The Human in the Node

The Silent Mentors Program has a profound effect on medical education: it enhances the humanity of clinicians and those they serve.

The US House of Representatives Committee on Space, Science, and Technology looks beyond the challenges facing America today to pave the way for the nation’s long-term development. Chairman Frank Lucas outlines his priorities for strengthening US science.

Scientists and elected leaders must join forces to inform the public’s discretion through improved communication and education.

Freeman Hrabowski III talks about the importance of the humanities, culture change at universities, and scientists’ involvement in civic life.

In her poem “My God, It’s Full of Stars (Part 5),” Tracy K. Smith remembers her father, a scientist who worked on the Hubble Telescope.

Bringing expertise, data, and model development “home” to African countries is interrelated and mutually reinforcing with achieving electrification, development, and climate goals on the continent.

In the decades after World War II, nurse educators built a science of nursing. Their work underpins the profession as it is practiced today—and offers insights for other disciplines into how knowledge is created, valued, and used.

An expansion of today’s static definition of biosafety to include research for mitigating risk will advance both science and public safety.

A bioeconomy that delivers environmental, economic, and social benefits requires a twenty-first-century regulatory framework.

Decades-old research about how and why people share rumors is even more relevant in a world with social media. 

When Facebook’s fact-checkers slapped a “missing context” label on a venerable medical journal’s article about breached vaccine trial protocols, they set off a very twenty-first-century fight about who should play what role in scientific communication.

Teaching research skills and encouraging inquiry from the earliest ages can build social resilience to misleading information.

An obsession with gauging accuracy of individual posts is misguided. To strengthen information ecosystems, focus on narratives and why people share what they do.

The CHIPS and Science Act advances equity by codifying an underserved group, but more must be done to correct the effects of skewed research funding.

When I was assigned to a federally funded project to revolutionize engineering education at Virginia Tech, I thought being an effective scholar meant shunning my unconventional background. Instead, I had to embrace it.

Understanding how biosafety professionals generate knowledge on the job can help train skilled personnel and craft rules to keep communities safe.

Amid increasing competition and conflict with countries such as China, calls to restrict international scientific cooperation overlook benefits to the United States.

Understanding how scientific concepts become associated with conspiracy theories online can help determine which countermeasures might be effective.