When we think of scientists, we hear a man's voice.
— Elise Andrew
To be honest, what I struggled with in my degree is what's so helpful when it comes to social media in that I lack focus. I'll start reading about evolutionary biology and end up on quantum physics. While that makes writing your dissertation very difficult, for a page like IFLS, that's amazing because I get a wide range of everything.
My degree is in biology, and it will always be my first love. Evolution, ecology, genetics - they were the textbooks I was devouring as a teenager, and it was there that my love of science grew.
It's a sad day when a woman being funny and interested in science is considered newsworthy.
Often, some people dress something up to make it sound scientific, use scientific words, call themselves doctor something-or-other, and then you look them up, and they're trying to make it sound like something it's not. There's this entire field that's adding the word 'quantum' to everything. It doesn't even make sense in that context.
In science, every question answered leads to 10 more. I love that science can never, ever be finished. From a young age, people think, 'Science is hard and boring.' We don't tell children, 'Yes, you have to learn these formulae and theorems, but then you go on to learn about nuclear reactions and stars.'
People in general romanticize nature, and they make it out to be something that it isn't because humans are so awful. And yes, we are absolutely screwing up this planet, but that is only because we have the capabilities to do so. Animals are not better than us. They are not nicer than us.
There aren't that many female role models in science. There are a couple of women, but mostly you've got Neil deGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Krauss - they're all guys. Bill Nye the Science Guy. I love that guy, but it's all guys.
I'm not a model or an actress; I'm just a 23 year old who likes to talk about science. Why does what I look like matter so much?
Sometimes I worry that science communication is just preaching to the choir, speaking to the converted. Social media gives us an amazing opportunity to reach new people.
A lot of people view science as dull or boring, and I think the stance we take, using humour, not taking ourselves too seriously... I think people enjoy that. I think it's quite refreshing.
There is a lot of pseudo-science and nonsense out there on the Internet, and everyone feels the need to send it to me. And I'm sitting there thinking, 'It isn't real! Stop it!'
I remember my first lecture on my first day in evolutionary biology, how populations and species change. I sat thinking, 'Why doesn't everyone know this?' I look back on it almost in horror: I came so close to not knowing how exciting our world is.
I'm such a generalist. I love everything. If I had the opportunity, I think I would do about 10 different degrees, five different master's degrees, probably as many Ph.D.s, and you can't do that.
I'm very lucky because people send me a lot of stuff and post cool articles and pictures on my wall, which does make life a lot easier for me. When we were at 60,000 or 100,000 'likes,' I was still having to source the content myself, and I was constantly trolling the Internet, whereas now things are sent to me, which does make it a lot easier.
My attention is constantly being caught! I'm constantly learning, constantly becoming fascinated by new things - I'm lucky that I read incredibly quickly and absorb a lot of information easily, because otherwise I don't think I'd ever get my head out of a book!
I was absolutely astonished by an onslaught of comments expressing their absolute shock that IFLS is run by a woman.
If you're going to believe crazy things, people are going to laugh at you.
I sleep five or six hours a night, then crash at the weekend. I'm learning to eat properly and exercise. I relax by watching silly sitcoms like 'Scrubs' and 'How I Met Your Mother.'
One of the reasons I'm so passionate about science is that it wasn't correctly taught to me. I got excited at university.
I don't really understand why people are so interested in me, personally. I'm just a curator. I'm just telling people things I think are cool.
