What I Cover
I write about scholars, scholarship, and society. I’m drawn to stories about researchers whose ideas are provoking debate inside and outside their disciplines. I am also interested in understanding how the knowledge-production ecosystem works — or, often, fails to work. That means I investigate issues like retractions, conflicts of interest, and misconduct, with the goal of holding institutions to account. There’s no subject I’m not curious about: My stories have spanned the fields of behavioral science, infectious diseases, food, art history, math education, and misinformation, among others.
My Background
I joined The Chronicle in 2022. I was previously a science and technology reporter at BuzzFeed News, and before that, a health reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. I was a recipient of the 2022 Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting, which honored my investigative reporting about scientific misconduct. My stories have been anthologized in The Best American Food Writing and noted in The Best American Science and Nature Writing. I frequently speak at conferences and in the press about topics like research integrity and scientific reproducibility.
I earned my bachelor’s degree in comparative literature at the University of California at Berkeley, where I got my start in journalism at The Daily Californian. I live in San Francisco.
Connect
I welcome reader feedback and story ideas at stephanie.lee@chronicle.com. For sensitive communications and tips, please don’t hesitate to message me at stephaniemlee@protonmail.com or on Signal at stephaniemlee.07.
I can also be found on Twitter, LinkedIn, Bluesky, and Threads.
