A Note From The Author

Hello friends and readers, it’s been a while. I wanted to write sooner, but I’ve been in crisis-mode at work since the end of February, when the drumbeat of news about COVID-19 spreading across the Western Hemisphere was growing louder.

At the science museum, we acted quickly and chose to use the coronavirus crisis as a science teaching moment. We moved to develop an exhibition about viruses, and in the course of a week, (an unheard of pace in non-profit years) a small team of us quickly developed, printed, and installed a series of informative panels. The most difficult part of this process was sourcing accurate rapidly changing information from all over the globe (back in February, daily scientific reports on COVID-19 were coming primarily from Europe and China).

Cue the back-and-forth with our on-staff scientists – long-winded explanations about the nuances of viral protein structure, and even more long-winded responses as to why we couldn’t bog our visitors down with those details. The resulting exhibit is about viruses, how they spread, and what’s special about COVID-19 – and you can view it here. We made it available online in English and Spanish as soon as we realized the physical museum would be shut to visitors for over a year while it became clear the crisis was farther reaching than we could have anticipated. If you’ll remember, Corona, Queens, was the “epicenter of the epicenter” of the global coronavirus pandemic in the spring of 2020. Talk about coincidental nomenclature.

I first sat down to begin planning how I would personally write about and cover COVID-19 at the end of March as if I were a working science journalist. To be honest, as soon as I did, I became overwhelmed by the frightening uncertainties of the virus entangled with the unstable future of my home in New York City. I needed to step back and process the situation before I could write about it without bias. I know many others have felt the same vulnerability, fear, and sadness in the last few months, for a plethora of their own personal reasons.

Even since that moment in the end of March, so much has changed (and continues to, such as recently finding out I’ll be working remotely for over a year while tackling the dismantling of systemic racism within the museum and science fields). But one thing continues to ring true. These last three months have affirmed my conviction that doing what I love – writing about science and how it’s communicated – is more important now than ever.

Your Biggest Communication Barrier at Work is Physical

Imagine this scenario in a team-building workshop: You’re a leader, standing face-to-face with me, one of your team members. You’re holding a mallet, and I’m holding a metal clothes hanger and a piece of string. I tie the string evenly around the top of the hanger, curl the remaining lengths of the string around my index fingers, and put my fingers in my ears. You then bang the hanger with the mallet, which emanates a dull noise, and I look up at you and smile in surprise.

If it seems like an unusual scenario, it’s meant to be. What I just described is an experiential activity designed to help you communicate better (and more effectively) with others by harnessing the language of the body, using a method called “embodied learning.”

Body Language is the Universal Language

Think about it – everything you learned as a child, you learned using your body. The five senses, spatial awareness, and imagination were the tools you used to navigate your environment. As we grow up, we limit our own bodily awareness by secluding into our minds, shunning physicality in favor of verbal communication. That is where we are stunting our human potential!

When I first directly experienced embodied learning from performance artist Tommaso Lana who runs a company by the same name, I knew I had to write about this powerful way of learning that was already built into us. As a science communicator I was intrigued because in my professional experience, body language can be more telling than words (the days of running studies at MIT aren’t too different from managing interns at NYSCI.)

If you type “embodied learning” into Google, you’ll get ambiguous definitions because it encompasses lots of different theories, from psychology to fitness to behavioral science. Some related scientific buzzwords include “somatic intelligence” and “meditation” – which are two plausible methods of embodied learning that embrace the core idea that bringing awareness to the body can help stimulate new or underlying thought processes.

Tommaso’s approach to embodied learning is different than meditation or brain-training. It’s not a solo journey on a long path to self-discovery. It’s fun, collaborative, nimble and immediately applicable to the workplace, and that’s why it stuck out to me. I’ve learned that in 60 seconds of observing my colleagues’ body language, I can learn more about how they operate compared to working with them over email for 60 days.

Communication = Collaboration = Success

The first step in embodied learning is understanding this key message: Each of us has a different perspective of our inner and outer worlds, and that perspective influences our behavior. At work, we all aspire to be more inclusive and collaborative. But collaboration only works when one person understands the other and can find successful compromises, and compromise only works if every party feels included and heard.

