Top science stories of 2021: Courage, ducks and bears

Cosmos, Australia's only independent science newsroom, has chosen their picks among 2021's thousands of amazing stories.

We STILL can't get over what an amazing week this was - and the fact that we got to talk about how chunky bears can get.

Every year, a national park in Alaska pits brown bears against each other in a series of knockout rounds, getting the public to vote on who has fattened up the most in the lead-up to winter hibernation.

Cosmos was delighted to see Otis crowned 2021 champion of chonk, but it also gave us a great excuse to talk about the interesting way nutrients cycle through temperate rainforests - from salmon to bears to scavengers to the trees themselves.

One of the biggest news stories of the year was the Taliban re-taking Afghanistan.

It's not a pure science story, but we immediately wondered what this would mean for education in Afghanistan, especially for women.

Two women, Farkhondeh Akbari and Pashtana Durrani, are fighting for education in their home county.

Listen to their interview with Cosmos at cosmosmagazine.com/people/courage-has-a-quiet-voice-the-women-who-wont-give-up-on-educating-afghanistan/

We did our share of mythbusting articles this year - especially when it came to COVID.

Between exploring misinformation in pamphlets to questioning why vaccinated people still end up in hospital, the most prominent through-line was in vaccine hesitancy.

The newsroom used its tenacity and expertise to breakdown the risk of people getting blood clots from the AstraZeneca vaccine.

It was an issue that caused great concern across the nation, but the data showed, compared to the AstraZeneca vaccine, the chance of blood clots is about 50 times greater for the pill, 2500 times greater for pregnancy, and 38,750 times greater from COVID-19 infection.

And Cosmos editor-at-large Elizabeth Finkel's series A letter to my vaccine-hesitant friends provided a comprehensive dossier on what we know about the COVID vaccines, what the risks are, and - crucially - where the benefits lie. Read it here: cosmosmagazine.com/health/covid/a-letter-to-my-vaccine-hesitant-friends/

In February, a group of eminent Australian and international experts petitioned the NSW Governor to pardon convicted child killer Kathleen Folbigg because of genetics research suggesting two of her children could have died of natural causes, rather than being murdered by their mother.

It came as Folbigg awaited the judgment of a NSW Supreme Court appeal, which she launched to quash the findings of a 2019 judicial inquiry that affirmed her guilt.

This was an extremely important piece of science.

For several days under a court embargo we pulled together three articles to translate some incredibly complex science in a domain we were previously unfamiliar with.

Regardless of the outcome of the petition and court case, we are proud of the work we produced, which presented this dense science clearly.

We aren't serious all of the time.

Behind the scenes, we like a laugh at Cosmos, and this was the product of our nerdy brand of humour.

It's niche, it's silly, and it's about science, so we're pleased to have hit all the important boxes to celebrate April 1.

Our April Fool's story claimed scientists across the world had declared no further research was required in the field of astronomy because everything about space was now sufficiently understood.

This joke was created on a whim, but it had an unexpectedly wide reach. It even fooled a few folks in the end, so we can happily say it performed as intended.

Ripper the musk duck is the most hardcore Aussie animal there is.

He chases people. He slams doors.

But most importantly of all? He swears like a sailor.

This foul-mouth fowl is a personal favourite here at Cosmos because we only wish we had an ounce of his confidence and pizzazz.

The Australian musk duck was added to the list of animals that can learn to mimic other animals - including humans.

A paper in Philosophical Transactions B revealed the ducks can imitate other bird sounds and human sounds - like doors slamming, and one truly Australian phrase uttered by their keepers.

"You bloody fool," agreed Ripper, musk duck and subject of the paper.

Ripper is a bloody inspiration. Let's hope 2022 is a ripper of a year, too.