McCredie Jane - The Best Australian Science Writing 2013

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 Australias 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 (20022012). 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

Tim Minchin

Natasha Mitchell and Jane McCredie

Mark Tredinnick

Becky Crew

Jo Chandler

Janine Burke

Damon Young

Clive Hamilton

Paul Livingston

Rhianna Boyle

Elizabeth Finkel

Ian Gibbins

Rachel Robertson

Michael Lucy

Fred Watson

gareth roi jones

Cordelia Fine

Kirsten Drysdale

Ian Gibbins

Kellee Slater

Janine Burke

Francesca Rendle-Short

Peter Doherty

Ian Gibbins

Nicholas Haslam

Karl Kruszelnicki

Chris Turney

Antony Funnell

Emma Young

sa Wahlquist

Gina Perry

Tim Flannery

Nicky Phillips

Ian Gibbins

Andrew Croome

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 Freuds art collection. She won the 1987 Victorian Premiers 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, womens 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/Vogels 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 Beginners 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 whats 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 TVs 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.