In Chapter 11 of 19 in her 2011 Capture Your Flag interview with host Erik Michielsen, Stacie Grossman Bloom answers "What Have You Enjoyed Most About Science Writing and Publishing?" She enjoys being an effective communicator of science in a realistic way. From a publishing perspective, she finds value seeing research results and unpublished data before others see it.
Stacie Grossman Bloom is the Executive Director at the NYU Neuroscience Institute at NYU Langone Medical Center. Previously, she was VP and Scientific Director at the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS). She earned her PhD in Neurobiology and Cell Biology at Georgetown University and did a post-doctoral fellowship at Rockefeller University in New York City. She earned her BA in Chemistry and Psychology from the University of Delaware.
Transcript:
Erik Michielsen: What have you enjoyed most about science writing and publishing?
Stacie Grossman Bloom: Being able to take a very jargon-y, niche-y, scientific finding and translate it into a way that the mass of people can understand without overselling it, I think is a really important skill. I would say that’s the thing that I’ve enjoyed the most: being able to be an effective communicator of science in a realistic way. In terms of publishing science, that’s such an easy answer for me. The thing that I’ve enjoyed the most is having the privilege of seeing these research results before anybody else sees them. As an editor at a high-level scientific journal you’re really in a great position because you really have this amazing privilege of seeing unpublished data. In the scientific world unpublished data is -- you never get access to unpublished data. Everybody is scared that you are gonna steal it, you’re gonna use the findings and publish it first. So, being in that position where you are the first person to see the unpublished data and then determining whether that data is of high enough quality and importance to be published in the highest tier of scientific journals.