The Best Australian Science Writing 2017

By Michael Slezak

The annual collection celebrating the finest voices in Australian science writing. From the furthest reaches of the universe to the microscopic world of our genes, science offers writers the kind of scope other subjects simply can't match. Good writing about science can be moving, funny, exhilarating, or poetic, but it will always be honest and rigorous about the research that underlies it. Now in its seventh year, The Best Australian Science Writing brings together knowledge and insight from Australia's brightest thinkers as they explore the intricacies of the world around us. This lively collection of essays covers a wide range of subjects, and challenges our perceptions of the world and how we exist within it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: NewSouth
• Release date: Jan 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9781742244051

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Introduction

Michael Slezak

Humanity faces a suite of existential risks, each of which is failing to be addressed by governments around the world.

Our best science tells us we are on course for catastrophic climate change, which will make life as we know it impossible. The clear policy implication of this science is that the world needs to dramatically cut its carbon emissions, reducing them to zero within decades, and then continuing the decline to reach negative emissions thereafter.

As a result of some of our most advanced science in recent decades, there remain more than 15 000 nuclear warheads in nine countries – enough to destroy humanity many times over. Meanwhile, ever more superbugs are developing and spreading around the world with alarming rapidity, threatening the basis of much of modern medicine.

For whatever reason, the science – combined with a concern for human life and wellbeing – has utterly failed to drive policy on these and many other serious issues. If this degree of species-level suicidal behaviour is not enough to convince us all of the need for more good-quality research and journalism, then nothing could be.

The best antidote to poor government policy is an informed populace. And one of the best ways to have an informed populace is to have a vibrant, critical and engaged media that scrutinises policy, explains its context, and educates us all.

However, it is no secret that, globally, journalism is in the midst of a crisis, making this antidote evermore elusive. Worse still, the reality is that it is just quality journalism that is in crisis. And as quality journalism has been shrinking, it has been replaced by a booming industry of sensationalist, hyperpartisan and sometimes simply dishonest (‘#fakenews’) media, that misinforms the public.

Since this crisis is driven by a collapsing business model for traditional media, the first type of quality journalism that is lost during this transition is that which is performed by specialist writers. Economics writers, education reporters, health writers and, of course, science writers are the first out the door when newsrooms cut costs. (Why pay three specialists when you can pay just one generalist?) As those experts leave the industry, the ability of the media to improve public debate diminishes dramatically.

Science writers and science journalists have fared particularly badly in this transition. The number of full-time science reporters in Australia can probably be counted on one hand. If you include health and environment reporters in the count, the numbers are a little better, but still rather sickly.

It is of little significance to the media executives who are legally bound to maximise shareholder profits that the existential threat facing our species is of a scientific nature – one that requires the public to feel competent engaging with the causes and consequences of our warming planet. That is, to feel comfortable engaging with scientific ideas.

It is for these reasons – the ever-greater need for more and better science journalism, combined with the declining quality and volume of that journalism – that projects like this anthology are vital.

While science writing, like most specialist full-time journalism, is in decline, this anthology shows that there is a vibrant and possibly growing ecology of scientists, freelancers, novelists, academics and general reporters who are producing science writing. Like what ecologists call a ‘regime shift’, full-time journalists moving out have made room for others to move in.

This anthology not only recognises the outstanding work those writers have produced, but by collecting their work over the past year, records the important events that happened during this time. And there have been few years recently that have been as significant for Australian science writing as the period captured by this anthology – January 2016 to March 2017.

Perhaps most significantly, over this period climate change hit home like it never has before. A massive underwater heatwave meant the Great Barrier Reef suffered the worst bleaching ever recorded, with a quarter killed in one fell swoop. And then as soon as that finished, it was hit again, with bleaching in 2017 killing another quarter or so.

Jo Chandler had this covered. Pulling on mask and flippers, Chandler got under the water and witnessed for herself the mass death occurring off Australia’s coast. Her expert reportage from the Great Barrier Reef seemed equally formed by her own lifelong passion for the reef and her expertise covering disasters around the world. There was no better reporter for the job.

