Category: Rachel Carson

Book Review: The Gentle Subversive

The Gentle Subversive: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and the Rise of the Environmental Movement.  Mark Hamilton Lytle, 2007. Oxford Univ. Press.
Bug Rating: (with some caveats)

I have written quite a bit about Rachel Carson, mainly because I am baffled at the amount of vitriol still spewed over her book Silent Spring nearly 50 years after it’s publication.  It’s turned out to be my own personal mini-crusade, since everytime I mention the name of this woman people come out of the woodwork to say…well, ill-informed wing-nutty things, frankly, including people who should know better.

I find Carson fascinating not just because she is the focus of a modern dis-information campaign, but because she was a scientist that could write. And I mean REALLY write, not just to communicate, but to bring the beauty and love of the natural world that she saw around her alive.

In all the DDT hoopla, it seems people have forgotten that Carson wrote beautiful prose about science.  She wrote well enough to win a National Book Award, and to have her science book stay #1 on the New York Times best seller list for 86 weeks:

“If there is poetry in my book about the sea, it is not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry.”

Rachel Carson Book Cover

I was interested this short biography of Carson, and picked it up.  I’m really glad I did, because it helped me gain a better understanding of this woman and the huge challenges she faced.  And there were a lot of challenges.

Carson did not come from a wealthy family, and much of her life was occupied in chasing enough money to support herself and her extended family.  Carson moved her mother, her brother and sister, and her 2 nieces into one house–and became the primary financial support for all of them during the Depression.  In 1929, women did not commonly apply to Johns Hopkins, or gain admission to graduate school at Woods Hole.  Carson did both of those things successfully, and recieved a Masters in 1932.

She skipped pursuing a PhD in order to seek work, and was lucky enough to find a home in the Department of Fisheries.  She began writing radio scripts, and progressed to writing USFW publications and magazine pieces.  Carson published her first book in 1941–which was promptly eclipsed by a world at war, and did not prove to be very profitable.  In 1950, she got her big break with The Sea Around Us, which did bring enough income in to allow her to purchase a home in Maine and become an independent writer.  In 1950 Carson also had her first cancer tumor removed from her left breast.

Reading her story now, I can’t help but think of my many freelancing writer friends, and how they struggle to support their families and to try to make a living. It doesn’t seem to have gotten any easier in the last 50 years to be an independent writer.

Carson had a demanding family life. Her mother wanted to be connected and involved in Rachel’s life in a way that…well, I found kind of creepy.  Rachel’s niece (who was, remember, living with her and diabetic) had an out of wedlock child.  Carson became the primary caregiver for both her elderly mother and disabled niece, and could not afford to put either of them in a nursing home or have home help.  That Carson could write well under those conditions is pretty amazing.  And that doesn’t even begin to cover how much stress she must have been under when writing Silent Spring.

In 1958 Carson began work on what would become Silent Spring–her last book.   She had a radical mastectomy in 1959.  Early excerpts of the book attracted vitriolic criticism, and lots of gendered slurs.  ”Shrill.” “Emotional.” “Unscientific.”

In 1960 Carson developed secondary tumors and blood poisoning, and was confined to a wheelchair for many months.  In 1961 she developed an infection that caused her to loose her sight for several months, and was unable to read what she had written. In 1962, as Silent Spring was going to press, more tumors were found in her abdomen.  She wore a wig to testify in Congress, hiding her loss of hair from radiation treatments.  By late 1963 compression fractures in her spine from radiation treatments made walking difficult and painful. Carson died in Spring 1964.

This woman had ovaries of brass.  I am in awe of how tenacious and determined she must have been to finish this last project.  Her letters show she was hanging on by her fingertips, determined to see it through.

As for this book—how does it compare to other Carson biographies? It is short, and a quick read, and has enough footnotes you can be fairly sure of source material. I was very happy that the author chose to not speculate about the nature of Carson’s close friendships with other smart, sciency women of her time, since we don’t know for sure if they were or were not platonic or romantic.

The book itself sort of falls into two parts: things jerks said to Carson while she was alive, and things jerks say about her now that she’s dead.    It’s not comprehensive, but for a quick dip into the issue and a history of what Carson endured, it’s a good read.  I don’t think the author covered modern attacks on Carson very well, but much of the documentation of who paid for the “hit” on Carson  came out in late 2007/2008, so that’s understandable.

