Jim Giles

Who is Jim Giles?

Jim Giles is a journalist and co-founder of 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, the New York Times, Nature, New Scientist and The Guardian.

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 in Wikipedia to those in Encyclopaedia Britannica. Peer reviewers recruited by Nature identified an average of four inaccuracies in the Wikipedia articles they examined and an average of around three in articles on the same topics in Britannica. Britannica subsequently criticized the story, prompting Nature to clarify the methodology used to compile the results.

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 recommendation were published on 5 October 2009 in an open letter to the Nobel Foundation.