Science squee

Wednesday my advisor and I snuck into an environmental hormone conference. I know, we're quite the rebels. By "snuck" I mean we attended two lectures without paying a registration fee. It turned out not to be so Mission Impossible because Barney knew enough people that no one would suspect him or think he was out of place. And me being his student . . . well, you know.

Barney had sent me an email Monday evening when he found out about the conference, and he ended the email with, "Tyrone Hayes will be speaking."

First, let me mention that environmental stressors that act as endocrine disruptors have interested me since I read my first alligator feminization paper by Lou Guillette (who was also there -- ::squees::). That alone might have induced me to put on my sneaking tires.

But the chance to hear the infamous Tyrone Hayes of UC-Berkeley speak? What time are you picking me up?

In the world of environmental toxicology, you do not hear Dr. Hayes's name without the words "atrazine" and "Syngenta" following soon after. Dr. Hayes has spent years gathering evidence that the herbicide atrazine has feminizing effects on frogs. Since atrazine is one of my stressors (chosen, I admit, because of its contentiousness) and I am at least going to look at male:female ratio, I naturally have an interest in Dr. Hayes's work. Not to mention he just looks like underneath that "how ya doing?" smile he's a troublemaker. It's true. Look at the picture.

It was awesome. Not only does Dr. Hayes do interesting science, but he's an engaging speaker as well. He deals with the press a lot, so he opened his talk with a request that we always remember that we (scientists) work for and with the public (especially when trying to get a chemical banned), and all our brilliant work is for nothing if the public can't understand what we do. His Powerpoint slides are made to be multi-purpose -- with sufficient data to be used with a scientist but easy for anyone without a science background to understand.

Afterwards, I got to chat with him for a little bit. I went back to the van a happy scientist. I can't say "went home" a happy scientist because by the time we got to the apartment Barney had me so stressed I wanted to scream. More on that later -- after I get my back up, tell Barney "no," and can give you the full story.