Best of 2016: Science Writing

An improbable tale of how a British maverick harnessed crowdsourced meteorological discoveries to reveal the poetic wonders of the sky.

International corporations that want to intimidate countries have access to a private legal system designed just for them. And to unlock its power, sometimes all it takes is a threat. Part two of a BuzzFeed News investigation.

A nonprofit purports to help the misinformed public sift through alarmist claims about the environment. But it has a disturbing history of promoting industry experts.

We can think of ourselves as an animal’s peer—or its protector. What will robots decide about us?

My sister had entered a different dimension of human experience — the world of dementia. How were we to follow? How to understand her end-of-life wishes?

“If you begin a conversation with, ‘You’re an idiot,’ that’s the end of the conversation, too,” says the Texas Tech scientist, an evangelical Christian spreading a gospel on warming.

Nicola Twilley reports on the discovery of gravitational waves, ripples in space and time that may change our understanding of the universe.

Part one of our series on the iconic national park examines the challenge of managing nature.

When the engineers had at last finished their work, Eugenia Kuyda opened a console on her laptop and began to type. “Roman,” she wrote. “This is your digital monument.” It had been three months since Roman Mazurenko, Kuyda’s closest friend, had died. Kuyda had spent...

Paige Williams on the paleoanthropologist who proclaimed the existence of Homo naledi.

Your brain does not process information, retrieve knowledge or store memories. In short: your brain is not a computer

In an excerpt from his new book, “I Contain Multitudes,” Ed Yong explains how a mother’s milk helps strengthen her baby’s microbiome and brain.