Attention-grabbing anecdote about science-related issue.
Short biographical sketch of quirky researcher working on scientific problem.
Short explanation of the scientific problem's history and significance.
Anecdote about quirky researcher's work on scientific problem.
Short explanation connecting back to initial attention-grabbing anecdote.
Pithy summary of What It All Means.
(Repeat steps 2-4 as needed to fill out word count.)
I got a review copy of The Best American Science Writing 2007 from Seed a little while ago, but I haven't had much time to read lately. I spent six hours on a bus yesterday, though, going down to MIT and back with a group of physics students, and that seemed like an appropriate occasion for reading it. I haven't finished it (more on that below), but I read 14 of the collected articles in the course of the trip.
Unfortunately, the rattling and shaking of the bus didn't really put me in the best mood, so this commentary might be harsher than it really needs to be. As you can guess from the above, though, I wasn't exactly blown away.
There's a depressing sameness to these articles when you read a whole bunch of them back to back, as if the authors were working from some sort of generic formula. I don't know if this is a general characteristic of the field, or if it reflects the personal taste of celebrity editor Gina Kolata or series editor Jesse Cohen (see David Foster Wallace's introduction to the Best American Essays collection for an explanation of how this works), but it wore thin.
It was especially bad in the great wodge of medically-oriented stories in the first half of the book. There are seven consecutive medical/ neuroscience stories in a row, and I made it through five before I couldn't take it any more. My apologies to Denise Grady and Jerome Groopman, whose stories I skipped, but I was thoroughly sick of Oliver Sacks and imitation Oliver Sacks, and jumped ahead to Matthew Chapman's story about the Dover Panda Trial.
Chapman didn't depart from the formula by all that much-- it's still a mix of quirky anecdotes and biographical sketches-- but at least he inserts some of his own personality into the story, which gives it a different feel. It's not all that great-- there was a blog by a Pennsylvaia reporter covering the trial who did a much better job with the same material (alas, I don't recall his name)-- but it was a refreshing contrast to the stuff around it.
It also didn't help anything that the physical science content of this volume is almost nil. One of the twenty collected essays is about physics, and that's a piece from Esquire about string theory and the LHC. Unfortunately, it's written with the level of technical sophistication that you would expect from an article in Esquire, so not only is it the umpty-zillionth pop article about string theory and the LHC, it's not even a particularly good explanation of the issues involved.
Again, I'm not sure if this reflects the tastes of the editors, or if this is just a reflection of the extremely limited range of physics articles available to draw from. I suspect it's the latter, which is rather annoying, as there's a lot more to physics than string theory and particle physics. We're not all sitting around twiddling our thumbs and holding our breath waiting for the next giant accelerator to come along-- there are hundreds and thousands of physicists out there doing fascinating work right now, with equipment that actually exists. Many of them are even quirky enough to provide amusing biographical anecdotes.
If you're a magazine or newspaper editor, and you'd like to expand the range of your physical science content but don't know how, send me an email. We'll talk. But enough with the particle physics articles, already.
I don't want to give the impression that reading this book was unremitting misery. There's some fascinating science described in these articles, and some of the quirky anecdotes are really well done. The Grisha Perelman piece by Sylvia Nasar and David Gruber is an outstanding example of the form. Joshua Davis's story about face blindness and the role of the Internet in making it a research topic was fascinating. Atul Gawande's "The Score" includes some great reflections on the history and progress of obstetrics. And Jennifer Couzin's piece about the experiences of a group of biology students who turned their advisor in for falsifying data ought to be required reading for every discussion on scientific ethics.
But really, somebody needs to shake up the form, because every one of the stories I read had exactly the same format and feel. They all have the same basic elements, in the same basic order, and by the end I was desperate for something-- anything-- to liven things up a bit.
Comments
# 1 | Stuart Coleman | October 10, 2007 12:58 PM
It's better than a reporter credulously reporting on bad science, which is what I typically see.
# 2 | Andy | October 10, 2007 1:04 PM
I think part of the problem here is that these articles were written to stand in the middle of a newspaper with all kinds of other articles. If you plonk them all down in a book they probably do look a bit same-y. Same might be true for celebrity stories.
It's also true that some papers have a distinctive style, so their articles tend to have a similar voice. NewsWeek's news features come to mind (though Sharon Begley's science writing is terrific).
