Adam has written the monthly science humor column “Experimental Error” for Science Careers since 2010. He received his bachelor’s degree in molecular biology from Princeton University, where he won the Gregory T. Pope ’80 Prize for science writing, and his Ph.D. in biology from Johns Hopkins University, where he was simultaneously an adjunct faculty member in the Expository Writing program.

Adam performs stand-up comedy and storytelling, and he has appeared on the Food Network, the Weather Channel, Discovery International, and the Travel Channel. He currently co-hosts Outrageous Acts of Science on the Science Channel. He is the author of Surviving Your Stupid, Stupid Decision to Go to Grad School and Pinball Wizards: Jackpots, Drains, and the Cult of the Silver Ball.

A Guatemalan mother falls to her knees as her seven-year-old daughter walks through the door. They've been separated for 55 days, and the mother is completely overcome with emotion. She embraces her child, rocking her and rubbing her back, openly weeping and speaking to her daughter in Spanish. When she pulls back, the child's face appears somewhat frozen, but she clearly has tears in her eyes; her mother wipes her face with the tissue she has been clutching.

This video from CNN is just one of many that have gone viral in the past couple of months, showing immigrant children and their parents' first reunification after months of separation as a result of the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy. Something that is strikingly uniform in each of the videos is the frozen, non-emotional responses of the children as their parents weep over them. One video shows a devastated mother whose toddler continues to crawl away from her as she tries to talk to him and pick him up.

Even to a layperson's untrained eye, these reactions appear to be confirmation of the significant trauma mental-health experts warned would happen as a result of separating children from their adult caregivers.

Karen Johnson, senior director of trauma-informed services at the National Council for Behavioral Health, says that what we're likely seeing in these children's responses is a protective numbing or disassociating. Weeks- to months-long separations have an impact on a child's brain, Johnson says, "which speaks to the urgency to make sure that children do not spend one hour longer than they need to separated from their parents..."