TOWN HALL #8 Journalist RICHARD HARRIS ON REPORTING A PANDEMIC

Richard Harris, is a journalist who has covered science medicine and the environment for National Public Radio since 1986. Richard grew up in the Bay area and he earned his bachelor's degree in biology at UC Santa Cruz. He graduated with highest honors and spoke at commencement there. And his first full time reporting gig was with the Livermore Tri-Valley Herald. Richard has traveled the world from the South Pole to the Great Barrier Reef to the Arctic Ocean and he's reporting on climate change. The American Geophysical Union honored him with a Presidential Citation for Science and Society. Richard's Award Winning work also includes his 2010 reporting that revealed the US government was vastly underestimating the amount of oil being spilled at the deep water horizon of gusher if you are in the Gulf of Mexico. That was 10 years ago in April there's maybe some anniversary reporting on that recently. In 2014 Richard turned his attention to Biomedical research and came to realize how the field was having challenges and suffering in some ways. He took a year-long sabbatical at the Arizona State University's consortium on science policy and outcomes to research and write Rigor Mortis about data reproducibility crisis in the life sciences. This is his first book. It was during the research for this book that I first got the pleasure of meeting Richard and I have been in touch and friends with him ever since. He's actually been to Davis to discuss the work in his book. Today we're really honored to have him visit us and lucky to pull him away from the intense work of reporting the COVID crisis.
*Introduction of Richard Harris above was done by Dr. Mark Winey, the Dean of the UC Davis College of Biological Sciences. 

Richard Harris's Town Hall video with English and Spanish subtitles can be found here. 

In addition, a summary of this Town Hall, including student questions, can be found on this Twitter thread curated by undergraduate researcher  Daniel Erenstein.