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. Science & Society

    Scientists Say: Theory

    A theory is an explanation of how part of the world works. It’s one that’s been tested many times and in many ways.

  2. Brain

    Confidence can make you miss important information

    Being confident can feed a confirmation bias in us, new studies show. This bias can make your brain ignore other people’s ideas and any conflicting information.

  3. Life

    Let’s learn about alligators and crocodiles

    Alligators and crocodiles seem similar — but they live in different places and look different, too.

  4. Chemistry

    Scientists Say: Plastic

    Plastics are made of long polymer chains and can take on many shapes. Unfortunately, they stick around for a long time.

  5. Life

    Scientists Say: Amphibian

    Amphibians are ectotherms that live dual lives — they start off in water, breathing with gills, and end up breathing air with lungs.

  6. Chemistry

    Build ice towers with bottled water and ice

    Pour out liquid water into a solid ice tower. We outline the conditions you’ll need to turn this demonstration into a super-cool experiment.

  7. Archaeology

    Let’s learn about ancient technology

    Ancient people didn’t have the internet. Instead, they performed surgeries, made weapons and built monuments with wood, stones, rope and fire.

  8. Chemistry

    Scientists say: Chemical

    A chemical is anything made of two or more atoms bonded together in a fixed structure. Chemicals make up the world around us.

  9. Health & Medicine

    Here’s how COVID-19 is changing classes this year

    To keep students and teachers safe from COVID-19, some things in the classroom are changing — and sometimes entire schools are being kept closed.

  10. Space

    Scientists Say: Asteroid, meteor and meteorite

    Asteroids, meteors and meteorites are all space rocks. But one is in orbit, another is in the atmosphere and the third is on the ground on Earth.

  11. Archaeology

    Women like Mulan didn’t need to go to war in disguise

    Female skeletons in Mongolia show injuries like those of fighting men — evidence that they could be warriors, too.

  12. Tech

    Let’s learn about space robots

    Space robots can take pictures of other planets, analyze samples of their surface and even peer into their interiors.