Jop De Vrieze

Based in Amsterdam, Joseph (Jop) de Vrieze has been covering the intersection of science and society and the scientific enterprise for Dutch media such as De Volkskrant, NRC, de Correspondent and Marie Claire, as well as Science magazine, New Scientist and Nature Medicine since 2008. In 2014 he published a popular scientific book on the human microbiome (in Dutch). In 2015 he took second place for the European Science Writer of the Year Award. In 2016, together with his wife Zvezdana Vukojevic, he won a AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Gold Award for an outstanding piece of advocacy journalism: a story they wrote on the stillbirth of their first son. In this story they used their personal tragedy to put in perspective the battle between midwives and gynecologists in the Netherlands and how science and health policy are being distorted by ideology and perverse incentives. Currently, De Vrieze is focusing on the nature of science and the scientific enterprise, its weaknesses and limitations and its value for society, mixing in-depth investigative journalism, science philosophy and storytelling.