#scientific essays

[scourge-lover]

I'm reading a book that's a compilation of scientific essays and I love some of the titles of the essays.

Headless Sex

In Praise of Rust

Those Dreadful Hammers

Enter Love and Enter Death

The Massacre of the Males

You'd think these were poem names.

[grand-theft-carbohydrates]

lifehack my friend taught me for keeping track of ur references: add a comment to ur work and insert the url/ref so u dont lose it later

[soweirdondisney]

Tom J. Astle and The Fly

So Weird creator Tom J. Astle regularly shares his nature photography and animal sightings on Twitter and Instagram.

He went viral in 2019 when he posted about Eddie the Tortoise and acquired 9,000 followers overnight because of it. Eddie is doing fine continuing to visit the Astle family, and Tom often shares learning tools and organizations to conserve the various forms of wildlife he’s documented.

So it’s no surprise that this eventually happened:

Tom shared similar words in a Twitter thread.

And the full essay can be found here.

(Get a drink and settle in because remember when I wrote about old-school blogging and the joy of writing without limits? Tom takes that seriously. 🤓)

Our So Weird family never stops amazing us. We’re so proud of Tom and his scientific achievement! (And here’s hoping he gets to meet Dr. Iain MacGowan one day too.)

[eddieintheocean]

born to

forced to

[totally-not-spani]

it is them. it is their meme

(pretty sure this one was already made by someone but uhhh!!!)

[keelanrosa]

started reading the cass review because i'm apparently just Like That and i want everybody crowing about how this proves sooooo much about how terfs are right and trans people are wrong to like. take a scientific literacy class or something. or even just read the occasional study besides the one you're currently trying to prove a point with. not even necessarily pro-trans studies just learn how to know what studies actually found as opposed to what people trying to spoonfeed you an agenda claim they found.

to use just one infuriating example:

Several studies from that period (Green et al., 1987; Zucker, 1985) suggested that in a minority (approximately 15%) of pre-pubertal children presenting with gender incongruence, this persisted into adulthood. The majority of these children became same-sex attracted, cisgender adults. These early studies were criticised on the basis that not all the children had a formal diagnosis of gender incongruence or gender dysphoria, but a review of the literature (Ristori & Steensma, 2016) noted that later studies (Drummond et al., 2008; Steensma & Cohen-Kettenis, 2015; Wallien et al., 2008) also found persistence rates of 10-33% in cohorts who had met formal diagnostic criteria at initial assessment, and had longer follow-up periods.

if you recognize the names Zucker and Steensma you are probably already going feral but tldr:

There are… many problems with Zucker's studies, "not all children had a formal diagnosis" is so far down the list this is literally the first i've heard of it. The closest i usually hear is the old DSM criteria for gender identity disorder was totally different from the current DSM criteria for gender dysphoria and/or how most people currently define "transgender"; notably it did not require the patient to identify as a different gender and overall better fits what we currently call "gender-non-comforming". Whether the kids had a formal diagnosis of "maybe trans, maybe just has different hobbies than expected, but either way their parents want them back in their neat little societal boxes" is absolutely not the main issue. This would be a problem even if Zucker was pro-trans (spoiler: He Is Not, and people who are immediately suspicious of pro-trans studies because "they're probably funded by big pharma or someone else who profits from transitioning" should apply at least a little of that suspicion to the guy who made a living running a conversion clinic); sometimes "formal" criteria change as we learn more about what's common, what's uncommon, what's uncommon but irrelevant, etc, and when the criteria changes drastically enough it doesn't make sense to pretend the old studies perfectly apply to the new criteria. If you found a study defining "sex" specifically and exclusively as penetration with a dick which says gay men have as much sex as straight men but lesbians don't, it's not necessarily wrong as far as it goes but if THAT'S your prime citation for "gay men have more sex than lesbians", especially if you keep trying to apply it in contexts which obviously use a broader definition, there are gonna be a lot of people disagreeing with you and it won't be because they're stubbornly unscientific.

