SciComm Summer #14: Melinda Wenner Moyer on Science Journalism

Opinion Science

Melinda Wenner Moyer is a science journalist and contributing editor at Scientific American magazine. Recently, Melinda received the Excellence in Science Journalism award from The Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the 2019 Bricker Award for Science Writing in Medicine, and her work was featured in the 2020 Best American Science and Nature Writing anthology. But that’s only recently. She’s been writing about science for major outlets for years and doing it really, really well.

In 2021, she released her first book—How to Raise Kids Who Aren’t Assholes, which is a great parenting book that actually cares about evidence from behavioral science.

We talk about how she got started and her new book, but we also do a deep dive on a 2017 feature article she wrote for Scientific American about whether legal access to guns actually deters crime and makes people safer ("More Guns Do Not Stop More Crimes, Evidence Shows"). It’s a really great example of what science journalism can be, and I wanted to know every step of how something like that gets written.

You can find the rest of this summer's science communication podcast series here.

For a transcript of this episode, visit this episode's page at: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episodes/
Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.

Chapter

1. SciComm Summer #14: Melinda Wenner Moyer on Science Journalism (00:00:00)

2. Science Journalism and Freelancing (00:07:03)

3. Reporting Social Science Results (00:13:55)

4. Research Process and Narrative Reporting (00:18:37)

5. Exploring Community Relationships With Guns (00:26:12)

6. Writing for Public Engagement (00:39:53)

7. Raising Non-Asshole Kids With Science (00:45:11)