The Best Australian Science Writing 2012 (2 page)

Contributors

MATTHEW BAILES
is an astrophysicist who is an expert at finding rapidly spinning relativistic stars known as millisecond pulsars and is currently the acting Deputy Vice Chancellor at Swinburne University of Technology.

LACHLAN BOLTON
is a Year 6 student from Redeemer Baptist School North Parramatta. Fresh from consecutive prizes in the national Dorothea Mackellar Poetry Awards, he penned his light-hearted essay on the Wee-Cam. It was the winning entry in CSIRO's
The Helix
‘What's The Solution?' writing competition, and yes, he is currently constructing his own Wee-Cam.

FRANK BOWDEN
is Professor of Medicine at the Australian National University Medical School and is an infectious diseases physician at the Canberra Hospital. His research interests range from HIV to head lice and have focused on public health approaches to the control of infections in the community. He is the author of
Gone Viral: The germs that share our lives.

ROB BROOKS
is director of the Evolution and Ecology Research Centre at the University of New South Wales. He is an internationally recognised expert on evolutionary biology and sexual conflict, and received the Australian Academy of Science's Fenner Medal. He wrote
Sex, Genes & Rock ‘n' Roll: How Evolution has Shaped the Modern World
.

COREY BUTLER
is a former
COSMOS
Magazine
art director, whose stories, photographs and illustrations have been published in the
Sydney Morning Herald
and QANTAS' inflight magazine,
The Australian Way
. Corey has received a Publishers Australia Excellence award for design and was a Walkley Award finalist.

JONATHAN CARROLL
completed his PhD in theoretical physics in 2009, and has since held a Research Associate position with the Centre for the Subatomic Structure of Matter at the University of Adelaide.

JO CHANDLER
is a Walkley award-winning journalist and senior writer with
The Age
, writing in-depth reports across a range of issues, with particular emphasis on communicating climate change science and its impacts; humanitarian aid and development; women's issues and human rights. Her book
Feeling the Heat
takes the form of a reporter's dispatches from the climate ‘front line', from Antarctica to the tropics.

CRAIG CORMICK
is a Canberra-based science communicator, and an award-winning author, who specialises in drivers of public attitudes towards contentious technologies. He prefers to tell people he studied at The Derek Zoolander Centre for Kids Who Can't Read Good and Wanna Learn to Do Other Stuff Good Too.

JULIAN CRIBB
is an author, journalist, editor and science communicator. He is principal of Julian Cribb & Associates, which provides specialist consultancy in the communication of science, agriculture, food, mining, energy and the environment. He has received 32 awards for journalism. His internationally acclaimed book
The Coming Famine
explores the question of whether we can feed humanity through the mid-century peak in numbers and food demand.

PAMELA DOUGLAS
is a GP, researcher and writer. She has been in general practice since 1987, and is now Director of Possums, The Clinic for Mothers and Babies, in Brisbane. She is also an adjunct Senior Lecturer with the Discipline of General Practice, at the University of Queensland.

ASHLEY HAY
has written four books of narrative non-fiction and a novel,
The Body in the Clouds
, which was long-listed for the 2011 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. A former literary editor of
The Bulletin
, her work has appeared in publications including
Australian Geographic
,
The Australian
,
The Monthly
,
Good Weekend
,
Griffith Review
and
The Guardian
.

ADRIAN HYLAND
is the award-winning author of
Diamond Dove
,
Gunshot Road
and
Kinglake-350
. He lives in St Andrews, northeast of Melbourne, and teaches at LaTrobe University.

MICHAEL KASUMOVIC
is an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow working at the University of New South Wales. His research program revolves around sex and evolution, and explores how individuals maximise fitness in a continually varying world. Although his research focuses on non-human animals, he aims to also better understand humans.

CHRISTINE KENNEALLY
is an award-winning journalist and author. She has written for
The Monthly
,
Good Weekend
,
The New Yorker
and other publications. Her book,
The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language
, was published by Penguin. She is 2.7% Neanderthal.

