Month: January 2021

Me and roommate were discussing peer reviews and how the process is definitely necessary, but also contributes to the elitist nature of some science. In a similar manner to how it was brought up during lecture, we both expressed annoyance that scientific papers that are written to glorify the head researches ego rather than to just discuss the findings and the facts. At one point my roommate laughed out loud at the peer viewed paper she was reading for her class. The author, who was a friend of her professor, had cited an “incredible piece of research” to support the researches claim, and it turned out the “incredible research” was the authors own old project. The fact of the matter is that people have implicit bias towards a friend rather than a stranger and towards themselves, especially if there ego can be given a boost. I am not saying that papers should not be peer reviewed, it is an extremely important process that allows ones work to be viewed by another. I am rather suggesting that neither the author nor the reviewer should know who the other is. And that when ever we read anything we need to consider our own bias along with the authors, take everything with a grain of salt.

The peer review process is a huge and important part of the scientific community. It allows outside perspectives to contribute to someones writing and question the authors findings to make the paper more credible. I have had a few opportunities to act as a peer reviewer so far in my scientific career and each time I have found ways to not only improve others writing but also my own. And when reading others research you are going to learn new things and new ways to view things. This is what truly makes peer review amazing, it allows you to see into someone else’s thought process and contribute to their work while also bettering your own.

When you find a microbe and study their internal workings you are not just studying one, you are studying a population. Microbes do not grow alone as they grow and reproduce at an exponential rate as long as they’re in a supportive environment. When it is the same strain reproducing colonies form, and therefore a population, and these populations have specific characteristics.

There will be certain textures, shapes, sizes, they have specific metabolites and byproducts. Some populations occur in your home while others occur in extreme environments, and when there are multiple populations in the same area they make up a community.

When there is a community you are examining the differences in the population characteristics, and also observing how each population interacts. Are the different microbes going to be beneficial for each other? Parasitic? Maybe one population creates a byproduct that the others need to survive. Or maybe they are competitive, fighting for resources and space. It is this interaction, between the species, that make microbes all the more interesting and enable us to see where the behaviors of complex animals in their communities stem from.