The Best American Science Writing 2001

by Timothy Ferris (Editor), Jesse Cohen

Gathered from the nation's leading publications by award-winning author Timothy Ferris, The Best American Science Writing 2001 is a dynamic, up-to-date collection of essays and articles by America's most prominent thinkers and writers, addressing the most controversial, socially relevant topics that recent developments in science pose. Among the Richard Preston examines the contentious business of decoding the human genome. Malcolm Gladwell follows investigators who aim to revolutionize birth control. Tracy Kidder profiles a modern Dr. Schweitzer. Alan Lightman laments what was lost in his transformation from astrophysicist to fiction writer. Natalie Angier makes some surprising discoveries about gender in mandrill society. Stephen Jay Gould investigates the strange contrast between the 1530 poem by a physician that gave us the name for syphilis and the poetry that can be found in the map of the pathogen's genome. Legendary physicist John Archibald Wheeler celebrates the mysteries of quantum mechanics, which still perplex a century after its discovery. And John Updike contributes a witty verse musing on a biological theme. For anyone who wants to journey to science's frontiers, understand more fully its ever-expanding role in our lives, or simply enjoy the thrill of powerful writing on fascinating topics, The Best American Science Writing 2001 is indispensable.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction

352 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2001

About the author

Timothy Ferris is the author of a dozen books (most recently The Science of Liberty), plus 200 articles and essays, and three documentary films—"The Creation of the Universe," “Life Beyond Earth,” and “Seeing in the Dark”—seen by over 20 million viewers.

Ferris produced the Voyager phonograph record, an artifact of human civilization containing music and sounds of Earth launched aboard the twin Voyager interstellar spacecraft.

Called “the best popular science writer in the English language” by The Christian Science Monitor and “the best science writer of his generation” by The Washington Post, Ferris has received the American Institute of Physics prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

A Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Professor Ferris has taught in five disciplines at four universities. He is currently an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Reviews

[Dennis Littrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting, diverse, and readable collection

This is the first of these collections that I have read, and it is very good. The articles are chosen from a wide spectrum of publications from the year 2000, including Scientific American, National Geographic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, etc., which means most of the essays were written in 1999 or thereabouts. There is a minor concentration on the exciting developments in genetics and microbiology, including "The Recycled Generation" by Stephen S. Hall, which is about stem-cell research; "The Genome Warrior" by Richard Preston, which is about Craig Ventor and the human genome project; "DNA on Trial" by Peter J. Boyer, focusing on lawyers Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld's Innocence Project; and a couple of articles on AIDS, "The Mystery of AIDS in South Africa" by Helen Epstein and "The Virus and the Vaccine" by Debbie Bookchin and Jim Schumacher.

My favorite piece was "The Small Planets" by Erik Asphaug where I learned a little about the surprising physics of asteroids, in particular that they are most likely composed of rubble held lightly together by low gravity instead of being solid objects. When they collide, the "rubble piles" are disturbed, but within a few hours most of the pieces come back together again if the collision was not too violent. I also particularly liked John Terborgh's piece "In the Company of Humans" in which he demonstrates that animals can be attracted to humans for reasons as diverse as safety in numbers (like different species of birds foraging together) or being fascinated by a lemon-scented detergent used by a primatologist. He relates the story of a sick peccary that hung out near humans until it got well, that way avoiding hungry jaguars. Also fascinating was Greg Critser's "Let Them Eat Fat" which is about how the fast food industry is "super-sizing" us into obesity. (By the way, I tried for the first time a few months ago a Krispy Kreme donut, just to see what all the fuss was about. It was a warm puppy of an "empty-calorie" confection, pure white flour, made almost as light as air, smothered in fat and glazed with pure white sugar. It practically melted in my mouth. I can see how a steady diet of these babies could lead to a nutritional nightmare.)

Also good were Andrew Sullivan's "The He Hormone" about the phenomenon of testosterone, and Jacques Leslie"s "Running Dry" which is about the mixed blessing (and ultimate failure) of damming rivers, and the present and future crisis in the supply of fresh water.

There is a sprinkling of rather ordinary pieces by scientific heavyweights, John Archibald Wheeler, Ernst Mayr, Stephen Jay Gould, and Freeman J. Dyson, which are collected here perhaps as much for the prestige they lend to this volume as for the value of the essays. But you be the judge.

The interesting articles by Joel Achenbach and Robert L. Park, "Life Beyond Earth" and "Welcome to Planet Earth," respectively, serve well as introductions to their recently published books, Captured by Aliens: The Search for Life and Truth in a Very Large Universe (1999), and Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud (2000), again, respectively.

Bottom line: this eminently accessible collection is well worth the candle.

--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”

[Chad · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like most things Timothy Ferris is involved in, there is a bit more whimsy than I like to see in my science writing, but with the inclusion of some thorough science journalism, the 2001 edition of the Best American Science Writing series is more good than bad.

Surprisingly, the least effective stuff includes most of the articals concerning physics and astronomy. What with this being Ferris's field, one might assume he's have a unique insight into tracking down the most engaging articals from that year. Instead, he seems to have mostly chosen very short rah-rah cheerleading essays about how Neat-O science is. They all read like guest-introducitons to books I'd rather be reading.

Far more interesting are the longer, less scientific, more journalistic articals. The highlights are Richard Preston's artical about Craig Venter's quest to map the human genome and Tracy Kidder's profile of the ridiculously altruistic and self-sacrificing doctor, Paul Farmer. Also worthwhile are the investigative works like Peter Boyar's look at the validity of DNA evidence in criminal trials or Jacques Leslie's somewhat frightening look at the criminal worldwide mismanagement of the planet's water resources.

Also of note is a lovely little aquatic-biology inspired poem from John Updike (you get bonus points for that inclusion, Mr. Ferris), and an amusing and intricately written explanation for the origin of syphilis from all round science oracle, Stephen Jay Gould.

There are other articals about Mandrill gender issues, the facts behind testosterone, the evolutionary origins of altruism, the relationship between a simean virus and mesotheliomal cancers, and other assorted sundry. None of these are bad reading, but much of it felt more like Discovery Magazine articals that I'd browse through rather than read carefully.

In the end, not a waste of my time, but a with a wide variety of quality, ranging from substancless science boosterism to average articals good for passing the time to genuinely interesting glimpses into hidden aspects of the inner-workings of the world around us.

[Richard]

(Still reading...)

Quote from page 67, in Richard Preston's bio essay on Craig Venter, "The Genome Warrior" (originally published in The New Yorker):

I placed some of the DNA on the ends of my fingers and rubbed them together. The stuff was sticky. It began to dissolve on my skin. "It's melting -- like cotton candy."
"Sure. That's the sugar in the DNA," Smith said.
"Would it taste sweet?"
"No. DNA is an acid, and it's got salts in it. Actually, I've never tasted it."
Later, I got some dried calf DNA. I placed a bit of the fluff on my tongue. It melted into a gluey ooze that stuck to the roof of my mouth in a blob. The blob felt slippery on my tongue, and the taste of pure DNA appeared. It had a soft taste, unsweet, rather bland, with a touch of acid and a hint of salt. Perhaps like the earth's primordial sea. It faded away.