How I Wrote…

A series of interviews with science journalists talking about a piece they wrote or produced.

How I Wrote … Potential fabrication in research images threatens key theory of Alzheimer’s disease.

Charles Piller is a multi-award-winning investigative science journalist at Science magazine, author of two investigative books about science, and founding board member of the Center for Public Integrity. His recent investigation into possible scientific misconduct and fabrication of images in Alzheimer’s disease research has sent shockwaves through the Alzheimer’s research community.

How I Wrote … Antarctica

Jackson Ryan is science editor of CNET, and four-time nominee for a Eureka Prize for Science Journalism. In December 2021, he departed on a six-week voyage aboard the Australian Antarctic Division’s new icebreaker the RSV Nuyina, courtesy of a media fellowship from the AAD. His writings from that experience won the 2022 Eureka Prize for Science Journalism. 

How I Wrote …“This shouldn’t happen”: Inside the virus-hunting nonprofit at the center of the lab-leak controversy

Katherine Eban is a multi-award-winning investigative journalist who writes for Vanity Fair, and the author of Dangerous Doses: a True Story of Cops, Counterfeiters and the Contamination of America’s Drug Supply and Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom. She recently published an investigative piece for Vanity Fair on how an organisation dedicated to preventing the next pandemic found itself suspected of helping start one.

How I Wrote … ‘Professor Amnon Neeman doesn’t really mind whether you read this story or not’

Tabitha Carvan is a science writer at the Australian National University’s College of Science, and author of This Is Not A Book About Benedict Cumberbatch. She recently wrote a profile of mathematician Professor Amnon Neeman – the most famous Australian mathematician you’ve never heard of.

How I Wrote … ‘Patient Zero’

Olivia Willis, Carl Smith and Joel Werner (and colleagues Cheyne Anderson, James Bullen, Jane Lee, Tim Jenkins, and Nakari Thorpe) won the 2021 Eureka Prize for Science Journalism for their eight-part podcast series Patient Zero, on ABC Radio National, which tells the stories of disease outbreaks: where they begin, why they happen and how we found ourselves in the middle of a really big one.

How I Wrote … ‘Role models in a time of pandemic’

Freelance science journalist Dyani Lewis talks about her Eureka Prize-winning feature for Cosmos magazine on mathematical disease modelling.