Think back to the mallet and hanger activity I first described. The mallet gives you a position of leadership in that scenario – you control the noise as I wait for your action. Therefore, as my supervisor, it’s up to you to infer any of my non-verbal communication in the moment. Did I rush to tie the string around the hanger unevenly, or take measured steps to assure perfection? Did I signify that I heard something different than you, or did I mimic your muted response?

Without “embodying” my perspective, you probably expected that I heard the same thing as you did, when in fact, I heard an entirely different noise than you. These are unconscious expectations, and can be hazardous points of communication breakdown in the workplace when a manager is unaware of how they influence others around them.

You can learn to reset your unconscious expectations by tapping into complete self-awareness through embodied learning. Actively combining your mental intelligence with your senses allows you to learn how and why decisions are being made (is your colleague a snap-decision-maker, or a patient list-checker type?). Each of Tommaso’s workshop experiences is designed to create a somatic memory of using your body to collaborate with another person, so that team-building and self-awareness training occur simultaneously.

Science-Backed Tools for the Senses

While there is no field of science dedicated to embodied learning (yet!), we can build a strong case in support of it. Numerous cross-discipline scientific studies over the years have demonstrated that non-verbal communication is equally as important as word choice. Cognitive scientists have demonstrated that the brain recognizes when verbal and non-verbal cues don’t match up. Tommaso’s work is built on these scientific concepts and is applicable in the corporate environment, the educational environment and the elder care environment (learn more on his website, Embodied Learning).

Professor Amanda Blake – an international expert in embodied learning and behavior – calls the body our “social and emotional sense organ.” The ability to use the body for social and emotional sensing is a learned skill; a skill that can be mindfully nurtured through a practice rooted in a little bit of cognitive science, a little bit of psychology, and a dash of professional development. 

Through my personal experience with embodied learning, I developed a sense of self-awareness I can literally feel in my bones. It’s now easier for me to understand the root of a complex situation, own my knowledge and carve a path forward.

Embodied learning gives you the tools you need to succeed with other people in work and in life. It’s up to you to apply them to become to best leader you can be. 

All Photos: Ivan Nikolov. Courtesy: Tommaso Lana, Embodied Learning

Science Summarized: Original Research on Food Allergies

In a past life, before science communications, I was a scientist who did actual experiments in a lab. While doing said science at MIT, I had the privilege of being able to design and run my own study on a topic that’s important to me and millions of other people — food allergies. The final paper was presented today by my friend and colleague Hillary Abraham at the Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting. You can read it in full here.

As a food allergy sufferer myself, I’m happy that in recent years, food allergies have been getting more attention and legitimate support from the medical and scientific community. And it’s a huge group to pay attention to -- 15 million Americans have food allergies that result in over 30,000 annual hospitalizations and hundreds of deaths following accidental consumption of an allergen.

One reason for this is because in the US, there are limited federal standards for companies to follow when labeling allergens in food products (the FDA's food labeling guide is particularly long and convoluted). Products need to list the common name of the allergen in the ingredients, but most font types, colors, and additional warnings are up to the manufacturer. That means some products might have no explicit warning, or have additional warnings that a product “contains” an allergen. Furthermore a food company might voluntarily choose to warn consumers that the product might have been cross-contaminated, but they aren’t mandated by law to do so.

This lack of a standard labeling practice results in extremely varied food labels, some of which are easier to read than others, and makes grocery shopping a serious pain in the butt for those of us with allergies. One study found that among 98 food products with cross-contamination warnings, there were 25 different phrases! The only advice for allergy sufferers is to read “every label, every time” according to the Food Allergy Research & Education (FARE). Unfortunately there has been little to no research on if the advice from FARE is faster, easier or more effective with certain kinds of labels -- until now.

Our study specifically focused on nut allergies, with the original question being: Do certain typographic styles affect people’s ability to correctly identify allergens in food? But after I spent a dozen hours in grocery stores choosing products to include in the experimental design, I realized that there was no way to control for the variability across each manufacturer’s different choices on label typography. Some products had a big red allergen section while others only included them in the small black ingredients list — a list that sometimes felt longer than this article as I was reading every label on every product in aisle 12 of the Cambridge Stop & Shop.

