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Michael Specter (born 1955) is an American journalist who has been a staff writer, focusing on science, technology, and global public health at The New Yorker since September 1998. He has also written for The Washington Post and The New York Times. Since 2021 he has also taught writing and, along with a colleague, a course called “Safeguarding the Future” at MIT. He has taught bioengineering as an adjunct instructor at Stanford University and environmental and urban studies as a visiting professor at Bard College.
His 2009 book, Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives, explores the ways in which people in the United States and Europe have increasingly rejected scientific truths, backed by impressive data. They instead are embracing what often seem to be more comfortable fictions about issues such as the value of organic food, vaccine safety, and personal genomics. Specter delivered a Ted Talk titled "The danger of science denial" at TED 2010. TED talk 2010
His original audiobook, Higher Animals: Vaccines, Synthetic Biology and the Future of Life, was published by Pushkin Industries in March 2023. In it, Specter explores the ways biology — symbolized most recently by the rapid development of the wholly synthetic mRNA vaccines — is essentially become a form of information technology, but instead of using the common bits and bytes of the digital world, it uses an alphabet based on the genetic code of DNA.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Specter wrote and narrated Fauci, an audiobook published by Pushkin, about Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
At The New Yorker, he has written about the global AIDS epidemic, avian influenza, malaria, paleovirology, synthetic biology, genetically modified food, efforts to mine the human genome to fight disease, and the world's diminishing freshwater resources. He has also written profiles of many people, including Mehmet Oz, Lance Armstrong, Richard Branson, the ethicist Peter Singer, P. Diddy, Manolo Blahnik, AIDS activist Larry Kramer, and PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk.
Two months prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Specter hosted a meeting at the Milken Institute School of Public Health titled "Universal Flu Vaccine" (dated October 29, 2019) with Anthony Fauci and several other government officials. In this meeting, Specter asked the attendees about the prospect of "disrupting" egg-based flu vaccine production with newer technologies. Although later debunked by Reuters, rumors spread through social media, using clips from this meeting taken out of context as evidence, that Specter and Fauci collaborated to produce a new influenza virus (in some versions of the rumor, SARS‑CoV‑2) to compel governments to adopt a universal mandate for flu vaccination. The timing of the meeting, along with soundbites of Specter asking whether we must "blow the system up" (in reference to traditional vaccine manufacturing vs developing newer manufacturing methods) or to create an "aura of excitement" and "make influenza sexy" in order to revive government funding, may have contributed to the virality of this rumor.
In 2009, Specter received the Robert P. Balles Annual Prize in Critical Thinking for his book Denialism." Dinner with Michael Specter, Author of Denialism " The yearly award is given by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry to the author of the published work that best exemplifies healthy skepticism, logical analysis, or empirical science.
Specter received the 2014 Mirror Prize for best Profile, from the Newhouse School of Communication, for "The Operator," about Mehmet Oz. In 2015 he received a James Beard Award for his New Yorker article “Against the Grain,’’ about America's obsessive fear of gluten. His 2020 audiobook Fauci received AudioFile Magazine’s Earphones Award for excellence.
Specter is a 1977 graduate of Vassar College, where he majored in English.
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