At one time I was pretty actively writing about Carson and DDT, and trying to combat the misinformation campaigns put out by various astroturf groups.  I eventually stopped, mostly because the people that comment on that topic scare me.  I have gotten many, many threats over those posts, most of them threats of sexual assault. Those posts about DDT and Rachel Carson are the reason that comments on posts close after 40 days on this blog, since that way I don’t have to go in daily and remove nasty spittle-flecked comments.

I can’t be intimidated into believing their lies about a brave woman and a wonderful writer, but I was intimidated enough that I stopped writing about Carson to stay under their radar.   I think I need to take a lesson from Ms. Carson herself. In the face of terrible pain and opposition, she WON with good writing and truth.

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature — the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”   Rachel Carson

I wonder if sometimes I feel driven to defend Carson because I see so much of my sister in her.  Both women are talented, had breast cancer much too young–and neither one seems able to catch a fucking break. Anything that could go wrong does seem to go wrong.

And by God, if you mess with my sister, you mess with ME.
I got your back, Rachel. I got your back.

Additional Reading:

And Another Thing…. (DDT Fail)

I was interviewed by Drunken Skeptics (Michigan Skeptics Association) about DDT, bed bugs, and my criticism of Brian Dunning for not doing proper research and posting a lot of incorrect stuff about DDT.

Listen to the podcast here!

I’m actually rather pleased with how it turned out, although you can clearly tell I had a cold.  I’m interested in feedback from some of my fellow bloggy entomologists about whether you think I represented the larger entomological community’s views on DDT correctly.

The biggest complaint I have about the whole manufactured controversy surrounding DDT is that it’s a waste of time and energy, and distracts from the real work we need to be doing.  DDT boosters like to frame the argument as:  “Which is worse, Malaria or DDT?”

They have framed that question so that there is only one possible choice.   A forced choice between Malaria and DDT is the WRONG QUESTION. I completely reject that false dichotomy as oversimplification. There are more than two choices.

The real discussion that needs to happen is about the best way to control malaria and improve human health in a particular situation.  Over 99 countries have a malaria problem. It is patently absurd to think that one chemical can solve a problem that is global in scope.  DDT is part of current WHO treatment guidelines. But it is only one piece of a huge, huge complicated problem.

What is the political, environmental, and socio-economic situation of a particular community struggling with malaria control?  What, if any, data do we have on the resistance of the parasite and mosquito vectors to drugs and insecticides? It is not a one-size-fits-all problem with one solution.

Because of the vitriol that is spewed, people like me (and probably a few politicians) are hesitant to talk about Malaria at all. It makes aid to the WHO and Africa a political football that is used to score points.   It’s not, really, about DDT at all.  It’s about tarring and feathering the environmental movement, and keeping people distrustful of science.

And that is sad.

I’d really like to type up a transcript for the podcast, but I still am under the weather health wise–hopefully I can do that next week.

Brian Dunning’s DDT Fail

A few weeks ago, Brian Dunning of Skeptoid posted a podcast that made a variety of claims about DDT and Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring that were poorly researched and factually incorrect.  For a while Dunning refused to admit his error; the podcast page as of 11/23/10 now has a box at the bottom in which he distances himself from the DDT claims he made by saying “Skeptoid is not here to tell you what to think.”

I and a few other people have been writing for several years about the way in which right-wing groups have been promoting DDT and attacking Rachel Carson. I could easily do a point-by-point fisking of Dunning’s mistakes (which others have done ably; see links at the bottom of this post), but I think the most useful thing to do would be to examine why a prominent skeptic fell so hard for a bogus manufactroversy.

“Manufactroversy (măn’yə-făk’-trə-vûr’sē).  A manufactured controversy that is motivated by profit or extreme ideology to intentionally create public confusion about an issue that is not in dispute.”

You see manufactroversies all the time in the media– “Teach the Controversy!” “Global Warming is a hoax!” “Vaccines are poison!”  The common thread is creating a controversy even though a clear consensus exists within the scientific community.

Media likes to frame issues as a debate: if you can get two talking heads to argue, that’s great TV. The problem is, presenting both sides of an argument is silly when there is no actual lack of consensus.

Dissent is manufactured by using information out of context and/or finding a scientist that opposes the prevailing view. That lone scientist’s opinions are then given equal weight to the majority of scientists who don’t think using DDT indiscriminately is a good idea. Or that Global Climate Change is a real and major threat to ecosystems.  You get the idea.

Manufactroversies also exploit the way in which scientists are constrained to speak in probabilities, not absolutes.  It’s part of the language of science to say that something may be true, almost surely IS true, but there are caveats on the conditions under which something is true. Scientists also have to make statements open to revision based on new information.