The study ultimately evolved into an analysis of how much time it would take a potentially nut-allergic consumer to correctly determine if a product is safe for consumption or not by analyzing the food label. Participants (who had no known food allergies) were asked to imagine as if they were grocery shopping for someone with a nut allergy. They were video recorded as they randomly selected products, and gave a verbal yes/no in regard to whether or not the food was safe to eat.

The results showed that participants had difficulty and took a longer amount of time to correctly identify allergens if the packaging only listed the allergen in the ingredients list or had a confusing cross-contamination statement. If a product had a clearly defined and obviously labeled allergen statement, participants tended to answer more rapidly and correctly. However, safe products without a “nut-free” label took the longest to identify as safe, and were most often classified inaccurately - better safe than sorry! In a post-experiment questionnaire, participants self-reported that aesthetic challenges of the packaging made it difficult to read ingredients, such as glossy packaging, low contrast, small font, and inconsistent labelling practices. They reported feeling empathetic towards allergy sufferers who had to read “every label, every time.” Given these results, it’s safe to say we need more research on how additional typographic factors affect accurate classification.

Ultimately with this study, I hoped to draw attention to the lack of standardization in US allergen warning labels and how high of a burden it creates for allergy sufferers. Adding symbols that let shoppers know a product is free from allergens could dramatically reduce shopping time and energy spent looking for an allergen that isn’t in the product. More importantly, a consistent warning label scheme might reduce the risk of accidental exposure to allergens, potentially leading to fewer related emergency room visits, hospitalizations and deaths. Better labels could save lives, while saving the healthcare system money -- seems like a win for everyone involved.

Magic Mushrooms For Your Mental Health

When you think of psychedelic drugs, what comes to mind? If the first images your mind conjures up are hippies lying on the floor listening to Pink Floyd, you might be interested to know that psychedelic compounds have actually been used in a medical setting for a great part of human history. “Magic mushrooms” are one example — over 100 natural types of mushrooms contain the active (and hallucinogenic) compound psilocybin, which has shown strong potential in scientific trials as an effective therapy for numerous mental health problems, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), depression, anxiety and alcohol addiction.

Even though the studies (linked above) supporting these claims are small, they showed incredibly powerful and similar results — following one dose of psilocybin, almost all patients had an immediate reduction of their symptoms that continued to last for months. For some mental health conditions such as OCD, no other types of treatments have demonstrated such strong signals of efficacy. So how does it work? Scientists don’t understand exactly, but it could have to do with how psychedelics temporarily disrupt negative thought cycles during a trip by interrupting how the brain talks to the “self”; those thought cycles can then effectively be “restarted”, which might break the cycle that’s causing the condition by creating an openness to new thoughts.

The field of psychedelic research isn’t new. The US government had already supported and funded over 140 medical studies on psychedelic drugs before the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, which labeled psychedelics as highly dangerous with no potential medical purpose. This has made it difficult to carry out controlled studies on the compounds. However, inspired scientists are finding ways to conduct innovative research, such as a new method of “microdosing” psilocybin — where someone takes a very small dose, far below recreational, in order to improve creative thinking abilities (here’s a link to new data on the topic).

Unfortunately there’s still very limited research from this century on the compound being used as a therapeutic. That’s why last month marked a milestone in psychedelic research -- the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) greenlighted a new clinical trial for the use of psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression (TMD). London-based Compass Pathways received permission to move forward with their Phase 2b study of psilocybin therapy for TMD in North America and Europe — the first study of its kind in the US.

The story of how Compass began doing this type of research is a personal one. It’s run by a husband and wife who watched their son develop depression that was resistant to every treatment. The couple (who had backgrounds in public health and psychology) began doing their own research. They continued to encounter literature and anecdotes claiming that psychedelic drugs, including psilocybin, could help treat mental health conditions, including depression. Even though they weren’t personally experienced in taking mushrooms, the couple believed in the power of the data.

They started Compass and developed “psilocybin therapy”, wherein a hallucinogenic dose of pharmaceutical-grade psilocybin is administered alongside tailored psychological counseling for the patient during the “trip”. The preliminary results are promising, with all of the study participants experiencing immediate improvement in their depression, and more than half of them continuing to improve three months after therapy. None of them had any significant adverse events — something rarely seen in pharmacological trials of more traditional antidepressants. It’s worth noting that the study didn’t have a control group, which does leave open the possibility that it wasn’t the psilocybin that improved patients’ depression symptoms, but the expectation that it could.

