Featured Article

Inside the Gig Economy

Tia Koonse, Saba Waheed

Uberland details Uber’s growth model, which hinges on ignoring municipal regulation to enter new cities without heeding relevant taxi, registration, or background check regulations. Cities that have attempted to ban or restrict Uber struggle to enforce these restrictions.

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How Quarantine is Transforming Our Bodies’ Microbial Ecosystems

Rob Dunn

As we isolate ourselves in order to reduce the connections in our social webs, what happens to the whole society of microorganisms that exists on and between us? What happens when each person, or at least each home, becomes an island?

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Do-It-Yourself Pandemic: It’s Time for Accountability in Models

Guru Madhavan

As we use models to guide policies for COVID-19, we should also use COVID-19 to stimulate thinking about setting better standards for models. Lessons from real-world engineering can help.

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In Focus

COVID-19

We’re closely following the news about the COVID-19 pandemic and hope you’re staying healthy and safe. The essays here deliver fresh insights on the social, political, and scientific aspects of the pandemic, which can help you more fully understand and respond to the complex and difficult events that are now unfolding.

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Current Issue

Slowing Science Down

Vol. XXXVI, No. 3, Spring 2020

Science is moving fast right now. The novel coronavirus pandemic has created the conditions for rapid knowledge generation. But is fast science always a good thing? Several of the essays in the Spring 2020 Issues reveals that the institutional arrangements for science need to allow space for things to slow down—and that there are considerable costs to not doing so.

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From the Current Issue

Unintended Beauty

Alastair Philip Wiper

The Changing Temptations of Science

Stephen P. Turner, Daryl E. Chubin

Shutting the Door

Albert H. Teich

Latest News

  • Does Protecting Nature Pay?

    July 12, 2020

    With international organizations calling on nations to set aside 30% of their land and marine areas as conservation zones by 2030, an interdisciplinary group of researchers that studied the economic benefits of protecting nature reports that expanding areas under conservation could yield a return of at least $5 for every $1 spent and boost global economic output by about $250 billion annually. But the idea is controversial, and in Issues an economist has argued that using economic rationales for conservation could backfire and undermine other compelling arguments for protecting nature.

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  • COVID Science Speed Limit

    July 9, 2020

    As the coronavirus gained speed and deaths mounted, many doctors and patients, anxious for treatments, turned to drugs that had not been tested for effectiveness and safety in sound clinical trials. But “desperation is not a strategy,” a researcher and government adviser says, noting that “good clinical trials represent a solid strategy.” An Issues online exclusive earlier examined this shortcutting of customary scientific standards, abetted by politicians and the media, and pointed out that rushes for treatments have occurred all too often in medical history, with patients paying the price.

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Alastair Philip Wiper, "Maersk Triple E Container Ship Under Construction"

Unintended Beauty

Alastair Philip Wiper

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