Carl Theodore Bergstrom is a theoretical and

evolutionary biologist Evolutionary biology is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes such as natural selection, common descent, and speciation that produced the diversity of life on Earth. In the 1930s, the discipline of evolutionary biol ...

and a professor at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW and informally U-Dub or U Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast of the Uni ...

Seattle, Washington Seattle ( ) is the List of municipalities in Washington, most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington (state), Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the List of Unit ...

, United States. Bergstrom is a critic of low-quality or misleading scientific research. He is the co-author of a book on misinformation called ''Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World'' and teaches a class by the same name at University of Washington.

Education

Bergstrom earned his B.A. from

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

in 1993, then completed his Ph.D. at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

under the supervision of

Marcus Feldman Marcus William Feldman (born 14 November 1942) is the Burnet C. and Mildred Finley Wohlford Professor of Biological Sciences, director of the Morrison Institute for Population and Resource Studies, and co-director of the Center for Computational ...

in 1998.

Research

Bergstrom's work concerns the flow of information through biological and social networks, as well as the ecology and evolution of pathogenic organisms, including the development of resistance. He is the coauthor (with Lee Dugatkin) of a college textbook, ''Evolution''. With Jevin West, he developed the popular course and website Calling Bullshit. His work has led to the identification of him as a resource to explain the dynamics of

disinformation Disinformation is misleading content deliberately spread to deceive people, or to secure economic or political gain and which may cause public harm. Disinformation is an orchestrated adversarial activity in which actors employ strategic dece ...

and misinformation, in general. In addition to evolutionary biology, Bergstrom's interests include the ranking of scientific journals. In 2007, he introduced the

Eigenfactor The Eigenfactor score, developed by Jevin West and Carl Bergstrom at the University of Washington, is a rating of the total importance of a scientific journal. Journals are rated according to the number of incoming citations, with citations from ...

, metrics for journal ranking. This and related work on

open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...

earned him and his father, Ted Bergstrom, the SPARC Innovator Award in June 2007.

References

External links

Carl Bergstrom page at Santa Fe
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bergstrom, Carl American evolutionary biologists American theoretical biologists University of Washington faculty Living people Santa Fe Institute people 21st-century American biologists Stanford University alumni Harvard College alumni Year of birth missing (living people)

Education

Research

See also

References

External links