WILLIAM LAURANCE
, Distinguished Research Professor at James Cook University in Cairns, is one of the world's leading researchers in tropical forest conservation. He works in the Amazon,
Africa, Southeast Asia and Australia, and has written six books and over 350 articles. He has received many honours, including the prestigious Heineken Environment Prize.

RICHARD A. LOVETT
is a former law professor turned freelance writer whose stories have appeared in
COSMOS Magazine
,
Nature
,
Science
,
New Scientist
and many others. He is also an award-winning science fiction writer and a distance-running coach for athletes ranging from local competitors to Olympic Trials contestants.

PETER M
C
ALLISTER
is an archaeologist and anthropologist from Griffith University's Gold Coast Campus. His major research interests are human evolution and the physical anthropology of ancient hominins, and he likes to write funny, informative books about the anthropology of the human condition. Outside his science writing, McAllister has worked as a journalist, a graphic artist, an advertising salesman for a country music radio station, and once (almost) as a Chinese-speaking rugby league commentator.

HELEN MAYNARD-CASELY
is a scientist working at the Australian Synchrotron, often attempting to re-create the conditions on the surface of Europa. When she isn't attempting to be on another planet, she likes eating jelly babies, watching sunsets and singing very badly.

VANESSA MICKAN
is a freelance writer and editor born in Brisbane and educated in Sydney. Vanessa suspected woodpeckers were just cartoon characters until she moved to Connecticut and started birdwatching. At
birdsandlife.blogspot.com
she writes about walking in the woods, the birds she sees there and the thoughts that unspool in those quiet moments.

NICK MILLER
is a freelance journalist currently based in New York. He left Australia in 2011 after eight years at
The Age
newspaper in Melbourne as its state news editor, health editor and IT editor. He started his reporting career at
The West Australian
newspaper, and has also written drama for radio and stage.

IAN MUSGRAVE
is a neuropharmacologist at the University of Adelaide. He is interested in understanding neurodegeneration, and neuronal function and survival, as well as natural product pharmacology and drug design. He is also interested in science communication (he is a committee member of SA Science Communicators) and is an avid amateur astronomer.

BRIAN SCHMIDT
is an ARC Laureate and Distinguished Professor at the Australian National University's Mount Stromlo Observatory. He was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contribution to ‘the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae'. He is currently leading Mt Stromlo's effort to build the SkyMapper telescope, a new facility that will provide a comprehensive digital map of the southern sky from ultraviolet through near infrared wavelengths. In addition to his astronomical studies, Schmidt runs a small vineyard and winery in the Canberra District, specialising in Pinot Noir.

WILSON DA SILVA
is the Editor-in-Chief of
COSMOS
Magazine
. A former foreign correspondent for Reuters, he's been a science reporter for ABC TV, a correspondent for
New Scientist
, and editor of the magazines
Newton, 21C
and
Science Spectra
. He began his journalism career at the
Sydney Morning Herald
and later worked as a technology writer for
The Age
. The winner of 31 awards, including twice Editor of the Year for his work on
COSMOS Magazine
, he is also a former president of the World Federation of Science Journalists.

RANJANA SRIVASTAVA
is an oncologist and author from Melbourne. A Fulbright scholar, she has written widely on the subject of humanity in medicine. Her book
Tell Me The Truth: Conversations With My Patients About Life and Death
was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Award. She writes a regular column in
The Melbourne Magazine
.

MARGARET WERTHEIM
is Director of the Institute for Figuring, a Los Angeles-based organisation dedicated to the poetic and aesthetic dimensions of science and mathematics. She has authored three books on the cultural history of physics and has written for many publications, including the
New York Times, Los Angeles Times, New Scientist
and
The Guardian
.

CASSANDRA WILKINSON
has worked for public, private and non-profit organisations developing and advising on social policy, and is currently National Business Development Manager for Social Finance, a start-up company developing one of Australia's first Social Impact Bonds. She is a co-founder and President of FBi Radio and author of
Don't Panic – Nearly Everything is Better than You Think
(Pluto Press 2007) and has contributed chapters to
Happiness
(Spinney 2009) and
Right Social Justice
(Connor Court 2011).

