From David Dobbs, writing in the New York Times.

"People often ask me about the significance of small first studies like this," says Dr. Thomas Insel, who as director of the National Institute of Mental Health enjoys an unparalleled view of the discipline. "I usually tell them: 'Don't bother. We don't know enough.' But this is different. Here we know enough to say this is something significant. I really do believe this is the beginning of a new way of understanding depression."

This essay appears in The Best American Science Writing 2007.

A Depression Switch?

From Matthew Chapman, writing in Harper's.

In the case of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, eleven parents sued to remove intelligent design from the curriculum. The defendants brought in some of the leading lights in the intelligent design movement to defend it as science and elucidate the gaps in evolution. The plaintiffs brought in experts on evolution to explain it and refute intelligent design.

That's the basic story, but if you think you know everything there is to know about this, you are wrong. Only I know the truth.

This essay appears in The Best American Science Writing 2007.

God or Gorilla

From DISCOVER Magazine.

When this shy paleontologist found soft, fresh-looking tissue inside a T.rex femur, she erased a line between past and present. Then all hell broke loose.

...

Schweitzer scoffs at visions of dinosaur parks. If anyone ever finds dinosaur DNA, she says, it will be fragmented and incomplete. In the unlikely event that scientists could reconstruct a complete dinosaur genome, she doubts that any modern animal could produce an egg capable of growing a dinosaur embryo. And even if that hurdle could be crossed, a viable dinosaur might not last long in 2006: "As far as we know, the way the lung tissue functioned, the way the hemoglobin functioned, was designed for an atmosphere that's very different than today's."

Truth is, Schweitzer hasn't even bothered to look for DNA. She has simply hunkered down to work in her characteristic way: keeping her eyes and her attitude wide open. "So many things are coming together that suggest preservation is far better than we've ever given it credit for," she says. "I think it's stupid to say, 'You're never going to get DNA out of dinosaur bone, you're never going to get proteins out of dinosaur bone, you're never going to do this, you're never going to do that.' As a scientist, I don't think you should ever use the word never."

This essay appears in The Best American Science Writing 2007.

Schweitzer's Dangerous Discovery

From Oliver Sacks, writing in The New Yorker.

A NEUROLOGIST'S NOTEBOOK about stereoscopy and binocular vision.

I can't find the full text online, but a larger excerpt is available.

This essay appears in The Best American Science Writing 2007.

A Neurologist's Notebook: Stereo Sue

From Science Magazine.

After making the difficult decision to turn in their adviser for scientific misconduct, a group of graduate students is trying to recover from the resulting damage to their careers.

Full text available here as PDF. See also related resources from Science.

This essay appears in The Best American Science Writing 2007.

Truth and Consequences

From Atul Gawande, writing in The New Yorker.

How childbirth went industrial.

...

In a sense, there is a tyranny to the score. Against the score for a newborn child, the mother’s pain and blood loss and length of recovery seem to count for little. We have no score for how the mother does, beyond asking whether she lived or not—no measure to prod us to improve results for her, too. Yet this imbalance, at least, can surely be righted. If the child’s well-being can be measured, why not the mother’s, too? Indeed, we need an Apgar score for everyone who encounters medicine: the psychiatry patient, the patient on the hospital ward, the person going through an operation, and the mother in childbirth. My research group recently came up with a surgical Apgar score—a ten-point surgical rating based on the amount of blood loss, the lowest heart rate, and the lowest blood pressure that a patient experiences during an operation. We still don’t know if it’s perfect. But all patients deserve a simple measure that indicates how well or badly they have come through—and that pushes the rest of us to innovate.

This essay appears in The Best American Science Writing 2007.

Annals of Medicine: The Score

From Sylvia Nasar and David Gruber, writing in The New Yorker.

A legendary problem and the battle over who solved it.

...

Mikhail Gromov, the Russian geometer, said that he understood Perelman’s logic: “To do great work, you have to have a pure mind. You can think only about the mathematics. Everything else is human weakness. Accepting prizes is showing weakness.” Others might view Perelman’s refusal to accept a Fields as arrogant, Gromov said, but his principles are admirable. “The ideal scientist does science and cares about nothing else,” he said. “He wants to live this ideal. Now, I don’t think he really lives on this ideal plane. But he wants to.”

This essay appears in The Best American Science Writing 2007.

Annals of Mathematics: Manifold Destiny

From Esquire.

For a hundred years, physicists have been scraping away at the strange and complicated phenomena obscuring the true face of our universe. Finally, a few brilliant young thinkers may be on the verge of getting the first real glimpse.

This essay appears in The Best American Science Writing 2007.

The Theory of Everything

Jottit makes getting a website as easy as filling out a textbox.

This could be useful.

Jottit

The lesson to be learned from this is that it is often undesirable to go for the right thing first. It is better to get half of the right thing available so that it spreads like a virus. Once people are hooked on it, take the time to improve it to 90% of the right thing.

The Rise of 'Worse is Better'