The Best Australian Science Writing 2014 Read online

  JOHN PICKRELL is an award-winning journalist, editor of Australian Geographic, and author of Flying Dinosaurs. He has worked in London, Washington DC and Sydney and written for publications including New Scientist, Science, Science News, Cosmos, National Geographic and Scientific American. A three-time finalist in the Australian Museum Eureka prizes, he has won an Earth Journalism Award and been featured in Best Australian Science Writing 2011. Find him on Twitter @john_pickrell.

  STEPHEN PINCOCK has been writing about science for 20 years, working for newspapers, magazines, wire services, websites and journals in Australia, Europe, the UK and the USA. He’s the author or co-author of four books, including The Origins of the Universe for Dummies. He now works as managing editor, Asia-Pacific, for Macmillan Science Communication, based in Sydney.

  MICHAEL SLEZAK is New Scientist’s correspondent in Australasia. Working on a location-based beat means Michael has developed a ridiculously eclectic mix of specialties, including the Higgs boson, Darwinian approaches to cancer treatment, evidence-based drug policy and climate change. Before working at New Scientist Michael was a medical reporter and before that he studied the philosophy of science and spent a lot of time thinking about the nature of time, thermodynamics and causality.

  THOMAS SUDDENDORF was born in Germany and is a professor of psychology at the University of Queensland. He has received honors and distinctions for both his research and teaching from such organisations as the Association for Psychological Science, the Australian Academy of Social Sciences, and the American Psychological Association. He has written more than 70 scientific papers, including a 2007 article on foresight that has become one of the most highly cited in the field of neuroscience and behaviour.

  Foreword: Clear and simple

  Ian Lowe

  There was a time when science was seen as a body of secure knowledge, given credibility by the scientific method and peer review. Back in the 1970s when I was a young lecturer at the UK Open University, the task of communicating science to the general public was straightforward, at least in principle. I had to understand the science well enough to explain it clearly and simply, then craft that explanation. A coalminers’ strike, which led to electricity restrictions, and the OPEC oil crisis had made the public aware of the importance of energy to modern lifestyles. So I found myself explaining the alternatives to coal-fired electricity, including nuclear power and the radical proposal to harness solar energy. At the time, nuclear power had a reasonable safety record, but there were emerging issues of cost and waste management, while solar power was an innovative technology so expensive it was only used on spacecraft. People were clearly excited by the idea that the physics of semiconductors could be used to power their homes.

  The idea of communicating science, however, was regarded with suspicion and hostility by some within the scientific community. When Barry Jones was minister for science in the 1980s, he observed that in the lexicon of scientific abuse, ‘populariser’ ranked just above ‘child molester’ – there was a feeling that you were letting the side down by explaining the science in terms that were accessible to the general public, in the same spirit as magicians giving away the secrets of their craft. There had always been a small group of prominent scientists who communicated openly and well, but most of their younger colleagues kept to their laboratories. Some scientists clearly wanted to maintain their community esteem by demonstrating that they understood principles that were a mystery to the general public.

  Those views are less frequently held today, with a growing acceptance that the public has a right to know what they are supporting. Even if those who pay the piper don’t call the tune, they should at least hear the music. And it’s also fair to say that there is a much greater imperative for effective communication of science, now that understanding the science is critical both to recognising the challenges we face and to shaping sensible solutions to those ‘wicked problems’.

  At the same time, we have become more realistic about the limits of scientific knowledge. No longer seen as a body of permanent truth, we now recognise science as a process of successive approximations to an understanding that will always have limitations and uncertainties: ‘islands of understanding in an endless sea of mystery,’ as the distinguished biologist David Ehrenfeld describes it.

  This is most obviously true in the broad area of our engagement with natural ecological systems, where controlled experiments are often not possible, where we can’t measure all of the relevant variables and where we can’t be objective observers – even in principle. We are part of the system we are analysing. Communication of these matters carries the responsibility to distinguish between what is known with confidence, what is thought probable but uncertain, and what remains unknown (or, in extreme cases, unknowable).

  Take the example of climate science: 25 years ago it was known that human activity was increasing the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases such as CO2 and methane, as outlined in the CSIRO’s 1988 publication Greenhouse: Preparing for climate change. It was also known that the climate was changing, with a warming trend superimposed on the year-to-year fluctuations – but most scientists were cautiously saying that it was not possible at that time to be confident that human activity was the cause of this. Now, with the enormous amount of detailed scientific work undertaken since, it is clear that there is a causal link, and the number of credible climate scientists who dispute that can literally be counted on the fingers of one hand. But there is still legitimate disagreement about the scale and rate of future changes in climate for any given increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.

  Several decades ago, US nuclear scientist Alvin Weinberg identified a class of problems that he called ‘trans-science’. These issues are couched in the language of science and they clearly require scientific analysis, but it is impossible to give an answer to them that meets the standards of science. He cited as examples the operating safety of nuclear reactors and the impact on humans of low levels of ionising radiation. While it might be possible eventually to collect enough data to give credible answers to those questions, Weinberg said, at that time they were unknowable. And so scientists, he argued, had a responsibility to be clear about what they did not know, rather than claiming always to have the answer.

