For Yet Better Science

Questions for scholars who do field research with indigenous communities: "Whose research is it? Who owns it? Whose interests does it serve? Who will benefit from it? Who has designed its questions and framed its scope? Who will carry it out? Who will write it up? How will its results be disseminated?" Often these questions and the issues they raise are seen as a nuisance.

In fast-paced crises like COVID-19, making use of scientific discovery in policymaking is challenging. We should learn the lessons of the current pandemic to make science a better partner to decision-makers in future crises, Sandro Galea writes.

India's research output and patent numbers have increased in the recent years as the government opens up to collaborations with the private sector. But more spending on research and development has not translated to improvement in scientific communications, a   report   suggests. The report by a private group Impact Science points out that while in many countries the public communication of science has changed from a “virtue to a duty”, the public knowledge about what research institutions do and what factors drive their ‘going public’ is very limited in India.

Start conversations grounded in science - our vaccine education guide is a great springboard for credible information about vaccines, gathered from reputable sources.  

The internet doesn’t turn people into assholes so much as it acts as a  massive megaphone for existing ones , according to work by researchers at Aarhus University. Researchers used representative surveys and behavioral studies from the U.S. and Denmark to establish the reason why people broadly perceive the online environment as more hostile than offline interaction.  

Svante Pääbo  “for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution”  

Carolyn R. Bertozzi ,  Morten Meldal  and  K. Barry Sharpless  “for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry”  

Alain Aspect ,  John F. Clauser  and  Anton Zeilinger  “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science”  

The science of science (SciSci) is based on a transdisciplinary approach that uses large data sets to study the mechanisms underlying the doing of science—from the choice of a research problem to career trajectories and progress within a field. This Review explains  that the underlying rationale is that with a deeper understanding of the precursors of impactful science, it will be possible to develop systems and policies that improve each scientist's ability to succeed and enhance the prospects of science as a whole.  

Here, we outline 16 tools  for science  that are causing us to rethink the boundaries  of scientific  research.