IoweBora, do you? And a History of Sci.

Sci was very sad to see Bora leave Scienceblogs a few days ago. Bora really defined what SB was really about, at least to me. And without Bora, Sci wouldn’t be here at all. Let me ‘splain.

Two years ago this past May (WOW how time flies), Sci was feeling rather down about her career prospects. She wasn’t feeling like a good scientist, and she was wondering what the heck else one could do with a PhD. She went to a seminar at her MRU on alternative careers, and ran into a guy who was an editor for Scientific American. While the other people at the seminar were trying to get his attention with their sci-fi short stories and their work at a college paper in undergrad…Sci had nothing to compete with. Ok, I published some poetry when I was 12. I don’t think that counts. So when he turned to me and asked if I had any experience, all I could say was “well, my students think I’m a really good teacher…”.

The writer looked at me, and paused, and then said “that’s actually not a bad start”. And when Sci, emboldened, emailed him to ask for for advice he told me to go talk to this guy, Bora.

And Sci was NERVOUS. First off, she’d never really emailed someone who didn’t use their actual NAME in their email (really). She didn’t really know what this science blog thing was about. I’d never read one. In my mind, blogs were things you put on livejournal that were really either bitching about your life or a glorified slide show of your summer vacation. And then there was the whole idea of meeting a guy I didn’t know except through email at a random coffee shop in the middle of North Carolina.

But Bora put me perfectly at ease. He exudes kindness and enthusiasm (a lot of enthusiasm). He chatted with me and told me to start a blog.

Less than 24 hours later, Scicurious was born.

And here we are, at >3 posts a week for the last two years, with hundreds of thousands of words written, awards obtained, and even a book edited. And Sci has received endless encouragement, promotion, mentorship, and friendship from bloggers and readers far and wide.

Dang that Bora knew what he was doing.

So I Owe Bora a LOT. I bet some of you do too. And so I was thrilled when people on Twitter (I think Ed started it, he starts everything that Bora doesn’t) started a hashtag. I was even more thrilled to see that Abel had started a PayPal button where we could all attempt to let Bora know how much we care. So click on the that last link, or send Bora more Twitter love. He’s the blogfather of us all.

Friday Weird Science Revisited: the “but they could have done it better” edition

Some of you may recall the post Sci posted on Friday “If you’re happy and you know it, smell some pee“. It’s an adorable post, by the way, in which Sci waxes extremely witty and breaks into song. We all love songs.

But the more Sci thought about the paper the more she thought several things:

1) Biological Psychiatry?! Do we have to go through this AGAIN?! I mean, the paper was FINE, but…BIOLOGICAL PSYCHIATRY?! This is not groundbreaking clinically relevant awesomeness, it’s a new animal model.

2) Sci could do it BETTER.

Sci doesn’t mean that to be a jerk, I really DO think this paper could have some bigger, cooler awesomeness to it. And for all I know, the scientists are in fact pursuing all of these avenues of research, but still. Authors, listen up for a second. Sci’s got some IDEAS. And she wants you to use them. Cause we are all in this together, and we all need to find some new hot animal models, amirite?!

Here we go