Elizabeth Finkel

A compelling journey through science's big breakthroughs, by an award-winning Australian science writer Humans developed the scientific method over centuries. Its departure from what came before was that theories should be fuelled by data, not opinion. Today, the institutions that underpin democracy - the law, academia, government, journalism - all rely on its central idea: seeking facts and interrogating them through robust discussion and real-world testing. Yet in the post-truth era, public conversations can feel far from scientific. In Prove It, Elizabeth Finkel describes how the scientific method plays out in a series of controversies, from proving the existence of Einstein's gravitational waves to identifying the origins of Covid-19, from understanding human origins to defining consciousness. Through these tales of dispute and discovery, she breaks down the key elements of scientific thinking. Full of politics, prejudice, obsession, heroism and eccentricity, Prove It captures the drama and excitement of scientific discovery and debate and argues compellingly that its lessons are more crucial now than ever.

Is the genomic revolution an overhyped flop or are we on the edge of a life changing revolution? How has it changed the way we practise medicine, grow crops and breed livestock? What have we learned about evolution? These are the questions science writer and molecular biologist Elizabeth Finkel asked herself. To find the answers she travelled the science frontier from Botswana to Boston, from Warracknabeal to Mexico and tracked down scientists working in the field. Their stories, told here, paint the picture of what it means to be part of the genome generation.

Offering a dramatic counterpoint to the findings that from elementary school through to college, women's interest in science steadily declines, and that "real science" only occurs in research and laboratory investigation, this text describes women engaged with science or engineering at the margins. In an innovative high school genetics class, a school-to-work internship for prospective engineers, an environmental action group and a nonprofit conservation agency, the authors found a high proportion of women who were successful at learning and using technical knowledge, and advancing in equal percentages to men. This text explores how women still had to pay a price, working outside traditional laboratories, receiving less financial compensation and little public prestige, unless they acted like male professionals.