Also Zucker is pro conversion therapy. Yes, pro converting trans people to cis people, but also pro converting gay people to straight people. That doesn't necessarily affect his results, i just find it funny how many people enthusiastically support his findings as evidence transitioning is… basically anti-gay conversion therapy? (even though plenty of trans people transition to gay? including T4T people so even the "that's actually just how straight people try to get with gay people" rationale for gay trans people is incredibly weak? and also HRT has a relatively low but non-zero chance of changing sexual orientation so it wouldn't even be reliable as a means of "becoming straight"? but a guy who couldn't reliably tell the difference between a tomboy and a trans boy figured out the former is more common than the latter + in one whole country where being trans is legal but being gay is not, sometimes cis gay people transition, so OBVIOUSLY that means sexism and homophobia are the driving factors even in countries with significant transphobia. or something.) anyway i hope zucker knows and hates how many gay people and allies are using his own study to trash-talk any attempts to be Less Gay. ideally nobody would take his nonsense seriously at all but it doesn't seem we'll be spared from that any time soon so i will take my schadenfreude where i can.

Steensma's studies have the exact same problem re: irrelevant criteria so "well someone ELSE had the same results!" is not exactly convincing. This is not "oh trans people are refusing to pay attention to these studies because they disagree with them regardless of scientific rigor", it's "one biased guy using outdated criteria found exactly the numbers everyone would expect based on that criteria, i can't imagine why trans people are treating those numbers as relevant to the past criteria but not present definitions, let's find a SECOND guy using outdated criteria. Why do people keep saying the outdated criteria is not relevant to the current state of trans healthcare. Don't we all know it's quantity over quality with scientific studies. (Please don't ask what the quantity of studies disagreeing with me is.)"

Steensma also counted patients as 'not persisting as transgender' if they ghosted him on follow-up which counted for a third of his study's "detransitioners" and a fifth of the total subjects and. look. i'm not saying none of them detransitioned, or assuming they all didn't would be notably more accurate, but i think we can safely treat twenty percent of subjects as a bit high for making a default assumption, especially when some of them might have simply not been interested in a study on whether or not they still know who they are. Fuck knows i've seen pro-trans studies which didn't make assumptions about the people who didn't respond still get prodded by anti-trans people insisting "the number of people claiming they don't regret transitioning can't possibly be so high, some of the people who responded must have been lying. (Scientific rigor means thinking studies which disagree with me are wrong even if the only explanation is the subjects lying and studies which agree with me are right even if we need to make assumptions about a lot of subjects to get there.)"

and this is not new information. not the issues with zucker, not the issues with steensma, not any of the issues because this is not a new study, it's a review of older studies, which in itself doesn't mean "bad" or "useless" -- sometimes that allows connecting some previously-unconnected dots -- but the idea this is going to absolutely blow apart the Woke Media, vindicate Rowling and Lineham, and "save" ""gay"" children from """being forcibly transed""" is bullshit. At most it'll get dragged around and eagerly cited by all the people looking for anything vaguely scientific-sounding to justify their beliefs, and maybe even people who only read headlines and sound bites will buy it, but the people who really believe it will be people who already agreed with all its "findings" and have already been dragging around the existing studies and are just excited to have a shiny new citation for it.

the response from people who've been really reading research on transgender people all along is going to be more along the lines of "……yeah. yeah, i already knew about that. do you need a three-page essay on why i don't think it means what you think it means? because i don't have time for that homework right now but maybe i can pencil it in for next semester if you haven't learned how to check your own sources by then."

[thefloatingstone]

If you have an Asari couple and they both got pregnant and had the kids at the same time would they be a form of twins?

I'm not actually sure. The thing is, Asari cannot get pregnant by accident. it's a conscious decision. So in order for that to happen both asari would have to decide they want to get pregnant at the same time as a choice. Which seems like a dumb idea because it would mean both of them would have to take leave from their jobs during the pregnancy (I don't actually know how long an asari pregnancy is tho...) So sure you COULD do that but it would be considered very weird because it would be choosing to inconvenience yourself and your partner both financially as well as physically for very little reason.

Unless the couple are rich weirdoes with too much time on their hands in which case yeah that might happen.

