Author: tesshardy

The prosperity, innovation and advancements in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths or STEM, is recognised by annual award ceremonies most notably the Nobel Prize. There have been 346 Nobel Prizes awarded in the Science Categories: Physics, Chemistry and Medicine or Physiology.

26 to Women. 320 to Men. 

The world of “STEM” has an infamous reputation coded in sexism and misogyny, the discoveries of women have been the backbone of scientific development. The prize winners (a common motif within the prominent figures of life) are most often old, cis white men. The voices of generations of women are callously silenced and their successes snubbed. Their intellectual property and groundbreaking discoveries that have changed the course of history have been stolen entirely. Examples of  outright theft: discoveries plucked from the hands of our legendary ladies and credit passed on to the white man in his white coat.

What do these all have in common?   

• The structure of DNA
• Nuclear Fission 
• The Cure for Leprosy
• The development of electronic frequencies.

No, it’s not that they are some of the most groundbreaking scientific discoveries that have been made.

They were all discoveries made by women, and stolen from them. 

Rosalind Franklin is the uncredited discoverer of the double helix structure of  DNA. Franklin was fierce and, according to her fellow (male) scientists, ‘short tempered and stubborn’. So much so that they claimed to find working with her to be a ‘challenge’. 

Oh Franklin, you would have loved DIVA by Beyonce. Franklin, you have been the number one diva in this game for a minute.

She worked alongside Maurice Wilkins and Francis Crick. Franklin had immediate beef with Wilkins; their conflicts leading them to work in relative isolation. Unknown to Franklin, Watson and Crick were right nosey nannies and read some of her unpublished data, including the beautiful “Photograph 51“.  Photograph 51 is treated as the philosopher’s stone of molecular biology, the key to the “secret of life” . Using Franklin’s photograph, Watson and Crick created their famous DNA model. Franklin’s contribution was not acknowledged, and in 1962 Crick and Watson won the Nobel Prize for Physiology. Franklin had died from ovarian cancer 4 years prior to this. She wasn’t mentioned once, leaving her as the wronged heroine of DNA. 

Dr Lisa Meitner was the Queen of Physics. She was one of the first women to earn a doctorate from the University of Vienna but fled after Austria was annexed by Germany in 1938. She moved to Sweden and began researching with her partner Otto Hahn (WARNING: MASSIVE ARSEHOLE). Meitner discovered nuclear fission, one of the most groundbreaking scientific discoveries made in history thus far. When publishing their research, Hahn conveniently left off mention of Meitner’s name. In 1944 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry and Meitner wasn’t mentioned once. In 1992, element 109 was named Meitnerium (Mt) in her honour. Many consider Lise Meitner the “most significant woman scientist of the 20th Century”.

Dr Alice Ball was the first woman and black American to get a PhD from the University of Hawai’i. She was also the first black chemistry professor. Big slay. She found the cure for leprosy, ‘The Ball Method’. Ball chemically modified Chaulmoogra oil to become water soluble to be absorbed by the body. Unforntionally, Ball died at only 24 years old. But her story doesn’t end there.. Her advisor Arthur Dean (I think you know where this is going) continued the trials of her treatment. Dean published a method of extracting the active ingredient in chaulmoogra oil without acknowledging the research by Ball. It was known as the ‘Dean Method’. 

Hedy Lamarr was an actress turned inventor. She was a sexy scientist spy. Girlboss. She created a secret radio system that could frequency hop during WW2. She presented this invention to the Navy, but after claiming they didn’t want Lamarr’s technology they stole it for themselves. Lamarr’s work is with us everyday, she birthed Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth. She is Mother. 

So, Women have always been in STEM, and  always will be. Even if forgotten, unacknowledged, robbed or  ridiculed – women in STEM prosper whether we see them or not. Misogyny is grounded deep within the foundations of every aspect of modern society, with intellectual property ownership in STEM being no different. I want to highlight this theft of success, do we not owe that to these women? To amplify the voices of those affected by cruelty of men in hope of fostering a more equitable and inclusive community within science and engineering. I believe that is the true meaning of strength, to fly in the face of ignorance and continue on for the betterment of humanity. 

So, this is my love letter to all women who have been or are in STEM.

We see you and appreciate you.

