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Author and journalist David Dobbs writes on science, medicine, and culture for the New York Times Magazine, Slate, Scientific American Mind, and other publications; "Buried Answers," one of his features for the Times Magazine, will appear in Houghton Mifflin's esteemed 2006 Best American Science and Nature Writing. The author of three books (see below), he is currently working on a book about the experience and neurobiology of fear. You can find more of his work at his website.

BOOKS by David Dobbs

Reef Madness: Charles Darwin, Alexander Agassiz, and the Meaning of Coral.
Oliver Sacks calls it "brilliantly written, almost unbearably poignant... The coral reef story becomes a microcosm of the conflicts -- between idealism and empiricism, God and evolution -- which were to split science and culture in the nineteenth century, and which still split them today.”

The Great Gulf
An epistemological argument disguised as fish fight.

The Northern Forest (with Richard Ober)
An environmental debate misses the most essential relationships in the ecosystem at hand.

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Infectious diseases:

A Hush About Bird Flu; Noise About Science Journalism

Amid my guilt at not writing more on avian flu myself, I note well this typically excellent post from Effect Measure, pondering: Why so little word lately of bird flu? Its issues intersect, in a very rough way, with those raised about science journalism...

Posted on October 23, 2006 10:08 AM • •

Declan Butler, gorgeous maps, avian flu, and spinach

Nature reporter Declan Butler, who has done some of best reporting on avian flu and (separately) the use of the internet as a means of communicating science, has updated his superb Google Earth avian flu maps to use Google Earth's new time series function. The resulting maps are both beautiful and even more informative and striking than before. The dynamics of the flu's spread are more clear, and the time series highlights the dynamic nature of this virus, particularly the way the flu has reappeared in some places, flaring up again — an important aspect that's otherwise easy to overlook.

Posted on September 18, 2006 10:39 AM • •