That’s part of what Skepticism is all about, too–forming opinions based on the available evidence.  New Evidence? Re-assess your conclusions.  This is not, alas, how many major media outlets–or politicians–operate.

The primary source Dunning seems to have used for his DDT fiasco is a website called Junkscience.com. Junkscience has an amazing history, and a little follow the money helps to connect cigarettes, lobbyists, anti-environmentalism, and an astroturf group called Africa Fighting Malaria.  Why didn’t Dunning pick up on those red flags? I don’t know.

The reality of DDT and malaria is that it is an incredibly complex problem.  There isn’t only ONE species of malarial parasite (Plasmodium). There isn’t only ONE species of malaria mosquito. There is not just ONE kind of ecosystem in which birds, mammals (including people) and malaria interact.  There is not just ONE political and health care system in areas where malaria occurs that is optimal for managing treatment.  In fact, in some areas where malaria occurs, there is no effective political or health care system!

Each system is different, and that is why blanket statements that portray DDT as a panacea for solving malaria problems are false and, frankly, stupid.  The issue of insecticide resistance is not trivial. We have many tools in our insect control toolbox; we need to choose each chemical carefully based on the best chance of control within a particular context. Making the wrong choice can have serious consequences if resistance occurs, and we loose the use of a pesticide.

When people espousing careful examination of data before making an insecticide choice are attacked for promoting “genocide”, you have to know something else is going on.  There is a political agenda at work.

I can guarantee you that within 24 hours of this post, there will be at least one, probably more, commenters that will accuse me of racism (“you want to kill brown people in Africa!”) or of lying about DDT.  They have shown up all over my blog whenever I bring up the topic of DDT and Rachel Carson.  Their primary methodology is copy/paste of the same old tired arguments over and over.

These are not people interested in nuance or conditionality of conclusions. They are people that find information that fits with their already existing world view, and then adopt it. Because it supports what they already believe.

Carson’s principal thesis was that broadly biocidal chemicals should not be carelessly introduced into the ecosystem.  She also said this: “It is not my contention that chemical insecticides must never be used.”  I don’t think many here would disagree with those statements.

Had Dunning actually READ Silent Spring, he might have realized his own words were wildly incorrect: “Silent Spring’s principal thesis was that DDT harms bird populations through eggshell thinning.”  In fact, the evidence for eggshell thinning was not published until after Carson’s death from breast cancer in 1964. (Also, when writing a critique of a book, it helps if you actually read the fucking book. But I digress.)

Dunning clearly got his information second-hand. And it was bad information.  This should be a lesson to all of us to check our sources carefully, and ask questions about “Who Profits?” and “What’s the Motivation?” about everything we read.  And to be willing to own it when we screw up.

Suggested resources:

The Science:

The Politics:

New article on Rachel Carson and DDT

FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), one of the most interesting magazines out there, has a new article on the “Rachel Carson is evil/DDT will save the planet” insanity in the media.

I think they pretty much sum up why an idea that is unsupported by facts has such staying power:

“At one level, these articles send a comforting message to the developed world: Saving African children is easy. We don’t need to build large aid programs or fund major health initiatives, let alone develop Third-World infrastructure or think about larger issues of fairness. No, to save African lives from malaria, we just need to put our wallets away and work to stop the evil environmentalists”

BTW, this month’s FAIR issue also has stats for the frequency with which think-tanks are used as sources in the media. Given that astroturf groups like AFM are fronted by conservative think tanks, and used as means to spread the lies about Carson, thought that would be of interest.

(thanks to Deltoid for pointing me to the FAIR article.)

DDT and Snake oil

For those of you following the attempts to resurrect DDT as the saviour of mankind, Ed at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub has a great new post in which he links an old TV drama to DDT and it’s apologists. Check it out!

I have been AWOL lately in my writings on DDT–it’s just been the semester from hell. I hope soon that I’ll have a chance to pick up on this again.

Of course, as long as Ed keeps doing such great work…… :)

Good Malaria news from the WHO!

Hurray! I’ve posted the results of several recent studies showing that bed nets can be extremely effective at preventing malaria in the past. The WHO has now publicly stated a policy of free distribution:

“NAIROBI, Aug. 16 — Long-lasting, insecticide-treated mosquito nets should be distributed free, rapidly and widely in malaria-endemic areas, World Health Organization officials said here Thursday, setting new guidelines for fighting the mosquito-borne disease around the globe.

