The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2012

by Dan Ariely

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Foreword

  Introduction

  PART ONE: Bacteria/Microorganisms

  BRENDAN BUHLER The Teeming Metropolis of You

  VIRGINIA HUGHES Our Body the Ecosystem

  JEROME GROOPMAN The Peanut Puzzle

  PART TWO: Animals

  CARL ZIMMER The Long, Curious, Extravagant Evolution of Feathers

  THOMAS HAYDEN How to Hatch a Dinosaur

  MICHAEL BEHAR Faster. Higher. Squeakier.

  BIJAL P. TRIVEDI The Wipeout Gene

  SY MONTGOMERY Deep Intellect

  MARK W. MOFFETT Ants & the Art of War

  PART THREE: Humans (the Good)

  DEBORAH BLUM The Scent of Your Thoughts

  ELIZABETH KOLBERT Sleeping with the Enemy

  MICHAEL ROBERTS The Touchy-Feely (but Totally Scientific!) Methods of Wallace J. Nichols

  PART FOUR: Humans (the Bad)

  THOMAS GOETZ The Feedback Loop

  JASON DALEY What You Don’t Know Can Kill You

  DAVID DOBBS Beautiful Brains

  DAVID EAGLEMAN The Brain on Trial

  PART FIVE: Society and Environment

  JOHN SEABROOK Crush Point

  DAVID KIRBY Ill Wind

  ROBERT KUNZIG The City Solution

  PART SIX: Technology

  MICHAEL SPECTER Test-Tube Burgers

  MARK MCCLUSKY Mad Science

  RIVKA GALCHEN Dream Machine

  JOSHUA DAVIS The Crypto-Currency

  BRIAN CHRISTIAN Mind vs. Machine

  Contributors’ Notes

  Other Notable Science and Nature Writing of 2011

  About the Editors

  Copyright © 2012 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

  Introduction copyright © 2012 by Dan Ariely

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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

  No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the copyright owner unless such copying is expressly permitted by federal copyright law. With the exception of nonprofit transcription in Braille, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is not authorized to grant permission for further uses of copyrighted selections reprinted in this book without the permission of their owners. Permission must be obtained from the individual copyright owners identified herein. Address requests for permission to make copies of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt material to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  www.hmhbooks.com

  ISSN 1530-1508

  ISBN 978-0-547-79953-7

  eISBN 978-0-547-79954-4

  v1.1012

  “Faster. Higher. Squeakier.” by Michael Behar. First published in Outside, February 2011. Copyright © 2011 by Michael Behar. Reprinted by permission of Michael Behar.

  “The Scent of Your Thoughts” by Deborah Blum. First published in Scientific American, October 2011. Copyright © 2011 by Deborah Blum. Reprinted by permission of Scientific American.

  “The Teeming Metropolis of You” by Brendan Buhler. First published in California Magazine–UC Berkeley Alumni, Fall 2011. Copyright © 2011 by Brendan Buhler. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Mind vs. Machine” by Brian Christian. First published in The Atlantic, March 2011. Copyright © 2011 by Brian Christian. Reprinted by permission of The Atlantic.

  “What You Don’t Know Can Kill You” by Jason Daley. First published in Discover, July/August 2011. Copyright © 2012 by Jason Daley. Reprinted by permission of Jason Daley.

  “The Crypto-Currency” by Joshua Davis. First published in The New Yorker, October 10, 2011. Copyright © 2011 by Joshua Davis. Reprinted by permission of Joshua Davis.

  “Beautiful Brains” by David Dobbs. First published in National Geographic, October 2011. Copyright © 2011 by David Dobbs. Reprinted by permission of David Dobbs.

  “The Brain on Trial” by David Eagleman. First published in The Atlantic, July/August 2011. Copyright © 2011 by David Eagleman. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Dream Machine” by Rivka Galchen. First published in The New Yorker, May 2, 2011. Copyright © 2011 by Rivka Galchen. Reprinted by permission of Rivka Galchen.

  “The Feedback Loop” by Thomas Goetz. First published in Wired, July 2011. Copyright © 2011 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

  “The Peanut Puzzle” by Jerome Groopman. First published in The New Yorker, February 7, 2011. Copyright © 2011 by Jerome Groopman. Reprinted by permission of Jerome Groopman.

  “How to Hatch a Dinosaur” by Thomas Hayden. First published in Wired, October 2011. Copyright © 2011 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

  “Our Body the Ecosystem” by Virginia Hughes. First published in Popular Science, March 2011. Copyright © 2011 by Popular Science. Reprinted by permission of Bonnier Corporation.

  “Ill Wind” by David Kirby. First published in Discover, April 2011. Copyright © 2011 by David Kirby. Reprinted by permission of David Kirby.

  “Sleeping with the Enemy” by Elizabeth Kolbert. First published in The New Yorker, August 15 & 22, 2011. Copyright © 2011 by Elizabeth Kolbert. Reprinted by permission of Elizabeth Kolbert.

