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July 21, 2023
The Masking Debate We Didn’t Have
“Mask Up DC” signs are still visible in the windows of some businesses around Washington, D.C. Are these signs public-health recommendations based on science, or just outdated reminders of a bygone pandemic era? Or could they be relics of a time when many mistakenly believed that masks were actually protecting us? That is the conclusion…
April 26, 2023
What Does “Scientific Progress” Mean, Anyway?
Last year, Congress passed the CHIPS and Science Act, which, besides shoring up the American semiconductor industry, also significantly increased federal spending on scientific research. Both the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation came away with substantial boosts. The “and Science” part of the bill comes from the Endless Frontier Act, a bipartisan proposal from early…
March 14, 2023
No One Is in Control
In 1878, a wave of yellow fever swept through the American South and spread out through the Mississippi River Valley. Along with cholera, “yellow jack,” as it was known—after the yellow quarantine flags displayed on ships afflicted by the contagion—had long been a scourge of the American South. As far back as the 1790s, Congress…
October 24, 2022
Saving Liberalism from Itself
The Crisis of Liberalism Liberalism is in crisis. Its defenders, who see liberalism as a bulwark against tyranny, fear that illiberalism now threatens to overwhelm liberal democracy. Its critics, who say liberalism is a failure that erodes community and tradition, welcome a “post-liberal” order. Today’s liberalism debate gives the false impression that this crisis is…
September 26, 2022
Biden’s Rule-Breaking Integrity Official
A Biden administration official whose job is to ensure the “integrity” of government science has an integrity problem of her own. Last month the National Academy of Sciences suspended environmental scientist Jane Lubchenco for violating basic principles of research integrity. Despite this disciplinary action from one of the most prestigious science organizations in the world—and her own…
August 11, 2022
Enthusiasm for the CHIPS and Science Act Is Overblown
Will the CHIPS and Science Act be an inflection point for the U.S. scientific enterprise? The often overlooked “science” portion of the new bill is the culmination of one of the core legislative priorities of Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Todd Young (R-IN): the Endless Frontier Act (EFA)—an attempt to jumpstart American science and innovation…
July 29, 2022
A New Policy Chief Brings Order and Stability to Biden’s Science Agenda
After two years of controversy and turmoil, President Biden’s federal science agenda finally may be getting back on track. The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation just voted to advance the confirmation of Dr. , the nominee to fill Biden’s only empty cabinet position — director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and…
June 30, 2022
5 Questions for Tony Mills on Federal Science Policy
Early in his presidency, Joe Biden promised to be a leader on science policy with proposals for new advanced research projects agencies centering on biomedical and climate research. And now, working their way through Congress are two bills designed to boost federal support for scientific research, the America COMPETES Act and US Innovation and Competition…
June 23, 2022
Metascience, R&D, and Federal Research Spending: My Long-Read Q&A with Tony Mills
When America endeavors to tackle an ambitious project, we speak in terms of moonshots or a “Manhattan Project for X.” The assumption is that vast government resources, directed toward some objective, can yield results on the scale of the Moon landing or the atom bomb. But federal research funding is more complicated than throwing dollars at…
March 28, 2022
Illiberalism’s True Colors
Nineteen-fifty-six—when the Soviet Union invaded Hungary—was, according to the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, the year “British communists lived on the edge of the political equivalent of a collective nervous breakdown.” If 2016 did not constitute such a year for conservatives in the West, then perhaps 2022—when Vladimir Putin’s Russia invaded Ukraine—will, at least for those…