In the final weeks of the year, CCC’s podcast series is looking back at the past twelve months.

2020 has earned notoriety for a series of natural catastrophes and human tragedies – most profoundly, for the global pandemic of the COVID-19 virus.

Scientists and researchers, however, are heeding this advice: Don’t waste a crisis.

The pandemic and its attendant challenges present opportunities to explore important questions in medicine and other sciences. In publishing, too, economic and professional disruption is opening new paths for information access.

In the first edition of a three-part review for 2020, we learn why “data analyst” may be the year’s hot job title.

Special guests include Xiao-Li Meng, founding editor-in-chief of the Harvard Data Science Review; medical scientist David Fajgenbaum, author of Chasing My Cure: A Doctor’s Race to Turn Hope into Action; and Outsell, Inc., analyst Tatiana Khayrullina.

“A public conversation grounded in scientific data has grown commonplace,” says CCC’s Chris Kenneally. “The tales the data tell may be dark or bright. But it is not up to the data to choose – it is up to us.”