA and Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, result from a single broken gene.

The logic behind gene therapy is very simple: if a missing or malfunctioning gene is causing disease, a working copy of the gene could cure the patient. There are two ways to provide a working copy:

1. Fix the gene that's already in the patient's DNA. This is easiest when the malfunction is caused by what's known as a "point mutation," which is basically a typo in the genetic code. Not all such typos are dangerous, but the right typo in the wrong place can knock out the entire gene.
2. Provide a new copy of the entire gene. This strategy applies for genes with larger insertions - extra code - or deletions - missing code.

Once a working gene is present in the patient's cells, his or her body can make a functional protein... and in some cases, that may be enough to cure the disease.

That Does Sound Simple... So Why Is Gene Therapy So Hard?

Lots of reasons, but we're going to focus on two:

1. Cells have lifespans. Dying cells are replaced by new cells, which are created by cell division. During this process, the cell's genome (all the DNA a person was born with) is copied so that each new daughter cell gets a complete set of instructions. There is no guarantee that a therapy gene that's simply floating around in the cell will end up in both daughters - to ensure that the shiny new gene will always be passed on, making the cure permanent, that gene has to become part of the original genome. Which means that, either
   1. the patient's original gene has to be edited in place, or
   2. the complete new gene has to embed itself into the patient's existing DNA.
2. According to one estimate, there are 37.2 TRILLION cells in the human body. Not every disease affects every cell in the body. For example, LCA is a form of blindness caused by a faulty gene in the cells of the retina. To cure LCA, only retina cells would need to be treated. Far fewer than the whole 37.2 trillion, but still enough that getting a working gene into EVERY retinal cell is still a huge challenge.

So How Do Scientists Solve These Problems?

Stay tuned! In Part 2, I will explain what CRISPR is and why scientists are so excited about it. In Part 3, we'll tackle the "every cell" problem... and some awesome/scary breakthroughs that have recently hit the news.

In the meantime, you or your teenager might want to check out my YA science book, Gene Therapy. It's a couple years old now, but is still a solid introduction to the history and science of this cutting edge medicine.

Science is the Practice of Constructive Ignorance

I have a theory* that there are three kinds of ignorance.

The first kind is what I'd call neutral ignorance. The gentle, perfectly understandable kind that arises due to a simple lack of knowledge:

Ignorance: lack of knowledge, education, or awareness (Merriam Webster)

There is no shame in not knowing something, and there's no shame in not having access to the education or experience that would provide that knowledge. This kind of ignorance is much closer to innocence, and doesn't bother me a bit.

In contrast, deliberate ignorance makes me absolutely crazy.

This is the kind that persists in spite of access to knowledge. If you've turned on the news or accessed the internet in the last twenty years, you'll have ample experience with it. It afflicts people of all ages and political inclinations, and causes people to say, in the face of overwhelming factual evidence that conflicts with irrational, deeply-held beliefs, "We'll just have to agree to disagree."

*sound of Lindsey's head exploding*

Scientists** on the other hand practice the third kind of ignorance - constructive ignorance. In fact, all science begins from a position of ignorance:

"Why do wolves howl?"

"How do bumblebees fly?"

"What is matter actually made of?"

"Why do kids look like their parents?"

"Is there life on other planets?"

This is where science starts - with the recognition that we don't know something. Most of us would stop there, but not scientists. Scientists put on their trusty lab coats and go find out.

After all, that's what the scientific method is for - to give us the tools to banish ignorance, to produce knowledge about ourselves and our world that we never had before. Scientific ignorance is constructive ignorance - it creates, rather than destroys. It discovers solutions and solves mysteries and shines light into the darkest depths of the unknown.

And that's how ignorance, instead of being something to deplore, becomes something to celebrate.

---

*Not a scientific theory, which is supported by so much evidence that the actual word for it is fact. What I have is more properly termed a notion.

**And all the other people who go in search of answers to their questions.

How Mary Shelley's Frankenstein Saved Lives

by L. E. Carmichael

One of the coolest things about fiction (especially science fiction) is how it inspires scientific discovery in real life. Cell phones - inspired by Star Trek communicators - are a classic example. Edmond Locard is another. Locard was a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes novels, in which the great detective solves crimes using the tiniest of clues. The books were one of the reasons that Locard became a forensic scientist. He not only pioneered the field of trace evidence - microscopic clues - but defined Locard's Principle, "every contact leaves a trace." Meaning that during a crime, physical evidence transfers between the crime scene and the criminal, this Principle the cornerstone of modern forensics.

