News Updates

5/25/18 – Universal conscription—the draft—ended 45 years ago, and NPR is marking the milestone with a new series on the shift to an all-volunteer military. In Issues, two analysts have taken an even deeper look, concluding with a call for return of the draft. “Our thesis is simple,” they said. “We believe it is neither socially nor technically advisable to rely on a progressively smaller group of specialists, increasingly separate from the rest of society, to provide the collective defense, nor does having such a small elite control the tools of modern, automated, and computerized war comply with democratic principles.”

5/24/18 – After examining progress in growing meat in the laboratory, two environmental scholars argued in Issues that it is time to “start thinking about how factory-grown meat might transform our food system, the environment, and even our culture.” Well, thinking has started—and is getting a bit contentious. Missouri may soon become the first state to legally define what “meat” is or is not, and proponents and critics are arguing over whether the legislation will protect food integrity and reduce consumer confusion or thwart an emerging industry that can provide healthier, more humane, and environmentally sustainable food products.

5/23/18 – US residents are losing some confidence in the value and safety of vaccinations for measles and other diseases, according to a new survey, with 70% now saying vaccines are very important, down from 80% a decade ago. Why a decline? In Issues, a philosopher and data analyst recently noted that opinions about vaccines don’t depend solely on scientific evidence, but also reflect deepening social disagreements about the nature of risk and the role of experts.

5/23/18 – Current fears of a “reproducibility crisis” in research are shortsighted, a quartet of scientists and philosophers say, because a key part of scientific inquiry is in fact the integration of conflicting observations and ideas into a coherent theory. But even as failures may lead to success, a longtime science reporter recently argued in Issues that an increasing amount of “poor-quality” biomedical science is amplifying reproducibility problems, and he offered suggestions for reducing built-in pressures on researchers that are having a corrosive effect on output from scientific labs.

5/17/18 – With this year’s US hurricane season approaching and damage from last year’s storms still vivid, the nation has “not fixed the underlying major problem, which is an utterly nonresilient infrastructure that at the end of the day will determine how much suffering there is after a large storm,” says an expert on disaster preparedness. On this front, three researchers recently noted in Issues that social, ecological, technical, and institutional issues often seem to set up infrastructure for failure, and they proposed an integrated and systemic approach for building and maintaining systems that will be more resilient.

5/17/18 – In arguing that college may no longer be worth it for many students, a Boston-based professor says many jobs don’t really require a college degree. So “why do employers demand a degree for jobs that don’t require them?” she asks. “Because they can.” In Issues, a longtime workforce scholar recently foreshadowed this assessment, and he proposed policy changes that would help provide everyone with “opportunities to learn and to advance in accord with their wishes and motivations without sacrificing already meager paychecks.”

5/15/18 – The Open Government Partnership, created to bring citizens and governments closer in policy-making, just released a new “toolkit” that details best practices and action plans proven to work in projects around the world and explains how other groups can use the lessons in pursing open government reforms. In Issues, a self-described “change maker and engineer” recently offered a view from the trenches at ways, including expanding public participation, to scale up policy innovations in federal government.

5/12/18 – Negotiations over the North American Free Trade Agreement have reportedly hit a snag that may make it impossible to reach agreement on a new deal by a fast-approaching deadline for gaining approval from the US Congress. But in a broader look behind the scenes, an economic analyst has argued in Issues that the three partners, who are already well served by the agreement, could gain even greater benefit by acting as a regional partnership to jointly engage the global community on a range of trade issues.

5/11/18 – An Arizona-based scholar of emerging technologies recently described in Issues what he called weaponized narratives, or the use of communication tools and services to spread stories intended to undermine an adversary’s resiliency. Even as he saw the United States being particularly vulnerable, the threat has now reached into Mexico, with a variety of false messages flooding both mainstream and social media in advance of the country’s upcoming presidential election.

5/9/18 – Months after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, some rural areas of the island still lack electricity, and even restored sections of the power grid face regular outages. Such disruptions of basic infrastructure by extreme weather events are likely to become more common with climate change, a trio of analysts recently noted in Issues, and they proposed some technological and policy innovations for designing, building, and maintaining energy and other critical infrastructure systems that will be more resilient to future challenges.

5/7/18 – Recent accidents involving self-driving cars have rekindled debate about regulating their use and prompted one state to require companies testing them to more fully report glitches that occur. In Issues, an analyst who focuses on governance of emerging technologies recently took a deep look at how self-driving cars may change the world in ways both anticipated and unexpected, and he proposed that any new rules should be flexible while ensuring that the vehicles are safe, broadly accessible, and avoid problematic unintended consequences.

5/5/18 – The administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency recently told a New York radio show that he planned to end what he called the Obama administration’s “war on coal,” declaring that the government should not use its regulatory power to pick “winners and losers” in the energy industry. But in Issues, the head a major consulting firm recently explained coal’s decline as an energy source over the past century, tracing it to technological and social changes rather than to political factors, let alone a presumptive war on coal.