Jim Giles (reporter)

Jim Giles
Alma materUniversity of Bristol
University of Oxford[citation needed]
OccupationJournalist
Websitewww.jimgiles.net

Jim Giles is a journalist and business executive. He is currently a vice president at GreenBiz.

Giles was previously a journalist and CEO of Timeline, which published historical stories primarily focused on the topics of race, class, and gender and how they relate to today. He co-founded Matter, an online publication specialising in long-form articles on science and technology.

He has written about science, politics and the environment for The Atlantic,[1] The New York Times,[2] Nature,[3] New Scientist[4] and The Guardian.[5]

Until April 2007, Giles wrote full-time for the journal Nature. In December 2005, he and colleagues published a story that compared the accuracy of science articles on English Wikipedia to those in Encyclopædia Britannica. Peer reviewers recruited by Nature identified an average of four inaccuracies in the English Wikipedia articles they examined and an average of around three in articles on the same topics in Britannica.[6] Britannica subsequently criticized the story,[7] prompting Nature to clarify the methodology used[8] to compile the results.[9]

In 2009, Giles asked ten prominent scientists to come together and discuss the future of the Nobel Prizes. The group, which included Tim Hunt, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, called for the creation of new Nobel prizes for the environment and public health. The group also recommended expanding the medicine prize to include disciplines such as ecology, which are not currently covered by the prize. The group's recommendations were published on 5 October 2009 in an open letter to the Nobel Foundation.[10]

In March 2012, Giles and fellow journalist Bobbie Johnson completed a successful Kickstarter campaign for Matter, a new science and technology publication. The campaign raised $140,201. Matter published its first article,[11] a 7,800-word story about a rare neurological condition, in November 2012. Matter was acquired by Medium in April 2013.[12]

Giles studied physics at the University of Bristol. He received a master's degree in computational neuroscience from the University of Oxford. Giles initially developed exhibitions at the Science Museum in London, joining Nature in 2001 as a news and features editor and becoming a reporter for the journal in 2003.[citation needed]

  1. ^ "All Stories by Jim Giles". The Atlantic. Retrieved 27 September 2022.
  2. ^ "Jim Giles - The New York Times". The New York Times. Retrieved 9 April 2024.
  3. ^ "Nature Search". Nature. Retrieved 23 September 2022.
  4. ^ "New Scientist".
  5. ^ "The Guardian". The Guardian. London.
  6. ^ Giles, J. (2005). "Internet encyclopaedias go head to head: Jimmy Wales' Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of its science entries". Nature. 438 (7070): 900–1. Bibcode:2005Natur.438..900G. doi:10.1038/438900a. PMID 16355180.
  7. ^ "Fatally Flawed: Refuting the recent study on encyclopedic accuracy by the journal Nature" (PDF). Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. March 2006.
  8. ^ Nature's responses to Encyclopædia Britannica
  9. ^ Anon (2006). "Britannica attacks ... and we respond". Nature. 440 (7084): 582. Bibcode:2006Natur.440R.582.. doi:10.1038/440582b. PMID 16572128.
  10. ^ PETER RAVEN; DAVID KING; Frans de Waal; Larry Brilliant; Rodney Brooks; Peter Diamandis; Lynn Margulis; Steven Pinker; E. O. Wilson (30 September 2009). "Open letter to the Nobel prize committee". New Scientist. Retrieved 7 March 2020.
  11. ^ [1] [dead link]
  12. ^ "Medium Acquires Matter As Long-Form Journalism Site Joins Evan Williams Startup". TechCrunch. Retrieved 21 March 2022.