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Sidedoor

Smithsonian Institution

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4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 24 May 2023

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Women have long fueled America's greatest scientific achievements. But when you go searching for information about these women scientists, you'll likely come up short. Only 19% of articles on Wikipedia are about women. In the field of science, this difference is even more pronounced. But now, a team at the Smithsonian is using artificial intelligence and good old fashioned research skills to scour the archives for lost women of science and publish their stories … before it’s too late.

Guests:

Liz Harmon, digital curator, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives

Kelly Doyle, open knowledge coordinator, Smithsonian American Women's History Museum

Rebecca Dikow, research data scientist, Smithsonian Data Science Lab

Tiana Curry, former intern, Smithsonian Data Science Lab

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Side Door, a podcast from the Smithsonian with support from PRX.
0:13.4	I'm Lizzie Peabody.
0:15.3	One day, Tiana Curry was scanning through some spreadsheets at the Smithsonian.
0:28.5	This was like my junior year, my first internship.
0:33.4	Tiana is now a grad student at the University of Southern California, but back in 2019, she
0:38.4	was interning at the Smithsonian's Data Science Lab, and it was while she was scrolling through
0:42.8	data from the botany collections that something caught her eye.
0:48.4	She was looking at the collections of Charles Walcott, a scientist and former secretary of
0:52.6	the Smithsonian.
0:53.8	In the early 1900s, he traveled all over the country, doing research and collecting
0:58.1	various specimens, which were then catalogued with date and location.
1:02.4	But as Tiana looked through the dates on Walcott's discoveries.
1:06.5	There were specimens recorded as being collected after Charles Walcott passed away.
1:12.4	Wait, specimens with his name on them?
1:16.0	Yeah.
1:17.0	Like a ghost botanist?
1:19.2	Exactly.
1:21.2	So what did you make of that?
1:22.5	I'd be the ghost researcher, did cross my mind.
1:28.6	This would have been a pretty prolific ghost.
1:31.0	There were several collections attributed to Charles Walcott after his death in 1927.
1:36.1	Tiana racked her brain, playing out the various scenarios.
	...

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