Brooke N. Wolford, PhD

Brooke N. Wolford, PhD

Statistical Geneticist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology

ASHG Nascent Transcript November 2018

less than 1 minute read

Published:

For the past 2 years I’ve contributed to the ASHG Trainee Newsletter, the Nascent Transcript. 2018’s 4th quarter edition was published today, and includes my final contribution. I have greatly enjoyed interviewing trainees in the field, collaborating with other trainees through the editing process, flexing my science communication muscles, and curating #ASHGtrainee tweets.

My final piece is my favorite, and describes the latest research on polygenic risk scores presented at the American Society of Human Genetics 2018 Annual Meeting in October.

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I had the honor of being guest on the Perspective 2020 podcast hosted by my former UNC classmate Kara Marker Credle back in December 2020. We discussed living in a data driven world, both in general and during a pandemic. Read more

Memorial Day during a pandemic

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Today is Memorial Day in the United States, a day when we honor those who lost their lives in service to our country. It is also a day we approach 100,000 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. Yesterday, the NY Times memorialized just 1% of those deaths starting on the Sunday front page. If we add every U.S. military death from the beginning of the Korean War in 1950 through all wars and conflicts up to today, we arrive at a similar number of 102,483 deaths (Note: this value is based on this table and could be more or less depending on inclusion of MIA or other nuances). In three months we have lost nearly the amount of Americans as the military personnel we’ve lost in 70 years of conflicts. To memorialize the sacrifice of those who gave their lives for the U.S., we should use our hard-fought freedoms responsibly to help our society and economy move forward as safely as possible in the presence of SARS-CoV-2. I acknowledge that the majority of our country is being conscientious and generous in their sacrifices, and I empathize that everyone has their own unique situation, but we are all interconnected in this pandemic. I believe the following are things we can do to live up to the American way our service members fought and died for. Read more

Extraordinary claims require … evidence

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In this blog post I discuss the credibility of the sources we turn to for evidence, and I provide a curation of resources for readers to explore claims in “Plandemic.” For the scientific community specifically, I summarize and comment on the lessons I’ve learned from “Plandemic”-related discourse the past week. I hope it will be relevant for science communication efforts during the pandemic! Read more

Remdesivir clinical trial & more

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