Best Science Books of 2020 | Books

In one of the many unexpected results of 2020, “science” has become big news. Politicians claim it, protesters contest it and suddenly everyone is an expert on superspreader events, RNA vaccines and what goes on at the bottom of an Excel spreadsheet. It’s hard to know who to trust and it’s more important than ever for the public to have a basic understanding of what “science” says, so we’re less likely to fool ourselves. Fortunately, a number of excellent writers are here to make it accessible, engaging, and incredibly informative.

The news Outbreaks and epidemics by Meera Senthilingam (Icon), for example, is full of information about the history and context of the diseases we think we know. He explains how effective monitoring and traceability, combined with a comprehensive vaccination program, has been crucial for smallpox eradication and why the climate crisis and drug resistance make future pandemics more likely. It also shows how politics affects the way we treat disease: the chapter on tuberculosis is titled ‘What Happens When Nobody Cares’. It also handles a last minute update on Covid-19. (We could have been much more ready if we really wanted to be.)

Adam Kucharski’s The rules of contagion (Wellcome Collection) also offers excellent explanations of the R number, herd immunity and mathematical models, but its purpose is to apply the principles of epidemiology to other “infections” – from financial contagion, to gun violence and the challenge of ice bucket to marketing, innovation and culture. We now know that the pre-2008 banking system had “enormous expansion potential”, for example, and we can use “public health” theories to fight knife crime. It also demonstrates why scientific models cannot fully explain the spread of the disease. After losing a fortune in the South Sea Bubble, Isaac Newton apparently complained: “I can calculate the movement of celestial bodies but not the madness of people.”

The strangeness of people is the inspiration for Explain humans by Dr. Camilla Pang (Viking), a biochemist with autism spectrum disorder and ADHD. He describes the book, which won the 2020 Royal Society Award, as “the manual I … always needed” to understand human behavior and how to adapt, and does an amazing job of explaining how Bayes’ theorem fits. apply to relationships what game theory etiquette can teach us and why a tidy bedroom is an affront to the second law of thermodynamics. It also introduces complex ideas to non-scientists in a warm and memorable way, while celebrating and demystifying neurodiversity: “ASD and ADHD are my qualifications as much as my PhD,” says Pang.

The great suitor (Canongate) was also inspired by a personal story. Its author, Susannah Cahalan, was diagnosed with schizophrenia and nearly got lost in the mental health system, until a persistent doctor found a physical diagnosis for her condition and she was cured. Her subsequent questioning of the division between “mental” and “physical” illness led her to discover a famous study from 1973 in which a group of mentally healthy researchers showed up in psychiatric hospitals, complaining that they could hear voices, and severe psychiatric illness was diagnosed. The experiment shook the world of psychiatry, but Cahalan’s research suggests that not everything was as it seemed. The book is a fantastic scoop, a fascinating history of psychiatry, and a powerful argument as to why science is often concerned with challenging accepted wisdom.

Linda Scott undoubtedly had personal reasons for writing The double X Economy: The epic potential of women’s empowerment (Faber), but the result is one of the most objective, data-driven, rigorously scientific and morally persuasive books of the year. Scott’s argument is simple: “Equal pay for women would put an end to some of the most costly evils in the world, while building prosperity for all.” It supports it with economic, environmental and evolutionary science by proposing “concrete, reasonable and effective actions”. Never before has an analysis of the supply chain economics resulted in so many punches in the air. This is a book that will make you think and act.

One of the most touching biographies of the year shows the human side of the great physicist Stephen Hawking, as seen by his friend and collaborator Leonard Mlodinow (Allen Lane). With admirably easy to understand digressions on favorite topics like Einstein, dark energy and black holes, Mlodinow tells us about Hawking the man. We learn that he did not like physics at school because Newton was boring and how he “fed on love as much as physics”. He also memorized in his computer voice the prepackaged phrase, “Thanks, but have you finished it?”, For fans who approached him to compliment his book.

JBS Haldane’s Samanth Subramanian Biography, A dominant character (Atlantic) reveals another flawed and brilliant scientist. A geneticist who helped define our understanding of evolutionary biology, Haldane was described by Arthur C. Clarke as “the most brilliant science communicator of his generation” and by one student as “the last man who knew all there was. ‘was to know, “but he also excused Stalin’s attacks on scientists and science. The book shows how politics and science are often tied together and the dangers of allowing political principles to corrupt scientific ideas. It is delightfully full of dangers, adventures and scandals.

Perhaps the most unusual science book of the year is Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta (Text), which he describes as “a series of stories with different people that make me feel uncomfortable”. Yunkaporta examines topics such as food, medicine, gender relations and financial and environmental systems using visual symbols to represent his thinking: he carves objects and draws images in the sand. “I’m not reporting on indigenous knowledge systems from the perspective of a global audience,” he says. “I am examining global systems from the perspective of indigenous knowledge.” It’s a dramatically new (for some) and engaging way to engage with the world, and it stops just before the exasperation with the self-important “Western science”. “Stupid thinking is something everyone is guilty of from time to time,” writes Yunkaporta. “It’s forgivable as long as you’re still listening.” It perfectly illustrates that there is no such thing as “the science ”, that we should question anyone trying to claim scientific thinking as their own, and that intellectual curiosity is everything.

• Browse the best books of 2020 at the Guardian Bookshop.