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• 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.

• April 27, 2023

  The Camouflaged Metaphysics of Embryos

  Jane Maienschein

  In the United States, diverging interpretations of what constitutes life coexist across public, policy, and legal environments. Many draw on what I call a hypothetical embryo, an entity that is almost… Read More

• January 31, 2022

  Episode 7: Shaky Science in the Courtroom

  Eyewitness testimony and forensic science are forms of evidence frequently relied upon in criminal cases. But over the past few decades DNA analysis—and the exonerations it has prompted—has revealed how flawed these… Read More

• October 20, 2020

  The Real Reason Young People Don’t Vote

  Sunshine Hillygus

  In the 2020 US elections, young people seem poised for unprecedented levels of participation. “Young voters are going to be key to winning 2020,” declared one CNN headline. “These 7 Million Young… Read More

• Fall 2024

  Second-Order Effects of Artificial Intelligence

  In “Governing AI With Intelligence” (Issues, Summer 2024), Urs Gasser provides an insightful survey on regulating artificial intelligence during a time of expanding development of a technology that has both… Read More

• Winter 2025

  Remembering Lewis Thomas

  “The Lives of Lewis Thomas” (Issues, Fall 2024), by Joseph J. Fins, stirred powerful memories. As an intern at Bellevue Hospital in New York City in 1971, I eagerly awaited The … Read More

• Summer 2025

  A Century of Conflict Over Evolution Education

  Glenn Branch

  In July 1925, a young science teacher named John Thomas Scopes was on trial in Dayton, Tennessee, for violating a recently enacted state law, the Butler Act. The law forbade public school… Read More

• Fall 2025

  Addiction Revisited

  Susan M. Fitzpatrick

  Two recent books on addiction “weave an overlapping synthesis of the current state of addiction scholarship,” writes Susan Fitzpatrick—and identify where that scholarship falls short.

• Winter 2025

  Reconsidering Research Security

  John C. Gannon, Richard A. Meserve, Maria T. Zuber

  The United States’ global leadership in research was built on the foundation of substantial government investments in science and technology (S&T) made during World War II. In the subsequent decades, S&T has… Read More

• Summer 2024

  What We Talk About When We Talk About Impact

  David H. Guston

  When most people talk about “impact,” they often imagine one thing physically hitting another, for example, the impact of the meteorite that scientists think was responsible for killing off the dinosaurs—and leaving,… Read More

• December 20, 2022

  Episode 23: Shirley Malcom – Where Science and Society Meet

  Shirley M. Malcom

  Shirley M. Malcom is a trailblazer in the area of broadening participation in science. Currently senior advisor and director of the SEA Change initiative at the American Association for the Advancement of… Read More

• Fall 2025

  AI Companions Are Not Your Teen’s Friend

  J. B. Branch

  Despite broad agreement that young people should be protected from threats posed by algorithms designed to act as friends, romantic partners, or therapists, federal regulation is dangerously limited.

• Fall 2025

  Field Notes on Moving Focused Research Organizations Forward

  Adam Marblestone, Anastasia Gamick, Mary Wang, Joseph Fridman

  Four years ago, we founded a new kind of scientific organization to build fundamental technologies and accelerate discovery. Almost a dozen launches later, we have an idea of what works—and what doesn’t.

• Spring 2025

  When That Chickadee Is No Longer “A Machine With Feathers”

  Brandon Keim

  New research on animal intelligence is leading to a clash of worldviews that has implications for policy.

• Summer 2025

  Updating Mental Models of Risk

  Rod Schoonover, Daniel P. Aldrich, Daniel Hoyer

  Disasters are no longer isolated events. This demands a fundamental change in how we think about and respond to complex risk.

• Summer 2025

  A Nation of Innovators

  Matthew Wisnioski

  The story of how the federal government became an innovation evangelist in the 1960s is an account of fits, starts, and ideological ambiguity.

• Fall 2024

  A Very Different Voice

  

  Xavier Cortada, Underwater HOA Elevation Drive: 7, aerial photograph of paint on asphalt, 2018. Xavier Cortada recruited art students from four local high schools to help him paint Elevation Drive at… Read More

• Summer 2023

  “Real Policymaking Involves a Lot of Other Things Besides Pure Technical Analysis.”

  Ben S. Bernanke, William Kearney

  Economist Ben S. Bernanke served as chair of the Federal Reserve from 2006 to 2014, was one of three recipients of the Nobel Prize in economic sciences in 2022, and is currently… Read More

• Fall 2023

  When the Energy Transition Comes to Town

  Jillian E. Miles, Christophe Combemale, Valerie J. Karplus

  In July 2023, Homer City, Pennsylvania, saw its coal-fired power plant deactivated, only three months after the community got word of the impending closure. With the plant being the state’s largest generating… Read More

• Summer 2025

  What Happens When the Nuts and Bolts of Science Diplomacy Come Loose?

  Cole Donovan

  The United States has focused on preventing the transfer of sensitive technology to adversarial nations rather than on improving its ability to collaborate internationally.

• October 16, 2019

  Forum

  Carl Mitcham, Christopher T. Hill, Gene L. Dodaro, Terri Ann Lowenthal, Cynthia Z. F. Clark, Ruth Macklin, Yan Ping, Sandra L. Calvert, William Savedoff, Sherri Goodman, Warren Pearce, Josh Galperin, David Schimel, Michael Keller, Wendy Gram, Diane Pataki, Dale Hitchcock

  Protecting the census Census Day is right around the corner. The US Government Accountability Office agrees with the challenges facing the upcoming enumeration that Constance F. Citro identified in “Protecting the Accuracy… Read More

• Winter 2025

  To Build a Biorubber Industry on the Prairie

  Tim Dawsey

  Farmers and scientists are collaborating in Pittsburg, Kansas, to reinvigorate the local economy through biorubber production.

• Fall 2025

  Don’t Forget the Farmers

  Will farmers see a benefit from modernized soil tests that provide more accurate assessments of soil quality—and therefore land value?

• Fall 2025

  Stony the Road We Trod: The Tradeoffs Universities Face in Chasing the R1 Designation

  Erin Lynch

  As America’s science enterprise is challenged to be more competitive with fewer resources, recognizing and supporting the research capacity of non-R1s offers a path toward a more dynamic innovation landscape.

• Spring 2018

  A Task for Democracy

  Jane Maienschein

  Over the past decade, a tool has emerged that enables very precise editing of the human genome, bringing with it tremendous value for research. Yet this gene-editing tool, called CRISPR, also generates… Read More

• Winter 2025

  Blended Worlds: Bridging Art and Science in the Age of Interplanetary Imagination

  

  Inspired by humanity’s journey into space, artists are creating works that extend beyond Earth.

• Spring 2025

  What We Learned From 25,775 Environmental Lawsuits

  Christopher Rea

  Environmental lawsuits play a critical role in enforcing and upholding environmental laws. Whose concerns are prioritized? What environmental harms are litigated—and which are overlooked?

• Fall 2022

  The Wireless Body

  Jeremy A. Greene

  Holter’s original wearable health technology: the radioelectrocargiograph, c. 1957. Courtesy of the New York Academy of Sciences. Nearly half the US adult population will pass out at some point in their lives.… Read More

• Winter 2011

  Making Stories Visible: The Task for Bioethics Commissions

  Adam Briggle, Meera Lee Sethi

  A little before lunchtime on December 6, 1957, when the United States made its first attempt to match the triumph of Russia’s Sputnik 1 by launching its own Vanguard TV3 satellite into… Read More