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David Ropeik
Retired Harvard Instructor, Author
David Ropeik is an award-winning broadcast journalist, a Harvard instructor, and an international consultant in risk communication and risk perception. He’s also the author of How Risky Is It, Really? Why Our Fears Don’t Always Match the Facts.
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Egypt has a civilian president. For most of us….so what. These are distant events, physically and emotionally, without much meaning and certainly with little personal relevance for […]
In the 50 years since Silent Spring was published, the environmental movement it helped create has accomplished a great deal. It may be less popular to suggest, but it […]
I remember going to bed one night when I was 11, seriously afraid I would not be alive in the morning. It was October, 1962, and the frightening cold […]
I got a call from a friend last year. He had prostate cancer and wanted some help thinking through what to do. He had gone to his doctors for the […]
In response to a lot of feedback on yesterday’s post, the loudest and nastiest of which came from people who deny climate change, I have revised the essay to […]
Strange name for a movement, isn’t it; “The Right to Die”? Isn’t that like asking the government for “The Right to Live” or “The Right to Eat” […]
Tribalism is pervasive, and it controls a lot of our behavior, readily overriding reason.
This is just stunning. In fact, it’s hard to believe it’s true. But the Heartland Institute, a fiercely conservative and libertarian think tank that champions denial of climate change, […]
They are looking for Etan Patz again. He was 6 years old when he went missing in New York City in 1979, a disappearance that, along with those of […]
My father, a journalist, died a few days ago. He taught me that journalism is not just a job but a calling, a high form of public service. I […]
California’s initiative process can be both a wonderfully democratic and perilously dumb way to make law. On no issue could that be more true than the proposed initiative to […]
As part of considering the costs and benefits of major regulations, the federal government assigns a dollar value to human life. This is not a real person, just an […]
Item:A study finds that between 1970 and 2009, melanoma skin cancer cases increased eight times in women aged 18-39, and four times in men, apparently from increasing use of tanning […]
The battle over Bisphenol A (BPA) rages on, and continues to teach lessons far beyond the particulars of the issue itself. Environmentalists argue that BPA (the supposedly dangerous chemical […]
Majorities around the world believe that the climate of the earth is changing, that human activity is contributing to those changes, that the changes are happening so fast they […]
Here’s some bad news for those of you who like to think you can think rationally about risk. You can’t. You know all those thoughtfully considered views you have […]
Want something else to worry about? Worry about worrying too much. The evidence is building that chronically elevated stress shrinks your brain! A study in press at the […]
When you read a news story about a threat or danger or hazard, what do you want to know? Most likely, you want to know if it’s a risk […]
A year ago a terrible earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power disaster in Japan gripped the world’s attention for weeks. The news is already full of stories about the anniversary […]
As I have written here before, many of us are more worried about some environmental risks than the evidence suggests we need to be – mercury, bisphenol a, nuclear […]