Posts by Brooke Siem
Happiness Is A Skill – Issue #3: Happy is a Paradox
No matter what country we live in, what culture we’re a part of, or what religion we practice, everything in our world revolves around a single goal: attaining happiness. This far-off-but-acheivable-if-you-follow-the-rules happiness is our own personal autocrat. In a capitalist society, the happiness dictator demands that if we study hard to gain a career, we…
Read MoreHappiness Is A Skill – Issue #2
On March 14 and June 14, my partner Justin and I marked the beginning and end of Vancouver’s coronavirus lockdown in the exact same way: we met friends at our favorite bar around the corner from our apartment. All things considered, Vancouver has fared exceptionally well throughout the pandemic. Our restrictions never reached draconian levels, and yet…
Read MoreWhy I Quit Social Media to Save My Mental Health
The following was originally published in my newsletter, Happiness Is A Skill, Issue #01. — The past few months have gifted us with an opportunity for deep reflection. While the world changes at a breakneck pace, we’ve all been stuck inside, left with nothing but the life we’ve created for ourselves and the emotions that…
Read MoreHappiness is a skill.
It’s hard to celebrate anything right now. Yesterday, after a much needed few days entirely off the grid, I came back to a digital shitstorm. The specifics are irrelevant, but what was important was that in the middle of getting real mad and doing a whole hell of a lot of ugly crying, I realized…
Read MoreWhat Came First, the Suicidal Chicken or the Effexor Egg? Iatrogenic Comorbidity Explained.
“Iatrogenic comorbidity” is one of those jargon phrases that makes me want to run far far away from research. To me, it’s code for this is an article for those who have letters after their name and if you don’t you’re too plebian to understand. For regular folk, it’s a term that’s difficult to…
Read MoreFangirling over Michael P. Hengartner and Prophylactic Effects
I was scrolling through Twitter when I came across a tweet by Michael P. Hengartner, PhD that read, “In my new open access paper, I critically discuss whether long-term antidepressant use has prophylactic effects, ie., whether long-term use effectively protects against depression relapses and why we must consider withdrawal reactions…” Hengartner is one of…
Read More5 Things I Wish I Was Told About Packing Before Traveling Around the World for a Year
Note from Brooke: This is an updated post originally written in November of 2016, when I was traveling around the world. Now that I’m four countries and nearly three months into my Remote Year experience, I’ve been doing this long enough to realize that everything I did to prepare for this trip was wrong. Everything I packed? Wrong.…
Read MoreWhat exactly is a “peer reviewed” article?
When people describe legitimate research, they tend to preface it with the term “peer review.” Because peer review is a critical part of scholarly publishing, it’s worth taking a few hundred words and diving into its meaning. What is peer review? Peer review is exactly what it sounds like: academic peers review an individual’s work…
Read MoreWhere to Find Scientific Research Papers (and How to Tell if They’re Legit), Part II
Click here for Part One of Where to Find Scientific Research Papers (and How to Know if They’re Legit). Yesterday, I wrote about predatory journals. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised to learn that there are shitty people in the research world who get off on exploiting academics and undermining science, but I…
Read MoreYou Need to Know About Predatory Journals
I’ve been feeling dejected since yesterday’s post. In fact, the whole research system has got me down. Let me be clear: I am not against research or science concept. What I am frustrated with, like everyone else, is the fucking system. This all began when I came across something called predatory journals during my…
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