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Last week, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg announced their new philanthropic initiative with the goal of “curing, preventing, and managing all diseases by the end of the century.” This may raise some eyebrows, but this effort—part of the $45 billion Chan Zuckerberg Initiative—joins forces with other philanthropists to push the envelope and support audacious ideas, with long-term commitments, to solve some of our greatest challenges.
When knowledge is uncertain, experts should avoid pressures to simplify their advice. Render decision-makers accountable for decisions, says Andy Stirling.
A professor of higher education at the University of Pennsylvania talks about why faculty diversity is an important — and elusive — goal.
We can all recognise the ambitious researcher at the conference who is anxious to advertise their own work. It resonates with my current work on academic self-promotion via university profile pages. And I start to wonder, is a new academic habitus beginning to emerge?
A torrent of low-quality meta-analyses and systematic reviews in biomedicine might be hiding valuable research and misleading scientists.
If Zuckerberg and Chan want to get some bang for their buck, they’ll need to break down the structures that hold brilliant young scientists back
For Peer Review Week, researchers from across the spectrum offer advice and insights about how to review research manuscripts
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We don't know what knowledge we'll need in the future, and that's where maths research comes in.
Last week saw the publication of the latest world university rankings. But until the purveyors of these league tables address the uncertainties in their data, no-one knows where they really stand. Opinion piece by Stephen Curry.
The cancer researcher reflects on the 2016 election, his experience as a political adviser, and the difficulties of communicating how science works.
Postdoc positions in industry can teach people skills that they would not learn in academia.
Two and a half years ago now, a narrow majority of the Swiss electorate approved the so-called popular 'Stop Mass Immigration' initiative or MEI proposed by the Swiss People’s Party or SVP...
The peer-review system, despite its flaws, is a central component of the publication process. However, relatively little guidance is provided for early-career scientists on 2 important aspects of peer review:
The solution to science's replication crisis is a new ecosystem in which scientists sell what they learn from their research.
Citation metrics are very influential and their normalization is a contentious issue. Each normalization approach has advantages and disadvantages that need to be understood for proper use of these metrics.
With the right investment, an open source drug discovery system might compete with the traditional pharmaceutical industry to deliver the drugs we need.
A modest developmental biology paper prompts breathless claims of egg-free embryos
Efforts to reduce irreproducibility in research must also tackle the temptation to cheat.
Ask people what’s wrong in American higher education, and you’ll hear about grade inflation.
It's easy to misrepresent the findings from brain scan studies. Just ask a dead salmon.
When you pay for something, you expect to receive it. Whether a physical good or a service, there is the rightful expectation that you will receive something in exchange for your money. The same should be true for scientific research.
