News
15 June, 2023
"World’s Largest Fusion Project Is in Big Trouble, New Documents Reveal," my article in Scientific American is published; it uses documents that I wrested from the Department of Energy via a FOIA lawsuit to expose the scope of delays at the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor.
31 January, 2023
In Slate, I talk about how Chat GPT is exposing the rot that has eaten away at the peer-review process in scientific journals for years. "A.I. Like ChatGPT Is Revealing the Insidious Disease at the Heart of Our Scientific Process."
13 December, 2022
In "The Alarming Deceptions at the Heart of an Astounding New Chatbot", I ask Chat GPT to write my obituary -- and in so doing, I explore some disturbing implications about the nature of the program and its training. In Slate.
12 December, 2022
The big announcement at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is not quite what it seems, I argue in The Atlantic.
8 December, 2021
"The Theranos Trial Shows Why We Should Be Suspicious of Nuclear Fusion," in Slate, puts the huge flow of venture capital into fusion-energy companies into context.
1 May, 2021
John Banville reviews Hawking Hawking in The Irish Times. "[Seife] sees his subject whole and he sees him plain, and his book is fair to a fault to a man who considered that the celebrity he most resembled was not Albert Einstein but Marilyn Monroe -- known for his body more than for his mind."
30 April, 2021
A review in the Financial Times says that "Charles Seife’s biography Hawking, Hawking: The Selling of a Scientific Celebrity is an object lesson in how to write fairly but critically about genius and fame."
18 April, 2021
Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek on Hawking Hawking in the New York Times: "Seife has performed an important service by documenting Stephen Hawking’s life as it actually happened. It is what a great scientist deserves, and should expect."
8 April, 2021
New York Review of Books review of Hawking Hawking.
And the mathematical physics blog Not Even Wrong says: "If you have any interest at all in Hawking’s story, you owe it to yourself to read this book. It’s a rich and thoughtful examination of his life and work, pushing aside the myth and bringing out the much more interesting reality behind it."
6 April, 2021
My biography of Stephen Hawking, Hawking Hawking, is now on sale.
You can read my brief essay about Hawking in Scientific American.
And there's another review in The New Republic.
30 March, 2021
Another good review of Hawking Hawking, this time in Science.
8 March, 2021
Philip Ball nails the reason why I wrote this book in his incisive review of Hawking Hawking.
1 March, 2021
Starred review from Booklist for Hawking Hawking: "The outrage this book will generate among Hawking's admirers will pique the interest of the curious.
19 January, 2021
Hawking Hawking gets a starred review from Kirkus, which calls the book "An unflattering yet outstanding biography of a giant of 20th-century physics."
21 May, 2020
The political battles over COVID-19 statistics are just the latest in a two-decade-long war over counting people -- a war that's about to explode, I argue in Wired.
19 May, 2020
A quick data visualization of the effect of COVID-19 on subway traffic in NYC, revealing significant disparities in lockdown behavior, posted on Twitter.
6 May, 2020
"The CDC Has Been on a Steady Decline. We're Just Finally Noticing." An essay in Slate likening CDC's and FDA's failures to the FAA's in the 737 MAX crisis.
13 April, 2020
Op-ed in STAT News about how lax enforcement of clinical-trials reporting requirements is robbing us all, written with Peter Lurie and Christopher Morten.
11 April, 2020
A subtle problem with datagathering is causing an underestimate of coronavirus deaths in New York City, I argue in Undark.
8 March, 2020
At a moment when our society needs reliable scientific information the most, the most dangerous source of misinformation in the U.S. has become our own president, I argue in Scientific American.
23 February, 2020
Legal victory in a lawsuit against the FDA; with co-plaintiff Peter Lurie, we argued that the agency was improperly creating a loophole in a law requiring reporting of results from clinical trials.