High-profile investors like Peter Thiel add excitement to Compass’s research, because with enough support, a Phase 3 trial could potentially change the public conversation about psychedelics and begin to emphasize their helpful medical uses. And it’s not just psilocybin. Other recreationally-used drugs are also demonstrating clinical applications; Ketamine and MDMA are being explored as breakthrough treatments for TMD and post-traumatic stress disorder (I might go into detail on these in different posts).

Depression and other mental health conditions are already difficult to treat with traditional pharmaceuticals and methods. There is mounting scientific evidence for using non-traditional drugs to treat these conditions in a controlled therapeutic setting. More positive data might lead to a perception shift by the public and a loosening of restrictions by the government, which would enable scientists to conduct more rigorous studies to add value to the pioneering work that has already begun.

Activated Charcoal: Just Another Non-Scientific Wellness Trend

If you follow “wellness” trends, you’ve probably seen claims or products promoting activated charcoal (i.e. carbon) as a method of “detoxifying” your body. Charcoal, which has been around for millennia as a non-toxic poison antidote, has recently become a mainstream health topic, thanks to influential bloggers and fad marketing. Just this year, the inaugural “50 Shades of Charcoal”  food festival in San Francisco promoted the black substance as a method for “brightening your smile, rejuvenating your skin, and hampering your most hateful hangovers.”

Sounds like a magic cure? Unfortunately, most of the health claims about activated charcoal are not supported by scientific literature. The European Food Safety Authority recently analyzed many of those claims, and found little evidence either proving or disproving most of them. So how did activated charcoal become such a fad? As in so many cases, it’s probably due to non-scientists misinterpreting the science.

Charcoal is a negatively charged particle and works through a process called ADsorption, wherein positively charged toxins and chemicals bind to it and are prevented from being ABsorbed. With toxins bound to it, the charcoal then passes through your digestive system in stool. When charcoal is “activated” by being processed at a high temperature, its pores expand and create more surface area for the toxins to bind to, effectively increasing the “detoxifying” effects.

This makes activated charcoal the most common method of treating ingested poisons in the emergency room, and also an excellent air and water filter for removing organic contaminants. This is also likely where the misunderstanding with regard to “detoxifying” comes in. The human studies on activated charcoal are limited and focused on using it as a treatment for overdoses of drugs such as aspirin or antidepressants. Otherwise, it’s ineffective at adsorbing some of the most common poisons, including alcohol, so it won’t cure a hangover, and certainly isn't the best method to whiten your teeth (a 2017 review found no supporting evidence for that claim). The literature also shows that charcoal’s detoxifying effects decrease significantly within an hour as the body begins to digest a poison, leading me to ask -- how could charcoal work as an all-around detoxifying supplement if it only works on the toxins that are in your stomach when you take it?

Another claim is that activated charcoal can reduce gas and intestinal bloating, but more research is needed because the results are conflicting. The only science supporting this is based on studies conducted in the 1980's, which were poorly designed by failing to consider people’s diets outside of a lab environment, while one study from 1999 failed to find it as an effective treatment for intestinal gas. Anecdotally, my grandfather took charcoal tablets from the 1930's - 1960’s to treat “gas” per the recommendation of his doctors. Little did my grandfather (or his doctors) know back then, but taking those black pills every day resulted in severe constipation and no long-term relief of his stomach problems. Activated charcoal is now known to cause constipation, which makes sense given its adsorptive properties.

There are other convoluted claims about charcoal that I won’t detail here, but the takeaway is that unless you’ve been poisoned, have chronic kidney disease, or work around dangerous airborne toxins, activated charcoal is not going to help with your health. It might even harm you by interfering with the absorption of other medicines or supplements that you take by mouth, making your important medicines less effective. So while charcoal-colored ice cream is Instagram-worthy, there isn’t a scientifically valid reason to be using activated charcoal as a supplement unless you’ve discussed it with your medical professional.

