Bethany Brookshire
Staff Writer, Science News for Students, 2013–2021
Bethany Brookshire was the staff writer at Science News for Students from 2013 to 2021. She has a B.S. in biology and a B.A. in philosophy from The College of William and Mary, and a Ph.D. in physiology and pharmacology from Wake Forest University School of Medicine. She is also a host on the podcast Science for the People, and a 2019-2020 MIT Knight Science Journalism Fellow.

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All Stories by Bethany Brookshire
- Neuroscience
Female rats face sex bias too
In neurobiological studies, male lab animals tend to outnumber females, which are considered too hormonal. Scientists say it’s time for that myth to go.
- Science & Society
Medical student evaluations appear riddled with racial and gender biases
Women and minorities are more frequently described by personality in medical student evaluations, but men are described by their skills, a study says.
- Science & Society
Statisticians want to abandon science’s standard measure of ‘significance’
For years, scientists have declared P values of less than 0.05 to be “statistically significant.” Now statisticians are saying the cutoff needs to go.
- Health & Medicine
‘Good to Go’ tackles the real science of sports recovery
In ‘Good to Go,’ science writer Christie Aschwanden puts science — and herself — to the test for the sake of sports recovery.
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This blog is dead. Long live the blog.
Blogs are synonymous with the early internet. But what is a blog, and what has it become? A blog is a platform. And this one, Scicurious, is now gone.
- Psychology
Sometimes a failure to replicate a study isn’t a failure at all
Ego depletion is one of the most well-known concepts in social psychology. A recent study can’t confirm an old one showing it exists. Who is right? Probably everyone.
- Animals
50 years ago, armadillos hinted that DNA wasn’t destiny
Nine-banded armadillos have identical quadruplets. But the youngsters aren’t identical enough, and scientists 50 years ago could not figure out why.
- Animals
50 years ago, atomic testing created otter refugees
Nuclear testing on the island of Amchitka caused hundreds of otters to be rehomed 50 years ago. Those hundreds have grown into thousands.
- Health & Medicine
50 years ago, a pessimistic view for heart transplants
Surgeon Christiaan Barnard performed the first successful human-to-human heart transplant in 1967. In 1968, he predicted that patients would survive five years at best. Fortunately, he was wrong.
- Science & Society
For popularity on Twitter, partisanship pays
Pundits claim that we’re all living in political echo chambers. A new study shows that, on Twitter at least, they’re right.
- Science & Society
Women and men get research grants at equal rates — if women apply in the first place
When women get research funding, they’ll stay funded as long as their male counterparts. But getting to the top of that heap is a challenge.
- Genetics
50 years ago, scientists took baby steps toward selecting sex
In 1968, scientists figured out how to determine the sex of rabbit embryos.