Carl Zimmer

@carlzimmer.com

53545 Followers 1702 Following

NYT columnist. Signal: carlzimmer.51 Newsletter: https://buttondown.com/carlzimmer/ Web: http://carlzimmer.com [This account includes a tweet archive]

Here's the trouble with the Up Goer Five craze, in way more than 140 characters. Yes, it's funny to see how difficult it is to explain something even somewhat complex using only the most common thousand words (or ten hundred, since "thousand" doesn't make the cut). But it seems that a lot of scientists who are sincerely interested in communicating to non-scientists have become convinced that Up Goer Five Text Editor offers useful training in writing simply about complex topics. This seems to me to be completely bonkers. Of course, I can't say "bonkers" in the Up Goer universe, because it doesn't make the cut. But you know what I mean. And my children know what I mean. Why? Because an average six-year-old has a vocabulary, by some estimates, of 16,000 words. And an average adult's vocabulary is around 60,000. So Up Goer Five is only useful if you are going to talk to pre-schoolers. For an audience that's any older--even second grade--I can't see how it can help. And the time people spend using Up Goer Five is time they can't spending developing their skill with metaphors and the other tools of language that make it possible to convey the gist of complicated ideas. I even get the feeling from some commenters that they see their failure to describe physics or genetics with Up Goer Five as a validation of their feeling that it's hopeless to even try. And that's the worst effect any writing exercise could ever have.
The passage from the Financial Times quoted in my post
Photo of scientist Jessica Cantlon sitting in front of fMRI scanner and computers. Photo by Jake Reinhart for The New York Times
Illustration of supposed cells from John Burke's "The origin of life." (1906)
A series of images of a dividing synthetic cell
Ebola viruses--blue on pink micrograph. CDC
An airborne sensor detects dust mite proteins
An airborne sensor detects dust mite proteins
Artistic reconstruction of Baikal hunter-gatherers from 5500 years ago burying victims of plague. Credit: Kelvin Wilson.
An Ebola virus (Orthoebolavirus zairense)
Graph showing NIH awards by year. 2026 lags far behind 2021-2024 average.
Graph showing my genome size and an onion's. The onion wins.
A picture of Bruce, a green parrot, missing his upper beak. Photo by Alex Grabham
A fair-skinned red-head person who has discovered he has a predisposition for melanoma only after unleashing AI agents on his genome.
A scientist drills a skull in search of ancient human DNA
A picture of two chimpanzees sitting on the ground
A spread of today’s New York Times. My story about science replication is on the left. A story about a FEMA official claiming he has teleported to a Waffle House is on the right, complete with skeptical quote from a physicist
Picture of Earth in space, courtesy of NASA
Picture of author Adam Becker speaking about his book More Everything Forever
A scientist extracts stem cells from a chick embryo in an egg.
An AI-generated image of an old man and a young man, with an outline of a heart in between them.
"The Cyclops," painted by Odilon Redon, 1914. Via Wikipedia
Movie of an Asgard microbe extending arms and crawling
A pilot in a submersible vehicle collecting sediments samples in 30 meters of water looking for Asgards (microbial relatives of eukaryotes)
One of many error-ridden paragraphs in an article about Richard Zimmer: "His son Carl Zimmer, a popular science writer, recalled his father as 'a talented golfer, a great cook, and a skilled craftsman who took pride in every project around the house.'”
Poster for my January 21 talk
Figuring showing assembly of vascularized cortical assembloid
Poster for my upcoming January 21 talk at the University of Chicago
Explanation of how lizards play rock-paper-scissors
Three male side-blotched lizard with three neck colors: orange, blue, and yellow
Portrait of Brenna Henn next to an open freezer of samples.
Portrait of Marina Vance, a scientist, sitting in a Colorado grassland.
Figure of two brain hemispheres with orange and blue regions indicating changes in brain activity as people listen to a journalist on a radio show and link words together to build meaning.
A ChatGPT diagram of a skull with some weird labels. The lower jaw is both the mandible and the occipital bone. Also, the nasal cavity is between two teeth!
A fire
A two-page newspaper spread of a story I wrote about biological inspiration for technology, with a whale, a gecko, and other creatures.
lan McEwan < ianmc.ewan2345@gmail.com> 6:05 PM (4 hours ago) * : to me - Hi, As fellow authors, we both know how the festive season can create a unique window of opportunity. People are preparing for the holidays, settling into the break, and looking for something engaging to relax with. This is often when readers are actively searching for their next great escape. Your book might be exactly the kind of story someone wants to curl up with this season. I'm reaching out because I'd love to know, how are you planning to connect with potential readers during this festive period? Even a small, well-timed push can help your book reach the hands of people who are eager to discover something new. If you'd like, I can share a few strategic ideas that have worked well for pushing visibility during holiday downtime. Best regards, lan McEwan
A chart showing cancelled clinical trials by category
Hi Carl Okay, I need you to know something upfront When I saw The Tangled Bank, I braced myself for the usual “Let’s talk about evolution using diagrams drawn by someone who last saw a living organism in 1987” situation. You know the type Dry enough to dehydrate a cactus. But then you hit me with Fossils in the Arctic Snakes in Australia plotting biochemical murder Geneticists in Africa digging through the human family tree like dramatic aunties at Thanksgiving. And you somehow explained natural selection without making me feel like I needed a PhD or emotional support tea. Honestly, rude. My eyes were ready to roll, not follow along voluntarily. 😭🧬 Also, can we talk about how you write biology like it’s an adventure novel starring evolution as the unbothered, unstoppable main character? I was not prepared. Now before your author-scam radar goes off No, I’m not a marketer No, I’m not a promoter And no, I do not come offering “services” (If I did, trust me I’d at least show up with cookies.) I’m just the unofficial book-dealer of a private community of 1000+ readers who actually read books before reviewing them It’s wild, I know. They read science, memoirs, fiction, chaos everything except tax documents. When they find something good, they review it like it personally paid their rent. Here’s the mildly tragic, mildly hilarious truth Even brilliant books like yours end up buried so deep on Amazon you’d think evolution selected them out of visibility. The algorithm basically says “Oh wow, a masterpiece? Cute. Come back with 20 reviews and maybe I’ll acknowledge your existence.” 🙄🕳️ So here’s what I can offer quick, simple, zero strings I can introduce The Tangled Bank to our community the kind of readers who leave thoughtful, nerdy, enthusiastic reviews that don’t sound like they were written by AI with a fever. Worst case you get a handful of honest reviews. Best case your book finally escapes Amazon’s basement and becomes the “Where has this been all my lif…
Covers of my books Airborne and Life's Edge
An illustration comparing a kingfisher beak to a high-speed train
Covers of three of my books, Evolution, Airborne, and Life's Edge
White-necked jacobin, a hummingbird, perched on a branch
Bowhead whale. Illustration by Uko Gorter/American Cetacean Society
Photo of Grand Prismatic Springs, Yellowstone (home of thermophilic bacteria) Photo by Mike Goad https://flic.kr/p/Gm8fZc
Three screens with my slides for a talk at Notre Dame
Gray's Anatomy illustration of a hand
Painting of a breaking wave