Climate Change, But First, Coffee

Coffee is one of the world’s most-traded commodities, grown and exported by over 60 countries, and is a staple in many people’s daily routines (including my own). But climate change is putting the world’s growing demand for coffee at serious risk. I’m prompted to write about this after reading an interview in Time magazine with Starbucks’ former CEO, Howard Schultz, wherein he says climate change is one of the biggest threats to the quality and availability of the coffee giant’s product. Climate change is already disrupting the fragile ecosystem that coffee flourishes in, and it’s only going to get worse.

Coffee is a notoriously picky plant that needs very specific living conditions, making it hard to grow it en masse anywhere that isn’t the optimal temperature and altitude. As the Earth rapidly continues to warm, land used for coffee farming will become less fertile, and coffee won’t be able to grow where it usually does around the Earth’s equator. Once heat makes the plants more vulnerable, coffee-specific diseases will threaten to wipe out entire plantations. On top of that, unpredictable storms and drastic temperature swings that kill crops are only predicted to get worse. According to the Time article, Costa Rican coffee harvests are already suffering from this unpredictability, causing a ~33% decline in production over 15 years.

View fullsize

The Climate Institute, "Coffee Farming and a Changing Climate" [link]

Even though scientists have been sounding the alarm bells since 2003 about climate change hurting agriculture, we’re only now realizing how bad it could get. The Climate Institute (based in Australia) produced a startling report in 2016 about climate change's effect on coffee. It predicts that useable land for growing coffee beans will be cut in half by 2050, possibly even further. Another study, published last year in the Proceeding for the National Academy of Sciences, estimates usable coffee bean land in Latin America could be reduced by as much as 88% by 2050. (Reality check: that’s only 32 years from now, could you imagine a future without coffee so soon?)

The coffee industry is now actively taking proactive steps to research, understand and mitigate the situation. Time reports that Starbucks is so deeply concerned about climate change’s impact on agriculture (and the lack of government-funded research on the matter) that the company decided to take matters into their own hands; Starbucks developed their own “field laboratory” coffee farm in Costa Rica where they are conducting research on new ways of adapting coffee to climate change. Other initiatives such as Coffee & Climate aim to develop more sustainable production methods. Meanwhile, World Coffee Research is looking for answers based in science, such as inventing more robust species of coffee trees that are engineered to withstand the threats posed by climate change.

Unfortunately, these research efforts are at the mercy of a warming world and a population that doesn’t know how to help fix the problem. Just how badly climate change will affect coffee crops is unknown, and dependent on how hot the Earth gets. You can start making a difference by choosing to purchase coffee beans sourced from sustainable farms, as well as demanding government and policy-makers to fund research about climate change’s effects on our coffee and our lives.

How you can fight climate change today: Recycle any plastic/cardboard coffee cups, unplug your electric coffee maker when not in use, and drink sustainably farmed coffee.

(Note from Lauren: I promise to try to not to be so negative about climate change, but it’s currently a bleak situation because we aren’t making a serious effort, as humans living on this Earth together, to combat it. Group awareness gets attention, but group action gets results. Every time I write about climate change, I’ll offer a small action you can do today to be part of the solution.)

Water On Mars, But Still No Water Martians

You probably heard the news that scientists found liquid water on Mars. This is the first major discovery in an ongoing hunt to find more bodies of water and determine if the Red Planet has ever harbored water-based life forms.

A paper published in Science showed radar-based evidence to suggest that there is a massive saltwater lake submersed below one of Mars’s polar ice caps. At a balmy -68ºC (-90ºF), researchers believe it’s still liquid because of how salty it is, and because it’s being protected from evaporation by the ice cap covering it. On Earth, we have similar lakes underneath ice caps in Antarctica and Canada.

And the point is? A couple of things.

First, this is the largest amount of water ever found on Mars. Scientists had found some water before, but never this much. It is a large lake at 20km in diameter (~12.5mi), which makes researchers wonder if it’s connected to other subterranean lakes with deeper water tables, ones that might be more hospitable to life.  

Second, a lake made of liquid water is typically where life flourishes on Earth, so we could hypothesize that the same might be true for lakes on Mars. This particular lake, however, is probably too salinated to harbor life (Science Magazine explains why this is the case along with the methods used in finding the lake).