HOWEVER, Asari children who are born as "pureblooded" are considered shameful and incorrectly marred as being bad for the asari gene pool. To the point "pureblood" is a slur. (and there is also the risk of the child being an ardat-yakshi) so I don't think even rich weirdoes would want to do that just to be rich weirdoes because it would be seen as embarrassing and a scandal to have pureblooded children at all.

[dailybotany]

I found a single individual of the Nightshade family while weeding a part of my mom's garden for her. No other ones around. I didn't know what it was at first so I looking it up with a plant identification app. There's a lot of birds around so I'm assuming that's how the plant got there. Berries are usually used by plants to disperse their seeds right? So why is nightshade usually so deadly? (Also I did pluck the plant like a weed. She plans on getting a dog and I didn't want it eating it and dying. Neat plants, wrong place for it. I do leave more harmless and less aggressively invasive weeds alone.)

Short answer: because birds aren't mammals!

Slightly longer answer: because birds are reptiles, the way birds metabolize different compounds often departs significantly from how mammals do it. Because birds are weird hot-blooded reptiles, this also differs from how many "typical" reptiles metabolize things.

In addition, depending on what species of nightshade you pulled, its entirely possible that their berries are not toxic to mammals (or at least are minimally so!). Take tomatoes, for a well known example!

Additionally, if your mom is using fresh compost or unsanitized soil (in this case, getting rid of seeds is included in 'sanitization'), it could have come from that. Or, if she is breaking new ground and establishing this garden, it could be that it came from the seed bank!

[alistairlowes]

i feel like the society is trying to collectively gaslit me into thinking jacob elordi is good looking

[dullahandyke]

Can I help you

[ID: my cat lying outside my house in the shade, looking up calmly from where I am peering outside an open window.]

[moomoocowmaid]

Love my friend dearly, but I also have to share this with all of you as an MLA lover and English enthusiast. My friend was working next to me on a five-page essay for a science class, and using the initial draft she got feedback on to make adjustments, I started helping her with some general things.

And after I start to revise... everything starts moving—moving like I just slapped an image in the middle of a Word document. I investigate, and there is a manual space between every line...

I question her, and this poor woman goes, "Oh, it's supposed to be double space since it's MLA format." I had a heart attack right then and there; I'm surprised I'm alive.

I showed her where the line spacing settings are. I asked ChatGPT to remove all the paragraph spaces from the essay and then fixed it for her in her document. I put her details in the heading and showed her the citation tool, then shared my MLA format template with her. I also encouraged her to come to me if she ever has an academic question or wonders if something seems unnecessarily difficult to execute.

It was horrific and I feel bad that she's gone through school like this, if only schools made sure their students were taught what they require of them.

Extra little fun detail:

I asked if she ran it through Grammarly, and she asked me how to do that

DON'T WORRY; I AM HERE TO HELP AND SUPPORT YOU!!!!!!!!!!

[sudaca-swag]

theres stupid people and then theres people who should get lobotomized bc youre surprised they even know how to breath at this point, and they can be found in the youtube comments calling people critizising obsenely rich people "jealous" and to "stop being mean to them theyre people like you and i" while theyre living one or two paychecks away from poverty lmao

[kelocitta]

Thinking about making a RW sideblog again so I can maximize my nerd exposure

[garbit-blog]

How to you explain the fog? The Misty experiences that waver on the edge of the water. The murky waters of the baseless. Where concrete reality doesn’t rule, and Belief and Faith rule in its stead. The experiences so many have had yet so many others deny.

Truly, you simply have to believe them. Whether they be wisewoman or preacher, this is where Pathos and perhaps Ethos take Logos out back and shoot him like a lame dog.

Logos falls into the water there, and the lake swallows its corpse.

We have forgotten how to wander without Logos.

The revolutionary art of science has married us to Logos. Told us how to read him, how to depend on him like a 1950s housewife.

And like a 1950s husband locking his wife away but treating her oh so well. We’ve lost so much of our world.

For our entire existence as a species, we have relied on religion and wisepeople. Relied on metaphors that were both true and in the lake of the mystical.

