Meanwhile 80 percent of all antibiotics sold in the U.S. are given to cattle and other food animals, so legislators like Rep. Louise Slaughter (DN.Y.) On the question of editorial bias and transparency, our respondents were surprisingly divided. So we sent scientists a survey asking this simple question: If you could change one thing about how science works today, what would it be and why? Only 16 had ever been successfully replicated. Assisted suicide is now legal in Montana, Vermont, Washington State and California as well as Oregonand 20 other states and the District of Columbia are considering the move. Obesity now affects more than a third of American adults. But that only goes so far. It "nudges us to emphasize safe, predictable (read: fundable) science.". "The paper peer review takes forever, and this hurts the scientists who are trying to put their results quickly into the public domain.". Similar efforts are being made to ban so-called microbeadstiny plastics manufactured for use in soaps and cosmetics. Theres constant pressure to develop the land surrounding parks, says Kristen Brengel, vice president of government affairs at the National Parks Conservation Association. DNA analysis indicates the world's most common bee originated in northern Europe around 780,000 years ago, before spreading into East Africa and Arabia around 120,000 years later. Please also read our Privacy Notice and Terms of Use, which became effective December 20, 2019. As reporters covering medicine, psychology, climate change, and other areas of research, we wanted to understand this epidemic of doubt. Replicating results is crucial. If you ever want to see a perfect example of this, check out "Kill or Cure," a site where Paul Battley meticulously documents all the times the Daily Mail reported that various items from antacids to yogurt either cause cancer, prevent cancer, or sometimes do both. If you also believe that everyone deserves access to trusted high-quality information, will you make a gift to Vox today. They are situations that require solutions; they hold difficulties that need to be resolved. "Imagine," he asks, "what they could do with more time to devote to teaching and research?". But the way incentives are set up can distort research. After Hurricane Sandy in 2012, for example, New York City helped rebuild more than 10,000 houses, but bought fewer than a thousand.Meaghan Lee Callaghan. Researchers take an older study that they want to test and then try to reproduce it to see if the findings hold up. Instead, they said, reporters ought to put new research findings in context, and pay more attention to the rigor of a study's methodology than to the splashiness of the end results. When it comes to published results, meanwhile, many of our respondents wanted to see more journals put a greater emphasis on rigorous methods and processes rather than splashy results. By choosing I Accept, you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Experts say we should also try to prevent the spread of infections in the first placeby encouraging hand washing and safe cooking practices.Elyssa Bernfeld. (+1) 202-419-4300 | Main And almost one in five children are now obese, detracting from their self-esteem, emotional well-being and health. The following are illustrative . Tuberculosis. China, India, Pakistan and Israel all have nuclear weapons. There are also some ideas out there to minimize conflicts of interest from industry funding. "I feel torn between asking questions that I know will lead to statistical significance and asking questions that matter," says Kathryn Bradshaw, a 27-year-old graduate student of counseling at the University of North Dakota. And its getting better in many ways. That needs to change. Too much is locked away in paywalled journals, difficult and costly to access, they said. Joanna Thompson Most news outlets make their money through advertising or subscriptions. As plastics fill up and pollute our oceans, recognising their value rather than thinking of them as disposable could help us deal with what has turned into a large, global problem Solving this wont be easy, but it is at the root of many of the issues discussed above. The Sistema Huautla in Oaxaca is the 10th deepest cave on Earth, and a explorers with a 2023 expedition to map the system have added over 700 feet to its length. But scientific research could liberate the issue from politics. Many of our respondents urged their peers to publish in open access journals (along the lines of PeerJ or PLOS Biology). "The review process is [a form of] certification, and that a paper is done." You can also contribute via. Last year in Paris the U.S. was one of 191 countries to sign a global agreement to slash the emissions that fuel climate change. The second problem is that many studies can be difficult to replicate. These responses often came from tenured scientists who loved their jobs but wanted to make the broader scientific project even better. 0:00. Fewer studies share effect sizes (which arguably gives a better indication of how meaningful a result might be) or discuss measures of uncertainty. Genetic engineering, also known as gene editing, has been used for years to enhance agriculture and treat disease. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Science is rarely practiced to that ideal. In 2015, the University of Maryland issued a press release claiming that a single brand of chocolate milk could improve concussion recovery. (Just check out the popular #SixWordPeerReview hashtag on Twitter). In Flint, Mich., thousands of children live with brain damage because lead from aging pipes leached into their drinking water. It was an historic moment, but the hard work is yet to come: figuring out how to reduce the countrys greenhouse gases to at least 26 percent below 2005 levels within the next nine years. Some respondents also pointed to the mismatch between the number of PhDs produced each year and the number of academic jobs available. Territorial battles among the states hold up necessary permits, leading to delays in connecting the isolated segments of the energy grid, according to policy expert Jules Kortenhorst, CEO of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a nonprofit research center in Colorado. Posted: June 6, 2022 Want to make a positive impact in the world, but not sure where to start? More transparency would also help, writes Daniel Simons, a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois. Already, much of nutrition science, for instance, is funded by the food industry an inherent conflict of interest. Thats why, even though advertising is still our biggest source of revenue, we also seek grants and reader support. But it wont erase the shortfall. To that end, here are some broad suggestions: One: Science has to acknowledge and address its money problem. Experts say easily disprovable narratives about the . A system like this would give scientists greater freedom to take risks with their work. Americas national parks and forests are facing many challenges. "The scientific publishing field particularly in the biological sciences acts like there is no internet," says Lakshmi Jayashankar, a senior scientific reviewer with the federal government. Climate change hasn't always been so polarizing and even today relatively few Americans deny global warming is real. While it's hardly a comprehensive discussion, it's a solid introduction to the kinds of concerns facing our world today. To that end, Scientific American corralled some of the key scientific issues that U.S. politicians should be paying attention to, but arentfrom the threat of nuclear Armageddon to the ethics of medically assisted suicide. Scientists face few incentives to engage in the slog of replication. See the work of meta-researchers who study and evaluate research a field that has gained prominence over the past 20 years. Researchers believe the creature, named Nihohae matakoi, used its horizontal teeth to thrash at prey before gulping it down. Helium is the simplest element in the periodic table with more than one particle in its nucleus, yet state of the art theory and experiments on it don't add up. And the vast majority of drug clinical trials are funded by drugmakers. Young scientists, after all, are by definition the future of science. "One format, one platform. (The site now holds information for more than 180,000 studies in 180 countries.). Four people in Florida and one person in Texas recently caught malaria within the U.S. (A 2012 paper found that female job applicants in academia are judged more harshly and are offered less money than males.) Repeat. This lack of flexibility tends to disproportionately affect women especially women planning to have families which helps contribute to gender inequalities in research. The problem here is that truly groundbreaking findings simply dont occur very often, which means scientists face pressure to game their studies so they turn out to be a little more "revolutionary." This is hardly an exhaustive list. Postdocs typically work long hours and are relatively low-paid for their level of education salaries are frequently pegged to stipends set by NIH National Research Service Award grants, which start at $43,692 and rise to $47,268 in year three. Plastic bags, balloons and six-pack rings pose known dangers to birds, sea turtles and other wildlife. The truth is, whether you want gun rights or you support gun control, you should want these kinds of detailed academic, scientifically rigorous studies, says Adam Winkler, a constitutional law expert at the University of California, Los Angeles. For now, experts say, the best approach is to suggest, not require. Part of the Obama administrations solutiondubbed the Clean Power Planwould require power plants to limit their emissions, but it has been blocked both by the Republican-controlled Congress and the Supreme Court. are turning their attention to the farmyard. Graduate schools could offer more generous family leave policies and child care for graduate students. Plenty of our respondents wished that more science journalists would move away from hyping single studies. Severe droughts in the western states threaten water supplies for some 43 million people. ", "As it stands, too much of the research funding is going to too few of the researchers," writes Gordon Pennycook, a PhD candidate in cognitive psychology at the University of Waterloo. Their comments deserve a section of their own. Scientists need to publish the methods and findings more fully, and share their raw data in ways that are easily accessible and digestible for those who may want to reanalyze or replicate their findings. But Copernicus believed in that ideal. Or, as a 2014 piece in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences put it: "The current system is in perpetual disequilibrium, because it will inevitably generate an ever-increasing supply of scientists vying for a finite set of research resources and employment opportunities. Science under Scrutiny: The Problem of Reproducibility. Climate change has gotten little attention during this presidential election season. Our World | December 17, 2014 10 Mysteries Of Our World That Science Finally Solved by Heather fact checked by Jamie Frater Scientists have been baffled for years by the mysteries of our world, from giant movements under the ocean to how the oceans themselves originated. "It's not a first-world problem and it's not a Western-world problem." -- Punith Kempegowda, MBBS, MD, PhD, MSc, of the University of Birmingham in England . Most attempts at national renewable energy policy take this geographic variability into account, allowing states to develop individualized portfolios