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August 29, 2025
Writing almost 20 years ago, science policy scholar Dan Sarewitz made a remarkable observation about federal support for research and development (R&D):1 Sarewitz argued that the long-term stability in R&D funding can be traced, in part, to a bipartisan consensus that R&D, especially support for basic research, was broadly in the public interest. He explained: [T]he political…
August 27, 2025
Tracking the fate of Mississippi’s age-verification and parental-consent law for social media account holders in the face of a First Amendment challenge in NetChoice v. Fitch is like watching a ping-pong game between the trial and appellate courts. Observing the judicial back-and-forth also proves maddening because sometimes, when Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch prevails against…
August 26, 2025
Last week, Hurricane Erin was a massive Category 5 storm that shot the gap between the U.S. east coast and Bermuda before heading out to sea. Imagine an alternative universe, where Erin’s track was just a bit further west — tracking over Miami, along the U.S. east coast, and then making a direct hit on…
August 25, 2025
Since the George W. Bush administration and under both parties, the White House has focused on scientific integrity. However, Republicans and Democrats have conflicting views on what that means. For Democrats, scientific integrity centers on protecting government scientists and the science that they conduct from political interference from higher-ups. For Republicans — who under President Trump…
August 25, 2025
This paper is part of AEI’s Center for Technology, Science, and Energy’s (CTSE) Science, Industry, and the State Project Key Points Executive Summary In the past decade, two compelling changes have occurred that call for revisiting the old debate of open markets versus industrial policy: China’s increasing economic role and political aggressiveness and the growing…
August 22, 2025
Life would be impossible without experts — doctors help us when we get sick, mechanics fix our cars when they break down, farmers produce our food, to name just a few. But we live in a time when too many of these roles have become politicized. President Trump recently fired the head of the Bureau of…
August 22, 2025
When someone attacks your democracy, it tends to stick in your craw. I don’t know that democracy is the last, best way to arrange human affairs, but if we’re going to have a democracy, participants in it should stick to the rules. If they don’t, the tradition of tit for tat in politics suggests a…
August 22, 2025
There was much angst surrounding AI as it loomed as a potential part of daily life, even among the so-called AI experts. But is it warranted? Physicist Niels Bohr is famously reputed to have said, “prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.” And decision scientist Philip Tetlock confirms this sentiment, claiming that most experts…
August 21, 2025
Carole Hooven, evolutionary biologist and nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, joins Jonah Goldberg to discuss the differences between gender and sex, homosexuality in the animal kingdom, and epigenetics.
August 21, 2025
Agentic AI, or automated systems that are capable of completing tasks and making decisions without human intervention, requires interoperability to remain innovative and competitive. But what does this degree of data access mean for user privacy? And how can this technology provide us with greater agency over our lives? In this episode of Explain to…