The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2017 Read online

  Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Foreword

  Introduction

  Emergent Fields

  SARAH EVERTS: The Art of Saving Relics

  MARIA KONNIKOVA: Altered Tastes

  KIM TINGLEY: The Secrets of the Wave Pilots

  NICOLA TWILLEY: The Billion-Year Wave

  Changing Land and Resources

  BECCA CUDMORE: The Case for Leaving City Rats Alone

  ROBERT DRAPER: The Battle for Virunga

  TOM KIZZIA: The New Harpoon

  ELIZABETH KOLBERT: A Song of Ice

  ADRIAN GLICK KUDLER: Something Uneasy in the Los Angeles Air

  OMAR MOUALLEM: Dark Science

  MICHELLE NIJHUIS: The Parks of Tomorrow

  TOM PHILPOTT: How Factory Farms Play Chicken with Antibiotics

  NATHANIEL RICH: The Invisible Catastrophe

  CHRISTOPHER SOLOMON: The Devil Is in the Details

  The “Real Life” of Scientists

  SALLY DAVIES: The Physics Pioneer Who Walked Away from It All

  DAVID EPSTEIN: The DIY Scientist, the Olympian, and the Mutated Gene

  ANN FINKBEINER: Inside the Breakthrough Starshot Mission to Alpha Centauri

  AZEEN GHORAYSHI: He Fell in Love with His Grad Student—Then Fired Her for It

  CHRIS JONES: The Woman Who Might Find Us Another Earth

  KATHRYN JOYCE: Out Here, No One Can Hear You Scream

  JON MOOALLEM: The Amateur Cloud Society That (Sort of) Rattled the Scientific Community

  MICHAEL REGNIER: The Man Who Gave Himself Away

  SONIA SMITH: Unfriendly Climate

  EMILY TEMPLE-WOOD: It’s Time These Ancient Women Scientists Get Their Due

  Contributors’ Notes

  Other Notable Science and Nature Writing of 2016

  Read More from The Best American Series®

  About the Editors

  Connect with HMH

  Copyright © 2017 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

  Introduction copyright © 2017 by Hope Jahren

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  The Best American Series® is a registered trademark of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. The Best American Science and Nature Writing™ is a trademark of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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  ISBN 978-1-328-71551-7 (print) ISSN 1530-1508 (print)

  ISBN 978-1-328-71556-2 (ebook) ISSN 2573-475X (ebook)

  Cover design by Christopher Moisan © Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  Cover photograph © SuperStock

  v1.0817

  “The Case for Leaving City Rats Alone” by Becca Cudmore. First published in Nautilus, July 28, 2016. Copyright © 2016 by NautilusThink Inc. Reprinted by permission of NautilusThink Inc.

  “The Physics Pioneer Who Walked Away from It All” by Sally Davies. First published in Nautilus, June 28, 2016. Copyright © 2016 by NautilusThink Inc. Reprinted by permission of NautilusThink Inc.

  “The Battle for Virunga” by Robert Draper. First published in National Geographic, July 2016. Copyright © 2016 by Robert Draper. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The DIY Scientist, the Olympian, and the Mutated Gene” by David Epstein. First published in ProPublica, January 15, 2016. Copyright © 2016 by ProPublica. Reprinted by permission of ProPublica.

  “The Art of Saving Relics” by Sarah Everts. First published in Scientific American, April 2016. Copyright © 2016 by Sarah Everts. Reprinted by permission of Sarah Everts.

  “Inside the Breakthrough Starshot Mission to Alpha Centauri” by Ann Finkbeiner. First published in Scientific American, March 2017. Copyright © 2017 by Ann Finkbeiner. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “He Fell in Love with His Grad Student—Then Fired Her for It” by Azeen Ghorayshi. First published in BuzzFeed News, January 12, 2016. Copyright © 2016 BuzzFeed News, Inc. Reprinted by permission.

  “The Woman Who Might Find Us Another Earth” by Chris Jones. First published in The New York Times Magazine, December 7, 2016. Copyright © 2016 by Chris Jones. Reprinted by permission of Chris Jones.

