Clare is a freelance journalist and fact-checker specialising in science, health, and the environment.

An alumni of the Oxford Climate Journalism Network, Clare is currently a journalist in residence at the Institute of Science & Technology Austria. Her work has also been featured in the Best Australian Science Writing four times, 2021-2024.

 

I have a background in biomedical research but traded my pipettes for a pen after a series of close encounters with an astronomer, a turtle conservation project, and an MRI machine.

Now, my reporting covers everything from seafood fraud and energy deficiencies in elite athletes, to the hype about green hydrogen and stem cell therapies.

I’ve reported stories for Undark (republished in TIME and Smithsonian Magazine), The Guardian, Nature News, Nature Medicine, Australian Geographic, New Scientist, Hakai Magazine, and more.

I also write regularly for ScienceAlert and Cosmos Magazine, two of Australia’s leading science news outlets.

 

Based on the east coast of Australia, in a steel-making university town, I’m drawn to stories where science interacts with communities, the law, policy, and everyday life. In other work I’ve been pulling back the curtain on how science operates, the biases academia perpetuates, and initiatives trying to change that.

In 2020, I completed the MIT Knight Science Journalism Fact-Checking Workshop, which included best practices for fact-checking online news and print features.

In 2024, I joined the Oxford Climate Journalism Network, completing their six-month global training program for journalists covering climate change, run by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. It’s led to stories like this one, on how heatwaves and hot days impact early births.

In 2025, I’m heading to Vienna as a journalist in residence at the Institute of Science & Technology Austria where I’ll explore the fundamental physics and mathematics that underpin climate models and help explain biological phenomena.

Through it all, my work is shaped by people’s lived experiences and grounded in my experience learning from and working with people and families involved in clinical trials and medical research.

Awards

Professional affiliations:

Science Journalists Association of Australia, 2020 — present
Committee member, 2023 — 2024

Professional guidelines That I follow:

Follow me on Twitter @clarewhatson or better yet, on Bluesky

2019 Frankin Women Wikipedia Edit-a-thon (Tim Levy)

2024 Universities Australia Award For Excellence In University Research Reporting (Fernanda Pedroso)

2023 World Conference of Science Journalists