One of my favourite examples is a case where science inspired art which then turned around and inspired science.

It began during the Scientific Revolution - the era of scientists like Newton and Boyle (who, in addition to defining Boyle's Law, invented the lab report). During a frog dissection around 1780, Luigi Galvani's assistant touched a nerve cell with his scalpel, and the frog's leg jumped. Galvani believed nerve cells conducted electricity - could electricity be the spark of life? Electric shocks couldn't save drowning victims, but they did cause the corpse of a murderer at Newgate Prison to sit straight up.

Mary Shelley was well-educated and fascinated by science, so she probably knew about these experiments. So it's probably not surprising that, when a group of her friends challenged each other to write scary stories, she came up with Frankenstein.

Here's the cool part.

In the early 1930s - golden age of Hollywood monster movies - 9-year-old Earl Bakken saw Frankenstein for the first time. He loved it so much, he went back over and over again, fascinated by the way electricity brought dead tissue back to life. Bakken also loved to tinker with mechanical devices, and once he got his engineering degree, opened a medical technology company in his garage. He repaired equipment for the local hospital and made friends with a lot of the staff, including Dr. Wilton Lillehei.

Lillehei was a pioneer in the field of open heart surgery. After the procedures, about 10% of the patients, many children, needed pacemakers to keep their hearts beating until they healed enough to beat on their own. At the time, pacemakers were so big, they had to be pushed around on carts. They also had to be plugged into the wall. As a result, one of Lillehei's child patients died during a power outage in 1957.

Lillehei asked Bakken to come up with something better. Bakken designed a 4 inch square, wearable pacemaker powered by a 9 volt battery. Bakken tested it on a dog and the very next day, Lillehei connected the wires to a little girl's heart. She not only survived the surgery, her heart grew strong enough that she didn't need the device anymore. Today, Bakken's company, Medtronic, is the largest manufacturer of (implantable) pacemakers in the world.

For more cool stories about medical innovations, check out my children's book, Innovations in Health. And for more on Frankenstein, vampires, werewolves, and sea monsters, check out Monster Science, by Sci/Why blogger Helaine Becker.

StripeSpotter: A Barcode Scanner for Zebras

by L. E. Carmichael

You've probably heard about scientists using photos of whale flukes to identify individual humpbacks. Did you know that a similar strategy is being used to count and identify zebras? Originally called StripeSpotter, it's a barcode scanner. A barcode scanner for zebras.

I'm going to pause to let that sink in, because the mental image is just hilarious and I would hate to deny you some Friday giggles. :D

Basically how it works is, scientists take a photo of the zebras. They feed the photo into StripeSpotter, and the computer finds unique characteristics in the stripe pattern of the zebra's coat. Any time that zebra is photographed again, it can then be checked against the database and identified.

This is supercool, because, unlike supermarket barcode scanners, where you have to hold the package at just the right angle while doing a little dance for the scanner gods, StripeSpotter works on "noisy" pictures. The kind that you're likely to get when shooting long-distance photos of a whole herd of zebras while riding a bouncy jeep across a dusty savanna. StripeSpotter also works on spotty animals, like giraffes, so it's flexible too.

Why does this matter, you ask? There are lots of reasons scientists need to know which animal they're looking at. For one thing, being able to identify individual animals makes it possible to count them. Counting helps scientists figure out whether a population is growing or shrinking, and, by extension, whether the species is endangered. It's also really helpful to know what individual animals are doing out there in the wild - whether they migrate or stay put, what they're eating, whether they are reproducing... the possibilities are both important and endless.

For more info on the technology and what it's being used for, click here. And for more info on zebras, check out Zebra Migration, for ages 6-9!

Now You See Me...

by L. E. Carmichael

If you were a superhero, what power would you pick? Reading minds? Super speed? How about invisibility? That last one is a good choice. Scientists around the world are already working on ways to make everyday objects - like humans! - invisible.

It all starts with understanding light and vision. When light waves collide with the atoms in an object, the waves bounce off, or scatter. The direction of the scatter depends on the angle of the bounce. Human eyeballs detect these scattering light waves, and our brains reconstruct the shape of the original object. So, to make something invisible, all scientists have to do is make light reflect off an object the same way it would reflect if nothing was there at all.

Easy, right? Um, no.

