Los Angeles freelance science writer and editor
by Janice Nigro I have never written a scientific review. Admitting that is like saying I never achieved expert status in anything as a scientist. It’s partly true. Many journals solicit review articles only from so-called experts in a field. I have simply never been asked. But my training was to focus on generating data... Continue Reading →
by Janice Nigro Blah blah blah...more studies performed to investigate gender disparity in science. We research the issues, we write about them, we even have to answer questions in our grants about them. But is it just talk or do we act on some of our rhetoric? I have had some of my own questionable... Continue Reading →
by Janice Nigro A highly successful scientist friend joked recently that he still doesn’t recognize much in his original drafts of manuscripts, even after thirty years of working consistently with a certain collaborator. Together they can boast of hundreds of articles reporting cutting edge science and hundreds of thousands of citations. After so much time, experience, and... Continue Reading →
by Janice Nigro As scientists, we are in the business of solving puzzles. We think of the puzzle and then work sometimes over a life time to find a solution. Most puzzles we simply do not have the time to answer. Then there are those puzzles that intrigue us, but the technology to answer them simply does not exist.... Continue Reading →
by Janice Nigro I went to a work interview by metro rail this week. In most big cities around the world, even in the USA, no one would bother to make such a statement. Maybe you wouldn’t want anyone to know! More likely, everyone, or most everyone, uses public transportation there. In Los Angeles, not so... Continue Reading →
by Janice Nigro I was shocked once when my PhD advisor ran into the lab to read out loud the first sentence of my first draft of a manuscript. A nightmare moment-hearing your own words read in front of a group of extraordinarily talented and accomplished people. He read it and then said why he... Continue Reading →
by Janice Nigro We travel to escape. To escape our work, to escape our lives, and maybe to escape who we are. I would be the first to admit to trying things on holidays that I would never attempt back home. There is ample opportunity; real gelato can only be eaten in Italy. But also no one is there... Continue Reading →
Controversy over a carrot by Janice Nigro If only I had made the surfboard a strawberry…my last thoughts as I was falling asleep one night recently. It was not one of those fleeting bizarre thoughts you have just moments before you do fall asleep. It was provoked by another one of my innocent forays into... Continue Reading →
Halloween: Season of Reviewer #3 by Janice Nigro I could walk into my PhD advisor’s office after more than 20 years, mention Reviewer #3, and out of all of the reviews of his hundreds of published articles, he would be able to go to a file cabinet and pull out hard copies of the reviews... Continue Reading →
Everywhere we are in remote control mode. TV offers hundreds of channels which we gladly click through until we reach the end only to start over again. On the internet, we move from one story to the next before completing the first, and we are told to write only a few sentences to a paragraph... Continue Reading →
Janice Nigro 