The story of the reef ’s death is, of course, one of the most visible stories of the impacts of climate change – at least in the developed world. Chandler deals with this head-on, speaking to scientists who explain what a warming world will mean for reefs in an informed and passionate way.

While the Great Barrier Reef bleached and died, another Australian world heritage site was decimated by climate change: alpine forests in Tasmania that do not naturally burn experienced a massive bushfire after climate change dried them out and also caused lightning to increase massively – the perfect ingredients for huge fires. Karl Mathiesen, who grew up camping in those very forests, explains with touching intimacy the causes and consequences of these fires. Large parts of the Tasmanian forests – unique remnants of vegetation that once stretched across the massive Gondwana supercontinent – were destroyed and probably lost forever. With climate change presenting a new normal that appears incompatible with their existence, Mathiesen speaks to experts who reveal the risks faced by those wondrous forests.

While these sorts of massive ecological disruptions are indisputably distressing, in ‘Alchemists of catastrophe’, Shanta Barley and Jessica Meeuwig explain through a series of fascinating examples how they also present a unique opportunity for scientists to answer questions that would never have been possible before. Disasters like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico – and no doubt catastrophes like the loss of coral reefs – present what they call ‘large-scale, unreplicated natural experiments’, or ‘LUNEs’. Quite rightly, scientists could not get permission to perform such atrocities. But once they’ve been done, they are a treasure trove of data.

Barley and Meeuwig demonstrate this, but also interrogate the issues raised for the scientific method itself, when LUNEs are the basis of knowledge. These sorts of natural experiments are inherently unreplicatable. But replication was once considered a basic requirement of scientific work. Barley and Meeuwig argue replication in science is in crisis anyway, and in any case, the stakes are too high to ignore the lessons we can learn from massive environmental disruptions. Their piece is important and timely.

If Barley and Meeuwig get you thinking about the nature of science – how it works – then Peter Ellerton will satisfy any questions you have about that. His piece is a lovely introduction to what the scientific method is, and why so many people get it wrong when they argue about scientific issues like climate change.

While climate change bleached coral and burned forests, a political storm erupted over Australia’s commitment to research how the climate is changing. When the new chief executive of the CSIRO announced in an email to staff that climate change had been proved, so it was time to shift focus away from studying how the climate is changing and towards understanding how to mitigate and adapt to it, outrage erupted around the world. Adam Morton explains the shift was not just about a choice of particular topics, but about a more fundamental question of whether the CSIRO should be engaged in ‘science for science’s sake’, and examines the political and cultural context in which the shift occurred.

That particular piece provoked a vigorous exchange of views among the expert panel who provided advice on the pieces included in this anthology. One member of the panel, who had a different perspective on the dispute, argued the piece was political writing, not science writing. Another panel member argued the piece was an important contribution to the public discourse on science that year – one that raised important and novel questions.

Personally, I feel strongly that science writing must do more than just explain the results of scientific studies. It must go further and examine the complex political and cultural context in which those studies occur – as this piece did. A lot of science writing is explanatory, but critical and investigative reporting such as Morton’s is important too, and it is the most at risk as journalism navigates its ongoing crisis. Moreover, these events at the CSIRO were one of the most significant events in Australian science over the period the book covered. I thank the expert panel for their honest, respectful and intelligent debate over the piece.

Just as science writers must examine the political context in which science occurs, so too must they consider the ethical implications of knowledge – and of the use that knowledge is put to. One such piece is an essay by one of Australia’s most famous philosophers – Peter Singer – who considers what it takes for us to consider that a non-human species has rights, and asks the surprising question of whether intelligent aliens would have rights – specifically, whether humans would have the right to kill them for food. The question, he points out, is a useful way of exposing inconsistencies we seem to hold about earthly non-human animals.

And in another piece, Alice Klein examines the ethics of killing animals for a very different reason. She asks whether largescale culls, intended to save other animals, are justified – or indeed, whether they work.

