Halloween - 2013 Edition

Halloween is filled with all kinds of emotions when dealing with life-threatening food allergies!

I'm so proud of myself.  Halloween is still 2 weeks away and safe allergy friendly treats are ordered, set to be delivered at our doorstep any day now.  In years past, it usually escaped my mind until the week before (too late to order), resulting in a mad dash to multiple stores to purchase whatever safe treats or toys we could find.  For our multiple food allergic child, this typically means trading unsafe treats for safe chocolate chips or small toys such as stickers, erasers, and pencils.  (Note - corn and soy are really big problems for us. I have yet to find standard nut-free/peanut-free brands that are also free of corn and soy, among others).  For some reason, I am afraid that he will be less than thrilled about safe chocolate chips yet again.  He is gaining awareness of his allergy predicament, which is a double-edged sword.  Good in that he is beginning to advocate for himself.  Bad in that he's socially and emotionally older, meaning he's becoming fully aware that he is "different" when all he really wants to do is "fit in."  Chocolate chips just aren't going to cut it anymore when all of his friends are getting those delicious looking, nose-pleasing aromas of chocolate and sugar all wrapped up in pretty colored packages.

The Sanctity of Science

As the years go by, I grow more and more convinced that the scientific process is a perfect process for its intended purpose - to test ideas in order to explain how natural phenomena work in the realm of space and time.  Natural phenomena can range from at one end - the known universe - to at the other end - the seemingly infinitesimally small Higg's boson (aka - God particle).  At either of those extreme ends of natural phenomena, questions of science often meet the philosophical - e.g. was there a BEFORE the big bang? Most of us, however, reside somewhere in the middle of this spectrum.  Even in the in between, there is still so much we have to learn - about ourselves, about our world.  I believe the wonder, awe, and beauty of the unknown will always be a part of our existence because it is central to being human to question, wonder, and desire to know.  I have yet to meet a person without these traits. I have to agree with a recent incredibly thought-provoking interview of Richard Dawkins on the Daily Show that this curiosity just may lead to humanity's demise (Really, watch it.  It's fascinating).  Yes, I agree that how certain humans will choose to use our accumulated knowledge will likely destroy us long before our use of the scientific process has a fighting chance of coming anywhere near understanding all there is to understand.  Like an addiction to a bad drug, we can't stop our craving for knowledge.  And I know we never will; I hope we never will.  We need solutions to humanity's problems like food allergies, and understanding the problems should go a long way in helping us fix the problems.

Whew, that was deep!  I hope you don't mind my random musings (the best thing about a personal blog, in my opinion!)  But, back to what I really wanted to discuss - the scientific process in all its perfect glory.  The process is perfect.  Humans are not.  Therefore, how humans use this process is inherently imperfect.  The steps - observation, question, hypothesis, test the hypothesis (experiment), analyze the data, conclude - gets repeated over and over and over... it's like an upward spiral staircase continuously climbing higher in our knowledge.  Any wrong ideas (hypotheses) will eventually be uncovered through experimentation.  This is the beauty of the scientific process - it self corrects our wrong ideas.

Genetic glitch at the root of food allergies?

I see a lot of different research articles on a weekly basis, and there is certainly a lot to be excited about in the realm of basic science research when it comes to understanding the immune system and allergic disorders.  I have to admit, though, a recent study published in Science Translational Medicine has my head spinning (in a good way!), and I hope this post accurately communicates why.

Science Fun - It's Electric!

Whether we are destined to become scientists or not, understanding the scientific process is crucial to our ever growing complex world.  Think about all of the articles that report scientific findings on food allergy alone - how do you separate the wheat from all the chaff in how science gets reported?  Understanding the process will go a long way in discerning claims that are truly supported by evidence versus the many over-sold or outright unsupported claims frequenting our online communities.

As an introductory-level college biology instructor, I'm seeing way too many students coming into my classroom lacking a basic understanding of the scientific method - i.e. how do scientists make the discoveries versus what is established scientific knowledge.  For too long, curriculum has focused on what I like to call "biology history" as opposed to "doing biology."  Yes, you need to know a good amount of the "history" to get to the bleeding edge, but the scientific process can and should be integrated all along the way.  There is hope that things are changing (Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education:  A Call to Action).

“Appreciating the scientific process can be even more important than knowing scientific facts. People often encounter claims that something is scientifically known. If they understand how science generates and assesses evidence bearing on these claims, they possess analytical methods and critical thinking skills that are relevant to a wide variety of facts and concepts and can be used in a wide variety of contexts.”

-National Science Foundation, Science and Technology Indicators, 2008.

In other words, teach a man to fish instead of giving him a fish. There is just too much new knowledge being generated for any human to keep up.  I strongly believe that an understanding of the scientific method begins many, many, MANY years before getting into undergraduate level science courses.  It begins in childhood.  I have to say, I'm encouraged by what I'm seeing in children's programming - in one of JR's favorite shows, The Dinosaur Train on PBS, one of the characters, Buddy, routinely shouts, "I have a hypothesis!"  As a result, JR routinely goes around the house shouting, "I have a hypothesis!"  (Hypothesis = educated guess to explain observation).  Sweet, beautiful music to this Mom's (and Dad's!) ears.  The seeds of scientific understanding are being planted.

Summer morning thoughts digging their way out

I find myself digging out from under a pile of the previous Spring term which ended last week.  Remnants of everything important - from tiny hand prints artfully crafted on special Mother's Day paper awaiting a more permanent framed display, to the last edition of Allergic Living, to stacks (and I mean STACKS!) of fascinating allergy/immunology papers awaiting meticulous consideration.

Crouching down on one knee with a small grin, I pump my fist and quietly exclaim, "Yes!  I made it.  I made it to summer."  It was a busy term, but worth it in every sense.  I have an appreciation of the microbial world that I did not have before, and suddenly pieces of complicated immunology literature that reference "bacterial things" like LPS and teichoic acid and how it relates to our immune system make perfect sense (at least more than it did). 

Our immune system is fine-tuned to recognize components of bacterial cell membranes/cell walls that we don't have in our cells (e.g. teichoic acid and lipopolysaccharide - LPS).  Source:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipoteichoic_acid