  But while limited knowledge remains an issue, a greater challenge now is the backlash against science from those whose interests or ideology are threatened by its findings. The denial of global environmental problems such as climate change, as well as peak oil and limits to growth generally, is now a serious issue. Those denying climate change have made it possible for elected governments to defer serious responses, so that the future consequences will be much worse than they might have been. The implicit assumption that oil is unlimited means that the inevitable decline of conventional oil production will cause either disruption or pressure to exploit environmentally damaging alternatives, like tar sands or oil shale. And as the 1970s report Limits to Growth showed, the traditional emphasis on growth would cause very serious problems – possibly even the collapse of civilisation as a worst case – while a ‘smooth landing’ in a sustainable future would be possible if limits were recognised and allowed to guide our policies.

  The denial of science also has significant consequences in more modest areas such as the health problems attributed to wind turbines, resistance to vaccination, claims that allowing cattle to graze in alpine areas reduces fire risk, and so on. Some governments have slowed the transition to cleaner forms of energy such as wind power to accommodate groundless fears of health impacts, while diseases such as measles and whooping cough are again becoming a real health risk because of lower rates of vaccination. Although meticulous studies have shown that allowing cattle to graze in alpine areas damages the ecosystem and has no measurable impact on fire risk, the Victorian government is letting cattle back into areas from which they have been restricted for decades.

  Across these fields, those denying the inconvenient truths suggested
by the science often resort to personal abuse and unsubstantiated assertions. They cherry-pick data and misquote respectable scientists or distort their views by quoting them out of context. Some repeat claims that have been systematically and scientifically refuted. Leading climate scientists such as David Karoly have become so exasperated by these tactics they will no longer debate the science with deniers. As Karoly has said, feeling an obligation to be truthful places the scientist at a huge disadvantage when debating opponents who clearly do not feel that need.

  And while only peer-reviewed science reaches the journals, any unqualified person can express their opinion in a blog, on a website or in the commercial media. Syndicated columnists and radio shock jocks regularly express unqualified opinions and label those who understand the science as ‘warmists’, as if we were members of an obscure religious sect.

  Science communicators have a responsibility to counter this tsunami of misinformation and facilitate community understanding of these important issues – in many ways their task has never been more urgent. At the very least, we are taking huge risks by ignoring these problems. More probably, we are actually making choices that reduce our chance of a smooth landing in any sustainable future arrangement; we are increasing the risk of serious disruption.

  As the most obvious example, an energy policy based on the science would recognise the problems of peak oil and climate change. Since petroleum fuels will become increasingly expensive, urban transport needs to move away from the present emphasis on driving one-to-a-car. Reducing the consequences of energy use for the climate would drive a transition to cleaner energy supply from renewable sources like sun and wind, as well as reducing demand by turning energy more efficiently into the services we need.

  As many of the contributions to this collection show, scientific knowledge is often intrinsically interesting, even in areas that are thought of as ‘academic’, in the pejorative sense of the word. The human condition is unlikely to be significantly improved by the amazing pitch-drop experiment at the University of Queensland, but the search for understanding of such complex phenomena is fascinating. Other pieces of writing included here show how scientific knowledge is advanced by the painstaking process of data collection and then testing theories against this evidence.

  These show that a ‘theory’ in science is very different from the common use of that word. In everyday talk – or in politics – a theory is an untested idea, perhaps one that somebody came up with after a few drinks. In science, a theory is the currently accepted best explanation of the evidence. From time to time, a theory may be supplanted by a better explanation: the Earthcentred model of the universe was replaced by the Copernican understanding that the Earth and other planets revolve around the Sun – and that heliocentric theory was in turn supplanted by the recognition that our Sun is just an ordinary star in an outer arm of an undistinguished galaxy. And while quantum theory and the theory of relativity were effectively refinements of classical mechanics, the theory of evolution consigned the old idea of creation to the rubbish bin of history.

  The writings in this collection are a reminder that science is always a work in progress, with this generation of researchers testing and refining the earlier studies. They also demonstrate that science is not just critical to understanding the problems we face; it is crucial to solving them. Even accepting the limitations of scientific knowledge and the human failings of individual scientists, science still gives us our best chance of a desirable future – just as it has given us a much more desirable present.

  Introduction: Stories, definitions and the art of asking questions

  Ashley Hay

  At the end of 2013, in Springfield, MA, the Merriam-Webster dictionary company announced its words of the year. Based on around 100 million consultations per month, these track the words that have piqued most people’s interest, and the 2013 list featured ‘metaphor’ and ‘integrity’, ‘cognitive’ and ‘niche’. But at the top of the list, enjoying its status as the word with the most increased ‘look-up’ rate, was one that, the Merriam-Webster folk suspected, might ‘surprise many people’.

  The word was ‘science’.