Another niche in the complex ecology of science writing is applying scientific understanding to domains beyond the laboratory. In this vein, Joel Werner and Tiger Webb take a scientific view of a criminal case. Next time a bored student asks what good maths is in real life, you can point to the murder case they examine, and say that maths could be the key to the accused’s guilt or innocence. According to Werner and Webb, it could be a case of wrong-place-wrong-time on steroids. A man’s presence at a string of murders appeared to be convincing evidence of his guilt, and he was convicted. But later, when statisticians argued that this reasoning was based on a fallacy, the expert statistical opinion initially fell on deaf ears, with the court arguing ‘there was no need to statistically validate the opinion evidence of experts’, according to Werner and Webb.

If courts are ignoring statistical analysis in favour of intuitive reasoning, that is further reason that more science journalism is needed. Society as a whole – courts included – needs a firm grasp on the value of scientific reasoning. And a public that is engaged in science is the best way to achieve that.

An important way to generate that public engagement is having scientists themselves write for general audiences. Today, more scientists than ever are doing that – and that is something to celebrate. Among those scientists, there are many who write competently for the general public. But there are a handful who do so with a deep insight, creative flair and a sensitivity to broader issues. Archaeologist Alice Gorman is at the top of that game.

In this book you will read Gorman’s intricately woven essay, which builds a cohesive fabric from what appear at first to be disparate threads. She tells a beautiful and sad story of Woomera and the Nullarbor Plain, through the presence of fossils and trace fossils – clues that would pass most of us by, but which to a trained eye paint a rich picture. It’s a story of climate change, of the space race, of nuclear war and of Indigenous repression that seamlessly moves from time scales in the order of billions of years, through to the present day.

Gorman is joined in the book by several other scientists who are as adept with the pen as they are with the test tube. John Long, a prolific researcher and communicator, explains the myths and realities of monster sharks that once ruled the seas. Ray Norris and Robert Fuller, in separate pieces, provide complementary discussions of Aboriginal astronomy. Norris outlines intriguing clues that suggest Aboriginal people might have been the world’s first astronomers, while Fuller explains how the navigational routes they designed with that astronomical study shaped Australia’s highways.

Darren Saunders writes not so much about the fruits of research he and his colleagues are doing, but about the challenges faced by cancer scientists. He writes with passion and sensitivity about the emotional and physical toll paid by researchers in his field, and the structural features of research funding that unnecessarily drive those problems.

Of course, science writers also aim to delight and excite audiences.

Elle Hunt, who has a near-obsessive interest in octopuses and other cephalopods, gets up close and personal with a giant cuttlefish in Sydney Harbour, accompanying Australian philosopher of science Peter Godfrey-Smith. The experience she describes is touching, and a perfect backdrop for the philosophical and scientific questions raised by the intelligence of cephalopods, which evolved almost completely independently from our own.

There is a synergy between Hunt’s and Singer’s pieces, which both ask questions about alien (or near-alien) intelligence, that continues with James Bradley’s excellent short work ‘Fish have feelings too’. The research he discusses might make you think twice before going fishing.

Staying below the water is John Pickrell’s reporting from the Great Australian Bight on what are probably the largest animals that have ever existed – blue whales. What we still don’t know about these serene giants – the continuing mystery – is almost as interesting as what we do know. As Pickrell’s first-person reporting reveals, the health of blue whales could be a useful proxy for the health of this mostly blue planet.

Rounding off the aquatic reporting is Peter Hannam’s deep dive into the hype Australia has seen about shark attacks. Hannam investigates the reality of shark attack statistics in Australia, free of the emotional hyperbole associated with the reports often seen in the immediate aftermath of shark attacks. His piece looks back at the history of human–shark interactions, as well as the future of emerging technology that could help keep people safe.

Emerging above the waves is Andrew Stafford, with his investigation into what was, until this year, Australia’s most mysterious bird: the night parrot. Once known to be widespread across most of the continent, for decades there had been rare evidence of their continued existence, with a few dead specimens found. With a high price on their head among bird and egg collectors, recent discovery of live populations was shrouded in secrecy. Stafford describes the controversy around their rediscovery, and the methods used to conserve them.

A key job of a specialist science reporter is being able to see trends emerging in a field, and gather together the relevant threads into a story for the general public. In this vein, Ivy Shih looks at an emerging trend in medicine that is harking back to the origins of the discipline: the use of naturally occurring chemicals. In this case, she looks specifically at the promise shown by venoms for modern drug discovery.

