The SciSchmooze
Kishore Hari
22 June 2026
Greetings science fans!
Father’s Day has me thinking about mentorship and the people who don’t just advance their field but spend their lives making sure the next generation can, too.
Bruce Alberts is one of the great biochemists of his generation, a pioneering researcher in DNA replication who went on to serve for 12 years as president of the National Academy of Sciences and to edit Science magazine. But alongside all of that, he insisted that science education was a place scientists needed to get personally involved. He has argued that “science education should be about learning to think and solve problems like a scientist, insisting, for all citizens, that statements be evaluated using evidence and logic the way scientists evaluate statements.” Wikipedia
He didn’t just say it. In 1987, while his own children were attending San Francisco public schools, he founded a program to partner UCSF scientists directly with SFUSD teachers and classrooms. And this fall, a piece of the vision he championed will be realized in brick and mortar: SFUSD is opening Mission Bay Elementary School in August 2026, a new school on the UCSF Mission Bay campus, placing K-12 students at the center of one of the country’s great biomedical research ecosystems.
This Saturday at SkeptiCal in Oakland, Alberts is giving a talk on how science education can protect us from misinformation, arguing that when people reject scientific consensus, that’s a failure of how we taught them science in the first place. It’s an urgent message, and the whole SkeptiCal lineup this year rises to meet it: a skeptical look at what the science actually says about wildfire risk and forest management, and a talk on how The Music Man anticipated the tactics of modern misinformation, from fake credentials to manufactured crises. Also on the speaker list: Leonard Tramiel, who, along with Herb Masters, I (and soon thereafter Bob Siederer) co-founded BayAreaScience.org back in 2008, the very site where many of you found this newsletter. Tickets are still available – get them at skepticalcon.com.
The misinformation problem isn’t contained to the stage. Wednesday at SPUR, a panel on AI data centers and sustainable energy gets into territory where the gap between hype and reality has direct consequences for the grid, for water supplies, and for the pace of electrification across the Bay Area. Clear thinking, evidence, the willingness to follow data wherever it leads: that’s the toolkit for this conversation, too.
Happy Father’s Day!
– Kishore
My picks for the week:
- Aligning AI Data Centers with Sustainable Solutions for Grid Efficiency (Wednesday, June 24, SPUR, San Francisco)
- Nerd Nite SF #161: Rethinking the ABCs, Belly Dancing, and the Definition of Art (Wednesday, June 24, Rickshaw Stop, San Francisco)
- SkeptiCal 2026 (Saturday, June 27, Oakland Asian Cultural Center, get tickets at skepticalcon.com)
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