It’s been one year since I revamped my website and launched this substack, and now there are over 10,000 of you here! Your time (and inbox space) are valuable, and I’m honored that you’ve decided this newsletter is worthy of it. To help make this newsletter
I am a binge reader — either a book captures my attention enough to complete in one weekend, or it sits on my shelf unread for months. This weekend I read a book that was the former, and so I decided to try something. Welcome to the first You Can Know
A new study suggests trust may actually increase One of the most difficult parts of science communication is effectively communicating uncertainty. The scientific method is a powerful tool that over time leads us to the right answer, but it sometimes gets things wrong along the way. When we talk about
I recently gave a talk on vaccine communication, and the most common feedback I got was appreciation for the section on words that confuse people. I’ve written before how a lot of “misinformation” can more aptly be described as miscommunication — public health saying one thing, and the public hearing
On Wednesday RFK Jr.’s CDC updated their website to claim that “vaccines do not cause autism” is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not definitively ruled out the possibility. On the surface, this may seem like a valid scientific statement. There have been dozens of studies investigating links
Yesterday I had the pleasure of chatting with my friend Matt Lanza (meteorologist and author of Space City Weather, The Eyewall, and Lanza's Stanzas) about the shift to new media that’s unfolding in the world of weather and public health (and everywhere else). Even though we are
It’s rare that an article has me nodding so much my neck hurts—but this one did. If you care about getting accurate health information to the public, I highly recommend you read it too. Titled ‘For Expertise to Matter, Nonpartisan Institutions Need New Communication Strategies’ by Renée DiResta
RFK Jr’s vaccine panel is meeting this week, and there is widespread concern they may vote to remove the first vaccine on the childhood immunization schedule: the birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine. Currently, it's recommended that newborns receive the first dose of the hepatitis B
The word ‘misinformation’ entered my regular vocabulary around the time it did for much of the country — March 2020. Discovering my newfound love for explaining science and addressing COVID rumors online, that seemed to be the logical term to use. “Misinformation alert!” “Fact check!” “This has been debunked!” became common
It depends on which "science" we're even talking about Should science stay out of politics—or is science inherently political? When is advocacy appropriate for scientists, and is it even possible to separate the two? These questions have been debated for years in the world of
Yesterday I joined one of my friends (and mentor!) Dr. Jeremy Faust on his show The Doctor's Lounge – we chatted about health communication, my new NEJM article on the need to integrate communications training into medical and graduate schools, and why health communication is so challenging right now.
Our new NEJM piece on the need for formal training for informal communication I made my very first “science communication” post on March 10, 2020. I was trying to understand what was really going on with COVID, and at the time the best public data was a crowd-sourced google sheet.