Uncategorized – Science Cafe

Science Cafe, September 23, 2025: Piltdown Man

The “Science Fraud of the Century” – Lessons from Piltdown for today.

With the Great War on the horizon, a group of British paleontologists unveiled their answer to Heidelberg man: Piltdown Man, the “first Englishman”. It would take a full 40 years to unravel the “science fraud of the century”. Diligent work since then has given us a much clearer picture of how, and by whom, the hoax was accomplished. Piltdown is now held up as an example of the self-correcting nature of science, or, by some, as evidence of the gullibility of scientists. We are entering a new age that furnishes would-be swindlers with sophisticated tools to falsify scientific results.

Join Alex Straiker in a conversation about the hoax from a history of science perspective, and what we might learn from it about the conduct of science in the 21 st century.

Science Café, October 16, 2024: Sugar

Is every sugar sweet?

Come learn about the varied roles of carbohydrates (from apple cider to blood typing to microbiome modulator) and find out how Professor Nicola Pohl’s lab at IU is working to expand our knowledge by creating automated ways to assemble and analyze complex sugars..

Matter/Antimatter Asymmetry

The asymmetry of matter and antimatter is one of the greatest puzzles in physics. All particles have antimatter versions that are nearly identical, but with mirrored properties such as the opposite electric charge. When an antimatter and a matter particle meet, they annihilate in a flash of energy.

If antimatter and matter are mirrored copies of each other, they should have been produced in equal amounts in the Big Bang. But today there’s nearly no antimatter left in the universe. We only see it in some radioactive decays and a fraction of cosmic rays. So what happened to it?

Dr. Mike Snow, IU professor of physics will talk about this mystery.

The Dark Sides of Empathy

Wednesday, July 17th, 7pm at Hopscotch

Professor Fritz Breithaupt, director of the Experimental Humanities Lab will discuss his work on empathy.

What can trigger empathy and what can block empathy? Empathy is often considered the basis of moral action, but plays a central part in a variety of highly problematic behaviors. The ability to empathize with other people proves to be a prerequisite for deliberate acts of humiliation and cruelty. Even well-meaning compassion has many unintended consequences.

This talk will discuss a range of phenomena, including vampirism (helicopter parents wishing to relive a better youth), empathic sadism, humanitarianism (in which people identify with helper-heroes to feel good about themselves at the costs of holding others in the victim role, but mistake this for empathy), and dynamics of polarization (empathetic side-taking that leads to aggression), all concepts and ideas from the recent book, The Dark Sides of Empathy.

Several things to note:

1) We’re starting at 7pm
2) We’re on the 3rd Wednesday
3) We’re at Hopscotch on Morton & Dodds
4) Hopscotch doesn’t have much food, which is why we’re beginning at 7pm (They do have great coffee, tea, beer, and pastries all the time.)

October 25th: Why is it so hard to create safe and effective new drugs?

We rely on drugs to solve many of our problems: to treat diseases, to ease our pain, to entertain us. But drugs come with risks, and even a widely used ‘household’ drug such as acetaminophen results in hundreds of fatalities each year in the US.

Join us as Natalia Murataeva, Ph.D. talks about some of the challenges in developing drugs that are both effective and safe.

September 27th: Open Scholarship — How Publishing Innovation is Changing Scientific Research

The ability to verify and replicate scientific discovery relies on meaningful access to research output, historically communicated via academic journals, trade publications, and books. The rising costs to access scientific research coupled with advances in data-driven methods have made traditional publishing models so unsustainable that 90% of scientists interviewed by Nature Publishing Group believe we are facing a reproducibility crisis. In a world of computational methods, artificial intelligence, 3D modeling, and a linked open web, pay-to-access scholarly journals are no longer adequately communicating or enabling access to scientific discovery. Alternative models aim to drive publishing towards more open, accessible, and impactful practices.

Open Access logo
Join us as Jamie WIttenberg, head of IU LIbraries Scholarly Communication Department asks: What does it mean to publish openly? What is the relationship between reproducibility and openness? How does open access change the way we do science?

The STEM PhD Job Market

Join us as Dr. Steven Ouelette (CTO, Kinasense) explains the challenges facing STEM graduates, and discusses strategies to prepare for and navigate a wide variety of emerging careers in industry.

6:30pm, Wedneday, May 31, 2017 at Bears Place, the back room

The STEM PhD Job Market: Landing a Career Requires Thinking Beyond Academia Early and Often The academic postdoctoral market has been described as a “crisis”, “bubble”, and “glut.” There are far more postdocs than the number of available careers that require academic postdoctoral training. This talk will give an overview of current data that shows why STEM PhD graduates should reconsider a postdoctoral appointment as the default career path. Strategies and resources for enhancing graduate training to promote career readiness will be discussed. Finally, a case study will be presented that demonstrates these strategies in action.

The Art of Astronomy

Join us as Professors Liese van Zee and Caty Pilachowski take us through the basics of imaging science as applied in astronomy, and explain how knowledge of the electromagnetic spectrum inform us about different environments in the universe. Taken together, these principles provide an ability to interpret astronomical images in order to learn about the universe and understand our physical world.

The Beauty of Diversity: The American Toad

Roger Hangarter

The Science of Obesity

Natalia Murataeva