Emily Willingham

Emily Jane Willingham (born 1968) is a US journalist and scientist. Her writing focuses on neuroscience, genetics, psychology, health and medicine, and occasionally on evolution and ecology.

She is the joint recipient with David Robert Grimes of the 2014 John Maddox Prize, awarded by science charity Sense About Science, for standing up for science in the face of personal attacks.

Willingham received her bachelor's degree in English in 1989 and her PhD in biology in 2001, both from the University of Texas at Austin. She completed a fellowship in pediatric urology at the University of California, San Francisco, from 2004 to 2006, where she studied under Laurence S. Baskin.

Willingham's work has been published online at Scientific American, Aeon, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post, Slate, Undark, Knowable, The Scientist, and others and has appeared in print in several local, regional, and national outlets, including in single-issue publications for Centennial Media.

Willingham was a contributor to the Forbes network for several years and ran an informal blog, "A Life Less Ordinary", which she started in 2007 and which published its last post on November 25, 2011. At Forbes.com, Willingham focused on what she described as "the science they're selling you," which included the disproven link between vaccines and autism, as well as the Seralini affair. She has also written multiple articles for Slate.com about GMOs, childbirth, astronaut DNA, and autism, including about what the motivation might have been for Adam Lanza to carry out the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting. Her view is that his alleged Asperger's syndrome was not a contributing factor, but that untreated schizophrenia was a more likely cause of his actions. In addition, she has contributed to Discover, where she has argued that the autism epidemic may, in fact, just be the result of diagnostic substitution and increased awareness of the condition. She was called "one of the sharpest science writers in the blogosphere" by Steve Silberman.

In 2016, Willingham, along with co-author Tara Haelle, published The Informed Parent: A Science-Based Resources for Your Child's First 4 Years, which examines the science around several parenting-related controversies and common parenting concerns.

Willingham has published 44 scientific papers, and, according to Google Scholar, her h-index is 22. With regard to her research, Willingham has said that talking about it "has always carried a frisson of the risque." Her research has also led her to what she describes as cool things, including ultrasound and surgery on a spotted hyena and plastic casting of the inside of the mammalian penis. Willingham's PhD research involved sex determination and the effects of pesticides and other environmental compounds on sex determination and development in the red-eared slider. She also has published on the effects of endocrine-disrupting chemicals such as atrazine.

Scientific papers

• Sheehan, D. M.; Willingham, E.; Gaylor, D.; Bergeron, J. M.; Crews, D. (1999). "No threshold dose for estradiol-induced sex reversal of turtle embryos: How little is too much?". Environmental Health Perspectives. 107 (2): 155–159. doi:10.1289/ehp.99107155. PMC 1566346. PMID 9924012.
• Willingham, E.; Baldwin, R.; Skipper, J. K.; Crews, D. (2000). "Aromatase Activity during Embryogenesis in the Brain and Adrenal–Kidney–Gonad of the Red-Eared Slider Turtle, a Species with Temperature-Dependent Sex Determination". General and Comparative Endocrinology. 119 (2): 202–207. doi:10.1006/gcen.2000.7505. PMID 10936040.
• Wang, Z.; Liu, B. C.; Lin, G. T.; Lin, C. S.; Lue, T. F.; Willingham, E.; Baskin, L. S. (2007). "Up-Regulation of Estrogen Responsive Genes in Hypospadias: Microarray Analysis". The Journal of Urology. 177 (5): 1939–1946. doi:10.1016/j.juro.2007.01.014. PMID 17437852.

Books

• Willingham, Emily (2010). The Complete Idiot's Guide to College Biology. Alpha Books.
• Willingham, Emily; Myers, Jennifer Byde; Rosa, Shannon Des Roches; Greenburg, Carol (2011). Thinking Person's Guide To Autism. Deadwood City Publishing.
• Willingham, Emily (2011). When Worlds Collide: The Troubled History of Bears and People in Texas. Amazon Digital Services.
• Tara Haelle; Emily Willingham (2016). The informed parent : a science-based resource for your child's first four years. New York, NY: TarcherPerigee. ISBN 9780399171062.

Current

• Member, Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ)
• Topic Leader, Social Determinants of Health, AHCJ
• Freelance associate editor, cardiology curator, "Patients Will Be Asking" writer, Univadis.com
• Scientific editor, freelance
• Features writer, various
• News writer, various

Priors

• Curator, writer of Spotted, a roundup of autism news and media papers, for Spectrum
• Board Member, National Association of Science Writers
• Member of the organizing team for the Women in Science Writing Solutions Summit, held June 14–15, 2014, at MIT.
• Contributor at Forbes, The Science Consumer
• DoubleXScience (managing editor)
• Thinking Person's Guide to Autism (science editor)
• Academic researcher
• Professor/lecturer: The University of Texas at Austin, Texas State University, University of California-Berkeley, Dominican University of California
• Scientific writing and editing
• EarthSky: A clear voice for science