Laura Parker looks more broadly into the idea of mimicking nature in medical research. Parker follows the work of bioengineer Jeffrey Karp, who is known as a ‘bioinspirationalist’. He’s made surgical tape inspired by gecko feet, and surgical staples inspired by porcupine quills. Parker’s piece reveals the creativity and lateral thinking required in much scientific research.

Looking at an emerging trend in material science, James Mitchell Crow reports on researchers who are making seemingly impossible metals. Updating the ancient method of alloying, researchers are discovering surprising properties can be imparted to metals by mixing them in ever more complex ways.

And in a timely piece, Bianca Nogrady looks at the sometimes overwhelmingly world-changing trend of autonomisation – robotics and artificial intelligence. Nogrady examines the promise of intelligent robotics and its potential costs, as well as how it’s already changing many industries.

But if all that reporting is sounding too agreeable, you’ll also find our authors navigating fascinating controversies with scientific precision. Felicity Nelson puts locally acquired Lyme disease under the microscope, investigating the industry around diagnosing and treating a disease that authorities insist does not exist in Australia.

Cordelia Fine and Rob Brooks both deal with the question of the role of biology in sex differences. Fine’s piece, an extract from her new book, is a classic in the genre of myth-busting, deflating the exaggerated role many commentators give testosterone in determining gender differences – including apparent preferences for different colours and toys. On the other hand, Brooks looks at what he sees as extremes on both sides of that debate, and presents a rare prediction of views on the basis of sex differences that was able to be tested.

The collection includes work on some of the biggest science projects in the world, like Elizabeth Finkel’s report on the world’s largest telescope – the Square Kilometer Array – which will be partly built in Australia, and Cathal O’Connell’s dramatic account of work being done to solve the mystery of the Universe’s missing antimatter.

It also deals with some of the world’s biggest challenges. In addition to the pieces dealing with climate change, Kemal Atlay reminds us that the emergence of antibiotic resistance could well be an even more immediate threat to humanity as we know it.

And finally, Elmo Keep’s Gonzo-esque report on a mysterious pyramid in the middle of nowhere in the US reveals a history of nuclear proliferation that few would be aware of, and she finds herself embroiled in a dispute between an unusual religious sect and the local government. Keep’s piece, along with Gorman’s earlier in the book, is a timely reminder of an ongoing existential threat nuclear war poses to humanity that is too often ignored today. The topic is also touched on by Simon Torok’s piece, examining the long-term implications of peaceful uses of nuclear technology.

Between all those reports – and other brilliant pieces there isn’t room to describe here – you’ll get a sense of the scientific issues that faced Australia and the world over the past year.

The picture you are given is inevitably slanted by a number of things, including the subjects science writers choose to focus on, what scientists are working on, and the sorts of stories that magazines, newspapers and book publishers are interested in featuring. However, those biases, reflected in this book, are themselves interesting. For example, there are a high proportion of pieces in this book about the environment, which possibly reflects how prominent environmental issues were in the past year or so, and the public’s concern about them.

It should also be noted that the biases of the editor – my biases – will inevitably be seen in the pieces chosen. Choosing the ‘best’ Australian science writing is ultimately a very subjective endeavour, and in doing so I applied my own beliefs as to what is important. I looked at the quality of the writing, the accuracy of the content, and how enjoyable the topic is, but I also looked for timeliness – I asked as I read each of the hundreds of pieces submitted (and many others I perused) why this piece was written now. If there was no obvious reason, it was unlikely to be among the best.

Of course, that process was also influenced by the expert advisory panel, who had their own views on the pieces which didn’t always agree with mine. As mentioned earlier, we had debates that were robust, the results of which contributed to the quality of this book.

I hope you enjoy The Best Australian Science Writing 2017.

Grave Barrier Reef

Jo Chandler

Many of today’s marine scientists blame Jacques Cousteau, who surfaced in their lounge rooms during their formative years, for luring them into the water. Others were hooked by the psychedelic barrage of coral gardens and sea creatures in National Geographic. Through the ’60s and ’70s, the co-evolution of scuba technology, underwater photography and colour television took millions of earthlings on their first beguiling voyage into the deep.