In October of last year, the British Library fell victim to a cyber-attack and user data was stolen, harvested, and auctioned off on the dark web for a starting price of £600,000. The library refused to pay and was left with no WiFi, no computer access, no website, and no phone lines, and they are still grappling with the waves of consequence. The hacker gang Rhysida is thought to be behind the attack: a ransomware-as-a-service group, meaning clients pay for the group to target a victim of their choice. The attack highlights a new vulnerability that many of us have never acknowledged: our data. 

Gradually, the value of online data collection has become a trillion-dollar-a-year industry. While the global oil market was worth about $1.7 trillion in 2019, the following year left this figure eclipsed by the global data market which valued at about $3 trillion in 2020. As the world moves online, our data becomes our identity. You might think that the platforms are the commodity: Facebook, Google, Instagram, Snapchat.

But you’re wrong. Data is the world’s most coveted commodity and thus, we are the product.  

The concept of data is a tricky one to wrap our heads around. Every second we spend online, buckets of our cyber information are spilled into the web, cloud, or whatever non-threatening metaphor you choose to use. These data points come together to form something of a digital footprint which can be used by buyers to form a predictive algorithm. So, contrary to popular opinion, your phone isn’t listening to you saying you want to go on holiday or that you want a new pair of docs. The magical apparition of ads suggesting cheap flights to Malaga or Doc Martens on sale are not quite as magic as they seem. The data from our online activity across all our apps is used to create an accurate predictive model of our behaviour, all of which is explained in excessively convoluted language in font size 3 T&Cs that we accept without the bat of an eyelid. The algorithm knows you and is one step ahead. You’re just that predictable, bitch! 

Hyper-targeted ads may seem rather unthreatening, with the only tangible consequences being felt by your bank account (my overdraft is screaming!). However this isn’t the whole truth. Data, although it seems like it only has online consequences, could be sending us further and further into the Matrix hand-in-hand with Keanu. We saw this with Cambridge Analytica’s involvement in the 2016 US Election and later in the Brexit Campaign in 2018. Cambridge Analytica was a political consulting firm specialising in using data to push their client’s political campaigns. Alexander Nix, the father of Cambridge Analytica, claimed to have 5000 data points on every US Voter. When helping push Trump into presidency, Cambridge Analytica didn’t target every US Voter (a problem that safely lies 25-or-so years ahead of us, fingers crossed), instead, they used data to build a psychological profile and then target persuadable voters through psychographic online microtargeting. A mouthful, I know. To fall into the category of ‘persuadable’ you must fulfil one of the Big Five personality profiles: agreeable, open to new experiences, extroverted, neurotic, or conscientious. Psychological researchers have shown that the things we “like” on platforms like Facebook can be used to predict our personality traits. Like + Cat meme = agreeable. 

So, follow the programme:

1. Find persuadable personalities through psychographic microtargeting based on data profiles
2. Send them advertisements like fake Facebook ads 
3. Then you’ve made just enough change to sway the polls in your favour

Project Alamo, the online division of the Trump campaign under the direction of Cambridge Analytica, spent around $1M a day on Facebook ads, pushing the “Crooked Hillary” narrative. Fake news was used again for the Brexit agenda following Analytica’s (short-lived) success. 

Yes, it is rather gloomy and dark. But before you run off and delete every social media account you have ever made and change every password in the hopes that you will remain off-grid forever, let me relay some reassuring news. What Cambridge Analytica highlighted through their ability to incite real political change was the need for data rights to be covered by human rights (in the meantime, all that was sacrificed was modern democracy). We need transparency with how our data is being used because it is our property. Data rights are human rights. In this tempest of data advances, navigating this 3D digital chess board depends on our defences. We can prosper as a computer chip in the digital age through an education on data rights and restrictions. 

Technology can make a huge difference and will for many years to come, but it’s how we let it define us that is the big question. So, before you gobble up those  cookies or accept those privacy policies, take a moment to pause. Google is free, use it to educate yourself. Brittney Kaizer (@own.your.data), a Cambridge Analytica whistleblower, saw the light and is now a data rights activist working with the UK Parliament to improve our data rights. 

The battle against cyberware is a long and arduous one. Take Dave Carrol. Following Cambridge Analytica’s bragging about data stealing for Trump, he embarked on the quest to retrieve his data and is still engaged in the legal battle. Cambridge Analytica was the lightning rod for a confluence of feelings about Trump’s election, Facebook, Brexit and the rising use of data modelling as psychological warfare. But it is bigger than just Cambridge Analytica. That big bad wolf may be gone but there are others out there and we must make it through the woods, red cape and all. 

