Creating a Science-Engaged Public
The federal government has the responsibility to serve all people through its programs, policies, and funding. This means it must lead the way in the creation and implementation of programs for...
View ArticleThe United States Needs a Director of National Health Security
The US response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent monkeypox virus outbreaks has been severely hampered by a lack of a central authority over health security, a concept that encompasses a range…...
View ArticlePathways to More Rapidly Reduce Transportation’s Climate Change Impact
Current US energy policies are laser-focused on addressing climate change—as they should be. Meanwhile, this summer’s soaring gasoline prices show that US dependence on foreign oil continues to be a...
View ArticleCRISPR’s Icarus
The documentary Make People Better is the result of three years of work by a team that witnessed the dawning of human genome editing using CRISPR, a breakthrough technique for precisely editing… Read...
View ArticleCollaborate for the Future
National science policy reflects a country’s sense of its internal and external challenges and its place in the world. Since the end of World War II, US science policy has embodied the… Read More The...
View ArticleDisaster Response Must Help Protect LGBTQ+ Communities
In late September 2022, as Tropical Storm Ian intensified into a hurricane, someone threw a brick through the front door of the Pride Community Center of North Central Florida in Gainesville. The… Read...
View ArticleThe Camouflaged Metaphysics of Embryos
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…...
View ArticleMaking the Most of the “Ethical and Societal Considerations” in the CHIPS and...
At its passage, the CHIPS and Science Act promised, among other goals, a sea change in research and development funding in the United States. Almost immediately, following the Democrats’ loss of the…...
View ArticleNo Ordinary Documentary
In 2017, Brian Wallach, a lawyer from Washington, DC, was told he had half a year to live after being diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. It’s now six years and… Read More The post No...
View ArticleThe Slippery Slope of Scientific Ethics
Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer, based on the life of the physicist known as the father of the atomic bomb, has surpassed blockbuster status to become a cultural juggernaut. It has spawned… Read...
View ArticlePreparing Researchers for an Era of Freer Information
If you Google my name along with “Monsanto,” you will find a series of allegations from 2013 that my scholarly work at the University of Saskatchewan, focused on technological change in the… Read More...
View ArticleStitches and STEM
When I was about eight years old, my grandmother took me to a local fabric store to pick out a pattern for a dress we could sew together. Piecing together the brown… Read More The post Stitches and...
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