Metascience

On the origin of continentsContinental drift is as fundamental to geology as natural selection is to biology. Why did it take us hundreds of years to discover it?How to lie about radiationDrinking one beer a night for a year is a lot less harmful than drinking 365 beers in one go. The same applies to radiation exposure, but regulation doesn’t agree.The blood cancer that became solvableMultiple myeloma is brutal. We may finally have a cure, but American regulatory inertia means that it was discovered abroad.How bacteria solved the mystery of inheritanceIn the 1940s, scientists made a discovery now fundamental to biology: genes are encoded in DNA. The story involves bacteria, dead mice, and a kitchen cream separator.The slippery protein problemA disease that was once a death sentence is increasingly treatable.The evolution of bacteriaGenerations of microbes evolve in hours, not millennia. By speeding up Darwin’s clock, scientists have watched evolution happen in real time, and it’s changed how we understand natural selection.Nature’s laboratoryMillions of years of evolution have given us genomes that are like giant datasets for drug development. Finally, we are learning how to study them.Why science needs outsidersScience has forgotten that the greatest breakthroughs often come from outsiders who are able to take a fresh perspective.The bad science behind expensive nuclearHow a dubious theory of radiation damage based on fruit flies and a secretive weapons testing program came to be – and why its time may now be up.How to write for Works in ProgressWe’re looking for new authors and article pitches.The ultra-selfish geneWe now have the power to genetically modify entire species by inserting certain genes into them with brute force. Doing this to malaria-carrying mosquitoes could allow us to wipe out humanity’s most deadly killer.Getting materials out of the labInventing new materials is only the first step. Getting them into mass production and use is just as hard.Life in the time of ZikaI was deliberately infected with Zika to test a vaccine. Human challenge trials like my one could save millions of lives by developing prophylactics more quickly.Waking up science’s sleeping beautiesMany scientific papers receive little attention initially but become highly cited years later. What groundbreaking discoveries might have already been made, and how can we uncover them faster?How mathematics built the modern worldMathematics was the cornerstone of the Industrial Revolution. A new paradigm of measurement and calculation, more than scientific discovery, built industry, modernity, and the world we inhabit today.Why we didn’t get a malaria vaccine soonerHundreds of thousands of people die from malaria each year, but it took 141 years to develop a vaccine for it. Advance market commitments could speed things up next time.Thomas Edison, tinkererThomas Edison is often accused of not having invented the things he gets credit for. He did something even harder: he built the systems needed to get them to market.A look at Britain’s new DARPAARIA is the UK’s visionary new scientific funding body. It has £800m and the freedom to make big bold bets on the scientific trajectories it thinks will benefit Britain – and change the future. We interviewed chief executive Ilan Gur and chairman Matt Clifford, to better understand what inspired ARIA and how they aim to make it a success.Developing the science of scienceInternational development was revolutionized by experiments and evaluations of its methods. Meta-science can learn from it.History is in the makingThough we tend to see history as just one political event after another, it’s technology and ideas, not politics, that change our lives the most. History should reflect that.The elements of scientific styleScientific papers are dense, jargon-filled, and painful to read. It wasn’t always this way – and it doesn’t have to be. Real peer review has never been triedOutdated forms of peer review create bottlenecks that slow science. But in a world where research can now circulate rapidly on the Internet, we need to develop new ways to do science in public.Why innovation prizes failHistory’s most famous innovation prize—the longitude rewards—is misunderstood. Innovation prizes are best at promoting refinements, not revolutions.Scientific slowdown is not inevitableSome think of advances in science and technology through the metaphor of low-hanging fruit: we “picked” the easy ones, and the rest will be very difficult. Who cares about plagiarism?Plagiarism is unforgivable in academia but it’s not plagiarism itself that should trouble us. It’s carelessness and a lack of originality. How trust undermines scienceOur success is based on scientific discovery, so it’s not surprising how much faith we put into it. But we now trust science so implicitly that our trust undermines the institution itself.Buyers of first resortHow do technologies get off the ground? As well as seed funding, many of the best technologies require Buyers of First Resort, which buy products until they improve enough to get to efficient scale.We don’t know how to fix scienceThe conversation around science is full of ideas for reform, but how do we know which ones will be effective? To find out what works, we need to apply the scientific method to science itself.The speed of scienceCritics of scientific reform say that transparency comes at the cost of speed. What can disciplines learn from each other to break away from this crisis?The great reinforcerAlongside all the successes of science in the Covid era, the pandemic has also sparked an outbreak of viral misinformation and sloppy research, revealing the glaring flaws in our scientific system.How Covid brought the future backCrises upend plans, force people to re-evaluate their priorities, and bring into focus new goals. Financial markets give us hints of what we can expect from the aftermath of Covid-19.What ails the social sciencesBad incentives, muddled theory and no practical use. The condition of the social sciences has been blamed on a great variety of things; what’s really at fault and how do we know?Escaping science’s paradoxScientific research today is afflicted by poor reliability and low utility, despite the best efforts of individual researchers. Innovation is not linearMany have argued that innovation develops in a simple linear fashion – from research to experimentation to engineering. The evolution of psychiatryModern psychiatry appears to be at a standstill, wanting for better treatment and a substantive theoretical framework. Evolutionary theory has the potential to reinvigorate the field.The rise and fall of the industrial R&D labFor a time in recent history, R&D labs seemed to exist in a golden age of innovation and productivity. But this period vanished as swiftly as it came to be.