Quick Facts
Biography
Carl Theodore Bergstrom is a theoretical and evolutionary biologist and a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington.. Bergstrom is an outspoken critic of low-quality or misleading scientific research. He is the co-author of a forthcoming 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 completed his Ph.D. at Stanford University under the supervision of Marcus Feldman 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 entitled, 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 and misinformation, in general.
In addition to evolutionary biology, Bergstrom's interests include the ranking of scientific journals. In 2007 he introduced the Eigenfactor, metrics for journal ranking. This and related work on open access earned him and his father, Ted Bergstrom, the SPARC Innovator award in June 2007.