Contents -- Advisory panel -- Contributors -- Foreword: Science writing for our time -- Introduction: Specimen hunting -- Bad hotel -- Science without a capital S: Battling Grumpy Uncles, Media Tarts and Jurassic Marxists -- You should probably just move oceans, male Gulf pipefish -- The trouble with genes -- There is no mercury in vaccines -- Is your brain making you fat? -- It's time to talk -- To save a species -- Birth of a killer -- Lousy science -- A fresh look at Earth -- How to keep the river flowing -- Blame it on the Stones -- In the age of fishes -- Tiger by the tail -- Gone viral -- Skin feeders -- Once were dinosaurs -- Australian floods: Why were we so surprised? -- No escaping the science -- How aqua regia saved Nobel Prize medals from the Nazis -- Extremes of sound -- String theory ties us in knots -- Deepak Chopra: Misunderstanding physics since he willed himself into existence -- Twinkling stars -- Flesh and stardust -- Is anybody out there? -- Acknowledgments.