Lisa M.P. Munoz

Later this week, I will be joining #science crew of the R/V Armstrong as they explore the waters off the New England Coast. This research cruise is part of reporting for a NEW BOOK I am writing, about field-based research. @columbiaup.bsky.social @uslter.bsky.social @whoi.edu 🛥️ 📘 🌊 #scicomm #writers

“What are you doing here?” growled the watchdog. “Just killing time,” replied Milo apologetically. “You see——” “KILLING TIME!” roared the dog—so furiously that his alarm went off. “It’s bad enough wasting time without killing it.” And he shuddered at the thought.

Well-intentioned role-model books may not always align with what motivation science recommends. The fix isn't to distort scientists' stories — just to tell them in ways that are both true and motivating.

We found that the most gendered experience wasn’t work-life balance, the focus of most retention efforts. It was feeling devalued, in formal evaluations, but particularly in everyday interactions. Unlike every other topic, the gender gap in devaluation was larger among more senior faculty.

As a PhD student designing my first survey, I added what I thought was a throwaway question at the end. To my surprise, thousands of academics answered it! The paper is out today: doi.org/10.1093/pnas...

Helen Branswell has been a shining example of truth-telling, decency, and rationality at a time when those qualities are in desperately short supply. We're all going to miss her at @statnews.com so much, and I know many others will, too. www.statnews.com/2026/10/13/h...

“We often think that all adolescents are irrational, too emotional... But in reality, these assumptions often are more telling of how adults perceive youth than that they are actually true.” Read this new Q&A with Eveline Crone to get a preview of her #CNS2027 keynote:

“She asked the powers at NASA to let her add a safeguard to prevent that error in a real flight, and they laughed it off as too unlikely… When an astronaut did make that blooper during the Apollo 8 mission, it caused necessary navigational data to vanish, and they called Hamilton in to get it back.”

Easily my favorite detail:

lede = introductory section in journalism bury the lede = hiding the most relevant pieces of a story within other distracting information Allegedly, it’s spelled ‘lede’ to avoid confusion with ‘lead,’ which was the strip of metal that would separate lines of type.

Hope your day was better than Darwin’s, on this day 165 years ago

The drive to help patients is the fundamental source of the culture of urgency that permeates so much of biomedical research. Delays cost literal lives. 🧪 #SupportBreakthroughs #SupportScience

"Anything worth remembering came from a person who did not know where she or he was going until arriving. No shortcut gets you there: the process leaves a trace."

The most successful early-career researchers often rely on a network of mentors who each have different roles — from advising on research and grants to making professional introductions and providing emotional support go.nature.com/46U5PXy

"Can you use AI for that?" I get asked that a lot, today after filming students at the Uni of Cambridge. Can I use AI to help storyboard the videos? Probably. But why would I? I travel all this way to find and tell those stories. It's about the journey, not just the endpoint. #stories #scicomm

Before losing her life in 1986 aboard Space Shuttle Challenger, Christa McAuliffe was set to be the first teacher in space with plans to teach a lesson to kids around the world from orbit. Today is her birthday, and even now, her courage and dedication to education continues to inspire.

Nancy Grace Roman was paid 60% of her male colleague's wages. 'the Nobel prize-winning physicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar ... told her: “We don’t discriminate against women. We can just get them for less.”' #WomenInSTEM 🧪 🔭

"No words to describe it. Poetry. They should have sent a poet.” #TotalEclipse #Mallorca #Spain #awe #science #nature (and yes, these are my photos from viewing the eclipse with my family off the coast of Mallorca in Spain)

This feels very targeted

How dystopian can things get, while many of us still do not experience a day-to-day dystopia?!? Books, words, stories are humanity's lifeline and legacy. AI cannot be that.

I learned a lovely thing yesterday: a group of brittle stars (either fossilised or dancing very slowly in a Devon rockpool) is called …a galaxy:

It’s impressive that autonomous AI agents is only the second most unreal idea in this sentence, behind the magic “press to get data” button. Just a huge devaluing of the process of data collection. Science is not just interpretation of data! There’s a reason many scientists want their own lab.

One of the hardest parts of writing books is the long publication timeline. It means I sometimes appear to get scooped. Like this NYT piece on a wonderful microbiome research team, who I've been talking to for 4 yrs and are featured in my forthcoming book: www.nytimes.com/2026/07/08/m... #scicomm

Mari-nerd friends can we blow up BlueSky with stars and anemones and other gorgeous explosions, of any taxonomy? Go 💥 💥 💥

What is it with people in the last year or so increasingly using cell phones for calls, music, or viewing something audibly but without headphones? On trails, at the mall, walking through the neighborhood... #RandomMusing

Spotted at the @cornelluniversity.bsky.social Store this morning! Exciting to still see it available in bookstores and on campuses! #WomeninScience #scicomm #authors #Cornellian @columbiaup.bsky.social

#Science 🧪 Who knew it could solve real-life problems?!? 😏 ... so sad to see so many digs their heads in the sand

They exacerbate the Matilda Effect...because that's what it's modeled on. Ugh! #WomeninScience

I should have anticipated that field-based researchers who have the time to peer review my new book on scientific fieldwork would be hard to come by during spring/summer field season...sigh! Just putting this out in the universe to get some good vibes to help move the manuscript along...😎 #scicomm

A global thank-you to all the scientists who talked to me, on the record and off, for this. I hope I accurately conveyed how they're feeling about...all of the everything.

At the end of the term I asked my college creative wriing students to submit anonymous thoughts on AI. No real surprises: Mood ranges from resignation to despair, capitulation from embittered erosion of standards to total, feelings of betrayal from deep to furious. 1/

In a field near Wicken, Cambridgeshire larkspur is grown for London florists along with cornflowers & Nigella. It’s quite a sight just now-some floral dopamine for you 🌿:

Lovely time of year for fieldwork in Switzerland. 🧪🇨🇭

On its 40th anniversary, we reassess 1986's SpaceCamp arstechnica.com/culture/2026...

"Our species’ ability to come up with unexpected and original ideas is something to protect and nurture. That’s especially true for today’s adolescents." Yes, with every fiber of my being! #AI #scicomm

An analysis of 370,000 college student essays found that human-written essays contain 8X more novel ideas than those generated by A.I! Though AI works often contain more flowery language, story lines are more homogeneous and lack distinctive ideas. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/27/o...

Never knew I wanted to understand how erasers work until I read this piece. Science never ceases to impress with its seemingly simple wonders! 🧪 #scicomm

Today we celebrate Mary Anning's birthday (21 May 1799) — pioneering fossil collector, palaeontologist, and one of the most influential figures in the history of Earth science. To mark her birthday and her discoveries, check out Moon's phylogenetic study of ichthyosaurs: buff.ly/ovaAjuM #PaleoSky

Younger daughter & I found these fossilised crinoid rock stars (segments of the ‘stem’ of Jurassic feather stars/sea lilies, related to starfish & sea urchins) in the gravel on the edge of a lake nr Peterborough UK. She used them to make an ammonite:

If you feel sluggish and unproductive, just remember that hot spring archaea need decades to make a single copy of themselves. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers, grandmothers, and mother-figures in our lives. We stand on the shoulders of formidable women, without whom, none of our collective achievements and discoveries would be possible.