For years, a policy debate has raged not so much over the effectiveness of mosquito nets in preventing the disease, but over how best to distribute them….The WHO announcement was paired with what Kochi called “impressive” findings by Kenyan health authorities that widespread, free distribution of mosquito nets can effectively save children’s lives.”

(The actual full WHO position statement is available here. )

The Kenyan program distributed nets free to all, so that income wasn’t a factor in being protected. Their results are published in the PLoS Medicine journal:

“With each subsequent survey socioeconomic inequity in net coverage sequentially decreased….The free mass distribution method achieved highest coverage among the poorest children, the highly subsidised clinic nets programme was marginally in favour of the least poor, and the commercial social marketing favoured the least poor.”

Deltoid makes the excellent point that the NYTimes didn’t cover this at all; instead it ran an editorial from the author of the pro-DDT study I critiqued as flawed last week. Sigh.

That paper has been promoted heavily by the Astroturf group, Africans Fighting Malaria. DDT has a major press staff. Who’s going to advocate for all the better and safer ways to control malaria, and ultimately prevent it long term?

An odd email campaign by Africa Fighting Malaria

Peer Reviewed researchI and a whole bunch of other bloggers were contacted this week by the Astroturf group Africa Fighting Malaria. They wanted us to know a new paper had been published about DDT:

“This information was distributed to global media today. We are sharing it with you now because we hope, regardless of your predisposition, that it will add to the discussion on the risks, benefits and role of resistance in using DDT for malaria control and other public health programs.”

First, I’m extremely flattered to be contacted! Maybe my attempts to try to balance all the lies JunkScience.com is spreading are working! :D
(I’m not really that naive–it’s more likely that there’s no such thing as bad publicity.)

Second, I’ve never actually seen a scientific paper be used by a lobbying organization in this way. Have any of you ever seen this before? Odd.
[Edited 8/18 to add: Ugh. The press release has been picked up and run almost verbatum by Reuters and the Wall Street Journal. ]

Third, if this is all AFM has got for evidence, they are in big trouble. They will probably (unfortunately) still be successful at marketing their message.

Media likes to frame issues as a debate: if you can get two talking heads to argue, that’s great TV. The problem is, presenting both sides of an argument is silly when there is no actual lack of consensus.

Dissent is manufactured by using facts out of context, and finding a scientist that opposes the prevailing view. That lone scientist’s opinions are then given equal weight to the majority of scientists who don’t think using DDT is a good idea, except as a last resort.

So…This paper. I’m going to go through this in detail, since the pro-DDT trolls like to nit pick. Sorry for the length.

FYI, The senior author, Roberts, is on the board of Directors for AFM, and also frequently opines on the DDT topic in the LaRouche magazine 21st Century Science.

It’s a perfectly good paper in terms of its data, and the reporting of it. Some of it, though, is quite…odd. The first thing that made my antennae twitch was the inclusion of dieldrin. It’s a dangerous compound. There’s a very good reason it’s banned in the US, and on the “informed consent” list internationally.
From the paper:

Data will be presented on these chemicals alone. Based on laboratory tests, one of the three (dieldrin) was toxic but had no repellent or irritant actions. Another (alphacypermethrin) had irritant and toxic actions; but had no repellent action. The third chemical (DDT) exhibited all three actions; repellency, irritancy, and toxicity.

Ok, that explains the inclusion of dieldrin. What the authors are doing here is proper science. They are setting up a test so that they will get clear, measurable results about repellents and toxicity.

As a promotional tool, though, this is a stalking horse. The test is deliberately set up to make DDT look as good as possible. Of course DDT repellency looks good in this paper–the other compounds aren’t supposed to be repellent!

As a tool for AFM to try to argue a policy, it’s like… ok, I just can’t come up with an analogy as silly as this.

Next, some of the results actually don’t make DDT look good–in Table 3, for example, cypermethrin produced much, much better mortality results–100% mortality in some cases. Permethrin and it’s relatives are, in fact, commonly used for insecticide treated nets (ITNs).

In terms of the contact irritant properties of DDT, cypermethrin again outperforms DDT, and does it at lower concentrations.

“A significant (P<0.05) contact irritancy response to alphacypermethrin was observed at treatment concentrations of 0.25 nmoles/cm2 and higher… DDT produced significant contact irritancy responses at concentrations of 2.5 nmoles/cm2 and higher…Of the three compounds, only alphacypermethrin gave consistent high levels (72–98% range) of knockdown at all treatment concentrations after a one hour exposure. ” (emphasis mine)

In the lab tests, the score is permethrin 3, DDT 1 (they did get more directional movement in one of the laboratory tests for DDT.) I’ll be fair and point out they were working with DDT resistant mosquitoes, so the difference in concentration is to be expected.

