Peer Review: Stories about other people's opinions
b'In science, peer review plays a critical role in figuring out if research is good enough, robust enough. In this week\\u2019s episode, both of our storytellers find themselves looking for outside feedback on if they\\u2019re good enough.\\nPart 1: At her NASA summer internship, Kirsten Siebach feels completely out of place among the Mars mission scientists.\\nPart 2: Alison Spodek\\u2019s need to be seen as smart takes over her life.\\nKirsten Siebach is an Assistant Professor in the Rice University Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences and calls herself a Martian Geologist. She is currently a member of the Science and Operations Teams for the Mars 2020 rover Perseverance and the Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity, and previously worked on the science and engineering teams for the Phoenix Lander and the two Mars Exploration Rovers. She uses the images, chemistry, and other data that the rovers send back from Mars to study ancient environments on the Red Planet and compare them to ancient and modern environments on Earth. She received her bachelor\\u2019s degree in Earth and Planetary Science and Chemistry from Washington University in St. Louis and her Ph.D. in Geology from Caltech. Kirsten is actively engaged in science education and outreach and loves sharing the stories and images from Mars with students and the public. She has been interviewed in multiple documentaries and TV shows related to Mars exploration and has given over one hundred talks to students and interest groups around the world. Outside of professional interests, she loves travel and photography (on Earth as well as Mars), and enjoys swimming, hiking, and puzzles.\\nAlison Spodek is a flamingo, majestically awkward in some circumstances, moderately graceful in others. A fierce competitor in her extended family\\u2019s daily Wordle competition, she is also an associate professor and chair of the chemistry department at Vassar College. There, her research focuses on the behaviors of all the most fun elements in the environment, particularly arsenic, mercury, lead, and uranium, but her real passion is helping people understand the world around them, particularly those who think they are \\u201cnot good at science.\\u201d She lives in Beacon, NY with her husband, two kids, and a crotchety old dog.\\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices'