The Best Australian Science Writing 2013 Read online

  THE BEST AUSTRALIAN SCIENCE WRITING 2013

  JANE MCCREDIE 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.

  NATASHA MITCHELL 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.

  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.

  IAN GIBBINS is a neuroscientist and Professor of Anatomy at Flinders University. He has over 100 scientific publications on the microscopic structure and function of nerves communicating between the spinal cord and the internal organs. Ian’s poetry has been widely published, including in The Best Australian Poems 2008 and has been shortlisted in national poetry competitions. His first full collection Urban Biology was published in 2012 with an accompanying CD of his electronic music.

  CLIVE HAMILTON is Professor of Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University in Canberra. For 14 years, until 2008, he was executive director of the Australia Institute, a think tank he founded. He has held various visiting academic positions, including at Yale University and the University of Oxford. His books include Growth Fetish, The Freedom Paradox: Towards a post-secular ethics, Requiem for a Species: Why we resist the truth about climate change and, most recently, Earthmasters: Playing God with the climate.

  NICHOLAS HASLAM is Professor of Psychology at the University of Melbourne. A social psychologist, Nick has written widely on relationships, group processes and psychiatric classification. His books include Psychology in the Bathroom and Introduction to Personality and Intelligence. His current fascination is the psychology of the nose.

  GARETH ROI JONES is a member of Friendly Street Poets in Adelaide. In 2012 he was selected as one of three emerging poets as part of New Poets 17. He loves both science and poetry, so combining them is a great joy. A highlight was having the poem that appears in this anthology chosen for RiAus’ Poem of the Month and being displayed on the LED thread which wraps around the Royal Institution of Australia’s Adelaide headquarters.

  KARL KRUSZELNICKI has 27 years of education (primary school to university). His degrees in physics and mathematics, biomedical engineering, medicine and surgery provide a solid scientific basis to understanding what is contained in the thousands of pieces of scientific literature that he reads each year. He currently works as an author, a fellow at the University of Sydney, and science reporter at the ABC (ten radio shows, one TV spot, and the weekly Great Moments in Science segment). He has spent two years travelling through 15 of the 17 Australian deserts.

  PAUL LIVINGSTON is the author of six books, nine radio plays, and was a cowriter on Happy Feet Two. He has received four AWGIE awards for television comedy writing. His comic alter ego Flacco has toured extensively in Australia and internationally and his television credits include The Big Gig, DAAS Kapital, Good News Week and The Sideshow. Paul was the joint winner of the 1996 Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award for outstanding achievement in the performing arts in Australia.

  MICHAEL LUCY is the deputy editor of The Monthly. He studied physics at the University of Melbourne.

  TIM MINCHIN is an Australian comedian, composer-lyricist, pianist, vocalist, actor and writer. ‘Audacious’, ‘jaw-dropping’, ‘a genius’, ‘a devil’, ‘an angel’, ‘a rock-star’ and ‘unashamedly polysyllabic’ are just some of the words used to describe his sell-out shows worldwide. We have no idea how to explain his ridicu-lously exciting career in just 75 words. So:

  GINA PERRY trained first as a psychologist, later as a professional writer. She is the author of Behind the Shock Machine: the untold story of the notorious Milgram psychology experiments. Her feature articles, columns, essays and short fiction have been published in newspapers and literary magazines around Australia. Her co-production of the ABC Radio National documentary about the obedience experiments, Beyond the Shock Machine, won the Silver World Medal for a history documentary in the 2009 New York Festivals for radio.

  NICKY PHILLIPS is the science reporter at the Sydney Morning Herald. As a specialist science journalist she reports on everything from climate change and conservation to evolution and astronomy. She writes the weekly True, False or Utterly Absurd column for the Herald’s health and science liftout. Nicky is a former reporter/producer with ABC Radio National’s Science Show and Health Report. She has also produced packages for the BBC World Service. Nicky has a bachelor of science.

  FRANCESCA RENDLE-SHORT is a novelist and essayist. Her most recent book Bite Your Tongue was shortlisted for the 2012 Colin Roderick Literary Award. She is the author of Imago and Big Sister, and has also published short fictions, photo-essays, exhibition text, poetry, and scholarly work. She is the recipient of the 2013 International Writers’ Fellowship to Iowa, has a doctorate in creative arts, and is an associate professor at RMIT University.

  RACHEL ROBERTSON is the author of Reaching One Thousand: A story of love, motherhood and autism and a lecturer in professional writing and publishing at Curtin University. Her work has been published in anthologies and journals such as The Best Australian Essays, Griffith Review, Westerly, Island and the Australian Book Review.

  KELLEE SLATER is a general surgeon specialising in surgery for diseases of the liver, bile ducts and pancreas. She is a member of the liver transplant team at Princess Alexandra Hospital and has a private practice at Greenslopes Private Hospital. Kellee did her general surgery training in Queensland, then travelled to Denver in the United States to learn liver transplantation. She is the author of How to Do a Liver Transplan
t: Stories from my surgical life. Kellee is a married to Andrew and is the proud mother of four.

  MARK TREDINNICK is a poet, nature writer, and essayist. He is the author of Australia’s Wild Weather, The Blue Plateau, Fire Diary and nine other books. He was the winner of the 2011 Montreal Poetry Prize and the 2012 Cardiff Poetry Prize. Mark is a member of the Kangaloon Group of Concerned Artists and Scholars.

  CHRIS TURNEY is an Australian and British earth scientist. He is Professor of Climate Change and an ARC Laureate Fellow at the University of New South Wales. Chris is the author of 1912: The year the world discovered Antarctica; Ice, Mud and Blood: Lessons from climates past and Bones, Rocks and Stars: The science of when things happened, as well as numerous scientific papers and magazine articles. In 2007 he was awarded the Sir Nicholas Shackleton Medal for outstanding young Quaternary scientist, and in 2009 he received the Geological Society of London’s Bigsby Medal for services to geology.

  ÅSA WAHLQUIST has been a rural journalist since 1984. She has worked in ABC Radio and ABC TV, at the Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian. She is currently a freelance journalist. She has won a dozen awards, including a Walkley in 1996, the Australian Government Peter Hunt Eureka Prize for Environmental Journalism in 2005, and the European Community Journalist Award in 1993. Åsa is the author of Thirsty Country, a book about Australia’s water crisis.

  FRED WATSON has been Astronomer in Charge of the Australian Astronomical Observatory since 1995, but is best known for his radio and TV broadcasts, books, and other outreach programs. He is also a musician, with a science-themed CD and an award-winning symphony libretto to his name. Fred was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 2010. He has an asteroid named after him (5691 Fredwatson), but says that if it hits the Earth it won’t be his fault.