The Best Australian Science Writing 2013

THE BEST AUSTRALIAN SCIENCE WRITING 2013

J
ANE
M
C
C
REDIE
is an award-winning science journalist, former science publisher and the author of a book on the science of sex and gender,
Making Girls and Boys: Inside the science of sex
. She is currently executive director of the NSW Writers' Centre and writes a weekly blog on medicine for the
Medical Journal of Australia
's electronic sister publication, mjainsight.com.au. She has a Masters in psychological studies from the University of Melbourne.

N
ATASHA
M
ITCHELL
is a multi-award-winning science journalist. She hosts the national morning program
Life Matters
on ABC Radio National and was presenter of the popular science, psychology and culture radio show
All in the Mind
(2002–2012). She has served on the board and as Vice President of the World Federation of Science Journalists. Natasha was a recipient of the overall Grand Prize and four Gold World Medals at the New York Festivals for radio, and of the MIT Knight Journalism Fellowship. She has an engineering degree and a postgraduate diploma in science communication.

With love and thanks to

My parents, Yvonne and David, who told me stories and encouraged me to ask questions. (JM)

My mother, Charmian, whose love of nature and learning opened my eyes wide early. And to the wolfhound, a scientist at heart (if her sample size of tree trunks is any measure). (NM)

A NewSouth book

Published by

NewSouth Publishing

University of New South Wales Press Ltd

University of New South Wales

Sydney NSW 2052

AUSTRALIA

newsouthpublishing.com

© University of New South Wales Press Ltd 2013

First published 2013

This book is copyright. While copyright of the work as a whole is vested in University of New South Wales Press Ltd, copyright of individual chapters is retained by the chapter authors. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Title: The Best Australian Science Writing 2013/edited by Jane McCredie and Natasha Mitchell.

ISBN: 9781742233857 (paperback)

9781742241654 (ePub/Kindle)

9781742246666 (ePDF)

Subjects: Technical writing – Australia.

Communication in science – Australia.

Science in literature.

Other Authors/Contributors: McCredie, Jane, editor.

Mitchell, Natasha, editor.

Dewey Number: 808.0665

Design
Josephine Pajor-Markus

All reasonable efforts were taken to obtain permission to use copyright material reproduced in this book, but in some cases copyright could not be traced. The publisher welcomes information in this regard.

Contents

Contributors

Foreword: Not a Nobel laureate

Tim Minchin

Introduction: An intimate dissection

Natasha Mitchell and Jane McCredie

The weather of who we are

Mark Tredinnick

It's time to become gonads

Becky Crew

The last laughing death

Jo Chandler

The perils of evolution

Janine Burke

Darwin's modest discovery

Damon Young

Earthmasters: Playing God with the climate

Clive Hamilton

Science is more than freaks and circuses

Paul Livingston

Animals on drugs

Rhianna Boyle

Dreamtime cave

Elizabeth Finkel

Heart dissection

Ian Gibbins

Reaching one thousand

Rachel Robertson

Higgs boson

Michael Lucy

Here come the übernerds: Planets, Pluto and Prague

Fred Watson

Many-worlds quantum mechanics vs earth-based grease monkeys

gareth roi jones

The vagina dialogues

Cordelia Fine

Big Data can tell by your tweets if you're a psychopath: That's only the beginning …

Kirsten Drysdale

With body in mind (after Vesalius)

Ian Gibbins

How a donor is done

Kellee Slater

Nest: The art of birds

Janine Burke

My father's body

Francesca Rendle-Short

Sentinel chickens

Peter Doherty

The science of shark fishing

Ian Gibbins

On flatulence

Nicholas Haslam

Radioactive cigarettes: X-ray inhale

Karl Kruszelnicki

Martyrs to Gondwanaland: The cost of scientific exploration

Chris Turney

Mr Jevons and his paradox

Antony Funnell

Alimentary thinking

Emma Young

The carnivore's (ongoing) dilemma

Åsa Wahlquist

Beyond the shock machine

Gina Perry

Australia's endangered future

Tim Flannery

Alive as a dodo

Nicky Phillips

Probably a sacrifice

Ian Gibbins

Fire on the mountain: A walk on Mt Stromlo

Andrew Croome

Advisory panel

Acknowledgments

The Bragg UNSW Press Prize for Science Writing

Contributors

RHIANNA BOYLE has degrees in creative writing and zoology. She is currently a research assistant at the Centre for Aquatic Pollution Identification and Management at the University of Melbourne. She has written the nature column for
The Lifted Brow
since 2011.

