Welcome to a combined edition of the chapter newsletter for the months of February 2024.

CHAPTER NEWS 

• New Chapter Advisory Council Representative

• New Chapter President-Elect

• New Chapter Co-Secretary

• New Co-Membership Chair

• Join our AMWA North Central LinkedIn Community! Link here. 

FEATURES 

• Chapter Advisory Council Update

• Grammar Talk: Embedded Lists

• Read a Good Book? The Icepick Surgeon by Sam Kean

• Book Club Notes: Exercised by Daniel E. Lieberman

CHAPTER NEWS

New Chapter Advisory Council Representative

Naomi Ruff, PhD, will serve as the 2024 Chapter Advisory Council (CAC) representative for the North Central Chapter. The CAC is the organizational bridge between the chapters and the national AMWA leadership. As the CAC representative, Naomi will attend quarterly meetings of the CAC, will bring chapter concerns to the meetings, and will provide a report on each meeting for the chapter. Naomi has been a member of AMWA since 2000 and has previously served as North Central Chapter Secretary (2013-2016) and in various other volunteer roles throughout the years.

New Chapter President-Elect

Kristen Hutchison volunteered to serve as President-Elect for the North Central Chapter for a three-year term from 2024-2027. Kristen is a patient advocate and medical writer with experience in publications, medical marketing, and continuing medical education. Kristen graduated from Santa Clara University with a B.S. in biology and psychology and recently completed a post-graduate certificate in publication writing from Harvard Medical School. She works as a freelance medical writer, collaborating with medical device and pharmaceutical clients to create content for publications, posters, abstracts, white papers, and marketing campaigns. Her therapeutic areas of expertise include neurovascular intervention, diagnostic imaging, orthopedic surgery, gastroenterology, auto-immune diseases, cardiovascular devices, and oncology. Kristen has been a member of AMWA since 2018.

New Chapter Co-Secretary

Audrey Russell volunteered to serve a three-year term as Co-Secretary for the North Central Chapter from 2024-2027. Audrey is a scientific editor for regulatory submissions at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, where she works primarily with the pharmacokinetics and precision medicine groups.  She earned a B.A. in Biology and Global Public Health from Bard College. Audrey’s interests include genetics, rare disease, biotechnology, and regulatory affairs. Audrey has been a member of AMWA since 2021 and a member of the North Central Chapter since 2023.

New Co-Membership Chair

Ashley Cantu-Weintein volunteered to serve as the Co-Membership Chair for the North Central Chapter from 2024-2025. She is a new AMWA member presently entering the medical writing field. After graduating with a B.A. in Religious Studies, Chemistry, and Neuroscience, she matriculated into medical school in Cleveland, Ohio. Here, she identified an enthusiasm for research and publication-related writing. Ashley’s interests include psychiatry, gynecology, substance use disorders, DEI, and medical education. She will graduate with an M.D. in May 2024 and looks forward to entering the medical writing workforce.

FEATURES

Chapter Advisory Council Update

By LeAnn Stee, North Central Chapter Representative

Mission of the Chapter Advisory Council (CAC)

The CAC serves to maintain a connection between chapter leaders and the AMWA Board of Directors by advising the AMWA board on the organization’s strategic direction as it affects the chapters and acting as a sounding board about issues that have an impact on chapters and the national organization.

Fourth Quarterly Meeting of 2023

The AMWA CAC meeting was held on November 9, 2023 (Teams meeting).

Updates From the AMWA Board of Directors: Jen Minarcik

1. Erik J. MacLaren, PhD, will be the chair of the CAC in 2023. Erik has been a member of AMWA since 2014 and has volunteered in several capacities.

2. The 2023-2024 Board of Directors and standing committees have been determined.  See the AMWA website for details.

3. AMWA Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Initiative         

   • The initiative has been informed by the work of the DEI task force.

   • AMWA is working with a DEI consultant to develop a strategic plan that will include goals, a timeline, and key strategies.

   • The initiative is focused on DEI education, strategic discussion, and building a vision and plans.

   • The goal is to create a sustainable, strategic effort fully aligned with AMWA’s mission, vision, values, and programs.

   • Members will be kept informed of the progress.

Updates From AMWA Headquarters: Sharon Ruckdeschel, director of membership and systems for AMWA

1. Chapter Compliance

   • Chapter activity reports are due on March 1, 2024.

