Bethany Brookshire

Bethany Brookshire was a longtime staff writer at Science News Explores and is the author of the book Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains. She has a B.S. in biology and a B.A. in philosophy from The College of William and Mary, and a Ph.D. in physiology and pharmacology from Wake Forest University School of Medicine. She was a 2019-2020 Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT, the winner of the Society for Neuroscience Next Generation Award and the Three Quarks Daily Science Writing Award, among others.

All Stories by Bethany Brookshire

  1. Give the gift of science without breaking the bank

    Many gifts for science lovers can get pricey. But there are lots of ways to share a love of science without having to spend too much.

  2. Book review: The Universe Verse

    Reading about science can get a bit boring. A new comic book will stop you from snoring. The book combines comics with poetry and rhyme, to help you learn science and have a good time.

  3. Tech

    Make your own mini hovercraft

    Hovercraft aren’t just the cars of the future. You can make your own with just a few household items.

  4. Dig dirt? It’s World Soil Day

    The food we eat, the water we drink and the air we breathe — all are influenced by the ground beneath our feet. On World Soil Day, take a moment to learn about the importance of good old dirt.

  5. Cookie Science 10: Finding the cookie difference

    To determine whether people ranked my cookies differently, I need to compare how much the groups of rankings differed. I can do this with a statistical test.

  6. Apply for summer research experience at NIH

    If you like science and think you want to be a scientist, it’s never too early to start doing your own research. The National Institutes of Health has a competitive program for summer research for high school students.

  7. Science & Society

    A teacher’s guide to mentoring in STEM

    Many people in STEM careers credit mentors for their success. But a good mentor is more than just a teacher.

  8. A Lego box to study drug addiction

    Most students learn that drugs are bad for you, but many try them anyway. A high school student has tried to find a new way to teach teens about addiction. His tool is made from Legos.

  9. Animals

    Scientists seek bat detectives

    Bats emit high-pitched calls in the night to find their way around. A citizen science project is eavesdropping on these calls to probe the health of ecosystems.

  10. A do-it-yourself map of touch

    Some parts of our bodies are more sensitive than others. In the brain, regions that respond to your fingertips, for instance, take up more space than those linked to your legs. A website helps you visualize this with a simple test.

  11. Cookie Science 9: How data can spread

    Two people often will rank things (such as a cookie’s taste) differently. The spread — or how broadly the rankings differ — helps me understand how one test condition compares to the others.

  12. Cookie Science 8: The meaning of the mean

    I have had people eat cookies and fill out surveys. What do I do with all those numbers? First I have to find something called the arithmetic mean.