1 April, 2019
An argument against amending CPRA, California's FOI law, to privilege scientists' communications from disclosure, in the Los Angeles Times
6 November, 2018
Due to popular demand, I have published the code to the "Python-based Twitter analysis tools" I use to capture and track the spread of false information on Twitter. (Roughly 2000 source lines of code.)
4 November, 2018
In what Kurt Eichenwald calls "The greatest pwn of all time," I explain an unflattering data visualization to a major source of online misinformation.
2 November, 2018
"Humans are getting more botlike on Twitter," in which I explore the surprising reasons that bots are passing the Turing test.
21 June, 2018
"The Real Meaning of Koko's Purported Nipple Fetish," a quasi-obituary for Koko the Gorilla.
10 January, 2018
"In Washington-speak, Censorship is Called 'Transparency,'" an investigative feature that describes how the CDC and FDA clamp down on the flow of information to the public; published in Scientific American. Some of the documents obtained through FOIA available here.
Appearances
May 10, 2023
I take part in a panel discussion about the use of FOIA in journalism sponsored by the Deadline Club of NYC: "Extract the Facts."
January 15, 2023
I discuss the fusion "breakthrough" at the National Ignition Facility in Livermore on 60 Minutes on CBS.
December 13, 2022
On CNN's Early Start, I talk about fusion and the National Ignition Facility in Livermore.
May 6, 2021
I talk about Stephen Hawking on Professor Brian Keating's Podcast, and on the Moncrieff show on Irish radio.
April 29, 2021
Discussion of my book, Hawking Hawking at Vromans.
April 23, 2021
Virtual Book Talk at the Scarsdale Public Library.
October 23, 2020
Panel discussion about misinformation and COVID-19 at the Journalism in the Time of Crisis conference at Carleton.
May 28, 2020
I discuss failures at the CDC on WBUR's On Point radio show.
March 21, 2020
I talk about misinformation in Al Jazeera's Deadly Deception: COVID-19 in Trump's America.
December 3, 2019
Panel discussion about fake news at the #SpreadingFacts conference at MIT.
April 27, 2019
"The Fakening," on Full Frontal with Samantha Bee.
April 3, 2019
"Futureproofing," on BBC Sounds.
October 16, 2018
"PIOs and Journalists... the Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and the Practices of Questionable Legality," presented at the NASW Information Access Summit.
May 14, 2018
"Sockpuppets, Bots, and the Vectors for Fake News," presented at "Fake News and Beyond: How to Improve News Literacy" at Tel Aviv University.
April 11, 2018
"Fake News, Bogus Science, and Bad Math: A Journalist's Advice for Cutting Through BS," a Poynter Fellowship in Journalism talk at Yale University.
December 19, 2017
"Unorthodox Strategies to Clinical-Trial Success: Fibbing, Fraud, Fudging, and Friends in High Places," at NYU Langone.
September 6, 2017
"Science, Journalism, and Democracy: Grappling with a New Reality," at the Rockefeller University.
September 29, 2016
"Clinical Trial Transparency: Promises, Pitfalls, and Reform Efforts," at NYU Langone.
September 9, 2016
"Virtual Unreality: The Web, Big Data, Information, and Truth," at the Festival della Communicazione in Camogli, Italy.
May 9, 2016
Grand rounds, University of Texas Southwestern: "Researchers behaving badly: (Unreported) misconduct in clinical trials."
April 19, 2016
"Information Battles: The Double-Edged Sword of Big Data," at the Weissberg Forum for Discourse in the Public Square, Washington DC.
April 7, 2016
"What Buzzfeed Journalists Learned From a 4 Month Study of FBI, DHS, drone flight patterns." (KPCC.)
February 16,2016
Talk: "Understanding clinical trials... despite heavy opposition." At the 3rd Kavli Symposium on Science Coverage.
February 15,2016
Session: "Using investigative reporting and data analysis to make an argument." At the American Association for Advancement of Science annual meeting, 2016.