In fact, progress on the invisibility problem didn't really begin until around 2000, when the field of metamaterials started to develop. Engineers build metamaterials out of "artificial atoms" that interact with light in very abnormal ways. These atoms allow engineers to control the way light scatters off the metamaterial with much greater precision than would be possible using naturally-exisiting materials.

Scientists have used these materials to develop several different types of invisibility cloaks, each with advantages and disadvantages. For example, objects embedded inside a spherical cloak are invisible from all sides, but only for a certain value of invisible - they can block some wavelengths of light, but not all, meaning the object blurs rather than totally disappears. Carpet cloaks, so named because they are flat, are easier to make and work on larger objects... but those objects are only invisible from one angle. If the viewer is looking at the cloak from the side instead of dead on, the object becomes visible.

Plasmonic cloaking is a new technique that combines advantages of both spherical and carpet cloaks. Rather than trying to stop light from scattering of the object, plasmonic cloaks create a matching, opposite scatter, and the two combined cancel each other out. Mantle cloaks use a variation of the same strategy, and both types offer the advantages of both spherical and carpet cloaks. However, they also share a unique downside - size. They don't work on any object that's more than a couple of wavelengths of light across.

That's not a problem, if, for example, you're the CIA and you want to hide a tiny bug or spy camera. If you're trying to hide a human, though, you've got big problems. For example, a human-sized carpet cloak would actually have be about the same size as your bedroom. Another problem is that current cloaks block light in both directions, meaning no one could see you, but you couldn't see them, either - which would make sneaking around Hogwarts at night very difficult!

Worst of all, you'd have to stay completely still. According to invisibility scientist Majid Gharghi, going from a stationary object to a moving person would be like going from simple Newtonian physics to Einstein's relativity. He told me it will likely be decades before engineers can build something that complex. Which is kind of a bummer... but on the other hand, gives you plenty of time to come up with your superhero name!

So. What superpower would YOU choose?

Cupping Bruises May Confuse Forensic Scientists

by L. E. Carmichael

Via Amy Selleck on Wikimedia Commons

If you had any exposure to the Rio Olympics at all, you probably noticed the giant hickeys several athletes - most notably Michael Phelps - were flaunting all over their events. Attacks by enormous octopodi? Nope. Cupping bruises.

If you've had any exposure to the internet since the Olympics, you've probably learned that cupping is a procedure from traditional Chinese medicine that involves creating a vacuum inside a glass or plastic cup, then applying the cup to the skin. Skin and tissue get sucked up into the cup. This increases circulation to the site, which could speed healing. So, in theory, could the suction itself. As my massage therapist explained it, massage involves "unsticking" tissues by pressing down, whereas cupping unsticks them by pulling up.

Western science has yet to find evidence that cupping actually works, which is not entirely surprising, given the nature of the treatment. As my massage guy also pointed out, it's pretty hard to do a double blind study on a treatment that creates a distinct physical sensation and a giant hickey. But that's OK, because this post is not about whether cupping works.

It's about the giant hickeys, which are formed when blood rushes into the skin below the cup, causing the tiny blood vessels to burst.

Here's a fact about cupping marks those Olympic stories didn't mention - they look an awful lot like bruises left by particular types of blunt force trauma. Specifically, the kind found in cases of child, domestic, and elder abuse. Depending on circumstances, cupping marks can also look like lividity - the pooling of the blood after death.

This, as you can imagine, is a problem, not for athletes, but forensic scientists. If pathologists don't know about cupping and the kinds of marks it leaves, they could interpret those marks as signs of foul play, confusing a criminal investigation.

Something like that happened in Turkey in 2015. A 40-year-old man died during surgery to repair shotgun injuries. Most people would assume the shotgun was to blame for his death, but the attending doctor saw round bruises and ordered an autopsy for further investigation. It wasn't until police interviewed family members that the bruises were identified as cupping marks from the victim's regular treatments, rather than signs of violence that contributed to his death.

Which just goes to show that being a forensic scientist is a really, really hard job, because you have to know pretty much everything about everything.

Did you watch the Olympics? Have fun playing "connect the dots" with the athlete's cupping marks? Did their endorsement make you want to try it?

Want to know more about being a forensic scientist? Check out my latest book for young readers, Discover Forensic Science!

Forensic Science: Not As Seen On TV

by L. E. Carmichael

Why do TV shows have science consultants when they clearly don't listen to what their consultants tell them?