  “Out Here, No One Can Hear You Scream” by Kathryn Joyce. First published in Huffington Post Highline/The Nation Institute Investigative Fund, March 16, 2016. Copyright © 2016 by Kathryn Joyce. Reprinted by permission of Kathryn Joyce.

  “The New Harpoon” by Tom Kizzia. First published in The New Yorker, September 12, 2016. Copyright © 2016 by Thomas W. Kizzia. Reprinted by permission of Thomas W. Kizzia.

  “A Song of Ice” by Elizabeth Kolbert. First published in The New Yorker, October 24, 2016. Copyright © 2016 by Elizabeth Kolbert. Reprinted by permission of Elizabeth Kolbert.

  “Altered Tastes” by Maria Konnikova. First published in The New Republic, February 15, 2016. Copyright © 2016 by Maria Konnikova. Reprinted by permission of Maria Konnikova and The New Republic.

  “Something Uneasy in the Los Angeles Air” by Adrian Glick Kudler. First published in Curbed.com, September 22, 2016. Copyright © 2016 by Curbed.com. Reprinted by permission of Vox Media, Inc.

  “The Amateur Cloud Society That (Sort of) Rattled the Scientific Community” by Jon Mooallem. First published in the New York Times Magazine, May 4, 2016. Copyright © 2016 by Jon Mooallem. Reprinted by permission of Jon Mooallem.

  “Dark Science” by Omar Mouallem. First published in Hazlitt Magazine, February 17, 2016. Copyright © 2016 by Omar Mouallem. Reprinted by permission of Omar Mouallem.

  “The Parks of Tomorrow” by Michelle Nijhuis. First published in National Geographic, December 2016. Copyright © 2016 by Michelle Nijhuis. Reprinted by permission of Michelle Nijhuis.

  “How Factory Farms Play Chicken with Antibiotics” by Tom Philpott. First published in Mother Jones, May/June 2016. Copyright © 2016 by the Foundation for National Progress. Reprinted by permission.

  “The Man Who Gave Himself Away” by Michael Regnier. First published in Mosaic, September 13, 2016. Copyright © 2016 by Wellcome Trust.

  “The Invisible Catastrophe” by Nathaniel Rich. First published in The New York Times Magazine, March 31, 2016. Copyright © 2016 by Nathaniel Rich. Reprinted by permission of Nathaniel Rich.

  “Unfriendly Climate” by Sonia Smith. First published in Texas Monthly, May 2016. Copyright © 2016 by Texas Monthly. Reprinted with permission of Texas Monthly.

  “The Devil Is in the Details” by Christopher Solomon. First published in Outside Magazine, February 2016. Copyright © 2016 by Outside Magazine. Reprinted by permission of Outside Magazine.

  “It’s Time These Ancient Women Scientists Get Their Due” by Emily Temple-Wood. First published in Nautilus, April 12, 2016. Copyright © 2016 by NautilusThink Inc. Reprinted by permission of NautilusThink Inc.


  “The Secrets of the Wave Pilots” by Kim Tingley. First published in The New York Times Magazine, March 17, 2016. Copyright © 2016 by Kim Tingley. Reprinted by permission of Kim Tingley and The New York Times Magazine.

  “The Billion-Year Wave” by Nicola Twilley. First published in The New Yorker, February 11, 2016. Copyright © 2016 by Conde Nast. Reprinted by permission of Conde Nast.

  Foreword

  Modern cosmology was born in Germany a century ago, and within two decades of its birth it almost died there. When Albert Einstein published his general theory of relativity in November 1915, it’s doubtful he could have imagined how profoundly deranged his country would become. On May 10, 1933—the same year Einstein left Germany forever—mobs of young Nazis and their supporters across Germany were feeding bonfires with his papers, along with works by Sigmund Freud, Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Erich Maria Remarque, and others supposedly contaminated with undeutschen Geist—un-German spirit. More than 25,000 books burned on that day, including those of the 19th-century Jewish poet and playwright Heinrich Heine, who had once written, “Where they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people.”

