June 1, 2021
When It Comes to Public Policy, ‘following the Science’ Is More Complicated Than It Sounds
Scientific evidence is vital to public policy, but science does not offer a repository of neutral evidence that arrives ready-made onto the political scene. Using science to make policy decisions is complex, requiring not only expert judgment but also the judgment of those nonexperts whose experience, knowledge, and know-how is needed to deliberate well about…
May 30, 2021
Congress Must Reassert Its Role in Science and Technology Policy
Earlier this year, Congress held a hearing to consider ways of addressing the “brain drain” in the federal scientific workforce. Calls like this to equip government with more and better expertise are a response to the gap between our elected officials’ technical capacity and the importance of science and technology for society as a whole….
May 28, 2021
Funding Isn’t Enough to Fix Science
The Senate just spent a fevered 72 hours debating the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, a bipartisan piece of legislation that aims to spur American innovation and bolster our competitiveness in science and technology by authorizing over $100 billion for federal research and development (R&D). With bipartisan support and the backing of the White House —…
May 6, 2021
Why the Federal Government Must Put More Money Toward Basic Science
A consensus is forming in Washington that the federal government is not doing enough to help American innovation. New research suggests that federal underinvestment is contributing to sluggish productivity and eroding America’s global competitiveness. Current public spending on research and development (R&D) stands at roughly $130 billion — dwarfed by the private sector’s more than $450 billion. This is…
April 15, 2021
To Reshape Federal Science Funding, Lawmakers Should Look to the Past
With the end of the war against COVID-19 now in sight, the National Science Foundation has become a battleground in the fight over the future of federal science funding. Tucked away in President Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan is a $50 billion funding increase for the National Science Foundation (NSF) — over $40 billion more than the…
January 28, 2021
The Case Against ‘STEM’
Among the more influential truisms about science today is that it is essential for technological — and thus economic — progress. It is fitting, then, that the apparent slowing of American innovation has fueled a debate about the importance of science and the need for the federal government to support it. Indeed, there is growing…
January 26, 2021
Basic Science Helped Us Win World War II. It’s Also Why We’ll Defeat COVID-19
President Biden has announced a “full-scale wartime effort” to vaccinate the American people against the coronavirus. This is hardly the first time our struggle against the pandemic has been likened to warfare. Operation Warp Speed, the public-private partnership that helped spur the invention of two COVID-19 vaccines last year, has often been compared to the government’s programs during World…
January 21, 2021
COVID-19 Vaccines: An Overnight Success Decades in the Making
After decades of being told it takes years to produce new drugs, we’ve now been spoiled by the magicians in pharma who invented multiple COVID-19 vaccines in mere months. Policy-makers and pundits will expect no less from technology in the future. And not just for diseases, but for all manner of societal challenges, from cancer to…