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• Summer 2025

  If Your Snark Be a Boojum

  Readers respond to “The Strange New Politics of Science” by M. Anthony Mills and Price St. Clair.

• Fall 2025

  A New Direction for Research Universities

  As the relationship between society and academia changes, research universities must adapt to keep pace or risk becoming irrelevant.

• Summer 2023

  Enhancing Trust in Science

  In “Enhancing Trust in Science and Democracy in an Age of Misinformation” (Issues, Spring 2023), Marcia McNutt and Michael M. Crow encourage the scientific community to “embrace its vital role… Read More

• Fall 2024

  Science Policy: No Longer an “Exotic Nice-to-Have Thing”

  Lisa Margonelli

  The community of people who do science policy has long been something of a cipher. In the late 1960s, journalist Dan Greenberg reported that it comprised a “remarkably small number of people”—he… Read More

• August 1, 2023

  Episode 34: Secretary Ernest Moniz on the Diplomatic Role of “Cumulative” Science

  Ernest J. Moniz, Lisa Margonelli

  Over the last 40 years, US and Chinese scientists at all levels have been engaged in broad-based diplomacy, publishing hundreds of thousands of scientific papers together. Recently, amid tensions between the two… Read More

• Fall 2024

  “You Learn More From Failure—When Things Are Not Working Well.”

  Katalin Karikó, Sara Frueh

  Katalin Karikó is a pioneer in research on messenger RNA (mRNA) and its medical possibilities, which were revealed on a global scale during the COVID-19 pandemic. With her colleague Drew Weissman, she… Read More

• Winter 2025

  Our Bases Are Precarious!

  Wilko Graf von Hardenberg

  Sea level rise has become a standard indicator of how humans are transforming the planet. But our ideas about sea level, why we measure it, and how it varies have changed radically over the centuries.

• Spring 2022

  “Try to Design an Approach to Making a Judgment; Don’t Just Go Into It Trusting Your Intuition.”

  Daniel Kahneman, Sara Frueh

  Cognitive psychologist Daniel Kahneman has spent his career studying the ways humans think, including the cognitive shortcuts and biases that shape—and sometimes misshape—our decisions. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics… Read More

• Summer 2025

  Building Decision Points Into Research’s Slipperiest Slopes

  John H. Evans, Craig Callender, Neal K. Devaraj, Farren J. Isaacs, Gregory E. Kaebnick

  The controversy around a ban on “mirror life” should lead to a more nuanced public conversation about how to manage the benefits and risks of precursor biotechnologies.

• Fall 2023

  An Epic Battle Against Polluters

  Charles N. Herrick

  When we think about the evolution of environmental policy, many of us tend to imagine congressional committee wrangling, Sierra Club activists trying to out-hustle coal industry lobbyists, and competing policy briefs from… Read More

• Fall 2023

  How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Intelligible Failure

  Adam Russell

  When I was appointed by the US health secretary to serve as the very temporary, de facto leader of the newly created Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) in May 2022,… Read More

• Spring 2019

  UFOs Won’t Go Away

  Keith Kloor

  A community of believers in extraterrestrial visitations continues to push its story, and the media and Pentagon continue to listen. Who benefits from these tales of close encounters?

• Spring 2025

  15 Years of California’s Science & Technology Policy Fellowship

  Bruce M. Alberts, Sarah Brady, Keleigh Friedrich, Amber Mace, Maxine Savitz

  Lessons from a thriving Sacramento-based program can help similar initiatives improve decisionmaking across the nation.

• Spring 2025

  “Universities Are the Invisible Hand.”

  Marcia McNutt, Michael M. Crow

  On March 12, 2025, the leaders of the Issues editorial board—Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academy of Sciences, and Michael M. Crow, president of Arizona State University—met on Zoom to offer… Read More

• Winter 2024

  “Libraries Are That Safe Place for Discussion of Ideas.”

  Carla Hayden, Molly Galvin

  Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden discusses the dynamic and essential role libraries play in American life—as community spaces, information repositories, trusted sources, and conveners of civil discourse. 

• Fall 2023

  How Will Carbon Capture Transform Port Arthur, Texas?

  Tristan Baurick

  Hilton Kelley says you can understand a whole lot about his hometown from the top of City Hall. Standing at a broad, fifth-floor window, the community organizer points across Port Arthur, a… Read More

• Winter 2023

  Mental Models for Scientists Communicating With the Public

  Kara Morgan, Baruch Fischhoff

  Over the past few decades, scientists have delivered stunning achievements—from improving crop yields to exploring Mars to identifying the COVID-19 virus. Despite such successes, many scientists feel unappreciated and even dismissed by… Read More

• Summer 2025

  Behavioral Aspects of Trust in Science

  Readers respond to “Who’s Afraid to Share Science in Their Listserv?” by Celinda Lake and Emily Garner.

• Summer 2020

  Whose Drugs Are These?

  Bhaven Sampat

  STEF at 75 Radar, penicillin, the atomic bomb—these technologies helped win World War II, in large part because the US government supported their development. Today, the nation faces a new enemy in… Read More

• Winter 2024

  Economists Being Economists

  Daniel Sarewitz

  In early nineteenth-century England, bands of men known as Luddites went about smashing the automatic knitting machines that had taken their jobs. The novelist Thomas Pynchon described the situation in a 1984… Read More

• Spring 2021

  “Talent and Ideas Are Democratized in the Sense That They Are Everywhere”

  Sethuraman Panchanathan, William Kearney

  National Science Foundation Director Sethuraman Panchanathan took the helm of the agency last summer in the midst of the pandemic, leaving behind his position as executive vice president of the Arizona State … Read More

• Spring 2023

  Misunderstanding Misinformation

  Claire Wardle

  In the fall of 2017, Collins Dictionary named fake news word of the year. It was hard to argue with the decision. Journalists were using the phrase to raise awareness of false… Read More

• Summer 2019

  Deciding the Facebook Question

  Clarke Cooper

  Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google: the FAANGs. We have one big fat reason for loving them: they provide us with overpowering convenience. Thanks to the FAANGs, just choosing to do something is… Read More

• Fall 2025

  “The Ability to Produce Is Just as Important as the Ability to Innovate.”

  Tsu-Jae Liu, Sara Frueh

  National Academy of Engineering president Tsu-Jae Liu discusses how engineers can help the United States translate new ideas into practical benefits for the nation.

• Summer 2023

  How to Investigate an Algorithm

  Meredith Broussard

  At the end of 2021, Sujin Kim was a senior at the University of Michigan. Eager to follow up her undergraduate political science studies with a PhD, Kim was applying to 15… Read More

• Spring 2025

  The Strange New Politics of Science

  M. Anthony Mills, Price St. Clair

  The polarization of trust in science is a complex phenomenon shaped by—and increasingly also shaping—American political identities.

• November 12, 2024

  Biodesign Challenge

  The Biodesign Challenge bridges art, design, and biotech to engage students and the public in dialogue about the implications of emerging biotech. Read more about the project in “What Is Biodesign?” by… Read More

• Spring 2022

  Unmet Desire

  Adam Seth Levine

  I vividly remember March 2020, the month the United States shut down as COVID-19 spread uncontrollably and upended daily life. At the time, I worked at Cornell University in upstate New York.… Read More

• Summer 2025

  Being a Good Mentor

  Mentorship is a powerful tool in accelerating the development and careers of all scientists.

• Fall 2025

  The Measured Body

  Mona Sloane, Abigail Z. Jacobs, Emanuel Moss

  Redesigning motion capture systems to be more representative of real human bodies and movements could make them fairer and more useful for applications such as law enforcement and medical diagnostics.