Highlighting the human side of science can only make science better.

So, I still don’t have a clear answer for how best to navigate the tension between structural sexism and personal effectiveness and well-being.

But humanity is probably part of the solution.

#humanScientist

(n/n)

Scientists also want to be humans.

The reversed Finkbeiner approach addresses this by talking about male scientists in a way that would fail the Finkbeiner test if it was a female scientist.

That resonates much better with me because...

(5/n)

I have considered applying the Finkbeiner Test to how I think and talk about other scientists - and myself. But it never felt quite right, because…

(4/n)

Scientists just want to be scientists.

The Finkbeiner Test was proposed for journalism: a checklist ensuring that profiles of female scientists don’t focus on gender, family, or personality when equivalent profiles of male scientists would not.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finkbei...

(3/n)

On a structural level, sexism in science is real and must be challenged hard.

On a personal level, being seen as a woman scientist can be exhausting - explaining your childcare arrangements, questioning your nurturing side, thinking about competitiveness in a gender-bias world.

(2/n)

😅

💯 agree it’s a backwards expectation for women to take their husbands’ names! In this case, it was simply about seizing the chance to swap a name that sounds exactly like a word meaning “idiot” (or worse) for a more melodic one. Glad that particular feature of my name isn’t too obvious 😅

7/7 Looking back, Katharina Rubi would have been the better choice. And this is one of the few regrets I have, but at least it comes with a story. And what’s in a name anyway? 🌹

6/7 My first paper set me off on pursuing a clinician-scientist career, but its scientific impact was less enduring than my marriage. Imaging genetics quietly faded (for good scientific reasons) while Mr Rubi and I kept evolving together ❤️

5/7 I published my first paper on these results under Schmack et al. So by the time I married Mr Rubi, my maiden name had already made it into PubMed. And that surely was a very good reason not to change it. 📄

4/7 We found that people with a certain COMT variant—an enzyme that breaks down dopamine—showed stronger brain responses to reward cues. I was intrigued by how a single base-pair difference could change how anticipatory joy may feel! 🧬

3/7 Life happened, and instead of moving on, we moved in. I also stumbled into fMRI: watching the brain at work in an awake, feeling person drew me in and led me to my doctoral research on dopamine. 🧠

2/7 When I met the wonderful Mr Rubi, it was anything but clear that we would end up sticking together for the next decades. He was amazing and I was in love, but we were young, curious, and very not ready to settle.

💔 Thank you for sharing and sorry to hear what you have had to go through! Wishing you exciting new opportunities ahead!

Congratulations 🎊 So well deserved!