Marla Cone is a senior editor for Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. She leads a new initiative tracking the real-life effects of the anti-science mentality that has seeped into many corners of the federal government. Cone is the only journalist to be named a Pew Marine Conservation Fellow, a lifetime honor usually reserved for scientists, and was a founding member of the Society of Environmental Journalists. Cone previously was senior editor of environment at National Geographic magazine and editor in chief of a nonprofit news organization, Environmental Health News, where she directed several projects. She was an environmental reporter at the Los Angeles Times for 18 years. Her reporting has won two national Scripps Howard Edward J. Meeman Awards, and her book on extreme chemical contamination in the Arctic, “Silent Snow: The Slow Poisoning of the Arctic,” was a finalist for a National Academies Communications Award. She has taught at the University of California, Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, where she was the first Hewlett Foundation fellow for environmental journalism.
Science is more than a compilation of data and statistics. It is the pursuit of evidence-based answers to the questions that bedevil us, and even if we don’t ever have clarity, this pursuit brings us knowledge, shining light on what we know as well as what we still need to figure out. Silencing scientists plunges us back into darkness.