Let’s be real here: we’re talking microbial life, if any, living in these newly discovered lakes. No sea dragons are hiding on Mars, and if we do end up finding Martian sea dragons 100 years from now, I’ll be the first to issue a correction.

We have evidence to support the notion that Mars once had, and still has, flowing water. We know that it was warmer and wetter in the distant past (its hypothesized to have been dry for about 3.8 billion years). Mars has also showed evidence of river deltas and other ecological characteristics of a water-prominent planet. So the big question -- are there Martians in the water? -- will remain unanswered for now. But Mars clearly has more secrets waiting to be revealed to scientists who are dedicated to studying the frozen fourth planet.

(Pictured above: Mars. Photo from NASA)

Science Summarized: From One Cell to Many

I came across a lengthy article published last month on Science that went deep into the biology of a question I’ve always been personally curious about: how did the rudimentary unicellular life of the past (and present) evolve into the complex multicellular life that now dominates the planet? I found the piece fascinating and thought you might as well, so staying true to the name of this blog, I’ve summarized it below.

Original Piece: "The momentous transition to multicellular life may not have been so hard after all" by Elizabeth Pennisi for Science.

Science Summarized: Until recently, we didn’t really know how single-celled organisms transitioned into multi-celled organisms, even though multicellularity has been in fashion for a long time (fossil evidence of multicellular algae dates back ~2-3 billion years).

Scientists have come to three main conclusions thanks to recent advances and discoveries in the fields of genetics, cell biology, animal development and evolutionary biology:

1. Organisms have been evolving for billions of years. Single- and multi-celled organisms have long shared the same basic cellular machinery, and can over time reprogram their genes to change that machinery to develop multicellular capabilities as needed.

2. Multicellularity can evolve quickly. The biological processes needed for multicellularity to flourish can evolve relatively quickly -- new experiments suggest only a few hundred generations (that’s quick in biological time!)

3. Change is not “one and done”. Some organisms have made the transition more than once in their history of being alive, for example, some fungi have unicellular and multicellular siblings.

The experiments that led to these conclusions are a little science-heavy, unless you can say “Chlamydomonas” five times fast. Some highlights include:

• Genes previously thought to be exclusive to multicellular organisms are also found in unicellular ones (and vice versa); one scientist found that an ancient unicellular organism both looked similar to and had the same genes as the cells that make up the inside of a sea sponge, which regarded to be the oldest multicellular organism on Earth, suggesting that evolutionary link.

• Single-celled organisms are capable of gene regulation -- meaning they can turn on and turn off genes as needed in order to survive-- something previously thought to be exclusive to those of us endowed with multiple cells.

• A single gene mutation can lead to multicellularity; scientists saw it over and over again with individual yeast cells that were specifically bred to create multicellular structures with specialized cell roles, which went on to spur more multicellular yeast structures.

• Cells get more complicated as time goes on; once you go multicellular, you don’t go back.

However, two major mysteries are still being debated.

The first unknown is why it took so long for multicellularity to become prevalent, given the new data. The answer might have to do with oxygen levels on a young Earth and the difficulty of evolving complex gene regulation. The second unknown is what was driving this transition. We still don’t know what caused life to make the multicellular jump in the first place.

All of this is evidence that shapes our understanding of how we, humans, got here.

And the evidence is pointing towards it being a series of small steps rather than a giant genetic leap towards multicellularity. We’re moving towards a more complete understanding about how life on our planet (and perhaps other planets?) evolved.

The image above is captioned and credited on Science as: “To study developing multicellular animals, students at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, apply various stains. In juvenile squid (Loligo pealei) they reveal muscle (red), hairlike cilia (green), and cell nuclei (blue).” Wang Chi Lau/Embryology Course at the Marine BIological Laboratory.

The Loneliness Epidemic Might Be Partially Genetic

You probably know that your genetic code controls physical attributes like your eye color. You might not know that you also have genes that are in charge of how you feel and behave, and that disruptions in those genes can lead to disease. Although there are thousands of connections between genes, emotions and illness (most are unexplored), this post focuses on the feeling of loneliness, which is known to be related to higher mortality rates, bad heart health, and cognitive decline. Experts claim there is a “loneliness epidemic” in America -- as of May 2018, nearly half of US adults identify as lonely.