On to the field tests: Here DDT did slightly better than cypermethrin. However, the data isn’t reported in a way that makes it easy to compare between treatments. This is something anyone who’s done field research can sympathize with. It’s really hard to do labor intensive experiments like this on successive days and have uniform conditions. This is just the nature of the field research beast.

From the methods, it seems they tested each compound in the two huts once, on one day, and paired it with a control. The unit of replication is each individual mosquito. This is common in field research, and it’s known as pseudoreplication. This means statistics can still be calculated, but they only apply to the difference between each individual treatment and its control.

There are clear differences between the individual treatments, but I have no way of knowing if that’s really due to the environmental conditions (“high between day variance“) or the treatment. DDT reduced risk from mosquitoes to 73%; alphacypermethrin gave 61% protection. It’s a difference, but again, there is no way to say if it’s a significant difference.

The part of the paper that I think is actually useful is a proposal to quantify the actions of insecticides in several different ways: toxicity, repellency, and contact irritant, and to look at all 3 in evaluating performance. That’s a good idea.

In summary:
Nothing in this paper argues that DDT is a superior performer against malaria mosquitoes. All it says is that when compared with two pesticides deliberately chosen not to be repellent, it performed comparably to them, despite the presence of DDT resistance. This is interesting, but not the huge news they are making it out to be.

In fact, the 12% difference between the compounds that they observed might or might not actually be significantly different–we can’t say for sure.

Additionally, this study only looked at ONE mosquito species. As I’ve mentioned before, many different species are involved in malaria transmission, and they don’t all react the same way to DDT. In some cases, the repellent effects of DDT changed transmission patterns, so that outdoor transmission replaced indoor biting. This effectively guts the effectiveness of both DDT sprays and bed nets.

Choosing dieldrin let Roberts say in both his promo piece for AFM and his publication that it would cause rapid evolution of resistance to the pesticide, and to talk about insecticide resistance as a potential problem. The fact that they were working with mosquitoes already resistant to DDT is glossed over in the press release. Dieldrin is a very rarely used pesticide, and it’s presence in this study is primarily to make DDT look good. It’s a Straw man.

The authors discuss pesticide resistance briefly (“Existing criteria for dealing with insecticide resistance have resulted in countries abandoning DDT when vectors became resistant to the insecticide’s toxic actions”) but don’t discuss the important issue of cross resistance via kdr between mosquitoes resistant to DDT and permethrins. (More about that topic here.)

The reason it’s an important topic is that permethrins are commonly used to treat insect bed nets. You really don’t want to short circuit that, especially since an awful lot of research finds they are extremely helpful in stopping transmission.

Here’s what I really don’t understand:

Why, if insects are already resistant to DDT, and you have other compounds that perform as well or better with less risk of resistance and toxic effects for both people and environment, is anyone so determined to justify keeping DDT in use??

It just doesn’t make sense. The cost/benefit analysis comes into play, but I really am not convinced that the difference is that prohibitive.

I’m going to repeat myself:

DDT is NOT a cure-all solution for malaria. It has to be used–if it is used–carefully, with planning, evaluation, and forethought. It’s easy to understand why some folks want DDT to be a panacea–Malaria is a horrible disease, and children suffer the most. But jumping in and spraying DDT can have the potential to make things worse, not better, in the long run.

Each situation has to be evaluated individually before insecticide choices are made. And insecticides are not the only piece of the malaria puzzle. A 2005 review found that simple environmental interventions–under the control of local people–could reduce malarial transmission up to 80%. I’ve already mentioned Bed nets as another strategy.

An integrated strategy will work much better than ideology.

Drive-By Snarking

Ugh. He’s back. In a way, it’s actually quite a flattering indication that I must be having an effect with my little campaign to point out the (many) inaccuracies in the “DDT is safe, Rachel Carson is the AntiChrist” campaign. I’ve been singled out for not one, but TWO posts on how wrong I am. Exciting, since the other person so honored is Deltoid at ScienceBlogs.com. Not bad company!

It is annoying, though, to have someone quote-mine you, and accuse you of lying and all sorts of other silly things. (Especially when your Real Life is going crazy. Don’t Even Ask about the software launch. It went even worse than I’d feared.)