Until then, the submarine world was, for most people, as remote as the just-trodden Moon. For the University of Queensland’s Professor Justin Marshall, however, terrestrial life was never really on the cards. His father was Dr Norman Bertram ‘Freddy’ Marshall, ‘curator of Her Majesty’s fishes’ at the British Museum (Natural History), and his mother, Olga, was a scientific illustrator who captured her husband’s discoveries in ink and watercolour.

Young Justin was the marine science equivalent of an army brat, floating around research bases in the Bahamas and Florida between stints at an Essex house where pickled specimens from the world’s oceans were collected, lifeless and eternal, in jars.

‘I was a nerdy little bugger,’ Marshall recalls, ‘correcting graduate students at age seven on the Latin names of fish.’ Marshall grew up to become a neuro-ecologist investigating how residents of coral reefs and the deeper ocean perceive their environment.

‘As arrogant humans we tend to assume we are the pinnacle of evolution; however, certainly in sensory terms, this is far from true,’ he explains in his professional profile. He tells me he works with these creatures ‘because I love them’. And, as it happens, they have much to teach. ‘The animals I’m working on at the moment are helping us detect cancer, increase data storage on computers and improve satellite design. All coming directly from mantis shrimp vision.’

The blue-grey surface of the ocean is a formidable barrier. But for Marshall it was always pervious. ‘I’ve lived underwater, done two stints in the Aquarius habitat [a submerged laboratory in the Florida Keys]. I’ve fallen asleep underwater, which you’re not supposed to do.’

On 16 March 2016 he wept underwater. ‘It was on my field trip to Lizard Island. I’ve been going there for 30 years.’ Marshall was treading water at ground zero of a global coral bleaching event – only the third ever recorded and the worst by far, all since 1998. To evoke the scene, he guides me on an imaginary walk through the loveliest forest I can conjure. But all the trees have lost their leaves. They are dying or dead and will soon start to fall down. The grasses and flowers are gone. The birds have flown away. Animals desperately search for food.

Marshall’s submerged Eden is Lizard Island’s Loomis Reef, 270 kilometres north of Cairns on the Great Barrier Reef. Stretching 2300 kilometres up the coast from Bundaberg to the Torres Strait, the Great Barrier Reef is the largest living structure on the planet, a World Heritage site cherished for its biological diversity.

But Loomis was now a slagheap. Its annihilation had been so swift that the scientist reckoned even the fish, many of them searching out their vanished food gardens, looked traumatised.

‘We were diving in dissolving reef,’ Marshall says. ‘The water had this terrible green ghostly quality – it was like diving in ectoplasm. It was awful. And essentially it was dying coral.’ Aerial surveys in April confirmed 93 per cent of the Great Barrier Reef had been hit by the bleaching to some extent.

The northern section, which because of its remoteness had endured as the most pristine, copped it the worst. In 2015, this area of the Reef was credited with saving Australia the indignity of its World Heritage treasure being declared by UNESCO as ‘in danger’.

‘Australia argued to UNESCO that the outstanding universal value of the World Heritage area is intact because we have this northern 30 per cent of the Reef where everything is hunky dory,’ says Professor Terry Hughes, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. ‘That is no longer the case. In the space of a month or two, the northern third is now more degraded than the southern two thirds.’ In early May, as Canberra waited for the bell to ring on the federal election campaign, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) chairman, Dr Russell Reichelt, broke the news to a distracted Senate committee that more than half the coral in reefs in the far northern section were dead. He was unequivocal about where the blame lay. This was not the consequence of this summer’s whopping El Niño, a natural warming cycle that occurs every five years or so. Bleaching was driven by ‘the upward trend in ocean temperatures, which is about 1 degree [Celsius] in the past century … It is very strongly linked to global warming.’ Scientists had been warning about this eventuality for decades. In 1999, Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, one of Marshall’s colleagues at the University of Queensland, spelled out the scenario. He plotted the future climate if humans continued