Books | DEZERAECOX

Book Review: If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?

Sat, 13 Jun 2020 03:57:13 +0000

I know, I know, book reviews are so seventh grade. But I am making a conscious effort not only to read more, but also to actively engage with the media I consume. So, I thought writing down a few tid bits about each of the books I conquer might help me stay accountable and promote some great popular science literature that I think everyone should get around!

Down with the details:

Title: If I understood you, would I have this look on my face? My Adventures in the Art and Science of Relating and Communicating

Author: Alan Alda

Theme: Science Communication

Target audience: Good for everyone, Great for scientists

Overall thoughts:

A vibrant and engaging read that was over in a flash - but not before challenging my view of what it means to tell a story and the importance of communication in everything we do (not just science!)
Alda imparts many gems of wisdom of value for anyone who wants to communicate better - whether you are a scientist sharing your latest research or a partner trying to find a deeper connection with a loved one. In fact, one of the common threads Alda weaves is that in order to engage in effective communication, you must find common ground with your audience. Effective communication is a team effort.
These insights were borne from years of comedic brilliance coupled with dedicated cultivation of the scientific literature investigating method, efficiency and effectiveness of communication. Far from being dry, the narrative glistens with Alda’s characteristic warmth and conversational style making for a truly pleasurable read.
Some of my favourite tips and tricks were “The three rules of three”. To paraphrase:
- When talking to an audience, try to make no more than three points - any more than this are unlikely to stick.
- Try to explain difficult ideas in three different ways - provide your audience with the means to triangulate their way to an understanding, where they can use the conceptual description that most resonates with them
- Find a subtle way to make your ’take-home message’ three times - like a callback in comedy, use this to prompt retention and tie your story together
Overall, this was a fantastic new addition to my fledgeling extracurricular reading activities, and one I cannot recommend enough.

*Some of the best bits:**

… pretty much everybody misunderstands everybody else. Maybe not all the time, and not totally, but just enough to mess everything up.

The person who’s communicating something is responsible for how well the other person follows

- pg 30

… real conversation can’t happen if listening is just my waiting for you to finish talking

- pg 10

Would IQ be the most important factor, or was there some other deciding factor for a team’s success? … average intelligence of a group could not significantly predict the groups performance. - pg 56

- pg 58

Women’s social skills lead in part to better decision making overall and … gender diversity in particular facilitates creatvity

- pg 58

… assuming students are totally responsible for their own motivation … can lead researchers to blame group members for their lack of motivation.

- pg 59

Collaborators in a lab can listen to one another’s ideas, no matter how odd they are, and add constructively to them. … There is a lot of blocking that takes place in science, but Yes And frees ideas to grow

- pg 62

\[When communicating\]
knowing what they are ready to hear is critical, and coming in too early or too late
\[in the story\]
can be confusing

- pg 64

While leadership is important, just as important is how leadership is communicated

- pg 68

Good communication with the person you’re closest to may be the hardest challenge of them all

- pg 77

I value the opinions of people I disagree with. It’s the yin and yang of understanding.

- pg 111

The stereotypical view of empathy is that it makes you soft. On the contrary, when you have to be tough, empathy can be a useful tool.

- pg 125

The reader expects thoughts to be laid out in a certain order, and that effects how the reader reacts.

- pg 135

A couple of emotional words can often turn a recital of the facts into something more engaging that will stick in the mind

- pg 151

Emotion is not a broad-brush amplifier of all things … It doesn’t simply turn up the volume knob. The kind of emotion matters.

- pg 157

Our lives are filled with stories, and yet when we want to communicate something important to us we often forget there’s a story behind it

- pg 163

The trouble with a lecture is that it answers questions that haven’t been asked

- pg 169

In an experiment, you don’t always figure out in the end what you had hoped to figure out. In an experiment, in life, and in a good story, obstacles get in the way

- pg 173

At first it seems nonsensical that knowledge could be a burden, even a curse. The problem, of course, is not in the knowledge itself. The problem is when you can’t imagine what it’s like not to have that knowledge.

