8:00

work. In the early

8:03

1920s, the development of an

8:05

organization called Science Service with

8:08

funding from a wealthy

8:10

newspaper publisher gave an

8:13

opportunity to hire people regardless of

8:17

who they were, but to

8:19

hire them to write about science. Fortunately,

8:22

the first person who

8:24

was appointed to run that

8:26

organization, Edwin Slossen, was

8:29

married to a suffragist and

8:31

was someone who just said, all right, if you

8:33

can write, if you're a woman, if you're a

8:36

man, doesn't matter, I want

8:38

you to write the best possible story. So

8:41

he opened the door and allowed women

8:44

to succeed or fail on their merits.

8:46

And that was something that was rather

8:49

unusual in journalism for the day. At

8:52

that point, if you were a journalist and

8:54

you wanted to work for a major newspaper,

8:56

it was more likely you'd get assigned to

8:58

the women's pages or to cover

9:00

society news. Covering science

9:02

was not something that the women reporters

9:05

on the New York Times or other

9:08

major newspapers in the United States were

9:10

allowed to do or even encouraged

9:12

to do. Can

9:15

you tell me a little bit

9:17

about the Science Service? I think

9:19

today people don't understand how newspapers

9:21

were fed stories from a service

9:23

organization like that and were there

9:25

bylines? What happened? How did that

9:27

work? Well, Science

9:29

Service sold stories without

9:32

bylines as wire

9:34

service stories. They sold what

9:36

they called enterprise feature stories with

9:38

bylines. And then they

9:41

also published their own newsletter and

9:44

later they had their own radio show. And

9:46

all of that content was content

9:48

that anyone could use. Their prices

9:50

were rather minimal. The whole idea

9:52

was to get science out there

9:54

to the public any way they

9:56

could do it. Can

22:00

you tell me a bit about that? That's

22:02

again a matter of the culture of the

22:04

workplace at the time. So,

22:07

Edmond Slossen had opened the door and

22:10

given these women opportunity to

22:12

write, to have a

22:15

job, to see their articles

22:17

in print. The

22:19

ability to have equal pay for equal

22:21

work was something that was going to

22:23

be many, many decades in

22:25

the future, even if we

22:27

have it now. There was

22:29

still a tendency to pay

22:32

men more, even if

22:34

they were doing the same writing

22:36

on the same staffs of

22:38

newspapers and magazines. So,

22:41

it was more a matter of

22:43

science service being in the sort

22:45

of mainstream of cultural attitudes toward

22:48

women and the pay scale for

22:50

women. Hmm, I see. I see.

22:55

Moving now to the scientists themselves,

22:57

it's clear from the book that Stafford

23:00

did understand that women scientists were also

23:02

not getting their due. Jane

23:04

even wrote about a victim of the

23:06

Matilda Effect, when male scientists

23:08

take credit for the work of female scientists.

23:12

Coincidentally, the incident that Jane Stafford

23:14

was involved in was about a

23:16

female scientist called Matilda, Matilda Brooks,

23:18

who had discovered a way to

23:20

treat cyanide poisoning. But

23:23

Stafford failed to attribute this discovery to

23:25

Brooks initially. This occurred

23:27

because Brooks' collaborators failed to include

23:29

her in the journal article about

23:31

it. So, how did Stafford

23:33

write this wrong? Can you tell

23:35

me that story? What Matilda

23:37

came up with was a method of

23:39

treating people for cyanide poisoning. And

23:42

the two, and possibly three, male

23:44

scientists just went on and presented

23:47

papers and talked about the work

23:49

as if she had nothing whatsoever

23:52

to do with it. And

23:54

she had not even been in a collaboration with

23:56

them. And then Jane Stafford

23:58

stepped in. And Jane Stafford. stepped in,

24:00

yes, which was one of

24:02

the few ways in which you could correct the

24:05

record at the time, unlike today when there

24:07

are more, let's say, formal ways

24:09

in which one can attempt to

24:11

get a scientific journal or an

24:13

association to acknowledge a matter of

24:16

theft of ideas. In those days,

24:18

Jane Stafford's newspaper

24:20

article turned out to be a fairly

24:22

effective way to get the point across.

24:24

And there is a bit of correspondence

24:26

saying that at least one of the

24:28

men seem to have expressed

24:31

regret. Oh that's good, that's

24:33

good at least. It

24:35

makes me think of the discrimination that both

24:38

the scientists and the science writers faced at

24:40

that time. Maybe it was part of the

24:42

times, but Jane

24:44

was a very proficient and well-respected

24:47

writer and she was part

24:49

of an organization that won

24:51

awards for science writing. And

24:53

yet, when they came

24:55

to arrange the award ceremonies, there

24:58

was something rather bizarre happening there.

