Heather Doran

 The world press has gone ABSOLUTELY CRAZ-EE with this fabulous piece of news, 'SCIENTISTS' claim, 'eating chocolate may be as good for you as going to the gym', ' eating chocolate is as good as jogging', 'as good as exercise'.  OM-NOM-NOM - CHOCOLATE Image: André Karwath aka Aka (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chocolate.jpg)  WOWZERS. As if we needed another excuse to skip a gym session and eat more chocolate. Unfortunately, none of the headlines above are true. Sorry. Here's why: - The study was small and carried out on MICE . Not people. - The mice were not given chocolate , they were given an extract, (–)-epicatechin (which is found in chocolate). There is nothing to say how much chocolate (and what types of chocolate) you would have to consume to get the benefits that were seen in mice. You might have to eat 5 bars of chocolate a day to get those levels of (–)-epicatechin, who knows. Chocolate contains lots

HAPPY MEN ARE LESS ATTRACTIVE It has been proven by leading scientists that happy men are less attractive. However, happy women are more attractive. Have I got your attention? Do you trust me? Do you trust the 'scientists'? Are you going to change your behaviour? How can you tell what to believe out of what you read, see or hear? Have you believed in something and then lost your belief? Green men from outerspace? Ghosts? Crop circles? God? Have you ever bought a new shampoo/mascara/body spray/car thinking it would change your life/get you the person of your dreams? We are bombarded with information, ideas, views and adverts. It is impossible for us to look into all the information that is thrown at us. How can we question an expert on a complex issue when we are not experts ourselves? Do we just pick and choose what we like to make ourselves feel better and to suit the beliefs we have already? Often when we are given information we are presented with snapshot of the story,

This is a 'graph' of the one hour meeting I have just had with my supervisor. Fairly typical. The big drop occurred after we had a little search on Pub Med. I am now exhausted and need a large lunch to keep me going. If you want to know more about my supervisor, she is on the fabulous Naked Scientist podcast  this week, talking about medicines from Cannabis.

I was really disappointed to see this article written in The Telegraph, ' 'Drinking Wine Could Help To Stop Sunburn' this week. A really glaringly obvious example of really bad science and bad churnalism. The article states, 'Drinking wine or eating grapes could protect you from sunburn, according to a new study that found a chemical in the fruit can limit cell damage.' Alongside this very appealing picture of a glass of wine in the sun. Nice, well then, let's all go outside and have a glass of wine in the sunshine and feel good about ourselves. Sound too good to be true? It probably is. The article refers to a study published in Agricultural and Food Chemistry (not free access). The study tested some grape extracts (polyphenolic fractions, not wine) on some skin cells in a dish. They then exposed the cells to some UVA and UVB rays. They found that some of the extracts reduced the numbers of damaging reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the treated vs untreat

I have been talking to friends and others about careers in science. This started me wondering about a science career. The vast majority of people I have spoken to have had to move for postdocs and jobs. Do you have to be a nomad for a few years before you can 'settle' (and even then you might be required to uproot yourself and move at the drop of a hat) to have a career in science? Is the only way to get a 'good' career to be prepared to go wherever the wind takes you? And how many other careers require that kind of flexibility? Is it unusual? To have a good career in anything do you need to be prepared do down tools and move on (but is it 'unusual' in other careers, whereas in science it is more the norm)? I am not talking about 6/8 months away at a time. I am talking years. If it is, this sounds like a perfect career for me. I love change. I thrive off it. I love meeting new people and seeing different places (no matter where it is). But can I do it? I am in

Last week I attended the British Science Association, Science Communication Conference 2011. I was granted a bursary to attend, covering transport, accommodation and conference fees - which was nice, as without it I would not have been able to go! I was really looking forward to meeting people involved in science communication across the UK (& world) and some of the people I have spoken to through email & twitter. Creating networks when you are based so far away from the main source of the action can be difficult, social media does help enormously - but it still never beats meeting someone and having a conversation in person. The conference seemed the perfect opportunity to do this. So, off I went to London town with a bag full of Au magazines  to share. I was really pleasantly surprised to find that quite a number of people had already come across the magazine and were interested in the project. That made conversation easy! As I was at the conference on my own I had no option

Blogging has taken a back seat recently, whilst I along with a team of others at the University of Aberdeen launched a new science themed magazine. I think I am in a very lucky position here at the University of Aberdeen. I mentioned this idea of a science magazine last September to the public engagement team and since then they have very kindly sent anything they came across (including people, interviews, events, stories) in my direction. I organised a meeting with 5 others that had mentioned creating a science magazine to the public engagement team. We met, clicked and then set on a mission to create the magazine. Without working as a team this would have been impossible. We have written stories that we think are interesting, but the science is not over-hyped. We do not shout about the latest cure for cancer, but we discuss how compounds in the cannabis plant are being tested for their therapeutic potential. We do not say there is life on Mars but we do talk about how we are expl