- pg 190

Try again. Fail again. Fail better. Those words rest on my desk and remind me almost every day that the ashes of failure can be a place of despair or they can be where the pheonix comes from.

- pg 194

* Please note these are direct quotes from the reviewed material and do not represent independently conceived ideas.

Handy links:

Buy the book
Follow Alan Alda on

Have you read any of Alan Alda’s work, or have another science-adjacent book you can recommend? Find me on or head over to the to tell me more!

Image credits: cover photo

Book Review: Spineless

Thu, 30 May 2019 12:27:33 +0000

I know, I know, book reviews are so seventh grade. But I am making a conscious effort, both to read more and to actively engage with the media I consume. So, I thought writing down a few tid bits about each of the books I conquer this year might help me and promote some great popular science literature that I think everyone should get around!

The nitty-gritty details:

Title: Spineless: The Science of Jellyfish and the Art of Growing a Backbone

Author: Juli Berwald

Theme:

Jellyfish, general scientific concepts, academia and beyond, motherhood, self-discovery

Target audience:

Everyone

Overall thoughts:

Part travelogue, part memoir, part deep-dive (literally) into the world of jellyfish… Spineless should serve as inspiration for all of us to advocate for research and understanding of the current climate emergency from the perspective of our gelatenous sea-bound dinosaurs. Masterfully intertwined with recounts of her international jelly-finding adventures are details of Berwald’s quest to reclaim a creative space in the midst of family life.

We may span different generations, geographical locations and scientific fields - but I felt an undeniable sense of commeradery and connection with the sentiments throughout this book. Many times along the way I found myself grateful that there was someone else with shared experiences of academia. I also found comfort in the seeming inevitability of her attraction to science. It was so incredible to hear how one person can navigate the complicated spiderweb of academia to pursue a true thirst for knowledge.

Overall, this was a fascinating read for scientists and non-scientists alike. Contemporary, lighthearted and enlightening with amazing illustrations to boot.

**Some of the best bits*:**

What is clear is that the more we learn about these animals from our deep past, the more we will understand about the gnarled evolutionary tree that supports all the animals in the world, including ourselves.

pg 82

As my kids progressed through elementary school, jellyfish had become my own alternative school, a place where my mind could play, and explore, and expand, the intellectual playground that I craved.

pg 84

Gene mutation is always seeking diversity, coming up with innovation, pushing boundaries.

pg 85

… asked him why so many jellyfish were transparent. He looked at me as if I’d asked him why grasshoppers were green. The question is, why isn’t everything transparent?

pg 96

Passion pushes our curiousity, drives innovation, and breaks through boundaries. Economics makes rules, sets boundaries, and forces compromise.

pg 101

While we usually think of domestivation in terms of animals and plants, GFP has essentially become a domesticated gene. By being so useful to us, this single gene has circled the globe, transferred from petri dish in one lab to cell culture in another to your neighbourhood pet store.

pg 118

… your orientation in the world is one of the most important things you can know.

pg 127

There’s something very democratic and modern about this multiple-pacemaker arrangement, evolutionarily ancient as it may be. It is a completely diffuse yet incredibly functional system. The jellyfish’s nervous system is smart without being consolidated.

pg 136

The more we think the same thought, the more neurotransmitters and receptors we produce at that synapse. And so it goes until the memory’s physical structure is a robust synapse, connected by the flood of neurotransmitters and a field of receptors.

pg 140

“information isn’t knowledge; knowledge isn’t wisdom”

pg 156

We have to move beyond this age of combustion… The jellyfish are an alarm that says we are mismanaging our ecosystem. They are a symptom. The cause is our stupid behaviour. And there is nothing else.

