Science advances by the free exchange of ideas. New ones are put forward and pitted against existing ones, and fights are fought with rational arguments. Scientists tend to take this freedom for granted, and carry it over to other fields, such as politics, where challenging prevailing opinion goes under the name of dissent, and may be much […]
On the other side of the sun, an interplanetary heist is afoot. Next week NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will make a daring attempt to steal samples from the surface of an asteroid, dodging giant boulders and other hazards in the process. If all goes well, it will then make the long journey back home, returning the […]
Science has long considered itself to be an apolitical enterprise. But in the midst of a global pandemic and with the 2020 election looming, some scientific institutions and elite journals have suddenly become willing to take a political stance against President Donald Trump and his allies. On October 8, for instance, the New England Journal […]
In 1945, as World War II came to a close, scientists logged a record drop in carbon dioxide emissions. They reckoned that global CO2 emissions fell by some 790 million metric tons—a record that stood for more than 70 years. Then 2020 rolled around. Global emissions fell 1,550 million metric tons in the first half […]
The human eye is a limited organ. The portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that we can see is about 0.0035 percent of the total light in the universe. Without any aid, a normal human eye with 20/20 vision can clearly view up to only about five kilometers (about three miles) in the distance and can […]
Medicine has a long history of erroneous beliefs about biological differences between races. Today this ideology continues in diagnostic algorithms and practice guidelines that are adjusted based on patients’ race—and often lead to further inequities in the health care of nonwhite patients. Now students are working to change these practices, with some successful results. This […]
“Clow-dia,” I say once. Twice. A third time. Defeated, I say the Americanized version of my name: “Claw-dee-ah.” Finally, Siri recognizes it. Having to adapt our way of speaking to interact with speech-recognition technologies is a familiar experience for people whose first language is not English or who do not have conventionally American-sounding names. I […]
Hiral Tipirneni spent nearly a decade working in emergency medicine in Arizona. She started out 23 years ago at Banner Good Samaritan Hospital in downtown Phoenix, treating patients with broken bones, failing hearts and a lot of other problems. Then some health tragedies hit home. “Our family suffered a great loss to cancer: my mom […]
Every time I log onto Facebook, I brace myself. My newsfeed—like everyone else’s I know—is filled with friends, relatives and acquaintances arguing about COVID-19, masks and Trump. Facebook has become a battleground among partisan “echo chambers.” But what is it about social media that makes people so polarized? To find out, my colleagues and I […]
The largest Arctic science expedition in history came to a close yesterday, as the German research vessel Polarstern sailed into the port at Bremerhaven, Germany. The Polarstern spent the past year drifting across the Arctic Ocean, frozen into the sea ice at the top of the world. As it floated across the central Arctic, scientists […]