JANINE BURKE is the author of 18 books, as well as numerous essays, short stories and reviews. She has written biographies of Albert Tucker, Sunday Reed and Joy Hester, as well as a book on Sigmund Freud's art collection. She won the 1987 Victorian Premier's award for fiction and she has been shortlisted for fiction and non-fiction awards including the Miles Franklin and
The Age
Book of the Year. From 2008 to 2012, Dr Burke was a research fellow at Monash University, and she is currently an adjunct lecturer at Monash University.

JO CHANDLER is a Walkley Award-winning journalist and writer. After a long career in daily newspapers (
The Age
), as a freelance journalist she now focuses on in-depth reports exploring science and medicine, climate change, human rights, women's issues and development. An extract of her book
Feeling the Heat
– dispatches from the climate ‘front line' from Antarctica to the tropics – earned her the 2012 Bragg UNSW Press Prize for Science Writing. She is an honorary fellow with the Alfred Deakin Research Institute.

BECKY CREW is an award-winning science blogger and freelance writer based in Sydney. She is the author of
Zombie Tits, Astronaut Fish and Other Weird Animals,
the former online editor of
COSMOS
magazine and a contributing editor for
ScienceAlert
. Her work has been published in
ABC Science Online, Salon Magazine, The Huffington Post,
and
Nature
blogs, and her blog,
Running Ponies
, is published by the Scientific American Blog Network.

ANDREW CROOME is a writer living in Canberra. His first work of fiction,
Document Z
, won the 2008 The Australian/Vogel's Literary Award. His recently published second novel,
Midnight Empire
, focuses on drone warfare and poker. In 2010 Andrew was named a
Sydney Morning Herald
Young Novelist of the Year. His writing has appeared in various publications, including
The Age
and
The Australian
. In 2012, he was resident at Mt Stromlo as part of the National Year of Reading.

PETER DOHERTY scored a Nobel Prize for his work on immunity and, while continuing with biomedical research, found a further focus communicating the excitement and elegance of science to those who normally have other things on their mind. That has led to three ‘trade' books (including
The Beginner's Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize
and
Sentinel Chickens
) with a fourth, on pandemic infections, due to be published in 2013. His next book will discuss how normal human beings can access and evaluate what's happening in science.

KIRSTEN DRYSDALE is a print and television journalist based in Sydney, a long way from her rural upbringing on a small cattle farm in North Queensland. She has written for
The Global Mail
,
Crikey
and
The Vine
, and reported for ABC TV's alternative current affairs program
Hungry Beast
and consumer affairs program
The Checkout
.

CORDELIA FINE is an academic psychologist and writer. She is an ARC Future Fellow in Psychological Sciences at the University of Melbourne and associate professor at the Centre for Ethical Leadership at the Melbourne Business School. She is the author of
Delusions of gender: The real science behind sex differences
and
A mind of its own: How your brain distorts and deceives.
<
www.cordeliafine.com
>

ELIZABETH FINKEL, after spending nearly a decade as a laboratory researcher, morphed into a science writer for scientific and lay audiences. She has served as a correspondent for the American magazine
Science
and an associate editor for
COSMOS
magazine, a popular science magazine that she cofounded. In January 2013 she was appointed
COSMOS
editor in chief. She has written two books,
Stem Cells: Controversy at the frontiers of science
and
The Genome Generation
.

TIM FLANNERY has published over 130 peer-reviewed scientific papers and has named 25 living and 50 fossil mammal species. His 32 books include
The Future Eaters
and
The Weather Makers
, which has been translated into over 20 languages and won the NSW Premier's Book of the Year award. Tim has made numerous documentaries and regularly writes for the
New York Review of Books
. In 2007 he was named Australian of the Year. He is a founding member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, was cofounder and chair of the Copenhagen Climate Council, and in 2011 became Australia's first Chief Climate Commissioner.

ANTONY FUNNELL is a Walkley Award-winning journalist and broadcaster. As the presenter of
Future Tense
on ABC Radio National, he analyses the social, cultural and economic faultlines arising from rapid transformation. He is also the author of
his mother's favourite book of all time
The Future and Related Nonsense
. Over the past two decades, Antony has worked for many of Australia's leading news and current affairs programs, including
AM
,
PM
,
Background Briefing
and
7.30 Report
.