LARB’s Best: Science

The following selections represent both stellar writing and a diversity of opinions on how science traffics in truth, and in complicity and fraud. They show why “trusting the science” is complicated, even as science is our best hope for confronting our biases and looming catastrophes. They take on AI and data dreams; human hubris and global warming; pandemic medicine; evolution wars; and the metaphors embedded in how we understand the brain. They are but a small sampling of LARB’s finest science pieces. Some of these essays and reviews have been translated into multiple languages, and one, by Patrick House, appeared in The Best American Science and Nature Writing (we urge you to read his equally compelling “There’s Something About These Dolphins”). Others have served as touchstones of various sorts, becoming ground zero for subsequent discussions. Yet others are quite simply examples of how this form of writing has turned LARB’s Science section into a leader of the genre. Special thanks to my colleague Julien Crockett for his help in making some of them happen.

— Michele Pridmore-Brown

This digest is part of our year-round celebration of our 10th anniversary. To celebrate with us, please visit our anniversary page!

I, Language Robot
Hired to write stories alongside an AI writing bot, neuroscientist Patrick House reflects on how the bot can — and can’t — write the same story that...
Oct 21, 2019
Is There a Crisis of Truth?
Historian of Science Steven Shapin turns the screw on the notion that “truth” is in crisis.
Dec 2, 2019
Fraud by Numbers: Metrics and the New Academic Misconduct
UCLA professor of Law and Communication Mario Biagioli dissects how metric-based evaluations are shaping university agendas.
Sep 7, 2020
Evolution Wars: The Saga Continues
Jessica Riskin offers a revisionist history of evolutionary biology.
Oct 20, 2020
Why “Trusting the Science” Is Complicated
Reviewing “On the Fringe,” Suman Seth uses 18th-century theories of putrefaction to show how flimsy the line between science and pseudoscience can be.
Feb 12, 2021
“I Don’t Really Care. Do You?”: Scientists in the Grey Zone in 1930s Italy
Massimo Mazzotti reflects on how Italian scientists failed as a bulwark against fascist politics in the 1930s.
Jul 8, 2019
Virus, Coal, and Seed: Subcutaneous Life in the Polar North
“We’ve got the largest collection of agricultural biodiversity in the world here, where there aren’t any farms or gardens or trees.”
Dec 21, 2016
Gods of Small Things
Victoria Lee reviews "Soju: A Global History" and "The Probiotic Planet: Using Life to Manage Life."
Jun 27, 2021
The Many Faces of Global Trauma
A newly minted doctor specializing in mental health finds Western concepts of trauma don’t have as much meaning when imported abroad.
Jul 10, 2021
Peak Brain: The Metaphors of Neuroscience
Henry Cowles describes how our technologies anchor our metaphors, which in turn anchor how we think about the brain — and ourselves.
Nov 30, 2020
When Einstein Was Just Another Physicist
Audra Wolfe shows how the banality of Einstein’s time in Prague is precisely the point of Michael Gordin’s new book, “Einstein in Bohemia.”
Mar 23, 2020