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Just How Historic Is the Latest Covid-19 Science Meltdown?
Don't blame last week's journal retractions on the scary pace of the pandemic. "Once-in-a-lifetime" scandals like this seem to happen all the time.
Yet Another Consequence of the Pandemic: More Plastic Waste
This new normal means mountains of single-use plastic-and few places to put it but the dump.
The Face Mask Debate Reveals a Scientific Double Standard
No one complained about the lack of evidence for 20-second hand-washing. So why did we treat face masks differently?
The Asian Countries That Beat Covid-19 Have to Do It Again
Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan had flattened the curve. Then travelers from the US and Europe began reimporting the virus.
How ProMED Crowdsourced the Arrival of Covid-19 and SARS
The low-tech site run by health experts collects reports of new diseases in real time. They've got a shoestring budget-and a stunning track record.
The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What's Coming
Epidemiologist Larry Brilliant, who warned of pandemic in 2006, says we can beat the novel coronavirus-but first, we need lots more testing.
Data Sharing and Open Source Software Help Combat Covid-19
Scientists are rapidly analyzing genetic samples from infected patients and sharing the data. But to move too fast is to risk making mistakes.
Global Officials Call for Free Access to Covid-19 Research
Government science advisers in a dozen countries are asking scientific journals to make data on the disease more widely available.
How to Work From Home Without Losing Your Mind
Coronavirus concerns have some businesses urging employees to work from home. If you're telecommuting, for public health reasons or otherwise, remember: Boundaries are your friend.
Science Conferences Are Stuck in the Dark Ages
Exhausting, expensive, and exclusive, these conferences needs to be modernized. The future of science depends on it.
Amazon Joins Tech's Great Quantum Computing Race
The company's AWS unit will allow customers to tap quantum machines from three startups.
We're All 'P-Hacking' Now
An insiders' term for scientific malpractice has worked its way into pop culture. Is that a good thing?
The Internet Archive Is Making Wikipedia More Reliable
The operator of the Wayback Machine allows Wikipedia's users to check citations from books as well as the web.
A Cow, a Controversy, and a Dashed Dream of More Humane Farms
The gene-edited bull was a marvel, with calves who'd inherited his trait. But a surprise in his DNA ignited a scientific feud and doomed them all.
Artificial Intelligence Confronts a 'Reproducibility' Crisis
Machine-learning systems are black boxes even to the researchers that build them. That makes it hard for others to assess the results.
Actually, Gender-Neutral Pronouns Can Change a Culture
In 2012 a nongendered pronoun dropped into Swedish discourse. Today it's widely used-and it's nudging people to see the world a little differently.
DeepMind's Losses and the Future of Artificial Intelligence
Alphabet's DeepMind unit, conqueror of Go and other games, is losing lots of money. Continued deficits could imperil investments in AI.
A Crashed Israeli Spacecraft Spilled Tardigrades on the Moon
The Beresheet lunar lander carried thousands of books, DNA samples, and a few thousand water bears to the moon. But did any of it survive the crash?
Algorithms Are Now Shockingly Good at Doing Science
Whether probing the evolution of galaxies or discovering new chemical compounds, algorithms are detecting patterns no humans could have spotted.
Darpa Wants to Solve Science's Reproducibility Crisis With AI
Social science has an image problem - too many findings don't hold up. A new project will crank through 30,000 studies to try to identify red flags.
We Won't Know if Screen Time is a Hazard Until Facebook Comes Clean
Facebook's research app shows big tech can't be trusted to conduct research on its users. To get real answers about how tech impacts us, social media firms need to give their data to external scientists.
James Watson and the Insidiousness of Scientific Racism
Opinion: Black scientists are in the best position to understand what is so broken about the ideas of Watson and his army.
One Couple's Tireless Crusade to Stop a Genetic Killer
When Sonia Vallabh lost her mother to a rare disease, she and her husband, Eric Minikel, set out to find a cure.
The Quest to Topple Science-Stymying Academic Paywalls
Scientific publishers charge so much that even Harvard can't afford it anymore. A new publishing infrastructure could help.
The House Science Committee May Soon Become... Pro-Science
House Science Committee Chairman Rep. Lamar Smith retired this year and Democrats won control of the House on Tuesday. Now some on Capitol Hill say that the anti-climate science spell may be broken.