pg 161

Given the mighty forces that drive our planet - volcanism, plate techtonics, magnetic storms - … our penchant for focusing on small issues
\[is\]
infuriating. “The planet isn’t going anywhere … We are. Pack your bags.”

pg 161

Even though I was miserable, the decision to quit academics came with a considerable amount of guilt. The scientific community had made an investment of nearly a decade in me. It had pair me, albeit frugally, during my training. And I walked away from it. A piece of me always felt that I left a debt unpaid.

pg 167

The low points - not the moments of joy - were the decisive moments in my life. I had almost never made a change when things were going well.

pg 177

This wasn’t about being capable; it was about being willing. Making a difference would require our collective intention and effort. It would mean growing a spine.

pg 179

You know, maybe that’s where the hope lies. The recognition that we are all stuck here on this planet together. Maybe that fact will be what eventually gets us to clean up our act.

pg 210

My fear wasn’t something I would have admitted in my grad school days when I was trying to show that I could handle anything, that I had what it took, or what I thought it l=took, to be a scientist.

pg 216

Jellyfish had become a better-late-than-never vehicle for me to explore the threats to the ocean’s future. They’re a way to start a conversation about things tha can seem boring and abstract - acidification, warming, overfishing, and coastal development - but that are changing our oceans in fundamental ways.

pg 223

Experiencing the ocean’s brilliance first hand meant more than all my after-school lectures combined… Our kids need to understand what’s at stake too.

pg 278

The realisation that scientists need to roll down their sleeves and button up their jackets has dawned on the European scientists I met much more insistently than it has on those on the other side of the Atlantic.

pg 284

In the United States as well as Europe, there is an ongoing attack on science, a willful insertion of misconception into the public sphere. And that leads to policies that fly in the face of the data and reason.

pg 284

Letters to the editor, which seem such an archaic form of free speech in these Twittering times, actually get read in Washington.

pg 285

Raise your voice. By staying quiet, we are deceiving the public. The public deserves to know what’s going on in the ocean. We are being willfully myopic.

pg 287

If any of those things had happened differently, I wouldn’t be standing in this spot at this moment. Life may be a series of happy accidents, but I had never before had them all come together in one morning.

pg 290

Our dancing turns to fighting, often for the wrong reasons. We fall in love easily, but often with things that don’t matter or even harm us, things that numb us to the thousands of ever-more discernible darts we are shooting at our own planet. This can lead to terrible mistakes, even self-destruction.

pg 304

*Please note these are direct quotes from the reviewed material and do not represent independently conceived ideas.

Handy links:

Buy the book
Check out Bradshaw’s blog

Have you read Spineless, or have another science-adjacent book you can recommend? Find me on or head over to the to tell me more!

Image credits: Spineless cover photo

Book review: The Effective Scientist

Sun, 28 Oct 2018 10:32:43 +0000

I know, I know, book reviews are so seventh grade. But I am making a conscious effort not only to read more this year, but also to actively engage with the media I consume. So, I thought writing down a few tid bits about each of the books I conquer this year might help me and promote some great popular science literature that I think everyone should get around!

Title: The Effective Scientist

Author: Corey. J. A. Bradshaw

Theme:
ECRs, academia, science impact

Target audience:
ECRs across scientific disciplines

Overall thoughts:
A well written, self-reflective evaluation of the important aspects surrounding scientific research that make or break a scientific career.

As a “first-gen” PhD, I naively thought that being good at the research (understanding concepts, designing and interpreting experiment, analysing data, writing papers and teaching students) would be enough to guarantee me a successful and impactful career in academia. However, very soon into my first post-doc it became clear that there was a great deal more than these qualities required, and that it was not something that is taught in Grad school. Mostly, people garnered “insider knowledge” on how to succeed. With this truthful and frank book, Bradshaw provides some of these insights as a guide for new early career researchers, helping to at least level the playing field for those of us not in the know. So much of his recounts were relatable, and wisdom enlightening. Even those who consider themselves in the know could learn a thing or two from the empathetic approach and good lab-building practice ideas put forward by Bradshaw. Together, these skills may help you survive (maybe even thrive) in the world of academic science, will lead to a more fulfilling and impactful career, and allow you to positively contribute to the betterment of society. And as a side-note, the print version itself is absolutely beautiful (props to Rene Campbell for the images throughout, and for the amazing cover image) - a win-win-win!

