News Updates

For some top combatants in the COVID-19 fight, science and faith—often portrayed in conflict—both have critical values to contribute. Says the director of the National Institutes of Health: “I see science as the most reliable way to study nature—and that includes this virus. But science doesn’t help me with deeper questions.… For that, I rely on what I have learned as a person of faith.” Issues earlier explored this weighty intersection in a set of nonfiction stories that push past conventional notions to reveal how science and religion can challenge and strengthen one another.

Putting computers in control of common tasks—think self-driving cars and robot assembly lines—is often hailed as progress. But not so fast, says Ben Shneiderman, a pioneer in human-computer interaction, telling the New York Times that robots and other forms of artificial intelligence should be designed to work with humans, not replace them. In a broader look in Issues at how to make the innovation process better serve real-world needs, he and a colleague called for removing the separation between basic and applied research and encouraging partnerships between scientists and practitioners.

Noting that disease pandemics often begin—as COVID-19 did—when a virus jumps from a wild animal into humans, two senior US lawmakers and a leading conservationist have called for governments and private groups worldwide to limit society’s steady encroachment into nature and curtail illegal trade in wildlife. The actions align with earlier proposals by a conservation scientist in an Issues online exclusive, including the formation of a global organization empowered to identify and stop habitat destruction and high-risk wildlife trade, aimed at preventing future pandemics.

For many people who hold opinions on matters involving health and science that differ from the scientific consensus, their views often turn more on political and social beliefs than on hard evidence at hand, a philosopher argued in Issues a while ago. COVID-19 is proving no exception, with some groups citing concerns about individual freedom and privacy to argue against large-scale testing that experts say is crucial to reopening the economy, and others vowing to never get a vaccine when one emerges, citing distrust of government and the medical community.

Poor-quality research and media hype have disrupted the search for treatments for COVID-19, two medical analysts wrote in a recent Issues online exclusive, citing as a case in point the French microbiologist whose early studies and promotion of several drugs—especially hydroxychloroquine—prompted supporters, including President Trump, to call them “game changers.” Now, the New York Times adds a deep look at the controversial researcher, noting that experts are identifying fundamental flaws in his work and cautioning about drug studies that ignore normal scientific protocols.

Much of the American West is getting relentlessly drier, and the “persistence of the drought conditions, in the Colorado River basin especially, is essentially unprecedented in human history,” says John Fleck, who has long studied and written about water and climate in the region. Yet a review in Issues of Fleck’s book Water is for Fighting Over notes that even amid challenges he finds hope in past collaborative solutions to thorny conflicts arising from differing interests of various states, agricultural and urban areas, and local and regional water users.

The head of a US government team working to develop a vaccine against COVID-19 is an African American viral immunologist named Kizzmekia Corbett, who has gained attention for her research and for seeking greater diversity in the federal coronavirus task force, given that the disease is disproportionately killing black people. In a sense, she is prepared for both roles, having graduated from a pioneering university program—described in Issues here and here—that focuses on educating underrepresented minority students for careers in science, technology, engineering, and medicine.

Seventeen states are jointly suing the Trump administration over the Navigable Waters Protection Rule, adopted in January 2020 as the culmination of the president’s campaign vow to roll back the Obama-era Waters of the United States rule protecting waterways and wetlands. Writing in Issues as the new rule was under debate, a longtime environmental consultant detailed its likely detrimental effects on wetlands, and he laid out a set of principles to support “a policy framework that can assure stewardship of wetlands even in the face of changing political winds.”

Before the coronavirus emerged to change the world, a scholar who studies media hype and medical misinformation described in Issues the untoward role that celebrities often play in shaping public attitudes about science and health. In a bit of déjà vu, he just told NPR that an array of public figures worldwide—including President Trump—are now making unfounded claims about ways to prevent or treat COVID-19. But in better news, he sees early evidence that many people are paying greater attention to real science and are rejecting erroneous advice.

In what started as a budget operation but is now backed by big philanthropic bucks, researchers in New York are using genetic engineering to restore the American chestnut that dominated the Appalachians before falling to a fungus—and they are reportedly on the cusp of success. But questions are arising about the value and ethics of releasing engineered trees into the wild. In Issues, a philosopher previously examined such arguments, concluding that public opinion will ultimately decide the fate of these trees and perhaps other genetically modified organisms as well.

NASA just awarded nearly $1 billion to three companies to start planning lunar landers needed for the agency to reach its goal of putting astronauts on the moon by 2024, with plans to pick one or more winners next year to begin building the spacecraft. This may be the fullest flower yet of private firms expanding their activities in the space business, a trend detailed in Issues by an analyst who presciently noted that the US government needed to adapt its policies to capitalize on their growing strengths.