And often there was error. These things weren’t true. The wisepeople lied or guessed or hypothesized instead of observed.

But I don’t think it is fair to turn our backs on the unexplainable just because it is not always reliable. To dam up every lake that refuses to fit nicely into western scientific hegemony.

Christianity has robbed us of so many of our lakes. In the US both real and metaphorical.

People forget, or rather like to ignore, that modern science was born out of Christian societies. Societies that by that point had already killed all their open pagans. Called everyone trying to live in relationship with the land devilworshipers. Had taught that Men hold dominion over the land, and like a husband beating their wife, that means a right to destroy.

People wonder why religion seems so constantly toxic. The only religion they have ever known has been christianity. One built on original sin. One built on the toxic notion that every single human is born with such evil in their heart that infants need to be washed of it in holy water. Of black and white. God and Satan. No other god before I.

Of course religion is toxic if it constantly tears you down. If it tells you that you can’t trust anyone else.

It’s time to realize not every religion is like that, we just ended up in the world where such a toxic one took out any other competition out.

It’s time to mourn and move on.

To reopen our hearts to the world. To let metaphors, the lakes, the unexplainable, come back to the table.

Let me show you a cup of that lake’s water.

You cannot prove in any world that water is living.

You can say there’s microorganisms inside it but that’s not the water itself. It moves, but not of its own will, it moves of the moon’s gravity. It only holds two of those traits that science uses to categorize life. But. above all else.

Doesn’t it make us kinder to say Water is living? Is life itself? Is it not worthwhile to prescribe that to the Water? To so simply say that it has actions, movement, power, like anyone else. To say that it deserves protection. That like a paralyzed family member we should try our best to keep it clean? To admit that we need clean water like we need our mothers?

Is that not worth it? That kindness? Is that not worth letting Logos sink into the depths?

In Christian societies, where they say the water is inanimate, unliving, nothing to be concerned about. They let themselves foul it. They drank water they poisoned with waste, with cholera. We still let ourselves foul it. Look out the window and see the white river, Our River, contaminated with human waste from the sewers and chemicals from the factories and runoff from farms, and ask yourself what would happen if we believed water was living. Was holy.

You’d suddenly, instead of an ecological disaster, instead of emotionless jargon, you’d see the corpse of a family member with the knife still in their back. Rotting in the center of town.

And you’d ask yourself with tears in your eyes, how anyone could do that. How someone could torture their own family member so publicy.

And that is the life I’ve been living. One where I see the scars of the land in bloodstained horrific metaphors. One where I understand the perspective of the wisewoman.

We need to bring back this radical empathy for our world. These metaphors of moving power.

We once had it. All across europe. We used to be native to our land. We used to protect the rivers and see the fairy rings and understand the lake of unbelievable reality.

Christianity robbed us of that, and I will never forgive that.

You may ask, and for good reason, but what of science? And see. That is, too, born out of christianity. The idea of No Other God Than I.

I am not trying to replace science or to undermine it. Science is wonderful. One of the best advancements in all of human history.

I am simply trying to criticize. To supplement. To add the empathy that so much science lacks.

As an example of what I mean. We cannot prove in any quantitative way once and for all that doctors being kind improves outcomes. But anyone with serious life experience could tell you that kindness heals so much bandages and stitches cannot. That getting outside, stepping into nature, is the most healing thing you can do. That all the beeps and bright white lights of hospitales make healing almost impossible.

I am asking science to allow the unprovable to exist alongside scientific truth. To find some way to exist alongside powerful empathy. To let the wisewoman sit at the table.

[eddieintheocean]

i finished my essay on deep sea crustaceans and submitted it so there wont be a chance of me being able to change it

ive just put it in a google drive until i can find somewhere to actually share it

if you would like access to any of the papers i can make a folder and post the pdfs somewhere. also please be kind! this was only my 2nd time writing an essay!

[spiritshaydra]

I wonder if it’d be a fun writing exercise to have my character Quantum attempt to “teach” about Cybertronian biology despite completely lacking a medical license AND any sort of formal training.

She well,, DOES know what she’s talking about she’s just not professional in the slightest