  “The City Solution” by Robert Kunzig. First published in National Geographic, December 2011. Copyright © 2011 by National Geographic Society. Reprinted by permission.

  “Mad Science” by Mark McClusky. First published in Wired, March 2011. Copyright © 2011 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

  “Ants & the Art of War” by Mark Moffett. First published in Scientific American, December 2011. Used with permission. Copyright © 2011 by Scientific American, a division of Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved.

  “Deep Intellect” by Sy Montgomery. First published in Orion, November/December 2011. Copyright © 2011 by Sy Montgomery. Reprinted by permission of Sy Montgomery.

  “The Touchy-Feely (but Totally Scientific!) Methods of Wallace J. Nichols” by Michael Roberts. First published in Outside, December 2011. Copyright © 2011 by Michael Roberts. Reprinted by permission of Michael Roberts.

  “Crush Point” by John Seabrook. First published in The New Yorker, February 7, 2011. Copyright © 2011 by John Seabrook. Reprinted by permission of John Seabrook.

  “Test-Tube Burgers” by Michael Specter. First published in The New Yorker, May 23, 2011. Copyright © 2011 by Michael Specter. Reprinted by permission of Michael Specter.

  “The Wipeout Gene” by Bijal Trivedi. First published in Scientific American, November 2011. Copyright © 2011 by Scientific American, a Division of Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Bijal Trivedi.

  “The Long, Curious, Extravagant Evolution of Feathers” by Carl Zimmer. First published in National Geographic, February 2011. Copyright © 2011 by Carl Zimmer. Reprinted by permission of Carl Zimmer.

  Foreword

  LAST NOVEMBER, WHILE gathering articles for this collection, I read that Lynn Margulis had died. She was one of the great evolutionary biologists of our time, and exceedingly controversial. In 1967, when she was twenty-nine, she published a paper that transformed our understanding of the evolution of life. Before being accepted by the Journa
l of Theoretical Biology, the manuscript had been rejected by fifteen other journals—the academic equivalent of publishing houses turning down the first Harry Potter book. Her forty-nine-page article challenged one of the bedrock principles of modern biology: that random mutation was the prime driver of evolution. Margulis argued instead that some of the most crucial evolutionary developments in the 3.8-billion-year history of life on Earth were the result of cooperative and mutually beneficial relationships among organisms. Specifically, she was convinced that more complex forms of life arose when simpler ones merged into a single organism—to the advantage of all parties involved. She called the process symbiogenesis.

  Margulis looked to the humblest living things to find evidence for her hypothesis. She argued that in the distant past, primitive single-celled creatures combined, creating more elaborate cells that would eventually give rise to all higher forms of life. The traces of those ancient unions remain today in nearly every cell of our bodies. It is now generally accepted that mitochondria—microscopic components of our cells that provide the chemical energy that keeps us alive—once existed as free-living bacteria that were engulfed by some larger cell, an event that probably happened roughly 2 billion years ago. Chloroplasts, the tiny engines of photosynthesis found in all plant cells, had similar origins. Without symbiogenesis, there would be no flowers, no trees, no grass, no animals, insects, or people. There would be no oxygen in the atmosphere.

  We humans have a self-important view of our place in the world. “Evolutionists have been preoccupied with the history of animal life in the last 500 million years,” Margulis once wrote. She championed a different perspective; she was a defender of the microscopic beings that make all other life possible. Bacteria were the only life on Earth for about half the planet’s history. In a sense, they remain dominant even today, thriving in just about any habitat, from glacial ice to blistering hot springs. The total mass of the world’s bacteria is probably greater than that of all other life combined. Human bodies are prime bacterial real estate. Our intestines carry several pounds of bacteria—the number of individual E. coli in the guts of each of us exceeds the number of humans who have ever lived. Be thankful for their presence—we couldn’t digest food without them.

  Two articles in this collection provide a salutary Margulisian corrective to our self-regard. Brendan Buhler, in “The Teeming Metropolis of You,” begins his story with a wonderful sentence: “You are mostly not you.” Our vast colonies of resident bacteria, Buhler tells us, protect us from disease and may even influence the development of our brain. You might then be primed to read “Our Body the Ecosystem,” by Virginia Hughes, which describes how some inflammatory skin conditions, such as eczema and psoriasis, may be caused by imbalances among the bacterial populations that live on us.

  Dan Ariely, this year’s guest editor, has arranged his selections in what he referred to in a note to me as a “micro to macro” order, beginning with three stories about bacteria and ending with five on technology. It’s an arrangement, I think, that reflects another aspect of Margulis’s thinking: that Earth itself can be regarded as an enormous example of symbiosis. Forty years ago, she and James Lovelock, an independent British scientist, collaborated on the Gaia hypothesis, which likens Earth and its web of ecosystems to a living organism. Depending on your point of view, Gaia is either a romantic metaphor or a provocative scientific theory. Or perhaps it’s both.

