Tara C. Smith
Associate Professor, lab rat (microbiologist/infectious disease epidemiologist) and occasional blogger, full-time nerd.
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Posts by this author
October 18, 2017
As several others have already noted, after almost 12 years, Scienceblogs is shutting down at month's end. Though I've done most of my writing elsewhere over the last few years, I'd certainly like to keep the archives of this blog up somewhere, and maintain it as a place to post random musings that…
September 29, 2017
Spring, 2004. I was in the second year of my post-doc, with kids ages 4 and 2. Because I was no longer a student, the full brunt of my student loan payments had hit me, which were collectively almost double the cost of my mortgage. To put it generously, money was tight. Truthfully, we were broke as…
July 26, 2017
I recently finished a 2-year stint as an American Society for Microbiology Distinguished Lecturer. It's an excellent program--ASM pays all travel expenses for lecturers, who speak at ASM Branch meetings throughout the country. I was able to attend Branch meetings from California and Washington in…
May 31, 2017
A claim that scientists need to quit making:
I've written about these types of claims before. The first one--a claim that antimicrobial peptides were essentially "resistance proof," was proven to be embarrassingly wrong in a laboratory test. Resistance not only evolved, but it evolved…
October 27, 2016
The news over the past 24 hours has exclaimed over and over:
HIV's Patient Zero Exonerated
How scientists proved the wrong man was blamed for bringing HIV to the U.S.
Researchers Clear "Patient Zero" from AIDS Origin Story
H.I.V. Arrived in the U.S. Long Before ‘Patient Zero’
Gaetan Dugas: "patient…
September 27, 2016
The 2013-2016 West African Ebola virus outbreak altered our perception of just what an Ebola outbreak could look like.
While none of the three primary affected countries--Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea-have had a case since April 2016, the outbreak resulted in a total of over 28,000 cases of…
June 23, 2016
[Obvious warning is obvious: potential spoilers for A Song of Ice and Fire novels/Game of Thrones TV series below].
While no one will claim that George R.R. Martin's epic series, "A Song of Ice and Fire," is historically accurate, there are a number of historical parallels that can be drawn from…
May 27, 2016
E. coli, from Wikipedia commons
We've been expecting it, and now it's here.
Yesterday, two article were released showing that MCR-1, the plasmid-associated gene that provides resistance to the antibiotic colistin, has been found in the United States. And not just in one…
February 3, 2016
Like cockroaches, the conspiracy theorists suggesting the Zika virus outbreak is anything but a normal, naturally-occurring event have begun to come out of the woodwork. To be expected, the theories they're espousing make no sense scientifically, and each theory is incompatible with the others, but…
February 1, 2016
As you've probably seen, unless you've been living in a cave, Zika virus is the infectious disease topic du jour. From an obscure virus to the newest scare, interest in the virus has skyrocketed just in the past few weeks:
I have a few pieces already on Zika, so I won't repeat myself here. The…
December 15, 2015
I have a paper out in the Christmas issue of BMJ on the coming zombie apocalypse.
You read that right. And yes, it was peer-reviewed.
I've discussed previously how I've used the attention paid to zombies to talk about infectious diseases with children and other audiences; and to bring some science…
September 10, 2015
A pig flying at the Minnesota state fair. Picture by TCS.
I've been involved in a few discussions of late on science-based sites around yon web on antibiotic resistance and agriculture--specifically, the campaign to get fast food giant Subway to stop using meat raised on antibiotics, and a…
August 20, 2015
Long-term readers of the blog know of my interest in HIV denialism, especially as it is maintained and spread via the Internet. In my online travels, I recently met John Strangis via this blog post. John has an interesting story to tell regarding his experiences with HIV denialism and…
August 4, 2015
Almost a year ago, I wrote about a terrible article that was published in the journal Frontiers in Public Health. FiPH is a legitimate, peer-reviewed journal, and they had just published a manuscript that was straight-up HIV denial, titled "Questioning the HIV-AIDS hypothesis: 30 years of dissent…
April 30, 2015
I've been working on livestock-associated Staphylococcus aureus and farming now for almost a decade. In that time, work from my lab has shown that, first, the "livestock-associated" strain of methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) that was found originally in Europe and then in Canada, ST398, is in…
February 10, 2015
I've written previously about Mayim Bialik, an actress previously on the TV show "Blossom" and currently on the "The Big Bang Theory." She has a PhD in neuroscience and is a brand ambassador for Texas Instruments. Sounds great, right?