I have often wondered this. Generally while watching forensics procedurals.

I still haven't recovered from that episode of Bones where Dr. Jack Hodgins, in shocking defiance of sterile protocol, sorts through a fecal sample and then grabs a lamp with his dirty glove. GAH!

The one that really gets me, though, is "zoom and enhance," a ubiquitous trope so blatantly impossible that every seventh grader in every class I've ever visited knows it could never happen. As does anyone who's tapped on a cell phone pic and watched it pixilate.

(I have a friend who does special effects for these shows. He HATES "zoom and enhance," because he's the guy that has to stitch together the distance shot and the completely separate close shot to make it look like that actually works.)

Lighten up, Lindsey, you say - these shows are for entertainment, not education! Thing is though, a lot of viewers, particularly young ones, don't make that distinction. And the inaccuracies in television dramas create misconceptions about how forensic science works in the real world.

Case in point, the CSI Effect. Many lawyers and judges contest that watching TV crime shows has biased jurors' reactions to evidence presented in real trials. Jurors have acquitted people due to a lack of DNA evidence, despite the fact that not all crimes naturally involve the transfer of DNA. Regardless of the weight of other evidence, jurors expect forensic evidence in every trial. Police and CSIs know that, and have dramatically increased the volume of evidence they collect at crime scenes.... which seems like a good thing until you realize that real-life crime labs (unlike the ones on TV) have small staffs, limited budgets, and enormous backlogs of unprocessed evidence.

It is possible that the CSI Effect is not a real thing (scientific studies of the phenomenon are mixed). But if a fictional effect has created a real shift in evidence-gathering behaviour, that creates a real life problem, the ramifications of which are not yet fully known.

I blame Hollywood. But I still watch forensic shows, because they are some of the only shows on TV where scientists get to be stars.

Are you a fan of forensic shows? Which ones are your favourites? Have you given up on shows because they just can't get the science right?

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Want me to talk to your seventh graders about forensic fact and fiction? I'm a member of the Nova Scotia Writers in the Schools Program and the Writers' Union of Canada, both of which offer subsidies to help bring writers into the classroom. Contact me for details.

You can also pre-order my new forensic book for grades 3-6, Discover Forensic Science.

This Is Your Brain... This is Your Brain on Books

By L. E. Carmichael

Image via ambernwest/Flickr under CC

Earlier this week, I had the privilege of talking to librarians at the Atlantic Provinces Library Association conference about STEM books for kids, and how to find the great ones. Due to scheduling conflicts, I was only able to attend one other session, but it was a great one - all about the neurobiology of reading. In other words...

Your brain on books.

I really, really, wish I'd brought a notebook with me. So many details have already escaped me, but here's what I remember.

Learning to Read

Nicole Conrad of Saint Mary's University started the session. She talked about how kids learn to read in stages, and how the process of becoming a fluent reader causes physical changes in the structure of kid's brains. For one thing, stronger connections form between the occipital lobe, which processes visual info, and the language centres of the brain. That wasn't too surprising, but did you know there is an area of the brain that appears to exist exclusively for reading the written word? In fMRIs, that area only responds to words - no other visual information. How cool is THAT?

Conrad also said that fun activities like story time and playing with letter-shaped toys (like plastic fridge magnets) are enough to prepare kids for the image recognition used in reading. The "drill and kill" method of early reading training is not only totally unnecessary, but risks building resentment towards books. Keep reading fun, parents, and see what a difference it makes!

Reading and Bilingualism

Hélène Deacon was next, speaking on language acquisition for bilingual kids. Apparently kids (the lucky ducks) can learn a second language with no more effort than learning their first, because (unlike adults) they're really good at applying patterns from one language to patterns in a second language. Retention of languages is strongly affected by reading material, though. Kids whose first language is the dominant language of their social milieu benefit from reading in their second language, whereas kids whose first language is in the minority actually need reading enrichment in their primary language.

Deacon also shared my favourite fact of the session - books are an important part of language acquisition for kids, because the text complexity of a kid's book is equivalent to the oral complexity of expert witness testimony. Which means that kids who read are learning a much deeper and richer version of their languages than kids who only speak!

Reading When Deaf or Hearing Impaired

Bonita Squires shared some really cool science on how children with hearing impairments learn language. For example, did you know that letter sounds used in speech vary in both pitch and decibel? As a result, a hearing-impaired child may hear the same spoken word as a collection of very different sounds, depending on level of background noise and the pitch of a person's voice. This lack of consistency makes it really challenging for kids to learn new vocabulary aurally.