A general problem with science writing (and this isn't the writer's fault) is the need to tell the reader Please Read This (insert quirky anecdote) and Why You Should Care (attempt explanation that does not confuse reader and/or upset scientists). No one writing a story about the Iowa caucus has to stick in a graf about "why you should care about the Iowa caucus." But we feel we need to do it in science writing.
# 3 | Jennifer Ouellette | October 10, 2007 1:20 PM
The sameness comes about in part because almost all the excerpted science writing in this anthology series -- year after year -- comes form the same publications: The New York Times, the New Yorker, Discover, and occasionally the Los Angeles Times. Only a handful are included that originally appeared in other publications. Since Andy is right about papers having a distinctive editorial style -- yes, you're going to get a bunch of pieces that all sound exactly alike.
Is it the fault of the anthology editor(s)? In part -- they are, after all, selecting pieces that conform to what they think science writing "ought" to be. However, science reporting in major mainstream media -- especially physics stories -- have been in sharp decline for the last decade. It's possible there's simply a shrinking pool from which to choose, so the editors end up looking to the same sources, over and over again.
All the more reason for promoting the scientific blogosphere...
# 4 | Chad Orzel | October 10, 2007 1:46 PM
Stuart Coleman: It's better than a reporter credulously reporting on bad science, which is what I typically see.
There's one of those, too, as a couple of other people have commented on-- the article about people who are skeptical about a link between CO_2 and global climate.
Andy: I think part of the problem here is that these articles were written to stand in the middle of a newspaper with all kinds of other articles. If you plonk them all down in a book they probably do look a bit same-y. Same might be true for celebrity stories.
True enough.
Of course, if the only forum for mass popular science writing in this country is articles fitting a particular format that fit in the middle pages of a newspaper somewhere, that doesn't bode well for the health of the field (which, as Jennifer notes, is not all that good).
It's really striking, though, that there isn't a single piece in the book that presents an in-depth explanation of any piece of science. Every article is loaded with quirky biographical anecdotes, and light on the scientific details. It's more Best American Human-Interest Stories About Scientists than anything else. There's nothing the least bit whimsical-- every article is painfully earnest-- and save for the Chapman piece and a few asides in Atul Gawande's piece, there's nothing personal. Every article is written in a serious tone, in an impersonal manner, and deals primarily in stories about scientists.
And I know that there's stuff out there written in a different style-- the Dennis Overbye essay on space travel that I linked a little while ago was way better than most of the stuff in this collection, because it's personal. It includes plenty of facts about the past and future of space, but also reflects on the author's personal engagement with the subject. It's way more compelling than yet another collection of quirky biographical anecdotes.
I suspect that after a while, these sorts of stories pretty much write themselves, but there are other ways to approach the subject. They're difficult to do well-- scientific whimsy is a lot harder than it looks, let me tell you-- but that's all the more reason to reward people who can do it well.
A general problem with science writing (and this isn't the writer's fault) is the need to tell the reader Please Read This (insert quirky anecdote) and Why You Should Care (attempt explanation that does not confuse reader and/or upset scientists). No one writing a story about the Iowa caucus has to stick in a graf about "why you should care about the Iowa caucus." But we feel we need to do it in science writing.
Actually, I think it would be great if political writers did feel a need to put in a paragraph about why we should care about the Iowa caucuses. If more writers had to make the attempt to explain why we should care about the Iowa caucuses, we probably wouldn't put so much importance on the Iowa caucuses.
There's a rant in this geenral direction coming later, though.
# 5 | Uncle Al | October 10, 2007 1:57 PM
Th SAT essay section has entered the Media. Outrageous resource allocations have enabled chokingly large harvests. If you despise this future, why did you purchase it?
Uncle Al says, "Paddle faster! I hear banjos..."
# 6 | BikeMonkey | October 10, 2007 1:58 PM
Is this just pulling from primary pub or new writing? I'm curious whether the Couzin piece is just the Science article or if it goes beyond this?
# 7 | agm | October 10, 2007 3:41 PM
Chad, sounds like you need a sequel to the Open Laboratory. (Which I also wouldn't mind, since not only is Mixed States non-functional again, it's good exposure to non-physics and non-politics in a non-digital format, which sometimes I want (say, the imminent plane ride...))