About Stephen Matheson
- Author, editor, scientist, critic
- Former developmental cell biologist
- Evolutionist
- Humanist
- NCSE Steve
- Baseball fan
- Bardolator
- Bicyclist
- Beer lover
Quintessence of Dust explores science, society, and human nature, focusing on genetics, development, evolution, neuroscience, systems biology, and topics related to scientific literacy. I occasionally discuss intelligent design, creationism, science denial, and other political/social influences on scientific literacy. Additional topics: philosophy, baseball, scientific culture, and Shakespeare. My main theme is scientific explanation.
In regular posts, I discuss a recent article in the scientific literature. I will bias my selections toward open-access papers so that readers can read the articles themselves regardless of academic affiliation.
For basics on my perspectives, see my 2007 post on common descent and explanation. My very first post has a little more detail about the blog, and my second one explains the name. The original About page description from 2007 is here.
The header image highlights my favorite things: Shakespeare, neuroscience (that's my brain), genetics, Scotland and all things British (the Celtic cross), developmental biology (that's a human embryo, image from Wellcome Images), and evolution. The Celtic cross (the famous St. Martin's cross in Iona) also formerly represented Christianity on my blog. I'm no longer a Christian, but I'm happy to acknowledge Christian cultural contributions.
More about Stephen
- My day job: I am Editor-in-Chief at Cell Reports and editor and contributor at CrossTalk, the Cell Press blog
- My research in developmental cell biology (at the Van Andel Institute and Calvin College)
- Research publications (at PubMed, Mendeley, or download PDFs at my Google site)
- My Google Scholar profile
- My ORCID record
- Science writing (at my personal site)
- Presentations and appearances
- Vita (at my Google site)
- Best of Quintessence of Dust (science writing)
- Blogger profile
- All writing on Quintessence of Dust expresses my personal views, and none expresses or implies the views or policies of my employer, which is Cell Press.
- My work as a journal editor places some constraints on what I write. Specifically, I will never comment on editorial policies at Cell Reports or other journals, nor will I discuss any paper at Cell Reports that is not already published. Read CrossTalk for my writing on scientific publishing and editorial work.
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Posts
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