Overall, I can not recommend this book enough for early-career scientists of all disciplines. Aspiring post-graduate students, newly-minted PhD’s, post-docs and junior principle investigators alike can all benefit from the wisdom held between this magnificent cover!

Some of the best bits*:

Knowing what or how to achieve what you will be expected to do is not necessarily intuitive or easy

We must compete in an age of on-tap information, most of which is either meaningless drivel or utter nonsense

To most, significant just sounds more authoritative, educated, and erudite than a lot or big. This is, of course, complete rubbish because some people use big words to his the fact that they are not quite as clever as they think they are

…you might be of the mistaken assumption that science is a nice, linear, logical process leading to unambiguous conclusions.

Failure, at least of the temporary kind, is therefore ironically a state that you will necessarily have to get used to if you are to succeed as a scientist.

What lacking novelty really means is ‘we do not think your paper will get as many citations as we would like’.

I could go on and on, but in reality this whole book bears repeating. In fact, I am quite certain that I will return many times over the years to revisit specific chapters or paragraphs - to cherry-pick more than these few phrases does an injustice to the rest, you will simply have to read it!

*Please note these are direct quotes from the reviewed material and do not represent independently conceived ideas.

Handy links:

Buy the book
Check out Bradshaw’s blog

Book review: Human Universe

Sat, 28 Apr 2018 03:43:15 +0000

I know, I know, book reviews are so seventh grade. But I am making a conscious effort not only to read more this year, but also to actively engaging with the media I consume. So, I thought writing down a few tid bits about each of the books I conquer this year might help me and promote some great popular science literature that I think everyone should get around!

Title: Human Universe Theme:

A self professed love letter to humanity, this book asks questions about our origins, our destiny, and our place in the universe, covering the science behind each scale in the universe, from single cells to whole galaxies to the infinite multiverse.

Target audience:

Inquisitive minds, suitable for both scientists and those with little to no scientific background.

Overall thoughts:

Well crafted stories and arguments, with an appropriate level of context for someone with no background in science, but not so much as to be nauseatingly boring for scientists. In many instances, Cox manages to articulate many of my feelings about science, policy and the challenges we face both as scientists and more broadly as a society with a solid foundation in established scientific research.

Some of the best bits*:

The language of science - because there is no better demonstration of our ascent… than the exponentiation of knowledge
Education powers the mind beyond direct experience - onwards and outwards
Common sense is completely worthless and irrelevant when trying to understand reality
The inbuilt and unavoidable stupidity of intelligent beings
Countries whose borders and interests are defined by imagined local differences and arbitrary religious dogma, both of which are utterly irrelevant and meaningless on a galactic scale
A lovely example of serendipity coupled with curiosity and a sprinkling of genius; from cannonballs to snowflakes to the code of life.
Science is a time machine, and it goes both ways. We are able to predict our future with increasing certainty. Our ability to act in response to these predictions will ultimately determine our fate.
Science and reason make the darkness visible
We woken up at the wheel of a bus and realised we don’t know how to drive it
A common governmental lament is new knowledge is not converted efficiently enough into economic growth. Is that what knowledge is for? Who pays for progress? Who should pay for progress?
there is much research to be done , but the barriers are likely to be budgetary rather than fundamental; the United States spends more on pet grooming than it does on fusion research.
I teach, I am taught, I research and I learn. I have been fortunate.
What are we made of? Up quarks, down quarks and electrons.* Please note these are direct quotes from the reviewed material, and do not represent independently conceived ideas. Where can I find it? Get it online .