For a world increasingly dominated by behind-the-scenes scientific alterations, and people in white lab coats, as global citizens we know very little about the field that is every day reshaping our lives and the planet we inhabit. Designer babies and synthetic biology are becoming tangible realities, right under our unsuspecting noses. Unequipped with the years of schooling and the plethora of degrees needed to even begin to comprehend such groundbreaking new implementations, how can we be expected to know about the discoveries and experiments redefining life on Earth? The answer is simple: read.

As infallible scientists devote countless hours to decades worth of research, there is a second group of individuals working just as hard to make this knowledge available to the public in a slightly more comprehensible manner: science reporters. The unsung heroes of modern journalism, science reporters face the insurmountable task of translating often-incomprehensible scientific forays into language understood by the masses. Despite being part of a branch of journalism oft passed over for celebrity gossip or political turmoil, these writers pen pieces crucial to our understanding of our ever-changing world.

Michael Specter stands among these silent giants. Currently under the employment of the famed and respected New Yorker, Specter has published articles on a variety of topics, ranging from the newest gene-editing tool, CRISPR, to a series on the AIDS epidemic that once devastated San Francisco and is currently eating away at underdeveloped, third-world countries.

His career in journalism began in 1985, when he began at The Washington Post. At the time, Specter covered local news, not the science and technology branch that has won him so many accolades today. He attributes the Challenger explosion to his science awakening, recalling sitting in a parking lot and realizing that events like that were those which he felt needed reporting.

Soon after making the transition from local news to topics like science, technology, and global health, in 1991, Specter was named the New York City bureau chief of The Post, but later transferred to the New York Times that same year. While working for The Times, Specter was stationed in Moscow. He veered off his course of science reporting to write about the 1996 presidential election and the war in Chechnya, for which he was awarded the Overseas Press Club Citation for Excellence. He also wrote a series of pieces regarding the decline of Russian health care.

Specter published his book, Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives, in 2009, in which he details the apparent trend of American and European citizens to reject fact-based science, and instead accept comfortable myths about topics like vaccines, genomics, and GMOs. For this publication, he was awarded the Robert P. Balles Annual Prize in Critical Thinking.

Specter began working at The New Yorker in 1998 and is still there currently. While at The New Yorker, he has published pieces on AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria in third-world countries, the shrinking supply of freshwater resources, agricultural biotechnology, and genomic editing tools. He has worked closely with and shadowed scientific greats, such as Feng Zhang, one of the developers of the CRISPR/Cas-9 system, and Peter Singer, a moral philosopher and bioethics professor at Princeton University.

Specter’s work paints a picture of where we are at as a global community and where we are headed. It’s his work, along with the work of countless others, that enable us to form educated opinions on controversial matters like vaccinations or GMOs, or learn about diseases ravaging underdeveloped nations. Science reporting isn’t just about taking jaw-dropping, mind-boggling material and dressing it up; it’s about unraveling the threads of science and determining how they’re dictating our lives.

If you’re interested in learning more about Michael Specter, or want to read his articles, go to http://www.newyorker.com/contributors/michael-specter or check out his twitter @specterm.