25:00

Can you talk a little bit about that? She

25:03

had been one of the founding members of the

25:05

National Association of Science Writers and

25:07

when the organization was being given

25:10

in a major award and

25:12

she was also an officer of the organization

25:14

at that point, unfortunately the

25:16

group that was giving the award

25:19

decided they were going to schedule

25:21

the award ceremony in a

25:23

club in which only men could be members

25:25

and where women were not

25:28

admitted into the building. And

25:30

even though her boss, Watson

25:33

David, objected several times when

25:35

this kind of thing happened,

25:37

when she was not invited

25:39

to something, for example, to

25:41

an important press event, the

25:44

organizations often would refuse to

25:46

change the venue and continue

25:48

to keep that male-only

25:50

exclusive kind of club

25:52

venue for quite a

25:54

few years. What

25:57

do you think this tells us about the larger environment?

26:00

that they were working in at the time. It

26:03

could be very discouraging. One

26:05

of the things that I admire

26:08

about these women is their

26:10

persistence. They never gave up. They

26:13

never stopped writing. They

26:15

kept learning more about science.

26:18

They kept doing their best

26:20

to cover every aspect of

26:23

the particular fields that they

26:25

were monitoring. They

26:27

seemed to always find new ways to

26:29

express what they were writing about. If

26:32

you look at their output, they

26:34

just became better and better writers

26:36

as they got on. Some

26:39

of them, like Margie Vanderwater, were

26:41

writing right up until the ends

26:43

of their actual lives within

26:45

months of their deaths. So

26:47

they were just strong women? Exceedingly

26:50

strong. Exceedingly strong women.

26:54

Intelligent, funny, resilient,

26:57

interested in the world around them, including

27:00

popular culture, but

27:03

also sensitive in an amazing

27:05

way given their

27:07

accomplishments, sensitive to

27:09

the needs and the problems of

27:13

the people they were writing for, and

27:16

especially as we get into World War

27:18

II, sensitive to the

27:20

plight of people who were caught up in

27:22

the war. That's a

27:26

lovely way of putting it. So do

27:28

you have a favorite writer

27:30

that resonated with you and

27:32

your career? No. That's

27:36

like asking which is my favorite pet

27:38

of all time. I once

27:40

thought that my dream would be if

27:43

I could go back in time and have all of

27:45

those women around my dining room table and

27:48

have all of the time, and

27:50

then just sit in the corner and

27:52

listen to them talk and laugh and

27:56

share experiences together. Because they really were an

27:58

amazing group of women coordinated

28:00

and worked together, which is also

28:02

another message, I think, for how

28:05

perhaps we can be in the

28:07

workplace in the future. That's

28:10

a nice way of putting it, a

28:12

dinner party with all these fantastic women

28:14

laughing and telling their stories. So

28:19

how did the work of

28:21

these women's science journalists shape

28:24

the idea of science

28:26

and of public health

28:28

at the time that they were writing? And I guess

28:31

they were starting to write in the 20s, 30s, up

28:33

through the 40s, 50s and 60s,

28:35

even. One

28:38

of the ways in which they change

28:40

the reporting on science

28:42

and medicine and public health

28:45

is that they are interacting

28:47

frequently with the experts in

28:49

those fields and attuned

28:52

to the issues that are

28:54

coming up in those communities,

28:57

in particular as the

28:59

concern about a rise

29:01

in venereal disease and

29:03

sexually transmitted diseases occurs.

29:06

They also were looking

29:09

at issues of diet,

29:11

nutrition, which was

29:14

a particularly important issue during the Depression

29:16

as people didn't have often enough money

29:18

to buy the right kind of food.

29:21

So throughout they're always pioneering

29:24

and having their ears to the

29:26

ground and attuned to what's occurring

29:28

within the field they're covering, whether

29:32

it's archaeology or

29:35

anthropology or chemistry

29:37

or public health.

29:40

And then bringing the newest,

29:42

latest information to their readers

29:45

in ways that would be

29:47

interesting, but also accurate

29:51

and comprehensive. Thank

29:54

you very much, Marcel, for talking to

29:56

us today. It's been an absolute pleasure

29:59

to have you. you on Lost Women

30:01

of Science Conversations. Thank

30:03

you very much for the opportunity. This

30:09

episode of Lost Women of Science Conversations

30:11

was produced by Sophie McNulty. Our

30:14

thanks go to Marcel Czachowski-Lafollette for taking the

30:16

time to talk to us. Stephanie

30:19

de Leonczyk recorded the conversation.

30:22

Lexia Tia was our fact checker.

30:24

Dizzy Yunnan composes all our music.

30:26

And Karen Meverak designs our art.

30:29

Thanks to Jeff Delvisio to our

30:31

publishing partner Scientific American. Thanks

30:34

also to executive producers, Amy Schaff and

30:36

Katie Haffner. Lost Women

30:38

of Science is funded in part by

30:40

the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the

30:42

Anne Wojcicki Foundation. We're distributed

30:44

by PRX. Thanks for

30:47

listening and do subscribe to Lost

30:49

Women of Science at lostwomenofscience.org. So

30:52

you'll never miss an episode. From PRX.