The Best Australian Science Writing 2015

BIANCA NOGRADY is a freelance science journalist, broadcaster and author, who is yet to meet a piece of scientific research she doesn't find fascinating. In more than a decade of freelance reporting, she has written for publications including
Scientific American, Nature, The Australian, Ecos, Australian Doctor, Medicine Today
and the ABC's health, science and environment websites, covering everything from nanomedicine and penis size to quantum physics and supernovae. She is author of
The End: The human experience of death
, which attempts to answer the questions we have about death but are too afraid to ask. She also co-authored
The Sixth Wave: How to succeed in a resource-limited world.

EDITED BY

BIANCA NOGRADY

For all those who never stop asking ‘why?', including my children Nina and Pascal.

And for my husband Phil; my answer.

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 2015

First published 2015

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: Best Australian science writing 2015 / Bianca Nogrady.

ISBN:      9781742234410 (paperback)

9781742247571 (epdf)

9781742242231 (ebook)

Subjects: Technical writing – Australia.

Communication in science – Australia.

Science in literature.

Other Creators/Contributors: Nogrady, Bianca, 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 editor welcomes information in this regard.

Contents

Foreword

Adam Spencer

Introduction: The ‘who' behind the ‘why'

Bianca Nogrady

All dressed up for Mars and nowhere to go

Elmo Keep

The vanishing writers

Fiona McMillan

I, wormbot: The next step in artificial intelligence

Gillian Terzis

It's all in your mind: The feeling of ‘wetness' is an illusion

Jesse Hawley

Love bug

Wendy Zukerman

Light

Sarina Noordhuis-Fairfax

Playing God

Bridie Smith

Job description

Alice Gorman

The past may not make you feel better

Christine Kenneally

Maths explains how lobsters swim

Clare Pain

Global ‘roadmap' shows where to put roads without costing the earth

William Laurance

Messages from Mungo

John Pickrell

Uncharted waters

Daniel Stacey

Field guide to the future

Ian Lunt

How I rescued my brain

David Roland

Small mammals vanish in northern Australia

Dyani Lewis

Will a statin a day really keep the doctor away?

Elizabeth Finkel

An uneasy alliance: Our debt to tools and their persistence in our nightmares

Elizabeth Bryer

Aliens versus predators: The toxic toad invasion

Michael Slezak

What shall we teach the children

George Clark

Why aren't we dead yet?

Idan Ben-Barak

Robots on a roll

James Mitchell Crow

Honest placebos

Jane McCredie

Imagine there's new metrics (it's easy if you try)

Jenny Martin

The women who fell through the cracks of the Universe

Lauren Fuge

Beating the odds

Trent Dalton

Where's the proof in science? There is none.

Geraint Lewis

Germ war breakthrough

John Ross

Lost in a floral desert

Manu Saunders

Revisiting Milgram's shocking obedience experiments

Nick Haslam and Gina Perry

Social robots are coming

Wilson da Silva

How dust affects climate, health and … everything

Tim Low

Copulate to populate: Ancient Scottish fish did it sideways

John Long

The mind of Michio Kaku

Tim Dean

Advisory panel

Contributors

Acknowledgments

The Bragg UNSW Press Prize for Science Writing

The Bragg UNSW Press Student Prize for Science Writing

Foreword

Adam Spencer

My love of numbers began way, way back.

Certainly as far back as second grade at Boronia Park Infants School in Sydney under the sagacious tutelage of Ms Russell.

Ms Russell was awesome. I can say without fear of contradiction that she had a great influence on my academic life and I'm sure she had a tremendous impact on the lives of countless other kids over the years.

Big call for a kid who was seven at the time but one I make confidently.

You see, speaking of confidence, as a young 'un I don't recall being short of it. I didn't take to calling my self ‘The Spence' until a good 25 years had passed, but if giving yourself a third person nickname had been the done thing in 1976 I imagine I'd have been way up for it.

The Spence Jr loved his maths. He loved times tables: ‘Miss, why do we stop at the 12s?', he lived for addition algorithms, and just the promise of one day doing long division drew him like a nerdy moth to a geeky flame.

But therein lay the problem. It's fair to say I loved my maths a fair bit more than the average seven-year-old in class 2R Boronia Park 1976. And while I thought I was helping by offering
to answer every question, and while I thought I had a right to be aggrieved when Ms Russell could clearly see my hand up but refused to acknowledge me, even though I'd answered the last seven questions correctly and was therefore a pretty safe option for question number eight, in fact, I wasn't really helping anyone. I had become what primary school teachers euphemistically describe as ‘that kid'.

It was into this swirling world of confusion and frustration that Ms Russell strode one lunchtime as she took me aside and uttered words that would change my life forever.

‘Adam, after lunch we're going to try these ten sums in the book. I bet that if instead of coming to class, you went to the library, you wouldn't be able to finish all 50 questions in the chapter, in the time it takes us to do ten.'

This challenge was like a red rag to a very nerdy seven-year-old bull. As the bell rang I raced to class, gathered my textbook, exercise book and not one, but two trusty HB pencils (you always have to build in a protection against system failure) and pounded down to the library as fast as my chubby legs would carry me. ‘You just watch me, Ms Russell.'

I finished the 50 questions in a whirl of delight and got back to room 2R just as the class was wrapping up problem number ten. I waited until the next break in class, quietly put my 50 answers on Ms Russell's desk: ‘Don't worry Miss, I've checked them' (I was SUCH a nerd) and resumed my seat.

This intervention by Ms Russell channelled my atavistic desire for arithmetic in a way that didn't distract the class, and it was sheer genius – a perfect example of great teaching. The right tool for the right student (who might have unwittingly been a bit of a tool himself) at exactly the right time.

My love for numbers was set for life.

Fast forward 20 years and another seminal moment. I suddenly had the realisation, midway through attempting a PhD in
pure mathematics, that while in a room full of randomly selected people I'm a ‘maths genius', in a room of Pure Maths PhDs … I'm as dumb as a box of spoons. It simply wasn't the gig for me.

What I did realise though was that for every genuine maths genius, or world-class biologist, or astronomer royale, there is a role for public lovers of science and champions of the cause. Roles for people like me to take these discoveries, these understandings, these brilliantly framed questions and tell the world why they are important.

Please don't misinterpret me. I'm not suggesting that most of these assembled authors are, in certain contexts, as dumb as boxes of cutlery. I wholly reserve that title for myself. In fact, some of them are both researchers
and
great communicators. To them I say ‘pull your head in pal – no one likes an overachiever'.