  I wish this book had more pages. As always, the range of topics is extraordinary, as you can see from a glance at the table of contents: a history of feathers; a scheme to re-create a dinosaur; ant wars; our relation to Neanderthals; the mysteries of teenage behavior; the inner lives of octopuses; and other topics that Dan describes in his introduction. And, as always, there just isn’t enough room for all the stories that deserve a place here. Among them is an interview with Lynn Margulis by Dick Teresi. (“I don’t consider my ideas controversial,” she told Teresi, “I consider them right.”) You can find the interview in the April 2011 issue of Discover; it is also available online. So ease into a comfortable chair and let the trillion-celled colonial organism that is you enjoy some of the best writing and reporting you’ll find in any genre.

  I hope that readers, writers, and editors will nominate their favorite articles for next year’s anthology at http://timfolger.net/forums. 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 web site. 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. I’ll even sign it, which will augment its value immeasurably. (A true statement, by the way, there being no measurable difference between copies signed or unsigned by me.) Perhaps I’ll manage to cajole Dan into signing some copies. I also encourage readers to use the forums to leave feedback about this collection and to discuss all things scientific. The best way for a publication to guarantee that its articles are considered for inclusion in the anthology is to place me on the subscription list, using the address posted in the news and announcements section.

  It has been a pleasure to work with Dan Ariely. I’m looking forward to reading his latest book, The Honest Truth About Dishonesty. Once again this year I’m indebted to Amanda Cook and Ashley Gilliam at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. I would also like to dedicate this year’s anthology to my mother, with the hope that she will be reading these words when the book is published in October. And I will forever be indebted to my beauteous wife, Anne Nolan.

  TIM FOLGER

  Introduction

  On Science-Based Paternalism

  SCIENTIFIC PURSUITS ARE constantly uncovering the inner workings of our psyches and our worlds, from the quantum to the cosmic level. In this volume, you will find essays that discuss the biota that fills and surrounds our bodies; animals that mimic and inform our own behavior; human failures and strengths; the societies and environments we create and inhabit (and sometimes destroy); and the technologies we develop and depend on. And although the journey from microcosm to macrocosm may seem like explorations of very different worlds, you will see that a common thread runs through the articles. Each of them offers an independent but complementary musing on the human condition. (Of course, I may be biased in this interpretation, given my own research focus.) To me, the main theme that surfaces in all of these articles is the timeless question of what makes us human. Is it the microbes that constitute the bulk of the cells in our bodies? Our differences from or similarities to other species in the animal kingdom? Our ability or irrepressible impulse to manipulate our environments with a godlike hubris? Our genes, our brains, the pheromones we emit? Or, as Elizabeth Kolbert suggests in “Sleeping with the Enemy,” is it our unique sense of Homo sapiens madness? The main conclusion I’ve reached, based on the evolution of science in general—and as reflected in this collection—is that we are extraordinary yet flawed and predictably irrational creatures.

  Contained within each of these articles, and with each new scientific discovery, is the joy of learning for its own sake, which is considerable in itself. But research is only the first step; we can’t ignore the lingering question of how we can—and should—use scientific evidence to our advantage. How do we make the most of science so that it has a greater purpose than merely quenching our curiosities?

  I have always looked at science as a tool to improve our lives and environment; it’s why I got into the field in the first place. When I was in the hospital many years ago being treated for extensive burns, the nurses would rip the bandages off my skin grafts as quickly as possible. They figured, following conventional wisdom, that short bursts of pain were preferable to prolonged (albeit less intense) periods of pain. Once I was out of the hospital and enrolled in Tel Aviv University, I turned my first academic research efforts toward figuring out whether peo
ple suffered less when pain was brief but intense or longer-lasting but moderate. As it turned out, people fared better with the latter. Reflecting on the gap between how my kind and highly experienced nurses had treated me and what I found in many controlled experiments showed me that my nurses hadn’t figured out the best way to remove bandages. Beyond the issues of burn patients, this made me wonder if we rely on biases and inaccurate beliefs about how the world works across many aspects of life to the detriment of ourselves and others. We think we are rational creatures, but time and time again we misjudge our own preferences, make decisions that fall far from our best interests, and are swayed by forces that we don’t recognize.

  What this suggests is that there is ample room for improvement in almost any aspect of human enterprise and that basing our decisions, guidelines, and procedures on scientific findings is the right way (and, in my opinion, the only way) to move forward. This is the upside of using the scientific method to inform our day-to-day actions. As Thomas Hayden quotes in “How to Hatch a Dinosaur,” “What good is a toolkit if you don’t use it to build something?”

  As we assemble a scientific toolkit of information, we can start remodeling the world around us to build stronger reinforcements that support our multifaceted human nature. We can take what we are learning about the microscopic world of gut biota to develop probiotics to treat conditions ranging from eczema to allergies. Or use the perpetually evolving science of genetic engineering to combat issues from obesity to dengue fever. And if we find that people are more likely to behave in environmentally friendly ways when they feel emotionally connected to nature, we can try out new methods of encouraging conservation that don’t use guilt tactics or information overload. We can test new strategies that promote sustainable behavioral change, and when we figure out the best ways to reinforce positive outcomes, we can enlist them on a larger scale.