  The dictionary gives first a general definition (‘knowledge about or study of the natural world based on facts learned through experiments and observation’), a series of ‘full definitions’, and then a separate definition for children (‘an area of knowledge that is an object of study’).

  As Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor-at-large, explained, science is a word ‘that is connected to broad cultural dichotomies: observation and intuition, evidence and tradition’. He noted the ‘wide variety of discussions’ that had centred on science in 2013 – ‘from climate change to educational policy’. And he noted the ‘heated debate’ about ‘“phony” science’ and whether science might ever give us ‘all the answers’. Underneath all this, he suggested, science simply fascinates us ‘enough so that it saw a 176 per cent increase in look-ups this year over last, and stayed a top look-up throughout the year’.

  Science is certainly about all those things and part of all those discussions and debates. It is also intrinsically fascinating. As someone who hangs out mainly on the humanities side of the fence, I’ve always wished I understood this earlier in life – it was one of the pleasures of becoming a jobbing journalist to realise that this great and unknown (to me) pool of work and ideas and projects, from astronomy and biology to zoology with everything else in between, was such a fertile source of fascinating stories. All you had to do was ask the ‘who, what, where, why and how’ of Journalism 101. I wrote my first scientific profile on the lifework of Australia’s pre-eminent weevil expert more than 20 years ago, and kept going from there.

  This is a book of science writing, the fourth in a series of annual anthologies. It is drawn from a variety of sources – from books and blogs, from magazines for school children and more specialist journals – and its voices reflect these diverse origins. It holds stories about the results of scientific research, about the people who undertake it, about the inspirations behind it, about its history and its future. It holds stories about plants and animals and people and places. It holds stories inspired by science – including short fiction and poetry – and stories that speak to the necessary connection between science and imagination.

  All these are parts of its whole. I work mainly as a novelist these days, and I know that the ideas of metaphor and translation often resound for me in science writing: the way a body of expert knowledge, with its particular methodologies and terminologies, can be unravelled and laid bare to make sense and to engage exquisitely. In this way, I hope some of the stories here scan purely for clarity, interest and those moments that kindle a reader’s curiosity. Others require a longer step into more complex language or more complex attempts to decode more complex processes.

  In 2013 Japanese researchers built a machine that could visualise people’s dreams with 50 per cent accuracy. Voyager 1 became our first vessel to enter interstellar space. Science magazine nominated cancer immunotherapies as its annual scientific breakthrough; New Scientist nominated the first movies made by physicists of ‘what travelling to the past really looks like’. Three new species of that feisty marsupial, the antechinus, were discovered around Brisbane; an expedition walked into Cape Melville in Far North Queensland and found two new lizards and a frog. And science snuck into pop culture via Nick Cave’s ‘Higgs boson blues’. (British physicist Brian Cox observed that Cave couldn’t have written the song without the particle – because without the particle he wouldn’t exist: ‘he’d just be a load of fragments travelling through the universe at the speed of light.’)

  In the week submissions for this year’s anthology closed, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published Climate Change 2014, and I followed its release from a hospital ward where my son was being stuffed full of antibiotics to counter a staph infection. These two instances seemed to speak to our different intersections with ‘scienc
e’. On the one hand was the noise that questioned the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change. (As Australia’s chief scientist Ian Chubb later noted, people would hardly take a broken-down car to a fishmonger for advice on how to fix it – or for actual repairs: so why do we have a problem trusting experts when it comes to climate science?) On the other I was in a place that embodied our certainty that science, in the guise of modern medicine, could fix or ameliorate just about any human ailment – in this case, a mountainously swollen knee.

  As the editing process concluded six weeks later, Australia’s latest federal budget was announced: Suzanne Cory, president of the Australian Academy of Science, reviewed it for The Conversation in the context of Tony Abbott’s election promise to ‘provide the long term, stable policies and vision that our nation’s scientists and researchers need to excel in their work’. Judge us, he had asked while removing a ministry of science from his cabinet, on ‘performance, not titles’. On judgment day, wrote Suzanne Cory, ‘the results – on the whole – are not good’. She outlined the $450 million cut from Australia’s premier research institutions, the end of bulk-billing, the dismantling of the preventative health agency, and ‘serious cuts for programs vital for adapting to climate change’.

  Yet as Ian Lowe writes in his foreword for this miscellany, the role of science is critical not only to our understanding the problems we face, but also to solving them: ‘even accepting the limitations of scientific knowledge and the human failings of individual scientists, science still gives us our best chance of a desirable future – just as it has given us a much more desirable present.’

  * * * * *

  There was a huge response to the call for submissions this year, and more entries for the Bragg UNSW Press Prize for Science Writing than ever. This means only a fraction of the pieces could end up in these pages, which made for some torturously subjective decisions. In the end, this particular suite of stories connected with and spoke to each other, creating a kind of narrative through their different parts. From different genres, and written for very different audiences, a lot of those parts are about process: about the time research takes, about the tiny particularity of its questions and its methods. There are epiphanies and unexpected intersections; there are careful reassessments of some areas of knowledge and thorough reiterations of others.