If you dress a woman in a lab coat, can you change the course of science? Sounds ridiculous, but some scholars say women are changing the very nature of discovery. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowlege, is there a "female style" in science? Also, the angels of primatology, And the adventures of a canopy biologist — life hundreds of feet above the forest floor.

Science historian Londa Schiebinger tells Jim Fleming that feminists are changing science by asking new and different questions and testing old assumptions in fields as diverse as archeology and medicine. Schiebinger teaches at Penn State and is the author of "Has Feminism Changed Science?" Also, Sandra Witelson, a neuroscientist at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, tells Judith Strasser that while women can do the intellectual work of science, their biology and brain chemistry make them ill-suited for the dog-eat-dog culture of scientific work.

Steve Paulson reports on the successes of several female field biologists, including Jane Goodall and Biurute Galdikas. Also, Margaret Lowman is a canopy researcher — she lives in the trees and studies the ecology of the forest canopy in rainforests from Belize and Brazil to Africa and Australia. She tells Judith Strasser about her work. Lowman's book is "Life in the Treetops: Adventures of a Woman Field Biologist."

Alison Jolly is a primatologist at Princeton, and the author of "Lucy's Legacy: Sex and Intelligence in Human Evolution." She tells Steve Paulson that some of the things females are good at - such as language and forming social bonds - gave human beings a big leg up the evolutionary ladder.

Distribution dates:

• week of 09/12/99 - hour 2