The Open Notebook – Interviews

Interviews

Sarah Zhang Explores the Fallout of a Fertility Doctor’s Secret

With the advent of direct-to-consumer genetic testing, an increasing number of people are learning that they were conceived using donor sperm. In rare cases, it turns out that their biological fathers are actually the doctors who offered fertility treatments to their parents. A situation like this involving an Indiana fertility doctor piqued The Atlantic reporter Sarah Zhang’s interest, leading her to track down his biological children. Her investigation reveals how much society’s attitude toward donor insemination has changed.

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by Knvul Sheikh · November 5, 2019 · 0 comments

Mary Heglar on Leading with the Heart, not the Head

Mary Annaïse Heglar writes beautiful, urgent essays about climate change—essays that acknowledge the emotional complexities of the crisis and often make clear its links to racism and colonialism. And she does it all in her spare time. Nine to five, she is the publications director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, where she edits and oversees technical reports about environmental research and policy. Here, Heglar tells TON about her process, her thoughts on the role of emotion in climate communication, and her sudden rise.

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by Emma Marris · October 22, 2019 · 0 comments

Elizabeth Shogren Uncovers Censorship of Science at the National Park Service

The National Park Service greenlighted a project studying the effects of climate change on coastal parks—then buried its results. Reporter Elizabeth Shogren, of Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, tells TON how she used public-records laws to pull back the curtain on scientific censorship by top Park Service officials.

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by Jennifer Lu · October 1, 2019 · 0 comments

Roxanne Khamsi Explores a Potential Revolution in Cancer Treatment

One typically thinks of Darwin’s theory of evolution playing out in natural habitats. Over time, random mutations that make a species more fit for its niche lead to the giraffe’s neck, the spider’s venom, the bees’ communicative dance. Journalist and genetics junkie Roxanne Khamsi was intrigued to learn of a theory that cancer cells are subject to similar evolutionary pressures. She spoke to TON about the challenges and pleasures of tackling a math-dense subject with implications for extending the lives of people with cancer.

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by Jeanne Erdmann · August 20, 2019 · 0 comments

Apoorva Mandavilli Probes India’s Push to Eliminate Leprosy

Leprosy’s victims suffer visible pockmarks, deformed limbs, and a lifetime of social ostracism. Yet the microbe responsible for this suffering remains elusive. Last year, India’s Supreme Court ruled that the country’s government had shirked its responsibility to patients and that officials had failed to count the number of patients correctly. The news piqued Apoorva Mandavilli’s interest and led her to track down how clinics and patients cope with this ancient disease.

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by Jyoti Madhusoodanan · July 23, 2019 · 1 comment

Brooke Jarvis Uncovers an Insect Armageddon

Picture this: You’re cruising a highway in, say, Wyoming, ogling the badlands and buttes, when it hits you—your windshield is clean. A decade ago, you recall, this same drive left your grille looking like a Jackson Pollock canvas, smeared and spattered with beetles, butterflies, and grasshoppers. Today, your windshield is transparent as air, unmarred by so much as a flying termite. With growing unease, you wonder: What gives?

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by Ben Goldfarb · February 19, 2019 · 1 comment

Elaina Plott Explores Everyday Life on a Sinking Island

Scientists project that Tangier Island, a fishing community in the Chesapeake Bay, might be uninhabitable in 25 years—but locals don’t buy it. In her Pacific Standard portrait of a cozy town fighting a changing climate and a changing culture, Elaina Plott shows what climate science and climate politics look like at street level. She spoke to TON about the power of asking sources basic questions, the keys to small-town field reporting, and why opinions and empathy might both be overrated.

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by Olga Kreimer · February 5, 2019 · 0 comments

Christie Aschwanden Tackles the Science of Exercise Recovery

Christie Aschwanden thought writing a book about how the body recovers from exercise and builds resilience for further challenges should be easy. In her mind’s eye, she could almost picture how the chapters would unspool. But as she dug into reporting and writing her new book, Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn from the Strange Science of Recovery, she learned how mistaken she’d been—laughably so, she says.

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by Siri Carpenter · January 29, 2019 · 0 comments

Laura Beil Dissects a Criminal Doctor’s Surgical Rampage

In the overwhelmingly popular podcast Dr. Death, Laura Beil chronicles the astonishing string of surgeries botched by Dallas-area neurosurgeon Christopher Duntsch. Throughout the series, Beil grapples with what allowed such an inept surgeon to kill two patients and harm 31 others before he was finally stopped. And, she reveals that this could easily happen again. Beil tells Zamzow how Dr. Death fell into her lap, how she adapted to audio storytelling, and how she has handled the podcast’s success.

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by Rachel Zamzow · January 22, 2019 · 1 comment

Science Photojournalist Morgan Heim Illuminates Environmental Cost of California’s Trespass Marijuana Grows

In 2012, photojournalist and filmmaker Morgan Heim came across a study in PLOS One about Pacific fishers—house cat–sized carnivores that live in old-growth forests in the mountains of Northern California—being exposed to rat poison in a place where they shouldn’t be: our national parks and forests. One of the suspected causes was illegal industrial-scale marijuana grows, also known as “trespass grows,” set up by drug-trafficking organizations. Heim immediately knew this was a big deal, and a big story.

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by Christina Selby · January 8, 2019 · 0 comments

Lizzie Presser Reveals the Underground Work of Home-Abortion Providers

Across the United States, there’s a secret network of women working outside the law and the medical establishment to provide cheap and accessible home abortions. Investigative reporter Lizzie Presser shares how she discovered their story and brought their work into the light.

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by Aneri Pattani · September 4, 2018 · 2 comments

Linda Nordling Probes the Transformation of South African Science

Reporting on the decolonization of South African science for Nature, Linda Nordling—a native of Sweden who had long lived in the United Kingdom before moving to South Africa more than a decade ago—found herself in an uncomfortable spot. She was passionately interested in the subject, but worried whether it was right for a white journalist from a former colonial power to tell such a story. Here, she talks about confronting those doubts and becoming the custodian of someone else’s story.

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by Jeanne Erdmann · July 10, 2018 · 1 comment

Announcements

Call for Applications for the TON Workshop for Science Editors. April 24-27, 2020 in Madison, Wisconsin. Instructors: Jacqui Banaszynski, Laura Helmuth, Siri Carpenter. Learn more here.

Environmental Journalism: A (new) TON collection. We are pleased to announce a new collection of TON articles centered on the craft of environmental journalism. Check it out!

The TON #PeepYourScience contest will return in 2020! Read all about The World’s Finest (and Only … As Far as We Know) Science-Themed Peeps Diorama Contest here and watch this space for more information in January.