YSM Issue 96.3

WRITING FOR THEIR LIVES
BY KEYA BAJAJ
SCIENCE
IN
IMAGE COURTESY OF SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION ARCHIVES
It is late 1937, and the American Society for the Control of Cancer convenes for a press
dinner under the dim chandeliers of the Harvard Club. All the invitees are welcome to
attend, except one: America’s premier medical journalist, Jane Stafford. To seat a woman
at the table would have “considerably changed the character of the dinner,” admitted the
organization’s publicity director; besides, the University Club didn’t allow women entry
anyway. Thrumming below the frenzied fever of twentieth-century scientific exploration
was a culture of leaving women out of a conversation they pioneered, when they were the
ones deconstructing scientific jargon.
In her newly released book Writing for Their Lives, historian Marcel Chotkowski
LaFollette chronicles the untold story of eight female science journalists who made science
intelligible to the average reader and put its latest advances on the front page, but who were
themselves omitted from the headlines. These women disseminated scientific discoveries
through published stories and columns, breaking both the news and the professional
paradigms of the time.
“Historians of science have tended to write about scientists, not those who wrote about
science,” LaFollette writes. In her novel, LaFollette attempts to lift the “historical fog”
that has hidden the pioneering efforts of these women. In 1921, Science Service, a small
Washington, D.C.-based science news organization, gave a group of dedicated female
science journalists their footing. Emphasizing meritocracy instead of gender, Science
Service boasted a female majority in its cohort of editorial staff writers; Jane Stafford was
just one of them.
Jane Stafford’s wide news sweep encompassed everything from schizophrenia to public
health epidemics, with a particular focus on cancer. Her work involved expository pieces,
like one in 1928 contesting the nicotine-free contents of a tobacco brand. She brought a
potent mixture of journalistic strengths to the newsroom: the ability to decipher volumes
of dense scientific literature, a dexterity with language (specifically in her allusions to
Classical myths and iconography), and an ability to speak truth to power.
In 1945, Science Service reported news of the atomic bomb, explaining the science
behind history as it unfolded in real time. While other news outlets succumbed to
sensationalism, the female journalists at Science Service collaborated to present a more
measured report of the Hiroshima-Nagasaki events. Martha Morrow reported on the
physics; Jane Stafford explored radiation and physiology; Helen Davis wrote about its
chemistry; and Marjorie Van de Water discussed the bomb’s socio-psychological effects.
As “career women,” they braved both the pressures of the news cycle and the inherent
misogynies of a male-dominated scientific community.
While occasionally dry in its journalistic tone and factually heavy in its ambitious
scope, LaFollette is successful in her detailed account of the hidden figures of scientific
journalism. If it took time for science to leave the confines of laboratories and trickle into
our lives—learning from curbside newsstands, on the taxi radio, and over morning cups
of coffee—Writing for Their Lives shows us that it took far longer to decide who got to tell
those stories. “The paths to success [for female journalists] were riddled with the potholes
of institutionalized bias along with the gaping gullies of entrenched and unapologetic
misogyny,” LaFollette writes.
It would be 1973 before the Harvard Club would open its doors to full-time women
members. By then, Jane Stafford had already established fundamental journalistic
practices, co-founded the National Association of Science Writers, and served as president
of the Women’s National Press Club—all while not being allowed to sit in on dinners. ■
T
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36 Yale Scientific Magazine September 2023 www.yalescientific.org