Understanding why people feel lonely is the first step in combating this growing public health problem. Researchers at the University of Cambridge published a new study in Nature Communications showing that loneliness (and other related traits) could be influenced by parts of our genome. They analyzed over 450,000 pieces of genetic data from the UK BioBank alongside self-reported responses to three mental well-being questions related to perceived loneliness, frequency of social interactions, and ability to confide in someone. These measures were used to determine whether someone is struggling with mental or physical health problems that could be linked to loneliness.

The study showed that propensity for loneliness could be traced to 15 distinct gene regions that expressed a different type of DNA if the person felt socially isolated and/or lonely. Interestingly, the same genetic regions could also predict if people were more likely to be obese, neurotic or depressed -- connections that the researchers think could be causally related (but it’s not super clear how all those factors play into each other). This raises a nearly unanswerable question - can loneliness specifically be related to genes, or is it a result of an intermingling of other traits and genes? We know for sure that we can’t conclude there is a single “loneliness gene,” because complex social traits involve both genetic and non-genetic factors.

However this isn’t the first time scientists have studied loneliness as a genetic risk factor for illness. A 2017 paper in The Lancet analyzed the same UK BioBank dataset and also found that obesity and a lower mental well-being could contribute to mortality among lonely people. In 2010 AARP conducted a huge "Loneliness Study" of older adults that identified loneliness as a predictor for poor health, and in 2011 research published in Science showed that chronically lonely people’s genes can cause high levels of inflammation, which leads to heart disease, increased susceptibility to viruses, and a host of other issues.

Overall, these genetic clues could explain why some of us feel lonelier than others, and more research on the topic might allow us to be able predict when people are at risk for loneliness. Such predictions could potentially lead to lower rates of loneliness-related disease by enabling doctors to identify and treat related mental health (depression) / physical health (obesity) issues more effectively.

Here’s what you might want to do as a result of this information. If you feel lonely, know that it's partially genetic, but there’s a lot you can do to take control: exercise, spending meaningful time with friends and family, and getting more sleep can all help combat the feelings of loneliness.

Note from Lauren: This is the first in a “Research Review” series, where I’ll be reviewing new research that comes out, summarizing it, and providing more context.

Two Sides of the Same Brain

Sometimes, ideas based in science take on a life of their own when they become part of popular culture. One such idea is that people’s personalities are based on whether they are dominantly left-brained or right-brained, a concept seen everywhere from infographics on the Internet to Mercedes Benz advertisements (photo above). As the Mercedes ad suggests, it’s widely believed that people who are left-brained are analytical, logical and verbose, while right-brainers are creative freethinkers who follow their intuition. This sounds like a simple neurological explanation for the differences in people’s personality — the problem is, it’s not backed up by any real evidence. So where did this idea come from?

The concept might have entered the mainstream in in the 70’s, based on Roger Sperry’s Nobel Prize winning research on “lateralization” — or how the brain localizes some activities to either hemisphere. His research demonstrated for the first time that each side of the brain had different cognitive abilities. As the idea reached a pop culture audience, lots of people “over-interpreted” his research and continued to expand on it, which could be one reason why the left-brain / right-brain myth still persists.

“No matter how lateralized the brain can get, though, the two sides still work together. The pop psychology notion of a left brain and a right brain doesn’t capture their intimate working relationship.”

— Carl Zimmer - “The Big Similarities & Quirky Differences Between Our Left and Right Brains” Discover Magazine (2009)

Realistically, each person’s brain is different in how and where it processes information, but both sides are always working together because they’re physically connected by a thick nerve bundle. For the majority of people, the left side of the brain has has processing centers that handle language and analysis, while the right deals with sight and emotions. This might explain why people believe the generalizations that left-brained people are better at math and right-brained people are better artists. Interestingly, these processing centers are swapped in 30% of left handed people, which just goes to show that general statements about the brain can’t be applicable to everyone.