As deaf and hearing impaired kids learn to read, however, they discover that the same letter combinations always signify the same object or concept (assuming the words are properly spelled!). That knowledge dramatically improves their language skills, in any format. In other words, fostering a love of reading in kids with hearing impairments may be even more important than in kids with normal hearing.

And Something for the Adults...

Good news, grown ups! According to Gail Eskes of Dalhousie, reading is one of several activities that can slow general age-related cognitive decline, AND the onset of Alzheimer's disease, meaning avid readers will probably get more functional years out of their brains.

Go forth, my friends, and experience your brain on books. Need suggestions for a great title? Check out our list of Canadian science books for kids!

The Case of the Totally False Fingerprinting Propaganda

A few weeks back, Jan Thornhill wrote a post about accuracy in the era of the Internet. It got me thinking about the biggest fact-checking challenge I ever encountered as a children's writer - and how glad I was that someone caught the problem before it made it into print. Here's the story.

by L. E. Carmichael

The Industrial Revolution of the 19th century was responsible for more than just technological breakthroughs and the novels of Charles Dickens. It also caused a major spike in crime rates, as people moved from the countryside into the cities looking for work - and turned to crime when they couldn't find any.

Urbanization also made it harder to reliably identify repeat criminals. In small villages, everyone not only knew everyone, they knew with a high degree of certainty which of their neighbours was likely to blame for the local crime wave. Not so much in cities, where many people lived surrounded by strangers. Witness reports were often useless, because criminals wore masks or otherwise changed their appearances, and there was no such thing as photo ID. Many governments instituted harsher penalties for career criminals, but these penalties couldn't be applied without certainty that the suspect in custody was actually a repeat offender.

Enter Alphonse Bertillion. A file clerk with the Paris police, he was the fussy, meticulous son of a statistician, and he had a revolutionary idea. A criminal could change his hair cut or moustache or even his name, Bertillon believed, but he couldn't change his bones. Careful measurements of body dimensions, like the length of the finger or the long bone in the thigh, could be combined to produce a one-of-a kind profile - the first (Western) scientific basis for identifying human beings.

The Paris police took a while to come around to this idea, but in its first year of use, Bertillon's system, called anthropometry, identified 300 career criminals. By 1888, it was implemented in all French police stations and quickly spread around the world.

Until 1903, when a man named Will West was taken to Leavenworth Prison in Kansas and identified based on his measurements as a repeat offender. But West swore he'd never set foot in the prison before. By a bizarre coincidence, West's measurements perfectly matched those of William West - a man already imprisoned in Leavenworth! While the men did, in fact, bear a strong resemblance to each other, their fingerprints were completely different. This incident was one of the reasons fingerprinting replaced anthropometry as the standard method of legal identification.

Or was it?

When I was researching Forensic Science: In Pursuit of Justice, I came across this story in not one, but several of my reference books. Since it appeared well-verified and was the perfect anecdote to explain how fingerprinting came to dominate criminal identification, I included it in the initial draft of Chapter 6. Imagine my shock when the content consultant* for the book told me the entire incident was a myth.

A myth.

As Simon A. Cole explains in his book Suspect Identities (a volume the consultant kindly referred me to), the West story was carefully fabricated and cleverly circulated as a means of promoting fingerprinting as a superior alternative to anthropometry. And while fingerprinting ultimately replaced Bertillon's method due to its numerous advantages, this incident was not one of them.

For mysterious reasons, I had more "fact" trouble while researching Forensic Science that with any of my other books (excepting maybe Fox Talk, because some of the science in that book is both new and controversial). I have no idea why this subject matter in particular was so affected by conflicting sources and legend-as-truth, but it just goes to show that fact checking is one of the most important steps in writing new nonfiction - especially for young audiences, who may not have the broader context needed to be critical of what they read.

What about you? Do you have a favourite fact that turned out not to be true? 

Calling all Nova Scotian kids' book lovers! I, and many other amazing local authors, will be signing at the Celebrating Children's Literacy Book Fair. It's on Saturday, April 23, from 8:30-1:30pm, on the NSCC Kingstec Campus in Kentville. Come out and see us!

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* Content consultants are experts that review my books before publication - they help me ensure that no errors make it into the final draft.