Los Angeles freelance science writer and editor
by Janice Nigro I always wondered what good I would be to society as a cancer biologist if the apocalypse happened. Now I know. Not very much. Most of us are waking up to the sobering reality at how less than fundamental our jobs are to basic human survival. We’re fluff. Even a scientist, after... Continue Reading →
by Janice Nigro Nature can still surprise us. One sperm, one egg and you are a whale shark, a red hairy shrimp, or a bat terrorizing humans by showering pandemic disease causing viruses down upon them. I’m as caught up as everyone else in the interruption of life, business and the stock market brought upon... Continue Reading →
Scientists don’t get into science to become writers. But the job demands it. We write, or we try to, because we need to communicate results. To survive. To move up in our career. To advance science. But that’s the problem. Scientists have to do it. And when you have to do something, it can become... Continue Reading →
by Janice Nigro Like a lot of beginning business writers, I waver between those moments of feeling like an imposter and feeling professional. The only way to gain confidence is to go out and do the job. “Say yes” people tell me. Saying yes is the easy part. “Saying yes, 50% deposit thank you very... Continue Reading →
by Janice Nigro A great irony in science is how generic we scientists often write about it. We use clichéd lines. “To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to show X…” Or “However, X still remains unknown.” Or my favorite, “Such and such cancer is the most aggressive tumor type in... Continue Reading →
by Janice Nigro When I started to write this piece, I thought, I have no idea why travel writing comes so naturally to me. I just thought, it’s like anything, when you want to do it, you actually do it. Still when you do something right, the first thing people want to know, is how... Continue Reading →
by Janice Nigro Stony corals fool us. We see only a big mountain of what appears to be lifeless rock before us, when in fact the mountain of rock is growing daily (in healthy reefs) due to the hard work of the macro animals and their algal symbionts, zooxanthellae, living inside. Scientists have long known... 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 →
Janice Nigro 