Laboratory life at Berkeley is about to undergo some changes; whether for better or worse depends on implementation, a willingness to be sensible, and your own personal perspective.

One (of the many) things I loved about coming to Berkeley was a relaxed lab atmosphere. If I am pipetting a caustic reagent, I wear gloves, lab coat and eye protection. If I am working with a volatile substance, I work in a hood. And if I need to pour filtered sea water, I, well … I don’t put on my lab coat, or even reach for a pair of gloves. Having a relaxed lab atmosphere does not mean a disregard for safety–it means that everyone has been sufficiently trained to make proper decisions regarding the safety of themselves and others, and that each person is trusted to take not just the safest, but also the most sensible actions.

But a lawsuit against UC is mandating stricter rules that will further retract from an individual’s power–and responsibility–to make their own good decisions. And although intentions are good and sound safety practices an absolute must, I believe that stricter rules–especially blanket policies–do not equal a safer working environment. In some cases, they may even lead to the opposite.

Sometimes, I wonder, “Is there anybody outside of my small field, or even just the 5th floor, that cares about my research? Is the rest of the world interested in the questions and discoveries that are born within the walls of the Valley Life Science Building?” Yes: they are interested, and Berkeley graduate student Lindsey Dougherty recently proved this by capturing the attention and imagination of the outside world with her research on Disco Clams. And like an underground electronic track that goes viral, her Disco Clams are now pulsing through more than just the science-geek scene. Lindsey is part of the Caldwell Lab and Integrative Biology (a member of my cohort, I’ll proudly claim).

Lindsey, in a nutshell, is an extension of the ocean. She surfs (often braving the cold, 6 a.m. waves of Pacifica or Half Moon Bay before a day at the lab), she dives (she was a dive master long before she came to Berkeley), and she is obsessed with her clams. You will be hard pressed to find another graduate student quite so excited about their model organism as Lindsey. I remember one ecstatic—and concerned—Lindsey talking about feeding her clams when they first arrived.

But it’s hard not to be excited about disco clams. Lindsey saw her first disco clam (a rare sight in its natural habitat) while diving in Indonesia. Her reaction to its strobing lights was most appropriate – she had a flash underwater dance party. When she surfaced, she told everyone that she was going to do a Ph.D. on disco clams, eliciting a few laughs. She spent the next couple of years trying to research them, contacting countless professors, but finding little information about these spectacular creatures. Eventually, she joined Roy Caldwell’s lab, and after a little convincing and a slow start (virtually nothing is known about their life history and behavior) she is now researching her dream organism and the question she is ultimately most interested in: why disco clams flash.

For those of you who are interested in effectively communicating science in a way that will make a political and social impact, I suggest taking a course with cognitive linguist/neuroscientist George Lakoff. You will discuss the tools necessary for effective communication (and conviction): the use of language, words, grammar, setting, sentence structure, and understanding of your audience, but at a level much, much deeper than you may have ever thought to consider. This is not a simple course on communication—it is the science of communication (mostly within a political context). It is the neural theory of thought and language.

Lakoff began his path in linguistics the first year MIT began offering such a program, and was among Noam Chomsky’s first group of students in this field. Lakoff studies the neural foundations of conceptual systems, the meaning behind metaphors, and the embodied structure of grammar. What is the framework your words evoke? How does grammar instruct how we think? How can scientists use science to get their point across in a more effective manner?