Michael Specter

From Philosopedia

Michael Specter (1955 - )

Specter, a journalist, is the son of Howard and Eileen Specter. In 1977, he earned a B.A. from Vassar College.

He was married to Alessandra Stanley, now a television critic for The New York Times, and they have one daughter, Emma.

Since 1998, he has been a staff writer, focusing on science and technology, at The New Yorker. Profiles he has written includes subjects such as Lance Armstrong, the ethicist Peter Singer, Sean (P. Diddy) Combs, Manolo Blahnik, and Miuccia Prada.

He also writes for The Washington Post and The New York Times. While in Russia when appointed co-chief of the Times Moscow bureau, he covered the war in Chechnya, the 1996 Russian presidential elections, and the declining state of health care in the country. In Italy, he has been a roving correspondent writing about the spread of AIDS, Michelangelo's Florentine Pietà, and Europe's demographic crisis.

In 2002, Specter won the A.A.A.S. Science Journalism Award. Twice, he has received the Global Health Council's Annual Excellence in Media Award- for his article about AIDS in India, “India's Plague” (12/17/01) and for one about AIDS and the population crisis in Russia ,“The Devastation.“

In a 2009 book, he wrote Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives, in which he details how Europeans as well as Americans have rejected scientific truths for comfortable fictions to the detriment of rational thinking. A New York Times review and a Grist review point out that to some he successfully battles the deniers but to others he misses some targets.