  Einstein’s own research—which transformed our understanding of the universe—was condemned by vicious ideologues as an example of “Jewish physics,” whatever that was supposed to be. Even Werner Heisenberg, one of the founders of quantum theory, could not summon the courage to defend Einstein. He capitulated to Nazi authorities, going so far as to request that his colleagues not mention the great physicist’s name in their lectures or publications. Heisenberg himself practiced that same self-censorship in all his work and talks while the Nazis remained in power.

  Not all German scientists followed Heisenberg’s spineless lead. Max von Laue, a Nobel laureate described by one colleague as “a sensitive and even a nervous man,” nevertheless openly opposed Nazi policies. He publicly compared the attacks on Einstein to the Inquisition’s censure of Galileo. Some accounts say that von Laue always carried something while out walking so he could avoid the mandatory “Heil Hitler” salute. He even helped some colleagues escape from Germany. The Nazis eventually forced von Laue to resign from his university position, in 1943, but he remained in Germany during and after the war, where he helped rebuild a shattered scientific community, a community partly undone by its own leaders.

  One measure of the health of any modern society must be the degree to which it supports its scientists. A few days before I started to write this foreword, hundreds of thousands of people in dozens of cities across the country participated in the March for Science. It was an event at once inspiring and worrisome: inspiring because so many took a stand for rationalism—a public rebuke to the nation’s leaders that couldn’t be more different from the German book burnings of the 1930s; worrisome because who would have thought that in the 21st century scientists and citizens would feel the need to gather in support of something so self-evidently valuable as unfettered scientific research?

  Yet the march was necessary, urgently so. Scientists at more than a dozen federal agencies have launched rogue Twitter feeds to counter the policies of a frighteningly uninformed president who once tweeted that “global warming was created by and for the Chinese.” We live at a pivotal moment in history, and not just for ourselves. We have already pumped enough greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that the planet will continue to heat up for centuries to come. Our inaction has fated future generations to a world with flooded coasts, extreme weather, and other catastrophes that will trigger political, social, and economic instability. Scientists are a cautious lot, but some of them now warn that climate change threatens not just “the environment” but civilization itself.

  Tragically, we’re now led—if that’s the word—by a government that denies the very existence of the crisis that is upon us. The president has promised to scrap funding for NASA’s vitally important climate-monitoring satellites. Scott Pruitt, the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, told reporters earlier this year, “I do not agree that it’s [carbon dioxide] a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.” Given his position, and his denial of basic scientific facts, Pruitt may well be one of the most dangerous people on the planet. He would do well to heed one of Philip K. Dick’s aphorisms: “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” Without the active participation of the United States in global climate agreements over the next few years, we risk losing forever any chance of avoiding the most disruptive effects of climate change. Our descendants will not judge us kindly.

  Sustained, in-depth reporting on these issues has never been more important. And few journalists have done as much as Elizabeth Kolbert to highlight the enormity of the threat posed by global warming. Her contribution to this collection, “A Song of Ice,” recounts her trip to Greenland’s vast ice sheet, which covers about 80 percent of the country, with a height exceeding 10,000 feet in the interior. “The ice sheet is so big,” she writes, “that it creates its own weather. Its mass is so great that it deforms the earth, pushing the bedrock several thousand feet into the mantle. Its gravitational tug affects the distribution of the oceans.” Among the scientists she met was a group studying a single melt stream in northeastern Greenland. That one melt stream, the scientists told her, will eventually raise sea levels around the world by more than three feet, high enough so that harbor waves would lap at the base of Manhattan’s new World Trade Center.

  Tom Kizzia takes us on another Arctic journey in his remarkable story, “The Last Harpoon,” about Inupiat whale hunters in northern Alaska. Their community of “small but comfortable homes, laid out around a new school and a diesel-fired power plant,” depends for its survival on fossil fuels, the very substances that threaten to destroy their ancient hunting traditions.

