The dark side of data

The dark side of data “He’s got fancy charts. He must be right.” Trevor Butterworth “Complete bollox—does that phrase translate here?” — David Spiegelhalter, Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk in the Statistical Laboratory at...

Fake news, science, and pseudo journalism

To understand the motivations of Paul Thacker it may help to read a profile written of him by his former editor at Audubon Magazine, and an adjunct journalism professor at New York University: “The Once Promising Journalist Who Became a Sadistic Troll.” It describes a...

How data is transforming journalism: obstacles and opportunities

Nearly two decades ago, Christie Aschwanden, currently the lead writer for science at FiveThirtyEight, began her journey to becoming a “stats nerd.” Little did she know that during that journey some would consider her a character on the side of evil Armed with a...

The negative results that improved healthcare for women

By Elizabeth Schiavoni, a freelance medical and science writer.  “The data was telling a story the public needed to hear…,” Dr. June Chang tells me as we discuss the groundbreaking clinical trial program she worked on throughout the early 1990s. “Thinking about...