while adhering to strict standards that increase over time. We should be maintaining them, says Bonner Cohen, senior fellow at The National Center for Public Policy Research.Samantha Lee. Astronomy A star cluster in the Milky Way appears to be as old as the universe By Lisa Grossman June 23, 2023 Life 1.6-billion-year-old steroid fossils hint at a lost world of microbial life By. "It seems wrong to me that taxpayers pay for research at government labs and universities but do not usually have access to the results of these studies, since they are behind paywalls of peer-reviewed journals," added Melinda Simon, a postdoc microfluidics researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. To be more competitive for grants, scientists have to have published work. Any amount helps. Nuclear war is no longer a two-player game, as it largely was during the cold war, with the U.S. and NATO facing off against the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact. The massive problem of microplastics. Wind and solar power produced a combined 252 terawatt-hours in the first five months of 2023, compared with coal's output of 249 TWh. Drinking water is a basic human need, says Erin Derrington, a Pacific Northwestbased environmental consultant who specializes in wetlands. 7 likes, 0 comments - ABC Home and Commercial Services (@houstonanteater) on Instagram: " It's World Pest Day! There is significant discomfort among Americans with the idea of AI being used in their own health care. For example, he has argued, psychologists could conduct small experiments with a handful of participants to form ideas and generate hypotheses. As it stands, researchers are encouraged to publish new and positive results and to allow negative results to linger in their laptops or file drawers. "This causes a conflict of interest: The scientist is in charge of evaluating the hypothesis, but the scientist also desperately wants the hypothesis to be true.". An underwater implosion refers to the sudden inward collapse of the vessel, which would have been under immense pressure at the depths it was diving toward. Today, health services in all regions are struggling to both tackle COVID-19, and provide people with vital care. 2020 was a devastating year for global health. The consequences are staggering. 2023 Scientific American, a Division of Springer Nature America, Inc. SEE ALSO: There, the articles are sorted and commented on by a community of moderators, providing another chance to filter problems before they make it to peer review. Meanwhile private groups are taking their own steps to protect the nations public lands. Scientists often learn more from studies that fail. In recent years legislators have stymied attempts to increase park funding and pushed for privatization of publicly owned lands. In this election season science and health have taken a backseat. Funding will always be finite, and researchers will never get blank checks to fund the risky science projects of their dreams. "If they go for online only, the costs for web hosting, copy-editing, and advertising (if needed) can be easily paid out of membership fees.". This could include more robust sharing of methods in published research papers. Now public health expertsincluding the American Medical Association, which put out a statement in Junewant the government to take a similar approach to gun violence, which is responsible for more than 30,000 deaths a year. USA TODAY. Jon-Patrick Allem, a social scientist at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, noted that funding agencies prefer to support projects that find new information instead of confirming old results. Most policy experts agree that Obamas power plan is the best tool to meet the nations emissions reduction target. Example The reasons for this are complex and can't be solved overnight. Quite a few respondents in our survey expressed frustration at how science gets relayed to the public. Another idea would be to change how grants are awarded: Foundations and agencies could fund specific people and labs for a period of time rather than individual project proposals. "This tends to hide a lot of the thought process that went into making the discoveries. In the US, the largest source of funding is the federal government, and that pool of money has been plateauing for years, while young scientists enter the workforce at a faster rate than older scientists retire. Outside grants are also in increasingly short supply. U.S. adults are less confident in COVID-19 vaccines: Fewer than half rate them as having high health benefits and a low risk of side effects. Others contend that, given the huge differences in natural resources around the country, it makes sense for states to retain flexibility on how to meet their energy needs. The reporters are students in Emily Laber-Warren's science journalism class at the C.U.N.Y. Nosek has detailed other potential fixes that might help with replication all part of his work at the Center for Open Science. Support our mission by making a gift today. In Gen Ed courses, students examine urgent problems we face today and enduring questions that humanity has grappled with for millennia. Aesthetics & Culture. Scientists studied the fossilized teeth of megalodon and determined that the jumbo-size extinct species of shark was warm-blooded. "I think because you have to publish to keep your job and keep funding agencies happy, there are a lot of (mediocre) scientific papers out there with not much new science presented," writes Kaitlyn Suski, a chemistry and atmospheric science postdoc at Colorado State University. Increasingly, meta-researchers (who conduct research on research) are realizing that scientists often do find little ways to hype up their own results and theyre not always doing it consciously.
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