   • The fiscal year is July 1 through June 30.

   • Chapters must have at least 4 events (at least 3 in person).

   • Chapters must have 3 board of director meetings.

   • Chapters must have 1 business/membership meeting.

2. The dates for the 2024 CAC meetings will be determined soon.

Grammar Talk: Embedded Lists

By Tess Van Ee

Organizing information into lists can improve flow and help writers stay within strict word counts.

However, complicated phrases, such as phrases already containing lists, can be difficult to corral. How can writers ensure sentences with embedded lists are crisp and clear and not a jumble of colons, commas, semicolons, and dashes?

The general rule of thumb for embedded lists is to use semicolons to separate phrases when one or more phrases include commas. Here’s an example:

"Primary exclusion criteria include previous surgeries within the last year; chronic conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, or heart disease; previous clinically significant systemic illness or infection, including test-positive COVID-19; and participation in another clinical trial of a drug or device."

Embedded lists are usually long and complex. Watch for parallelism when building embedded lists. The sentence above lists each item as a noun (“surgeries,” “conditions,” “illness or infection,” “participation”). Adding a criterion like “younger than 18” without rephrasing this adjective into a noun would topple the sentence’s structural integrity (and, by extension, threaten the writer’s integrity).

Reading each item in the list with the beginning of the sentence helps ensure the list is grammatically sound. For example, “Primary exclusion criteria include…participation in another clinical trial of a drug or device.”

When an embedded list’s bulkiness threatens the message’s clarity, writers can break the list into multiple sentences or go vertical with a bulleted list.

"Primary exclusion criteria include the following:

• Previous surgeries within the last year

• Chronic conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, or heart disease

• Previous clinically significant systemic illness or infection, including test-positive COVID-19

• Participation in another clinical trial of a drug or device"

Punctuation for bulleted lists varies by style guide. The example above follows AMA style, where periods are unnecessary for bulleted phrases unless they are full sentences. APA style, in contrast, uses periods after phrases that complete a sentence, and the Chicago Manual of Style recommends using semicolons and periods in vertical lists to mirror horizontal embedded lists.   

Vertical lists break up dense paragraphs for a more digestible reading experience but aren’t allowed in certain document types, like journal articles. Horizontal lists can become overwhelming, but they present complex information in a more conversational tone when done right. Choosing between the two depends on your document type, intended reader, and the volume of material you are getting across.

For more information on embedded or bulleted lists, check out the following sources:

• McLeod D. How to properly list things in a sentence. Grammarist. Accessed November 14, 2023. https://grammarist.com/grammar/how-to-list-things-in-a-sentence/

• Forsaith C. How to write a list correctly: Colons, commas, and semicolons. Writing Tips Institute. Updated March 3, 2023. Accessed November 14, 2023. https://writingtips.org/how-to-write-a-list-correctly/

• Bulleted lists. APA Style. Updated July 2022. Accessed November 14, 2023. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/lists/bulleted

• Cullen M. How to correctly punctuate bullet point lists. Instructional Solutions. Updated October 24, 2023. Accessed November 14, 2023. https://www.instructionalsolutions.com/blog/bulleted-list-punctuation

Read a Good Book?: The Icepick Surgeon by Sam Kean

By Paul W. Mamula, PhD

If you haven’t read any books by Sam Kean, I would suggest his latest book, The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science.That’s quite a title. The book was published in 2021 and in a paperback edition in 2022. Kean’s book is a fascinating read that traces unethical work done in the name of scientific research from Cleopatra through contemporary society. One doesn’t have to read the book in order; one can pick and choose to suit individual interests. The 12 chapters cover considerable ground and are amply referenced. The book is a fast read, written in Kean’s witty style.

The book opens with a chapter on “scientific piracy” and the grandfather of naturalistic writing, William Dampier. Dampier wrote A New Voyage Around the World in 1697, in which he details his travels while serving as a navigator (and pirate) on several ships. The book detailed many new findings and even influenced Charles Darwin. Nearly 1,000 citations in the Oxford English Dictionary trace back to Dampier’s writings (e.g., banana, smuggler, avocado, chopsticks). Another fun fact was that Dampier was the navigator on the ship that rescued Alexander Selkirk, the marooned sailor whose tale served as the basis for Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. 

