Seth Mnookin

Seth Mnookin is a Lecturer in MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing and a blogger at The Public Library of Science. His most recent book, The Panic Virus: The True Story Behind the Vaccine-Autism Controversy, has received international acclaim and was named one of The Wall Street Journal's top five science and medicine books in 2011. The New York Times called it a "tour de force" and said, "Parents who want to play it safe, but are not altogether sure how, should turn with relief to this reasoned, logical and comprehensive analysis of the facts," while the Journal called it "a book that should be required reading at every medical school in the world. … A brilliant piece of reportage and science writing." He is also the author of the 2006 national bestseller Feeding the Monster: How Money, Smarts, and Nerve Took a Team to the Top, which chronicles the challenges and triumphs of the John Henry-Tom Werner ownership group of the Boston Red Sox. His first book, 2004′s Hard News: The Scandals at The New York Times and Their Meaning for American Media, was a Washington Post Best Book of the Year.

Since 2005, Seth has been a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, where he’s written about the American media presence in Iraq, Bloomberg News, and Stephen Colbert. In 2002 and 2003, he was a senior writer at Newsweek, where he wrote the media column “Raw Copy” and also covered politics and popular culture.

His work has appeared in numerous publications, including New York, Wired, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Spin, Slate, and Salon.com. A former music columnist for The New York Observer, he began his journalism career as a rock critic for the now-defunct webzine Addicted to Noise and has also worked as a crime reporter at The Palm Beach Post, a city hall reporter at the Forward, a presidential campaign reporter at Brill’s Content, and a jack-of-all-trades at Inside.com. He graduated from Harvard College in 1994 with a degree in History and Science, and was a 2004 Joan Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. A native of Newton, Massachusetts, he and his wife currently live in Cambridge with their seven-year-old dog, their two-year-old son, and their infant daughter.

You can communicate with Seth via Twitter, Tumblr, Google+ and The Panic Virus's Facebook page.