Ah, a good-natured rant

One of the sources of my daily metaphorical firehose of information that I try to take in is the RSS feed for the blogs at Scienceblogs.

One of the sources of my nearly-daily metaphorical itchy rash of irritation that I encounter along my studies is the fact that as far as most people are concerned (including, most importantly, the people responsible for the required “Microbiology” degree curriculum), “Microbiology” is essentially the study of diseases.

These two collided today when a professor of Epidemiology who is a blogger on Scienceblogs posted offering “Everything you want to know about Microbiology and Epidemiology[…]”. A perfectly reasonable post (downright laudable, actually – it’s part of an effort by several of the bloggers there to be try to get posts going offering explanations of basic concepts in their respective fields). Nonetheless, I couldn’t resist mentioning that what I wanted to know was what it would take to get people to quit assuming microbiology was about diseases (while acknowledging that an epidemiologist was probably not the most sympathetic person to ask…). Hopefully the mini-rant came across in as good-natured a manner as I’d intended.

Those bored enough to care can read it here (the main post is here).