Leoparda

First off, thanks for being a kick-ass woman in science! I'm always happy when I see a woman being featured in the news for her brain :)

Question: If you were to speak to a class, (middle school or high school age) what would you say to them to help inspire a love of the STEM fields?

For your second question, I might be able to help! In order to recognize biases, it helps to have a little bit of knowledge about how studies are done and how results are interpreted - this and this graphic do a pretty good job explaining the basics without being too jargony, hope they help!

It depends where you're getting your information, honestly. The original published research article will include a section that lists who funded the study, if any of the researchers were employed by a company that would have an interest in the outcome being a certain way, etc.

The main studies I look at are about medications (pharmacy student) so I can talk best from that angle. Just because Company X funds a study about a drug they make doesn't invalidate it - if the study was conducted well otherwise (double-blinded, placebo-controlled, large test group), it is still a good study. As new drugs come out, it's in pharmaceutical companies' best interests to fund studies to show if the new drug works as well as what's on the market - or if it works better - and those are two distinctly different outcomes.

Remember, researchers have the option to not publish. I think that's where the $$ bias comes more into play, personally. A company-funded research project that isn't published would be a bigger red flag to me.

I love it. Thanks! I have the opportunity to speak to some students to get them interested in pharmacy (and science in general) and had no idea how to approach it. Can't wait to see your next article!

I'd never heard of that, thanks for sharing! That's definitely a creative way to present it, there's a lot to work with there :)