How to Write Successful Health and Science Articles

My Medium Day talk will help you improve your credibility and build a following

Some professions seem a lot easier than they really are. Writing is one of them. Especially writing about health and wellness, and science more broadly.

Writing successfully about health and science, and doing it well week after week, year after year — in a responsible and credible way that informs and entertains readers — is more challenging than many writers realize. A key difference: There’s often a ton of research out there — some good, some bad, and much of it revealing less than what the abstract or the press release might claim.

This means a writer has to work diligently to get beyond what they think they know and what appears to be true in one study or in the echo chambers of influencers and certain clickbaity dot-coms that repeat supposed facts over and over. Skepticism and intellectual humility are vital traits for anyone who purports to tell readers how things work, and especially how readers ought to think about and manage their physical, mental and emotional well-being.

This requires a specific mindset: It’s not about getting readers. It’s about serving them.