Slowing Science Down

In the “Synthetic Age,” fundamental earth processes that used to be governed by forces outside human power increasingly become an expression of it. This is a redesign of some of the biosphere’s most fundamental processes.

Between 1980 and 2013, the older, traditional STEM career pathway produced a ninefold increase in underrepresented minorities earning PhDs in biomedical fields; however, it failed to produce any increase in professors in this demographic in the same period.

Remembering former National Academy of Sciences president Frank Press, whose launching of Issues in Science and Technology in 1983 provided a forum for discussions of science policy and further expanded the audience for them.

Jennifer Doudna, the codiscoverer of CRISPR precision gene editing technology, reflects on the dramatic events that unfolded at the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing in late 2018, and discusses her hope that the clinical promise of genome editing is pursued responsibly—with proper consideration by society of its ethical implications—going forward.

The changes in science over the past century have outpaced society’s images of science, of what sort of activity it is, and of what scientists are and do. Have these changes also outpaced science’s capacity to assure its integrity and quality?

The United States has been Australia’s closest scientific partner for nearly a century. But with the globalization of science and the rise of China, Australia may need to rethink the science policies that have guided this partnership.

Not only is there a host of ways through which California could meet its 2045 carbon neutrality goal, but it would be a lot less costly than previously imagined.

Despite the production of more and better science, it often falls dramatically short of solving real-world problems. A group at the University of Maine tackled this problem head-on.

Famines have killed tens of millions of people across the centuries. But as the global population rose from 2.5 billion people in 1950 to nearly eight billion today, mortality from famine was radically curtailed. What accounted for this remarkable accomplishment?