Bethany Brookshire

Bethany Brookshire was a longtime staff writer at Science News Explores and is the author of the book Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains. She has a B.S. in biology and a B.A. in philosophy from The College of William and Mary, and a Ph.D. in physiology and pharmacology from Wake Forest University School of Medicine. She was a 2019-2020 Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT, the winner of the Society for Neuroscience Next Generation Award and the Three Quarks Daily Science Writing Award, among others.

All Stories by Bethany Brookshire

  1. Health & Medicine

    Scientists Say: Vaccine

    Vaccines help the body develop immunity to a disease. They are biological mixtures that imitate a disease so the body can defend itself.

  2. Agriculture

    Scientists Say: Carbohydrate

    Carbohydrates are molecules with carbon, oxygen and hydrogen. Animals break down these chemicals in food to get energy.

  3. Brain

    You don’t see as much color as you think

    It might seem like we live in a world full of color. But when scientists flip it into black and white, most people never notice the switch.

  4. Humans

    Let’s learn about early humans

    Homo sapiens are the last member left of our genus. But many other species of early humans existed before us.

  5. Space

    Scientists Say: Solar

    What do solar energy, the solar year and solar flares have in common? They’re all related to the sun.

  6. Chemistry

    Let’s learn about batteries

    Many things in our lives rely on batteries. Here’s how scientists are working to make new ones — and make existing batteries safer.

  7. Animals

    To figure out your dog’s ‘real’ age, you’ll need a calculator

    What’s your dog’s human-equivalent age? Just multiply how old it is times seven, right? Uh, no. And here’s why.

  8. Explainer: What are logarithms and exponents?

    Mathematics provides a means of tracking, comparing and expressing data that vary broadly in scale.

  9. Archaeology

    Scientists Say: Archaeology

    People leave things where they’ve been — old buildings, trash heaps and human skeletons. Archaeology is the study of those left-behind things.

  10. Earth

    Let’s learn about volcanoes

    Volcanoes bring melted rock up to a planet’s surface.

  11. Ecosystems

    Scientists Say: Deforestation

    Trees slurp up carbon dioxide and help keep our planet cool. But deforestation cuts those trees down in large numbers.

  12. Planets

    Let’s learn about exoplanets

    Exoplanets are planets outside of our solar system. Scientists are finding out more about them than ever before.