The book covers many other acts perpetrated in the name of science. Kean reviews the animal experiments used to create the electric chair – experiments that included electrocuting an elephant! Kean also provides a brief explanation of the ethically challenged Tuskegee Institute syphilis “study.” A more thorough treatment of this experiment is provided in Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment by James H. Jones, the Book Club selection for September 27, 2021. 

The book ends with an appendix on the future of crime, which serves as a nice coda. Kean admits that the chapter is a hodgepodge but that it loosely addresses new technologies that will likely be used for crimes. It opens with the fascinating tale about the murder of a man on a base in the Arctic Ocean, one of the few places where no specific laws govern. The murderer was eventually tried in the United States but acquitted. The case caused a sensation and for Kean provoked questions about other places where no laws apply, e.g., Antarctica, outer space, and about new technologies with potential for misuse, notably computers and DNA technology.

Throughout The Icepick Surgeon, Kean peppers his writing with intriguing details, curious anecdotes, and fascinating footnotes. 

Our book club has previously selected other Sam Kean books: The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements (January 28, 2013) and The Violinist’s Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code (April 25, 2016). The author also maintains a website (SamKean.com) for more information about his work.

Book Club Notes: Exercised by Daniel E. Lieberman

By Paul W. Mamula, PhD

Our first book club meeting of 2024 took place on January 22nd. Apropos for those whose New Year resolutions include exercising more, we discussed Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding by Daniel E. Lieberman. We had a good turnout. In addition to regular attendees, one new member joined to learn about the book (and book club), and two others hadn’t read the book but were interested in the discussion.

The Book

Lieberman, a paleoanthropologist, provides a different take on physical activity and exercise in Exercised. The text is 338 pages long divided among 13 chapters and an Epilogue. The author leavens the hard science about human anatomy and activity—upright posture, feet, muscle composition, strength, sleep, comparative animal behavior—with an anthropological take on non-Western lifestyle, modern life, and physical activity and exercise. The book has no bibliography, but the notes section incorporates all references. All 13 chapters begin with an exercise myth (e.g., Myth 1: We Evolved to Exercise). The overarching theme is that humans never really exercised as we do now, but possess many adaptations and behaviors, such as upright posture and social groups, that assist activities of daily life. Exercise, as we know it, is a modern phenomenon; hunter-gatherers did not exercise, because energy was too precious to expend on unnecessary activities. Modern humans have eliminated the need for many of these activities but haven’t been able to overcome the physiological drive to store energy (as fat); as a result, we now need to exercise for health reasons.

The book is written in a witty, self-deprecating manner. Lieberman laces it with examples, anecdotes, quotes from the classics, and trivia. His observations on modern hunter-gatherers provide some provocative health comparisons. For those in the TLDR (too long, didn’t read) camp, the last three chapters (82 pages) comprising the Exercise in the Modern World section are the most valuable. The book’s message can be summed up its last lines: “Make exercise necessary and fun. Do mostly cardio, but also some weights. Some is better than none. Keep it up as you age” (p 339).

Good Points

We liked the book. I enjoyed it, because of the anthropological flavor infused into the research from physiology, sports, and medicine. Lieberman notes that most hunter-gatherers in the past spent little time doing vigorous exercise but engaged in considerable low-level physical activity, such as making weapons, digging for food, caring for children, and socializing. He distinguishes physical activity from exercise with examples from contemporary hunter-gatherers, including the Hadza of Tanzania; from subsistence farmers, the Pemja of Kenya; and from current rural folk, such as the Tarahumara of Mexico. These contemporary hunter-gatherers walk a lot by modern standards (often exceeding 7.5 miles per day). Lieberman notes events that modern Westerners might consider exercise but that traditional societies do not. For example, the Tarahumara play a game in which 2 teams compete in a multi-hour relay race that serves as a social event, but find our concept of exercise (e.g., running a marathon) alien. They ask why anyone would do that; it serves no purpose.

We found the book sprinkled with fun facts. Mary Knatterud said, “I was hooked on the book by the end of its Prologue, which reported that ‘[f]or more than a century, English convicts (among them Oscar Wilde) were condemned to trudge for hours a day on enormous steplike treadmills’ (page xiii).” She also said, “So many of his tidbits were fascinating, e.g., ‘According to a 2018 survey of millions of Americans, about half of adults and nearly three-quarters of teenagers report they don’t reach the base level of 150 minutes of physical activity per week’ (page xvi) and ‘only about 50 percent of patients undergoing antidepressant treatment get better’ (page 335).”

