Reporting from the trenches in the war over dolphin rights, freelance science writer Erik Vance relates the story of Lori Marino and Diana Reiss, dolphin researchers who have spent most of their careers as close colleagues […]
Is there a science writer alive who has not been schooled by John McPhee? Both of us began our writing careers with a collection of McPhee’s books and articles on our shelves, and over […]
For the residents of Lakeshore, Ontario, the black fungus caking their homes was a problem, and they blamed the local distillery. For James Scott, the Sherlock Holmes of fungi, the identity of the unsightly mold was a mystery waiting to be solved. And for Adam Rogers, senior editor at Wired, Scott’s quest was a tale that needed to be told. Here, Rogers tells the story behind his story.
On September 18, 2011, the front page of the Sunday edition of The New York Times carried a story remarkable to find in any newspaper: a 7,300-word story that was almost all narrative. “Autistic and […]
In her new book Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution, historian Holly Tucker weaves a tale of the first blood transfusion experiments (at the time, such transfusions were all animal-to-human) […]
Michelle Nijhuis could not have suspected a Christmas letter would lead to an award-winning Smithsonian story about scientists’ scramble to understand and thwart a fungus ravaging bat populations. Getting the story involved some scrambling of her own, including through some of the nation’s most iconic caves. Here, Nijhuis tells the story behind her story.
For nearly all her career, journalist and author Maryn McKenna has written about public health, from Midwest droughts to bird flu to Gulf War Syndrome. While covering the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) […]
New York Times Magazine staff writer Susan Dominus spent five days with the family of Tatiana and Krista Hogan, 4-year-old twins who are joined at the head. Observing Tatiana and Krista as they played, fought, […]
On February 12, 2010, biologist Amy Bishop stood up in a conference room at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and shot six of her colleagues; three died. Nature correspondent Meredith Wadman visited the campus to recount the horror of those moments and efforts to rebuild a shattered department. Here, she tells the story behind her story.
Knowing that NASA would soon cease operating its shuttles, Nature’s video team decided to create a music video showing each flight in chronological order. What began as a labor of love soon descended into […]
When journalist David Dobbs’ mother was dying, she shocked her children by asking that her ashes be spread in the waters off the coast of Hawaii, so that she could be with her former lover, […]
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In medicine, the phrase “the placebo effect” is often prefaced by the word “just”—as though the word “placebo” were a synonym for a psychological trick or a fraud, nothing more than an annoying complication for […]
In 2010, Slate national correspondent William Saletan wrote an eight-part series about experimental psychologist Elizabeth Loftus and her work on false memories. He began the series by inviting readers to take part in an interactive […]
In 2007, freelance science journalist Douglas Fox traveled to Antarctica with a team of glaciologists studying rivers and lakes buried under thousands of feet of ice. He and the researchers spent four weeks tent-camping on […]
New York Times Magazine contributing writer Robin Marantz Henig traveled to Harvard and the University of Maryland for a story on the biology of anxiety. Alongside top developmental psychologists, she watched research videos on infant […]
Hillary Rosner traveled to a Colorado River reservoir to meet scientists bent on rescuing an unassuming fish, the razorback sucker. The resulting story, which won the 2010 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award in the Small […]
If ever you feel alone in the universe, perhaps you can take comfort in the knowledge that in fact, you are never without the company of the thousands of microbial species residing in your body’s […]
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For his first major feature, freelancer Brendan Borrell crisscrossed Bolivia for 2 ½ weeks in an old truck with notebook, recorder, and camera, waiting out roadblocks, going a long time between meals, and of course […]
For a special issue of Science News, staff writer Tina Saey explored research on why we sleep—and what happens when we can’t. Here, Saey, who wrote the package along with staff writers Laura Sanders and […]
Christie Aschwanden shows that when it comes to selling evidence-based health care reforms, hammering people with the facts won’t change entrenched beliefs—in fact, it may only strengthen them. For evidence-based reforms to succeed, Aschwanden writes, […]
In his 2008 Science story “The Mushroom Cloud’s Silver Lining,” David Grimm profiled research using radioactive isotopes from atomic bomb fallout to pursue an astounding variety of scientific questions. Here, Grimm tells the story behind his story, revealing how sticking with an elusive story can bring a big payoff.
In a story selected for The Best American Science & Nature Writing 2010, freelance science journalist David Dobbs explores the “orchid hypothesis”: the tantalizing idea that certain variants of some behavioral genes can either increase […]
In an award-winning story, Roberta Kwok recounted the story of an asteroid from the time it was spotted until the meteorites hit Earth. This event represents the first time that astronomers were able to track […]
Concentrated fumes from a neighboring farm made Eric and Lisa Stickdorn so ill they had to leave their home and take up residence in a church basement. In a story that won the 2009-10 award […]
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