Every year for the past two decades, John Brockman has been posing what has become known as the Edge Question. (Find it at Edge.org.) It is always science-related, and scientists and others interested in science are invited to answer it in their own way. He then gathers the responses together in a book. I recently read “Know This,” the book that resulted from his 2016 question: What was the most interesting scientific news of the year?

The book has more than 200 essays, ranging from a single short paragraph to five pages in length. Most were written by scientists, but others are from science writers, philosophers, artists and even show business personalities such as actor Alan Alda and singer Peter Gabriel.

Even when several contributors give the same basic answer — climate change, for example, or the Higgs boson — their perspectives are so different that the essays never seem repetitive. Some writers are much too technical for general readers. Consider this line from Maximilian Schich: “Driven by the quantification of nonintuitive dynamic cultural science is accelerated in an autocatalytic manner.” Yet most writers keep it as simple as possible most of the time.

A bigger problem for me is that so many contributors stray from science into politics, feminism, theology or whatever their personal hobbyhorse happens to be. Journalist David Berreby writes about how wonderful it will be when America no longer has a racial majority and everyone is more tolerant of others, then shoots himself in the foot by saying, “We are seeing inevitable ethnic renegotiation, as what was once ‘harmless fun’ (like naming your football team the Redskins) is redefined as something no decent American should condone.” No decent American? How tolerant is that? It's like saying, how wonderful it will be when everybody thinks the same way I do.

Imagining brave new worlds is, in fact, a common theme in many of the essays, as if the Edge Question had to do with science fiction, not science news. One considers the possibility of head transplants, another announces that "self-driving genes are coming," another that some "bacteria may have jumped from Mars to Earth." Noga Arikha, identified as an "historian of ideas," mocks this sort of thing in his own essay about claims that reflect "wishful thinking rather than actual reality, typical of what constitutes fast-burning 'news.'"

When contributors stay on subject, the results can be edifying. Several, and these are among the most interesting, have to do with findings that a significant percentage of published research papers, especially in the field of psychology, cannot be replicated. The findings of such papers are often the ones most likely to be reported in news accounts. Yet when other researchers do the same study in the same way, they come up with different results. Too many researchers find what they want to find or what those paying for their research want them to find. As psychologist Philip Tetlock writes, "The road to scientific hell is paved with political intentions, some well intentioned, some maniacally evil." ( )

Know This is a collection of short essays that answer the 2016 question from Edge, “What do you consider the most interesting recent (scientific) news? What makes it important.” The question is different every year. For 2017, the question is “What scientific term or concept out to be more widely known?” What makes the Edge annual questions so interesting is they are answered by leaders in many fields, mostly in science, but also artists, mathematicians, historians, software developers, musicians, and philosophers. Who is not answering? Anonymous blowhards and conspiracy theorists are mercifully absent.

So what do people consider the most interesting recent news? A lot of people are rightly concerned about rising sea levels, global warming, and other environmental issues. Around 4,400 people die from air pollution every single day in China. As the author wrote, “Every time I hear of some tragedy that makes headlines, such as a landslide in Shenzhen that killed 200 people, I think to myself, “Yes — and today 4,400 people died of air pollution and it didn’t make the news.” He also pointed out that China posts environmental data updates hourly. This struck me as particularly poignant with this week’s silencing of several federal agencies for unknown reasons, on the environment at least, China is now a more open and transparent country that the U.S.

There were a number who focused on the rejection of science while others mentioned the declining standards of scientific research publications. One of my favorite essays is “We Fear the Wrong Things,” something that drives me nuts. This is because of the availability heuristic, we fear what we remember, what’s available to our thoughts. So, because it is not news when someone dies of something ordinary but common, we don’t worry about it. Instead we worry about unlikely disasters that make the news precisely because they are unlikely. Which is why “we spend an estimated $500 million per U.S. terrorist death but only $10,000 per cancer death.”

There are answers that talk about math, physics, amazing new technology, psychology and health. The variety is as broad as the 198 respondents who participated last year.

I loved Know This and know I will read it again. It is one of those books that insist on being read more than once and read slowly. Doctor’s offices should have copies in their waiting rooms. People should think of it as a coffee table book for readers. The short essays are the perfect length for someone to read while you make a cup of tea or do the last minute assembly before dinner. It’s better to read just one or two or, at most, three answers at a time so you have a chance to synthesize them, to consider each answer distinctly from other answers. Just reading straight through will never do the book justice because it will all run together.

This book deserves the justice of being read so that each answer can be a separate, considered reading. Topics are so disparate and varied that they only work if you don’t try to absorb them all at once. I rate this book so highly because it both fascinating and important. These are things we should know, things that deserve our attention. I am glad Edge makes a point of trying to get us to do so.

Know This will be released on February 7, 2017. I was provided an advance e-galley by the publisher through Edelweiss.

★★★★★
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