Knatterud stressed, “As someone who often wakes up ruminating, I was especially captivated by Lieberman’s comments, some bleakly humorous, on sleep, e.g., ‘zebras sleep only three or four hours a day because they are in constant fear of lions, whereas lions that eat the zebra typically enjoy about thirteen’ (page 77).” She added, “I was surprised by his debunking of 8 hours of sleep for humans as a harmful myth, given its ‘12 percent higher death rates’ vs. ‘six and a half to seven and a half hours’ (page 82).”  

The book does contain many hard facts, too. I liked Chapter 5, entitled Speed: Neither Tortoise nor Hare (Myth 5: Normal Humans Trade off Speed for Endurance) with its explanation of fast twitch and slow twitch muscle fibers and their effects on sprints and endurance running. The comparison with animals illustrates how slow humans are. Evolutionarily, we compensate by having long endurance, allowing us to run down animals whose physiology in distance running makes them overheat, and thus catchable.

The book includes a few funny statistics, too. Knatterud quipped, “My favorite clause in the entire book was ‘regular chocolate consumption adds nearly a year to your life’ (page 281).”

Quibbles

Some of Lieberman’s points seems to be a stretch. When comparing human foot anatomy to that of other animals, his analysis shows that human feet were not well suited for fast locomotion. While true, it overlooks the skeletal adaptations that animals such as horses or great apes have for a particular niche. Although human gait may be more energy-efficient than that of great apes on two legs, the discussion overlooks the adaptations that great apes have for an arboreal life and a four-legged gait (mostly). The same is true for horses, whose long evolution produced a single-toed foot adapted to running on the plains.

In discussing chimpanzees’ relative muscular strength, Lieberman includes an anecdote that seemed to contradict his premise that adult chimps are not much stronger than adult humans. Knatterud bemoaned that her “least favorite passage in the book described the ‘reactive aggression’ by ‘an adult chimp named Travis who had spent his entire life peacefully as part of Sandra and Jerome Herold’s family. Then, in February 2009, at the age of fifteen, he flew off the handle after one of Sandra’s friends, Charla, picked up one of his favorite toys. Travis’s immediate and savage attack left Charla with no hands and without much of her face including her nose, eyes, and lips’ (page 146).” Not many humans could do that!

Chapter 8 (Myth 8: You Can’t Lose Weight by Walking) provides some useful examples about energy expenditure, but I questioned the use of 50 calories as the energy expenditure for walking a mile. Most of the estimates I have seen, even considering metabolic rate and weight, come out to around 100 calories.1,2 Even so, using this figure did not undermine Lieberman’s argument about the usefulness of low-intensity activities such as walking for weight loss.

We did have a few editorial and usage quibbles. (What group of writers and editors wouldn’t find a few?) As a longtime editor, Knatterud said, “I am always alert to semantic lapses, e.g., ‘thirty- four incidences [instead of incidents] of fights’ (page 154) and ‘the bedrock of most exercise regimes [instead of regimens]’ (page 292).” Additionally, she said, “I was irked by Lieberman’s frequent use, undefined, of ‘elderly,’ a term often deemed ageist and pejorative.”

Next Up

Our next book club will meet on April 22, 2024, to discuss Lifespan: Why We Age—And Why We Don’t Have to by David A. Sinclair, PhD with Matthew d LaPlante. Sinclair discovered sirtuins, molecules believed to influence aging. His research led to founding a company that markets resveratrol, a molecule found in grapes and red wine that acts as a sirtuin activator. Please join us for a stimulating discussion. Reading the book is not a prerequisite to attending. We hope to see you there!

References

1. Marcin A, Mathe B. How Many Calories Do You Burn While Walking. Healthline. Calories Burned Walking: 1 Mile, 1 Hour, Calculator [Accessed Jan 27, 2024]

2. Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans. About Physical Activity Guidelines. US Dept Health Hum Serv. Health.gov About the Physical Activity Guidelines | health.gov [Accessed Jan 27, 2024]

Questions, comments or new additions to the newsletter? Please contact the Publications Committee Chair.