Awfully Interesting Science

Round table with me, Mathew Crawford, Joomi Kim, Jessica Rose and Jonathan Couey

I have thus far used my Substack to share show notes for Rounding the News and my own investigations, but I’d love for some of these other projects to make it into — well, my Dad’s inbox, frankly.

He told me a few weeks ago that he prefers reading my articles over watching the shows I do with Rounding the Earth, which I have no problem with. Still, I wanted to use this opportunity to put some names and faces in front of him, as I’m fairly certain part of him still thinks I’m canoodling with random strangers on shadowy message boards.

Thankfully, the all-star cast that joined me for today’s round table discussion are anything but shadowy (though “strange” might be applicable nonetheless!) So, father (and everyone else), allow me to introduce you to four people who I call colleagues and role models.

Mathew Crawford is an educator and applied statistician with an impressive background on Wall Street. Even more impressive is his decades of innovating in the field of education. He’s authored several math textbooks and helped build a number of successful schools, including the Art of Problem Solving (AoPS) and MetaPrep Education Group, developing entire curriculums for youth, parents and schools. He’s the founder of Rounding the Earth.

Joomi Kim is a biologist, trained in molecular biology and biochemistry. She has a robust history of scientific publications and at least one patent that spawned from her research. Joomi writes an excellent Substack series called “Let’s Be Clear” where she pushes back on the notion that censorship is ever an honest or appropriate way to handle scientific dialogue.

Jessica Rose is a Canadian researcher living in Israel with a diverse scientific background that includes applied mathematics, immunology and computational biology. Her contributions to the COVID-19 research sphere are many, but perhaps none are more impactful than her early and frequent analyses of the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), in which she has identified multiple serious safety signals temporally correlated with the available COVID-19 vaccine products long before they were ever acknowledged by the CDC or FDA.

Finally, Jonathan Couey is a biologist in Pittsburgh, PA whose early research into the “novel coronavirus” led to his suspension from his assistant professorship at the University of Pennsylvania. Despite his early concerns that SARS-CoV-2 was a product of some form of biological warfare, he has now dedicated his platform, Gigaohm Biological, to disassembling that mythology and reintroducing the basics of virology to better inform individuals and institutions moving forward. He was recently tapped by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (as in son of Robert F. Kennedy, and nephew of John F. Kennedy - yes, that Kennedy!) as a consultant for his forthcoming book and to round out his larger circle of advisors on biology and health sciences as he considers seeking the Democratic nomination for the 2024 Presidential race.

I admire these four greatly, and am thrilled to call them friends and role models. In the end, that’s been the best part of the (otherwise largely horrible) last three years; learning never gets old. Especially when you have excellent teachers.

I hope everyone enjoys this very scientific discussion!