All of this means that labels like mutualist, commensal, pathogen, or parasite don’t quite work as badges of fixed identity. They are ill-suited for describing the messy, fractious, contextual relationships of the natural world…. These terms belong in children’s stories. “Here is a strange but critical sentiment to introduce in a book about the benefits of living with microbes: there is no such thing as a ‘good microbe’ or a ‘bad microbe’. It was a delightful read, and among the reasons is that Yong describes perfectly some fundamental things about being an ecologist. That’s so too much to ask.Īnyway, this month I finally read the book, and boy was I wrong. Like, I’m studying all these complicated non-microbial things about my organism’s ecology, and I’m supposed to somehow have all the skills, techniques, and equipment to also understand its microbiome? Please go away. As an ecologist I was kind of sick of hearing about the microbiome, and of people asking me whether my study organism’s microbiome might explain X or Y thing I had found about it. It seemed very of-the-moment, very bandwagon-y. It’s about the microbiome, and I just wasn’t that excited to read about the microbiome.

Nevertheless, when Yong’s first book, I Contain Multitudes, was released, I wasn’t that thrilled. I’m trying not to get sidetracked, but it’s hard, and that link is worth clicking, I promise.) That might be a pretty good measure, and it is one that Yong passes with flying colors: both the experts in fields he writes about, as well as nearly everyone else, are happy when he puts words on the internet. What is the measure of a good science writer?īoth my boyfriend and I – one of us a scientist, the other not – adore reading Ed Yong’s columns in The Atlantic.

I contain multitudes book review