Anne Glover's science advisor role reinstated
The European Commission has agreed to retain the role of EU Chief Scientific Adviser, despite the departure of Anne Glover.
Lessons from researcher rehab
Common compliance situations can get good researchers into trouble, warn James M. DuBois and colleagues.
Notes From an Academic Paper Mill
As someone with a deep appreciation of education and expertise, it’s troubling to know that college is just one more locus of skulduggery, veiled and overt.
A Nobel Opportunity for Interdisciplinarity
Despite the growing interdisciplinarity of research, the Nobel prize consolidates the traditional disciplinary categorization of science. There is, in fact, an opportunity for the most revered scientific reward to mirror the current research landscape.
Scientists Are Just Beginning to Understand Mysterious DNA Circles Common in Cancer Cells
India's Plan to Pay Journal Subscription Fees for All Its Citizen May End Up Making Science Harder to Access
India's Plan to Pay Journal Subscription Fees for All Its Citizen May End Up Making Science Harder to Access
All modern scientists should share ownership of their knowledge and research.
Reform the Way the World Works Together - or Doesn't - on R&D
What the Manhattan Project's scientific director J. Robert Oppenheimer and his physicist-colleagues went through after the war holds lessons for us today, hoping for the end of our own generation's global crisis.
US Set to Close Office Responsible for Global Science and Technology Deals
Cuts at the US Department of State could eliminate the office that negotiates science and technology agreements, including with Europe, throwing into confusion the future of global research cooperation with Washington and access for US scientists to international facilities. Three people who work for the State Department have told Science|Business that the office, which oversees nearly 60 agreements and more than 2,000 sub agreements, is set to be eliminated.
Open letter to Mr. Juncker
Letter urging to support for the post of Chief Scientific Adviser to the European Commission President.
A Prescription for Better Science (and Better Science Journalism)
In a sweeping manifesto, researchers from the U.S. and Europe have proposed some fixes for vetting published science. It might help science journalism, too.
Thousands of Academics Spurn Nature’s New Paid-Access Machine Learning Journal
Nature has just announce plans to create a Machine Intelligence imprint, and researchers in this normally open access field are not happy. Over two thousand have signed a statement saying they won’t publish in it.
PhD Viva Rule is ‘unfair on Female Academics’
New rules requiring a female presence on doctoral defence panels at the University of Glasgow will push more ‘unrewarded’ academic tasks on to women, critics claim.
Politicians and R&D Funders 'Finally Pushing in Same Direction' on Science Publishing
Politicians and R&D Funders 'Finally Pushing in Same Direction' on Science Publishing
A major push by science funding agencies in Europe to make the research they back freely available at the point of publication is the world's best chance of fundamentally altering scientific publishing, says the new coordinator of Plan S, Johan Rooryck.
An Unsung Female Pioneer of Computer Simulation
A mid-20th-century computer experiment created a new field of science—and programmer Mary Tsingou Menzel is finally being given credit for her role in making it happen
The Trap of Securitizing Science
In response to China's rise, Western governments are acting to limit scientific collaboration but this may hurt science and the economy.
New Trends in Open Access Publications
The quality of scientific publications will benefit from a revolution in the peer review models.
Preprints Promote Transparency and Communication
The potential of preprints to drive scientific understanding and innovation, and even support good journalism.
Inside a “Fake” Conference: A Journey Into Predatory Science
Science journalist attends a predatory conference and interviews scientists involved.
Making Better Use of Natural Experimental Evaluation in Population Health
Rather than arguing about the suitability of natural experimental methods to inform decisions we need to focus on refining their scope and design, say Peter Craig and colleagues Natural experiments have long been used as opportunities to evaluate the health impacts of policies, programmes, and other interventions. Defined in the UK Medical Research Council's guidance as events outside the control of researchers that divide populations into exposed and unexposed groups, natural experiments have greatly contributed to the evidence base for tobacco and air pollution control, suicide prevention, and other important areas of public health policy.1 Although randomised controlled trials are often viewed as the best source of evidence because they have less risk of bias, reliance on them as the only source of credible evidence has begun to shift for several reasons. Firstly, policy makers are increasingly looking for evidence about "what works" to tackle pervasive and complex problems, including the social determinants of health,23 and these are hard to examine in randomised trials. In Scotland, for example, legislation to introduce a minimum retail price per unit of alcohol included a sunset clause, which means that the measure will lapse after six years unless evidence is produced that it works. This has resulted in multiple evaluations, including natural experimental studies using geographical or historical comparator groups.4 Similarly, the US National Institutes of Health has called for greater use of natural experimental methods to understand how to prevent obesity,5 and a consortium of European academies for their greater use to understand policies and interventions to reduce health inequalities.3 Secondly, a wider range of analytical methods developed within other disciplines, mostly by economists or other social or political scientists, are being increasingly applied to good effect. A good example is the use of synthetic control methods …
Precision Medicine Initiative moves forward
The NIH Advisory Committee to the Director issued recommendations laying out a blueprint for the Obama Administration's precision medicine initiative, including the framework for building a large-scale, national research cohort of 1 million or more Americans.
Data Sharing Can Offer Help in Science's Reproducibility Crisis
A team of researchers suggest that the increasing complexity of managing data may be one reason that reproducibility has fallen off.
Elsevier Strikes Its First National Deal with Large Open-access Element
Agreement with Norwegian consortium allows researchers to make the vast majority of their work free to read on publication in Elsevier journals.
COVID-19 Changed How the World Does Science, Together
Never before, scientists say, have so many of the world's researchers focused so urgently on a single topic. Nearly all other research has ground to a halt.
Donald Trump's Lack of Respect for Science Is Alarming
The U.S. presidential election shows how far the political conversation has degenerated from the nation's founding principles of truth and evidence.
Important, Widely Used and Well-Reported Datasets
Because sharing underlying data is essential for accelerating scientific advances and maximizing the value of research.
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