Researchers even conducted a study (PLOS One) that specifically looked at whether people used one hemisphere of their brain more than the other while doing tasks inside an MRI machine -- and ultimately found no evidence of “sidedness”! They reviewed brain scans of over 1,000 people and analyzed over 7,000 different brain regions to determine if one side was more dominant than the other side. Ultimately they saw that while individuals had some unique differences, both hemispheres of the brain always communicated and worked together. At the end of the day, neuroscientists still don’t have any evidence that your personality is governed by lateralization, regardless of which hemisphere your Wernicke's Area is in.

The science out there shows the left-brain / right-brain concept is more of a metaphor than a truth based in science, but it’s true that certain brain regions can differ from person to person. Even though many of us identify with personality traits such as “creative” or “analytical”, it’s a misunderstanding to believe that such traits have something to do with which side of your brain is working harder. The neuroscience of personality is a topic for another day, so in the meantime ditch the notion that you’re governed by one side of your brain, and embrace your brain-ambidexterity.

(Science) Communication Is Key

“If a scientist cannot explain to a ten-year-old what he does and why it is relevant to the child, it’s like a tree falling in the forest with no one there to hear it: it may happen, but nobody will care.”

— Elizabeth Marincola - "Why is public science education important?" (2006)

If you’ve ever tried to read a dense Nature article about a topic you’re interested in, “science” can seem a bit intimidating and alienating. Scientists tend to get caught up in the details that no one else really cares about, and don’t focus enough on explaining what to do with the knowledge, how to apply it to life, or where the research could take us in the future. As a result, most of us don’t know how science benefits us despite using it in our daily lives (think cell phones, medicine and air conditioning.)

This is because scientists think that the science should speak for itself, but tend to forget that most of us don’t speak “science”. Unfortunately, ineffective (or misleading) science communication is causing an opinion gap between scientists and the non-scientific general public. A 2015 survey from Pew Research Group and the American Association for the Advancement of Science found that their scientists and the public tend to disagree with each others’ views across a lot of scientific issues. Why?

It’s a big question, but one reason has to do with how science gets oversimplified when reported on in the media. Or as Douglas Adams best said it in The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy: "We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!" 

The truth is, lots of research isn’t as black-and-white as we’d like it to be. For non-scientists who don’t understand that science has grey areas, and look to it for definitive answers, that leaves a lot of things up for (mis)interpretation. This often happens when complex science gets boiled down to headlines designed to appeal to our emotional biases about a given topic, biases that are so powerful they can shape our opinion more than the science itself.

Let’s take genetically modified (GM) foods for example. The Pew survey found that most scientists believe GM foods are safe to consume, but most consumers don’t. Furthermore, two-thirds of the public polled are skeptical, believing that scientists don’t have a clear understanding about the health effects of GM foods. But based on what is known today, science does have a good understanding — major health groups such as the World Health Organization have reviewed independent research and say GM foods are safe to eat. This is just one example of people making inaccurate interpretations about scientific research because of poor public communication from the scientific field.

Scientists are aware of this communication conundrum that causes misinformation to spread -- over 80% said that limited public knowledge about science is a major problem. It’s a problem because it leads to people into not caring about how science affects them. And without the support of the public, critical research could lose its funding, or government policies could be put in place that aren’t based on sound evidence. That stuff sounds boring to a lot of people, but impacts us all. Scientific advances (or disbelief in them) affect the quality of the water we drink, the safety of the cars we drive, the medicines that save our lives, and the laws around how we access and regulate these things. It’s important that there’s an open communication channel between the public and scientists because having a basic understanding of how such things work helps us make more informed decisions about them in the future.

Hello!

Welcome! My name is Lauren and I'm a scientist-turned-writer. I started Science Summarized because throughout my career, I saw that scientists usually don't do a great job of succinctly explaining what's important about their work, or why it matters to non-scientists. I don't know about you, but I find that frustrating, because science is really cool and applies to our daily lives in more ways than we can imagine.

The lack of effective communication from scientists themselves, combined with a growing wave of of fake news and pseudoscience, can make understanding science intimidating and confusing for lots of people. There's so much information out there -- how do we know what's valuable and what's not? 

Science Summarized is working to answer to that question. In this blog I'll be simplifying fact-based science and how it's relevant to you, in plain English. To make it even easier to understand, each post will have an upfront summary in the form of TL;DR (too long; didn't read) that tells you what the whole thing is about.