Fat & Skinner

I’m a journalist. You can contact me at: dhfreedman@gmail.com

Twitter: @dhfreedman (medicine, obesity, technology, more)

Facebook: david.h.freedman

Google+: David H. Freedman

My blog, if you can call it that, is a mix of excerpts from some of my recently published articles, and posts written just for the blog. You can see from the blog what some of the publications are that I’ve been writing for lately.  Many of them come from my Tech Support blog in the New York Times or my Impatient Futurist column in Discover. Over the years I’ve written for a lot of different publications, but here’s a sampling: The Atlantic, The New York Times, Inc. Magazine, Scientific American, Discover, Newsweek, Science, Forbes, MIT Technology Review, Self, The Boston Globe, Wired, The Harvard Business Review, The Los Angeles Times, Fast Company, Reader’s Digest, Men’s Health, The Boston Globe Magazine, U.S. News & World Report.

I’ve also written five books, and I’m working on a sixth.

I’ve long been primarily a science, technology and business writer. Over the past few years I’ve come to increasingly focus on health care, especially with regard to the role of behavior change in preventing illness, and most especially with regard to obesity. I’m also interested in how these and other health-care issues play out globally, and particularly in developing nations.

Lately I’ve been working with Johns Hopkins International on projects relating to its work in collaboratively building health-systems with public and private partners in other nations, and have been contributing articles to various Johns Hopkins Medical publications on a range of subjects.

I’ve also been working with McGill University’s World Platform for Health and Economic Convergence on projects relating to curbing obesity and the diseases associated with it in ways that promote rather than hinder economic development, in both industrialized and developing countries.

I live in the Boston area.

My byline usually reads “David H. Freedman.” The “H.” is there to distinguish me from various well-known David Freedmans who are not me, including the late Berkeley statistician, the animator/producer, the late Bible scholar, the North Carolina lawyer, the law/boxmaking writer, the neuroscientist, the racehorse owner, the blacksmith, the cricketer, the late gag-writer, the accountant, and the radio-station manager. There are even several people of note who go by “David H. Freedman,” including an international labor writer/researcher who wrote a book on employment, a Michigan lawyer, and a U.S. Army officer. I am not any of them, either.

My latest book came out in June, 2010.  It’s called WRONG: Why experts keep failing us–and how to know when not to trust them. It’s about all the forces that push experts, be they top scientists, high-powered consultants, pop gurus, financial whizzes or journalistic pundits (like me), into misleading us with flawed advice, and discusses ways to tell good expert advice from the dubious stuff.  I wrote about the subject for The Atlantic Monthly for the lead feature of the magazine’s annual “Brave Thinkers” issue in November, 2010, and substantial articles about the book ran in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, and many other publications internationally.  I spoke about the book on numerous radio and television programs in the U.S. and elsewhere.  It’s published by Little, Brown, and you can learn more about it here.

My previous book was A Perfect Mess, published in January, 2007; the paperback came out in January, 2008.  It’s about how disorganization and messiness can be good things. You can learn a bit more about it here.

I’m the author of three other books (on the U.S. Marines, computer crime, and artificial intelligence), a contributing editor at Inc. Magazine, and have written at one time or another for many publications, including The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, Science, The Harvard Business Review, Newsweek and Wired.  (You can learn more about my books, and browse some of my articles, elsewhere on the site.)  I’ve spoken to numerous executive, student, scientific and government audiences about science, technology and management issues.