She's also gone on the record stating that her family is "a non-…
January 15, 2015
Measles has come to the happiest place on Earth. As of this writing, a total of 32 cases of measles have been linked to Disneyland visits that took place between December 17th and 20th. About 75% of the cases identified to date were not vaccinated, either because they chose to forgo vaccines or…
November 1, 2014
I've been asked several times about this NY Post article on the CDC's "admission" that a sneeze could spread Ebola. The Post (which, I should note, is the least credible newspaper in New York City, for those not familiar with the paper) suggests that the CDC has changed their tune regarding the…
October 27, 2014
Left to right, Granny Beck, my Grandma June, and Great-Great Grandma Bertha, circa 1961. Who knows what was on the menu that day.
My Great-Grandpa and Granny Beck were, in some ways, ahead of their time. My Grandpa’s mom and step-dad, they both went through scandalous divorces and then switched…
October 20, 2014
The Hot Zone was first released in 1994, the year I graduated high school. Like many readers, that book and Laurie Garrett's The Coming Plague* really sparked my interest in infectious diseases. In some sense, I have those books to thank (or blame?) for my career.
But I'm still going to criticize…
October 19, 2014
Though I haven't had a chance to write about this here, I have an article at Mic.com on Kent's experience with Ebola exposure in our area. Amber Vinson, the second Ebola-infected nurse in Texas, is a Kent State alumna and has relatives that work here. Our experience on campus so far is described…
September 30, 2014
My first article at The Guardian is up: No, Ebola in Dallas does not mean you and everyone else in the US is going to get it, too.
September 25, 2014
Everything old is new again. For years on this blog, I wrote about HIV denial and the few fringe scientists and journalists who espoused it. I attracted a host of trolls, some of whom repeatedly attacked my credibility, my appearance, even showed up at my academic office. One of the most prolific…
September 23, 2014
Have a new article up at Slate. Nine months into the worst-ever Ebola outbreak, here's where we stand.
September 18, 2014
Gregg Mitman's article in the September 17th New England Journal of Medicine, "Ebola in a Stew of Fear," is unfortunately all too prescient. Dr. Mitman highlighted "the ecology of fear" in Western Africa. Fear is present on both the part of Westerners (scared of Africa's yellow fever, malaria,…
August 18, 2014
I'm happy to welcome Dr. Heather Lander to the blogosphere and Twitterverse. She's a virologist who has done work with some of the world's deadliest pathogens in a high-security biosafety level 4 laboratory. This is the type of lab where one must wear "space suits" to work with organisms. You've…
August 8, 2014
By the same lead author that published the pig Ebola transmission paper comes a new publication examining airborne transmission among primates. In these, Ebola did *not* spread between non-human primates (NHPs) via air. I sent an email to the PI to comment; will update the post if he responds, but…
August 7, 2014
Yambuku, Zaire, 1976. A new disease was spreading through the population. Patients were overcome by headaches and bloody diarrhea. The disease was spreading through entire families and wiping them out.
Eight hundred and twenty-five kilometers to the northeast, a similar epidemic was reportedly…
August 6, 2014
For several days now, people have been quoting The Hot Zone* at me as a realistic account of an Ebola outbreak. Just...no. I have an article up today at mic.com addressing this and some more Ebola myths: Everything you know about Ebola is wrong.
*Entertaining as hell, but very over-dramatized.