Emily Jane Willingham 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'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.
Research
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.
