The Worst Science in the World

摘要

There's a very dark humor that permeates the culture of field science. Tales of hardship, suffering, and endurance are often told with a peculiar form of irony, filled with braggadocio, and sprinkled with in-house jokes. Nowhere is this strange mixture of hardship, suffering, and dark humor more evident than in Apsley Cherry-Garrard's celebrated memoir of Antarctic exploration dramatically titled The Worst Journey in the World (1). Its memorable opening line sets its tone: "Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised." Billed as the War and Peace of travel writing, the nearly 600-page epic recounts a disastrous 1911 journey to locate and collect the eggs of the emperor penguin from the rookery on Cape Crazier in the Antarctic. Then thought to be primitive because they were flightless, penguins had drawn the attention of the many post-Darwinian evolutionists at the turn of the 20th century who believed that anatomical study of their embryos might shed light on the evolutionary relationship of birds and reptiles.