The part that is most amusing about this, though, is that Mr. Beck has a link to this on his website: World Swim Against Malaria. And the money generated by this event? It goes to buy BED NETS. Not insecticide sprayers, or DDT. Bed nets, that are treated with insecticides, and that work really well, if you can get them to enough of the population. And, if you don’t use DDT and cause the mosquitoes that you’re fighting with the bednets to become cross-resistant.
Recently published example:

“Unfortunately, the knock-down resistance (kdr) gene conferring cross resistance to pyrethroids and DDT has become widespread in anopheline mosquitoes in Africa [2-5]. This resistance may represent a threat to the future success of malaria vector control programmes, based on insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) and indoor residual spraying (IRS). “

I encourage you to support the swim charity, or one of the many other groups fighting Malaria with proven science, not rhetorical nit-picking and nasty personal attacks on a dead woman. (Or a living one, for that matter!)

(BTW, World Swim is registered with Guidestar, and I Looked over their US tax forms–curiously lacking details, so I can’t verify much, but certainly the officers weren’t paid. World Swim isn’t ranked on Charity Navigator, which gave AMREF top marks.)

More DDT hijinks from people who should know better

Ed at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub caught someone blindly repeating the “Rachel Carson is the antichrist” dogma that’s making the rounds. Check out his post.

Here’s some interesting background on the overly positive National Geographic DDT coverage that I didn’t know: Michael Finkel, the author of the malaria piece, was fired from the New York Times for inventing details in his stories.   (From Panda’s Thumb, via Deltoid)

I have some additional grumbles about the video features on the site–the voice over narrator says “DDT is the only way to control mosquitoes…” (emphasis mine). No. That isn’t the case anywhere–we have other options available. It may just be the most affordable or convenient way. But it isn’t the only way.

In case you missed it: Rachel Carson and DDT, the Cliffs Note Version

All actions bear a kind of fruit

Just for the heck of it, one of my NetVibes widgets is the Buddhist Quote of the day. Most of them are koans that just make my head hurt, but today’s I really liked:

“No matter what one does, whether one’s deeds serve virtue or vice, nothing lacks importance. All actions bear a kind of fruit. – Buddha”

If you read here often (Yes! You! I’m talking to all 3 of you!) you’ll know that I’ve been going back and forth about what paper topic to submit to the ESA Natl. Meeting this year.

I really wanted to do a poster about the attacks on Rachel Carson, because I know that most entomologists are unaware of it. It pains me to see a great woman vilified with so many lies.

On the other hand, I also don’t want to do something that will seriously hurt my chances of making a career move in the future. And I think that’s likely, given the political connections of the groups involved, and the rabid persistence of some of the wingnuts running the attacks.

So, in the crunch hours before the deadline to submit an abstract, I decided to do something strategic, rather than….well, what I think is the right thing to do. (I’d emailed a couple of people with more clout than me to ask advice about this, but didn’t hear anything back from them. I’m hoping that just means they are out in the field, and not that I’ve offended them.)

I went with something that would bear fruit for me, rather than the larger community good. I’ve also applied for a new job, and I’m actually, tentatively, kind of excited about it.

If I got it, I’d have an impressive title, and it would be a great transitional position into something better. I love working in student affairs, but it isn’t valued by most academics.

And here we are back at fruit again–I know that the work I do in my current job is meaningful and important. I have the letters and emails from students I’ve helped to prove it. Some even say I’ve saved their life by intervening when they felt suicidal or lost. Nearly every day I go home knowing I’ve made a difference for at least one student.

I don’t regret the choice I made to switch out of the faculty track to serving students directly, but I do wish I didn’t get treated like an inferior, embarrassing, mentally-deficient cousin because of it! What is it with faculty? They are such assholes sometimes.

Oh.
Yeah.
That’s part of the reason I bailed on the faculty tenure-track thing on the first place.

So, while I am a member of the local entomology department, and do committee work for them, I also have lots of people in the department who do not speak to me. I mean, don’t even say hello when we pass in the halls, or–and this hurts worse–when I greet them at off-site entomology meetings.

They carefully avoid making eye-contact, I guess because my “failure” is catching. I still publish–my latest manuscript will be out later this year–but I don’t have giant grants. I don’t have post-docs. I don’t FIT.

Why is my choice to have a life and not be a faculty member anymore so scary and unacceptable? Why is everything I publish and say professionally because of that choice suspect and diminished? Are undergraduates really so icky that contact with them has contaminated me?

So, I clutch my little fruits of emails and letters and happy hugs closely, and try to know that I’m doing the right thing in my job. I write, anonymously, in this blog and try to change some of the silly things people say and believe.

But, sometimes, it’s not nearly enough.