Health, psychology & science stories

These stories - mostly for New Scientist and The Age - were written against the backdrop of perhaps the most exciting scientific era of all time. However it is also an era where the things which contextualise science are in eclipse. Things like ethics, philosophy, education, a diverse media, and freedom of thought - to say nothing of coherent communities.

In Australia, the cloning of some wretched animal, or a new cancer drug, will garner a lengthy report on ABC or SBS TV news. Areas where meaningful scientific change is taking place seem to be outside the news paradigm. Partly this is because journalists don’t understand what is important in science and what is not. There is a tendency to abdicate judgement to the ‘medical experts’, and to echo their often myopic perspective.

These stories cover many emerging schools of thought, and entire new sciences - such as evolutionary psychology, pycho-neuro-immunology, Darwinian Medicine, the paleolithic diet, low carb, sexual signalling, the hormonal basis of lust, romance and bonding, and the neurology of religious experience. At the time the ideas were novel, and in some cases unknown. Ten or fifteen years on, many have become mainstream. Hopefully the stories preserve the flavour of the brilliant new idea, which went on to become big.