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• January 27, 2022

  The Hard Math of Minerals

  Mark P. Mills

  The great twentieth-century physicist Richard Feynman once said that “it is important to realize that in physics today, we have no knowledge what energy is.” But we do know one unequivocal fact:… Read More

• February 11, 2021

  US No Longer in Innovation’s Top 10

  Tom Burroughs

  The United States dropped out of the Bloomberg Innovation Index’s top 10 countries this year. The index assesses such things as R&D spending, manufacturing capability, and concentration of high-tech companies. South Korea… Read More

• November 22, 2021

  Episode 1: Science Policymakers’ Required Reading

  Every Monday afternoon, the Washington, DC, science policy community clicks open an email newsletter from the American Institute of Physics’ science policy news service, FYI, to learn what they’ve missed. We spoke… Read More

• Summer 2020

  Public Value Science

  Barry Bozeman

  STEF at 75 Why should the United States government support science? That question was apparently settled 75 years ago by Vannevar Bush in Science, the Endless Frontier: “Since health, well-being, and… Read More

• October 22, 2021

  America on Edge: Settling for Second Place?

  Norman R. Augustine, Neal Lane

  The United States is on edge in ways the nation has rarely experienced throughout its young history. The country’s global leadership is being challenged in a rapidly changing and increasingly competitive world.… Read More

• Spring 2021

  Open to Experimentation

  Adam Millsap, Neil Chilson

  America is an especially philanthropic society. It has ranked number one on the World Giving Index for the last 10 years. A 2016 report found that annual charitable giving in the United… Read More

• April 5, 2021

  What Do China’s Scientific Ambitions Mean for Science—and the World?

  Sylvia Schwaag Serger, Cong Cao, Caroline S. Wagner, Xabier Goenaga, Koen Jonkers

  In the past two decades China has become a leading international scientific contributor—not only in resources and publications, but also through its ambition to achieve technological leadership in key industrial sectors. In… Read More

• Winter 2021

  A View from the Boardroom

  Norman R. Augustine

  The interview with Charles O. Holliday, “We Don’t Know What This Is Yet” (Issues, Fall 2020), was truly illuminating. I found little, if anything, with which I could disagree. But… Read More

• Summer 2020

  The Race to the Top

  David Sainsbury

  Since 1990, nations of the Group of Seven, comprising the world’s largest industrialized economies, have all shown declining rates of economic growth. Over the same period, growth in many developing countries has… Read More

• Summer 2020

  “This Is Everybody’s Issue”

  Margaret A. Hamburg, William Kearney, Victor Dzau

  The editor of Issues in Science and Technology, William Kearney, recently discussed the coronavirus pandemic with National Academy of Medicine President Victor Dzau and immediate past NAM Foreign Secretary Margaret “Peggy” … Read More

• April 16, 2020

  Where’s Congress? Don’t Just Blame Trump for the Coronavirus Catastrophe

  M. Anthony Mills, Robert Cook-Deegan

  How in the world did it happen? The United States has the highest rating in the world on the Global Health Security Index, which assesses prevention, capacity for detection, preparedness and planning,… Read More

• Winter 2020

  A Taste of the Future

  Kai N. Lee

  “The main way that most people will experience climate change is through its impact on food—what they eat, how it’s grown, the price they pay for it, and the availability and choice… Read More

• Winter 2020

  Will Precision Medicine Lead to a Healthier Population?

  Nigel Paneth, Richard Cooper

  Human health and biomedical science have been transformed in tandem over the past two centuries. From around 1850 to 1920, better nutrition and prevention of epidemic infections were the main contributors to… Read More

• January 29, 2020

  Misinformation Rampant on New Virus

  Tom Burroughs

  The newly discovered coronavirus that causes a potentially deadly pneumonia-like illness and is spreading rapidly in China has now moved into the United States, prompting a parallel outbreak of misinformation spread via… Read More

• Summer 2019

  Artificial Intelligence for a Social World

  Justine Cassell

  Will artificial intelligence (AI) mean the end of social interaction? I want to say right away—so that you can stop reading if this disappoints you—that I’m not going to answer that question.… Read More

• April 17, 2020

  Where’s Congress? Don’t Just Blame Trump for the Coronavirus Catastrophe

  You can watch a recording of this webinar here. The United States has the world’s highest rating on the Global Health Security Index. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may… 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

• Summer 2019

  Protecting the Accuracy of the 2020 Census

  Constance F. Citro

  Since 1790, US census data has been built into the fabric of the society, economy, and polity—and strong systems can assure accuracy.