EMMA YOUNG
is an award-winning science and health journalist, and was named Australian Health Journalist of the Year 2010. A contributing editor at
COSMOS Magazine
, she also writes regularly for
Australian Geographic
and
New Scientist
, and is the author of five novels and three non-fiction books.

WENDY ZUKERMAN
is a researcher for
Catalyst
at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. She graduated from Biomedical Science/Law (Hons) at Monash University in Melbourne in 2008. Before working at
Catalyst
, Wendy was the Asia Pacific reporter for
New Scientist
. She appears on ABC and local radio to discuss science news and tweets @wendyzuk.

Foreword:
A new era for science writing

Brian Schmidt

It has never been a better time to be a consumer of scientific information. Thanks to the internet, we have an embarrassment of riches. Aficionados can help themselves to data from NASA satellites and seismic arrays, and to huge databases of information throughout the biological sciences. The broader community is even being encouraged to participate in citizen science activities such as the Galaxy Zoo or SETI Live. Scientists and scientific organisations are also reaching out with Twitter feeds, Facebook pages and Google Circles. YouTube provides a mind-boggling array of video material – everything from professional scientific presentations to the self-documented experiments of children. There are more science podcasts published each week than can be listened to by the keen listener in the available 168 hours.

But when it comes to quality, the internet windfall has its drawbacks, and science journalism is no exception. The e-media's premium on immediacy and brevity, and its bite-sized delivery through smartphones and tablets, threatens the longer, well-researched and considered article. Long-form journalism has become a threatened species.

But it's a species that needs preservation. Science writing
remains one of the most powerful forms of scientific communication. The well-written science article, typically authored by a professional writer and edited to a high standard, is where the reader, moving at their own pace, gets a chance to unify the morass of complex information into coherent and manageable chunks. This year's
Best Australian Science Writing
is indeed a protected reserve for such writing. It represents the high culture of Australian science communication.

But that's not to say that articles written solely for electronic media cannot also make the grade, and indeed many make an appearance in this anthology. These articles show the opportunity for non-professional writers – often scientists themselves – to contribute high-quality material to discerning readers. While they represent a small fraction this year, it is inevitable that that fraction will grow. Combining the expertise of the traditional print media with the flexibility of new media seems to provide the best results to date, and I expect to see more collaboration in this space in the coming years.

Another fantastic gift provided by the internet is the opportunity to massively increase the audience for Australian science writing. Rather than just our own 23 million citizens, the two billion internet users across the world are within reach. It is an opportunity to share our Australian scientific culture with the rest of the world. But our own citizens are being similarly tempted – it is a highly competitive world. Science consumers are looking for the highest quality material they can find, and journalistic excellence is vital to winning in this worldwide competition.
The Best Australian Science Writing
also serves the important role of providing the benchmark for aspiring science writers.

A feature of this year's collection is articles defending the role of science in society. One major drawback of the internet is that it provides a conduit for anyone to publish their own theories – from medicinal treatments to climate change or cosmology. This
has led to confusion in the community about what facts are supported by scientific evidence, and to questions about the use of science as a tool to understand the world around us. There are articles in this anthology that make important arguments about the scientific process. They defend the process by which science reaches conclusions, and help the reader understand how to wade through the anti-science rhetoric. These are subtle arguments, because the basis of scientific enquiry is scepticism. Science continually challenges the status quo, and has to make judgments with respect to conflicting information and dissenting views. The challenges have been particularly pronounced on the subject of climate change, where important government policy considerations have meant that the science has been intensely scrutinised in the media. Dissenting views have thrived in the oxygen of publicity, even though the fraction of scientists who uphold these views is small. This has had an unfortunate result: many in the community, including several notable politicians, discount the prevailing scientific view. Thoughtful articles like several in this collection provide a way to engage the public in areas of scientific debate in a constructive rather than destructive manner.