  In “The Invisible Catastrophe,” Nathaniel Rich writes about a methane leak at a natural gas facility in Southern California. Methane, Rich tells us, is a potent greenhouse gas, with a warming effect more than 80 times that of carbon dioxide. By the time state officials announced that the leak had finally been capped early in 2016, it had already released enough methane to equal the global-warming impact of the exhaust belched by nearly 2 million cars over the course of a year.

  The articles mentioned above remind us—as do all the stories in this collection—of something easily overlooked: science is an intensely personal pursuit. All the data and discoveries, all the remarkable insights about the world and our place in it, come from people beset with the same worries, ambitions, and career obstacles familiar to each of us. And scientists are not immune to the ills that plague any other profession. Hope Jahren, our guest editor, has included two unsettling stories that focus on an issue that has long been underreported: sexual harassment in science. As Azeen Ghorayshi and Kathryn Joyce show in their forceful articles, scientists sometimes need protection not just from malevolent government officials but from their own predatory colleagues and mentors.

  Hope has organized her selections in this anthology under three broad themes: Emergent Fields; Changing Land and Resources; and The “Real Life” of Scientists. You’ll find in the pages ahead accounts of an astronomer’s search for worlds like our own, the ongoing struggle to save endangered species, the tragic story of a scientist obsessed with altruism, and more than a dozen other examples of some of the best and most important writing of our time.

  As we finish work on this year’s anthology, I can’t help wondering what this year will bring. Will the United States, against all expectations, take the lead in confronting climate change? Maybe next year’s collection will include stories that will surprise us all—in a good way. To that end, I’m already gathering candidates for the 2018 edition. And you, readers, can help! I promise to read widely, but I depend on many thoughtful readers, writers, and editors from around the world. Nearly every week my physical mailbox or my email inbox contains some new surprise, a story I would never have found on my own. So please, nominate your favorites for
next year’s anthology at http://timfolger.net/forums. I encourage writers to submit their own stories. The criteria for submissions and deadlines, and the address to which entries should be sent, can be found in the “news and announcements” forum on my website. Once again this year I’m offering an incentive to enlist readers to scour the nation in search of good science and nature writing: Send me an article that I haven’t found, and if the article makes it into the anthology, I’ll mail you a free copy of next year’s edition. Maybe next year’s guest editor will sign it for you. I also encourage readers to use the forums to leave feedback about the new collection and to discuss all things scientific. The best way for publications to guarantee that their articles are considered for inclusion in the anthology is to place me on their subscription list, using the address posted in the news and announcements forum.

  It has been a privilege to work with Hope Jahren. Her first book, Lab Girl, published in 2016, won a tremendous number of accolades, including the National Book Critics Circle Award for best autobiography. The New York Times said that Lab Girl “does for botany what Oliver Sacks’s essays did for neurology, what Stephen Jay Gould’s writings did for paleontology.” Not bad for a first effort! As in years past, I’m very grateful to Naomi Gibbs and her colleagues at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, who are responsible for the entire series of Best American anthologies. And firstly and lastly, I’m grateful to my beauteous wife, Anne Nolan.

  But enough from me. Please turn the page, where Hope will tell you more about why she selected these fascinating stories, which deserve the widest possible audience.

  TIM FOLGER

  Introduction

  In 1982 you could pull off of North Carolina State Highway 751, walk into a gas station, buy a pack of cigarettes and enough gas to get you to Tennessee, pay with a five-dollar bill, and still get change back. Once you got back on the road, you’d find yourself driving through what looked like the apocalypse, for 1982 was also the year that a group of men systematically severed at the base every one of the 60-foot-tall loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) trees planted in the area, leaving no fewer than 80 acres of pure demolition behind them. Cleanup crews mowed through the debris using huge drum choppers and then burned what was left. Each of the trees that was killed was, roughly figured, 30 to 40 years older than the man who cut it down. These fallen trees had been planted by other men in 1922, to start a forest and effectively end 60 years of cotton and tobacco sharecropping at the location. Exactly 60 years later, their little forest met its end.