There’s one big subject our leaders at Cop27 won’t touch: livestock farming
It’s on course to guzzle half the world’s carbon budget, so why are governments so afraid to discuss it?
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It’s on course to guzzle half the world’s carbon budget, so why are governments so afraid to discuss it?
In this article, the Oppenheimer Generations Research and Conservation team's Dr Duncan MacFadyen and Rendani Nenguda write about the technical reports developed through the African Group of Negotiators Expert Support, which provides an armful of scientific evidence to underpin Africa's case at COP27.
Oliver Müller's brief tenure at the technology giant taught him that many skills acquired in academia are highly valued.
The European Innovation Council's (EIC) future will involve more horizon scanning, intelligence and strategy, according to a programme manager responsible for scoping the potential for technological and innovation breakthroughs and for directing EIC health-related projects, to ensure there is a coherent plan that will support development of a competitive sector.
Is there an entrenched stasis in scholarly communication in which the core elements of the system have not been much moved by the revolutions happening around us?
The world's richest man promises more than he has delivered. His social network purchase is likely to go the same way
The authors critically discuss their experience as guest editors for a Frontiers journal. They aim to foster open scholarly debate about Frontiers publishing practices, triggered by Frontiers hindering such debate on their own pages.
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are not a priority for research in high-income countries. That must change.
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 …
Does forcing students to mandatorily publish a research paper before thesis submission lead to a high-quality PhD thesis, or does high-quality PhD work lead to publications in good journals? This question is unlike the chicken...
Magic mushrooms are no magic cure for society's ills, and a substance as powerful as psychedelics can be dangerous if it falls into the wrong hands
This year's winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics were driven by curiosity, skill, and tenacity.
The way that the global north pays for publishing hampers public, scholar-led efforts in Latin America.
Back in the 60s, the Outer Space Treaty provided us with an assurance of peace and security in the Cold War space race. So much has changed since then - so why hasn't the treaty, asks DW's Zulfikar Abbany.
Nature's recent efforts to redefine the ethical responsibilities of scientists leave a lot to be desired.
Internships and work-integrated learning for social sciences and humanities students can be part of how post-secondary institutions increase their capacities to contribute to social innovation.
The director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy plays a critical role in achieving the president's science goals. Facilitating cooperation among the dozens of research agencies is key.
When programmes expand, new complexities and indirect consequences must be studied.
Funders must make pragmatism prestigious; the current obsession with novelty risks making science irrelevant.
More funders should consider using randomization to choose grant recipients when decisions are too close to call.
Does trust in research begin with trust in peer review across the whole ecosystem, and what does that look like for different communities and stakeholders?
Beyond ideological boundaries, the Open Science movement should address the question of whether and, if so, under which framework conditions “closeness” can be appropriate in global, political crises. Openness must not be abused to place sanctions in global, political crises by closing open offers.