Carrol won’t stop until he gets his data back because it means more than just him,

“All I want is everything, because I’m entitled to it. And so is everyone.”

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1218772110#ref-15

What are girls made of? Hormones, Hysteria And everything nice…

Embarking on the journey through the man-made medical maze is a daunting challenge for many women; there is an undeniable history of perpetual misunderstanding, mystification, and misdiagnosis of women’s health issues. Harking back to the wandering womb in ancient greek medical texts, the Salem witch trials, and the days of “feminine hysteria”, and now to menopause, endometriosis, and postpartum depression. The etymology of “hysteria” is derived from the Greek word ‘hystera’, literally translating to uterus, reinforcing the misogynistic reduction of women and their wellbeing to their reproductive organs. There is a medical orthodoxy masking a horde of misdiagnosis and misconduct cases from male physicians and psychiatrists, creating a vast gender-based disparity in health research and treatment affecting millions of women across the world. 

The UK is thought to have the largest female health gap of all G20 countries with millions of women falling through it annually. According to the new digital healthcare service Livi, ‘over half of UK women fear they’ve been misdiagnosed at least once in their lives, with a quarter believing this is due to ‘simply being a woman’. The knowledge surrounding the differing effects of illness in men and women are unknown. The symptoms of a heart attack or stroke appear differently in women than they do men. The main conditions with severe, prolonged and debilitating symptoms such as PCOS, chronic pain, and endometriosis are woefully under-researched. But what we do know is that women are experiencing institutional scale medical misogyny.

PCOS, or polycystic ovary syndrome, affects  roughly 10% of women at reproductive age in the UK and causes fertility issues nationally. It can take up to 8 years to receive a diagnosis of endometriosis, a devastatingly haunting statistic, actively discouraging me from exploring the condition myself. Endometriosis is a chronic gynological disease where tissue similar to womb tissue grows around the body causing severe symptoms: infertility, fatigue, and period, pelvic and chronic pain. Endometriosis occurs in 4 stages, as it worsens it increases the difficulty to treat; this impact cannot be understated. 

The organisation Chronic Illness Inclusion represents disabled women, like myself, who report recounts of ‘gaslighting’ and ‘accusations of hysteria’ by medical professionals in examples of gender and disability prejudice. They’ve received more than 800 complaints of negative healthcare experiences of disabled women with energy-limiting chronic illness and pain. Chronic pain is prevalent in 34% of the population, but reportedly significantly higher in women. For these cases of chronic pain, the most common treatment is prescription opioids which are disproportionately prescribed to men not women. So women must turn to over the counter medication. 

Let’s take Feminax, a period painkiller, 1 pack includes 16 tablets at £5.49. With severe pain, one may need to take up to 2 tablets every 4 hours, totalling at 12 tablets every 24 hours. For a whole week, the average cycle of a period, that’s nearly 6 packets costing around £33. Annually, this totals at £400 to medicate just one week, every month. Not accounting for any muscular, neurological, or other illness. To self-medicate period pain for 10 years you could find yourself spending over £4,000 just to get through one week of the month. Issues like the pink tax don’t help this issue and create comercial economic misogyny. Feminax is 346 mg of Ibuprofen Lysine and targets women with its little pink box. However, migraine relief is the same medication sold for a fraction of the price at  £2.15. Women are continually misled with this information, encouraging them to spend thousands of pounds on, essentially, a pharmaceutical scam. 

All these symptoms of misinformation, negligence and simple misogyny lead to a bleak and horrific terminal diagnosis. I myself can, reliably, diagnose the UK with a callous case of terminal gender healthcare disparity. The NHS is infected. But this isn’t new. It traces back to Aristotle’s distinction between the superior male “form” and inferior female “matter”. Even Aristotle’s argument is fundamentally wrong and has been heavily disproven. The significance of this idea catalysed centuries of suffering for millions of women.

I must admit, while writing this I’m boiling with rage, frantically typing while listening to A Pearl by Mitski on a meticulously curated ‘female rage playlist’. 

Consider my fuse blisteringly burning…

But the truth I must sadly reveal to you is, I don’t have the answers; the miracle antidote to fix this festering and violent cancer that has infected our healthcare system to the core. But that shouldn’t be my responsibility. Healthcare is a basic human right that I shouldn’t fear or doubt. I want to be heard and respected. I’m not being a bitch, I’m being a fucking person. Women are people. And I will scream, shout, yell, and belt until you hear me and help us.