• Summer 2018

  Beyond Patents

  Jeffrey Funk

  Over the past 20 years, patent analysis has become a dominant method of studying innovation. The number of papers containing “patent citation” listed in Google Scholar rose from fewer than 10 in… Read More

• Fall 2018

  Investing in Entrepreneurs Everywhere

  Tracy Van Grack

  In July 2018, the US House of Representatives—in a surprising act of bipartisanship—passed a collection of bills dubbed the Jobs Act 3.0. The bills, broadly speaking, were designed to ignite innovation and… Read More

• Winter 2019

  Why the United States Should Partner With Africa to Deploy Advanced Reactors

  Jessica Lovering, Kenton De Kirby

  Africa has nuclear power in its future. Interest in nuclear energy technologies among African nations is considerable and growing. Of the 30 countries identified by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as… Read More

• Winter 2018

  Forum – Winter 2018

  Daniel Sperling, Edward A. Parson, Jane C. S. Long, Richard R. Nelson, Keith Kloor, Irwin Feller, Ben Shneiderman, Sallie Keller, Stephanie Shipp, Alan Jenn, David L. Greene, Laura M. Hartman, Lisa H. Sideris, Yves Gingras

  What drives innovation? In “What Does Innovation Today Tell Us about the US Economy Tomorrow?” (Issues, Fall 2017), Jeffrey Funk starts with an assertion that puzzles me, but after that… Read More

• Summer 2018

  Indicators of R&D Tax Support

  Ana González-Cabral, Fernando Galindo-Rueda, Silvia Appelt

  Investment in research and development (R&D) is a key driver of innovation and economic growth. In addition to funding R&D within public institutes or universities, governments within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation… Read More

• July 15, 2018

  Chinese Innovation on the Rise

  Tom Burroughs

  7/15/18 – China joined the world’s top 20 most innovative economies and is aiming to move higher, while the United States fell out of the top 5, according to the recently released… Read More

• Winter 2018

  Funding Highways

  Alan Jenn, Daniel Sperling, David L. Greene

  As John Paul Helveston says in “Navigating an Uncertain Future for US Roads” (Issues, Fall 2017), highway finance in the United States is “broken and broke.” It is ill suited… Read More

• Winter 2018

  Make America Great Again

  Gregory Tassey

  The United States emerged from World War II as the dominant technology-driven economy in the world. For decades, virtually every major technology was developed and initially commercialized within the US economy by… Read More

• Fall 2017

  What Does Innovation Today Tell Us About the US Economy Tomorrow?

  Jeffrey Funk

  How does the future of technological innovation look for the United States economy? Experts disagree. Techno-optimists such as Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee, Martin Ford, and Ray Kurzweil claim that there are endless… Read More

• Fall 2017

  A Silicon Valley Catechism

  Frank Pasquale

  For over a decade, business books have exhorted managers to be “supercrunchers”—numbers-obsessed quantifiers, quick to make important decisions as “data driven” as possible. There is an almost evangelical quality to this work,… Read More

• Summer 2017

  The End of the Line

  G. Pascal Zachary

  Innovation is almost universally desired but almost always misunderstood. Confusion abounds over such basic tasks as how to describe how innovation works and even what counts as innovation. If culture conditions innovation,… Read More

• Spring 2017

  Give Bats a Break

  Merlin D. Tuttle

  Searches for new viruses in bats are unlikely to contribute substantially to human health, but they may threaten the future of bats.