Science is golden when the plot is hot

From Sydney Morning Herald: Science is golden when the plot is hot
JO CHANDLER hung out of a Hercules aircraft and wept at the beauty of the Antarctic below - which was not a good idea, as her tears turned to ice. Elizabeth Finkel spent a year figuring out how to tell stories about chromosomes. Jane McCredie found herself standing on a street corner, looking at passers-by, waiting to meet a stranger who once was female but now was male.

The Melbourne Writers Festival session was billed as ''Writing in Lab Coats'' but science writing as portrayed by these journalists was anything but clinical. Whether writing about climate change (Age journalist Chandler's Feeling the Heat), micro-organisms (Finkel's Stem Cells) or gender bending (McCredie's Making Girls and Boys), all the writers found themselves on a thrilling journey in which the biggest challenge was to communicate to the reader exactly what was going on.

Popular science writing is huge internationally: think of the success of people such as Carl Sagan, Dava Sobel, Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Dawkins and Simon Winchester in bringing apparently dry and difficult subjects to wondrous and exciting life. Science is one area where journalism is much in demand - The Guardian in Britain is running a competition to find new science writers.
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But with some celebrated exceptions, there hasn't been much Australian science writing in book form. It's astonishing that only now are we seeing such pieces in an anthology. In November, New South will publish The Best Australian Science Writing 2011, edited by Stephen Pincock, with a foreword by Peter Doherty and work from authors as diverse as Tim Flannery, Germaine Greer, Anna Funder and Paul Davies.

Science writing is becoming more celebrated but also more contentious. ABC science journalist Natasha Mitchell, who chaired the festival panel, said science writers were becoming part of the story themselves and sometimes copped ''incredible aggression and vitriol'' from those who disagreed with them: ''I've had colleagues who've been very damaged by the crap they're getting.''

The writers had all struggled with how to present complex and controversial issues. Chandler said she decided to put herself into the story of climate change as ''a confused, anxious, sometimes distressed person'', speaking with scientists on the front line as a war correspondent would.

Finkel, who has worked as a research scientist, decided the way through a mass of facts and figures was to look for stories. She wanted to avoid ending up in a corner, being combative: ''That's not what my voice should be; I have to be like the judge in the courtroom.''

McCredie thought it was important to tell personal stories, especially ones that weren't stereotypical about the sexes. She kept questioning herself: what authority did she have as a non-scientist to write about scientific questions?

''I decided the only authority I could ever have is as a journalist and as a woman. I see myself as a friend of science rather than a participant. And like any friend, sometimes I have to be critical.''

But difficult as it is to strike a balance and transform a mass of facts into a gripping story, all agreed that writing about science was marvellous and essential. The human genome project had catapulted us into a new universe; we were asking fundamental questions about what it meant to be a girl or boy; and climate change was an epic adventure story of men and women trying to figure out the planet.