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• 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

• 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.

• 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.

• 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

  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

• 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

• 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.

• 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

• Winter 2026

  Fully Accounting for America’s Research Investments

  Nicholas S. Wigginton

  Far from being passive recipients of federal research dollars, universities pour in substantial resources of their own. It’s time to do a better job of documenting those investments.

• 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

• Spring 2026

  Something Missing in the Numbers

  How much do universities invest in research? Greater financial transparency could better illuminate their vital role in America’s scientific enterprise.

• 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.

• Spring 2026

  Same Storm, Different Boats

  Adam Briggle

  Adam Briggle examines how disasters can disproportionately affect vulnerable people in his review of Angela Frederick’s recent book.

• Spring 2026

  We Created a Survey to Measure Community Well-Being and Activated a “Messy Middle”

  Natalie Bomstad

  How a Wisconsin county realized that systems change requires shared sensemaking as much as innovative metrics.

• 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