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• 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. 

• Winter 2026

  The “Terrible Engine of Destruction” That Inspired Federal Science Funding

  Lisa Margonelli

  The story of how the federal government came to fund science to solve the problem of plagues of locusts in the 1870s offers insights into the relationship between science and the American public.

• Spring 2026

  Charting a Course for AI in Science

  Catherine Aiken, Steph Batalis, Greg Tananbaum

  Rather than haphazardly using artificial intelligence for research, scientists and decisionmakers should take a deliberative approach.

• 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

• 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.

• Spring 2026

  Roving the Prairies

  Charles N. Herrick

  Charles N. Herrick navigates the science and art of American grassland restoration in his review of George Frazier’s recent book on grassland rivers.

• Spring 2026

  What’s Missing in Animal Welfare Efforts?

  The suffering of water-breathing animals can be invisible to humans—and thus left out of initiatives to improve animal welfare.

• 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

• Winter 2026

  Repurposing Grand Challenges in Tumultuous Times

  Martin Ho, Pramod P. Khargonekar, Eoin O’Sullivan

  As research budgets tighten, priorities evolve, and new funding models emerge, the grand challenge framework can restore coherence, direction, and shared purpose across the scientific enterprise.

• 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

• Winter 2026

  Who Will Build It?

  Winifred Opoku

  Restoring US manufacturing leadership requires a culture shift in how engineers, technologists, and technicians translate ideas into production.

• 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

• Winter 2026

  Water Breathing Is a Blind Spot in Animal Welfare Science

  Jennifer Jacquet, Daniel Pauly

  Considering how water breathers differ from air breathers in policy and practice could improve welfare for these animals, both captive and wild.

• 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.

• Spring 2026

  Mohole Moments

  Lisa Margonelli

  A “mohole moment” is when an investment in science goes disastrously wrong, providing a focal point for distrust and funding cuts. Such moments reveal the tacit premise of science’s social contract—both what the agreement is and what counts as a breach.

• 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

• 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.

• 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?

• 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