December 16, 2015
Colloquium: "Anatomy of a retraction" at Langone/NYU Medical Center's Department of Population Health.
October 30, 2015
Talk: "How to report on scientific fraud" at the AHCJ Journalism Workshop on Evidence-Based Medicine
June 12, 2015
Talk: "Researchers Behaving Badly: Misconduct in Clinical Trials" at the 5th PharmedOut Conference at Georgetown University.
June 11, 2015
Talk: "Data-Jitsu: How to go (way) beyond Excel" at the 9th World Conference of Science Journalists in Seoul, South Korea.
June 10, 2015
Talk: "What are we going to do with data?" at the 9th World Conference of Science Journalists in Seoul, South Korea.
February 26, 2015
"The Leonard Lopate Show" (WNYC).
February 19, 2015
"Midpoint" (Newsmax TV.)
February 13, 2015
"Science Friday" (PRI).
December 23, 2014
Coast to Coast AM with George Noory. (KFI-AM and other radio stations.)
December 2, 2014
Symposium: "Does Privacy Really Matter in Healthcare?" NYU School of Medicine's Department of Population Health.
August 9, 2014
Signing at the East Hampton Library's Authors Night.
July 10, 2014
Talk at the Westport (CT) Library: "Virtual Unreality."
July 4, 2014
"Science Friday" (PRI).
June 30, 2014
"The Leonard Lopate Show" (WNYC); also "Central Time" (Wisconsin Public Radio.)
June 30, 2014
Appearance at the Powerhouse Arena in Brooklyn to discuss Virtual Unreality.
May 14, 2014
Keynote at Blue Waters/Petascale Science Symposium: "Information Feast, Information Famine: Big Data, Big Computing, and Big Trouble."
February 11, 2014
Moncrieff. (106-108 FM, Ireland.)
March 20, 2013
The 2013 Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate. (The American Museum of Natural History.)
December 1, 2012
"This is Hell." (WNUR Chicago.)
December 1, 2011
Authors@Google. (YouTube.)
September 13, 2011
"Afternoons with Jim Mora." (Radio New Zealand.)
January 7, 2011
"More or Less." (BBC Radio 4.)
December 12, 2010
"Open Mind." (WGVU.)
December 11, 2010
November 30, 2010
"Topical Currents." (WLRN.)
November 17, 2010
"Think." (KERA.) Also, "Nine to Noon." (Radio New Zealand.)
November 16, 2010
"Statistics are facts, right?" (KPCC.)
November 9, 2010
"Culture Shocks with Barry Lynn."
November 4, 2010
"The Kathleen Dunn Show." (Wisconsin Public Radio.)
November 2, 2010
"Roundtable." (WAMC.)
October 28, 2010
"Bogus Figures" (AARP radio), "Viewpoints" (WTKF) and the "Dr. Alvin Jones Show." (WCBQ.)
October 26, 2010
"StudioTulsa." (KWGS.). Also, "Strategies for Living" and "Let's Talk." (WBOI.)
October 22, 2010
Coast to Coast AM with George Noory. (KFI-AM and other radio stations.)
October 19, 2010
Moncrieff. (106-108 FM, Ireland.)
October 11, 2010
The Journey Home with Diego Mulligan. (KSFR.)
October 8, 2010
Bloomberg News. (Bloomberg TV.)
October 6, 2010
IEEE Spectrum. (Podcast.)
September 28, 2010
Talk at Strand bookstore: Proofiness. (828 Broadway at 7th St, 7:00 PM.)
September 25, 2010
America's News HQ. (FoxNews.)
September 19, 2010
All Things Considered. (NPR.)
Books
Hawking Hawking: The Selling of a Scientific Celebrity
Virtual Unreality: Just Because the Internet Told You So, How Do You Know It's True?
Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception
Sun In A Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking
Decoding the Universe: How the New Science of Information is Explaining Everything In The Cosmos"
Alpha and Omega: The Search for the Beginning and End of the Universe
