Scientific Norms
Public Data
As the federal government withdraws from public data collection, states cannot step into the breach without addressing common challenges and disparities.
Real Numbers
The scientific community urgently needs to consider the longevity and resilience of open research infrastructure—when and why it might fail, what risks failures represent for the broader community, and how to prevent them.
Scientific Practice
Rather than haphazardly using artificial intelligence for research, scientists and decisionmakers should take a deliberative approach.
AI Governance
Public values must shape governance and implementation of artificial intelligence.
Digital Regulation
The story of feckless efforts to address spam in the early 2000s offers a cautionary tale for attempts to regulate artificial intelligence today.
Under Review
Adam Briggle examines how disasters can disproportionately affect vulnerable people in his review of Angela Frederick’s Disabled Power.
Editor’s Journal
A “mohole moment” is when an investment in science goes disastrously wrong, providing a focal point for distrust and funding cuts. Such moments reveal the tacit premise of science’s social contract—both what the agreement is and what counts as a breach.
Knowledge Commons
An environmental knowledge commons could support evidence-based policymaking, but it will require long-term coordination across the many communities monitoring pollution and local conditions.
Science Policy IRL
Community Well-Being
How a Wisconsin county realized that systems change requires shared sensemaking as much as innovative metrics.
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Vol. XLII, No. 3, Spring 2026
There are big, open questions about the changing relationship between science and society: How should the public fund science, and what kind of science should it fund? What should society expect in return for its support? What is the role of research universities in the scientific ecosystem? And the relationship between science and society looks very different at the local, or even personal, level—and the questions are different too: How can research improve the quality of life in my community? Should I be worried about the refinery in my neighborhood? Is my town able to assist the most vulnerable when the power goes out during a storm? The essays in the Spring 2026 Issues explore all these questions to better understand how the social contract with science is evolving.
Browse the Issue
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Subscribe to the Print EditionIn response to essays published in Issues, our readers weigh in on critical topics in policy related to science, technology, and society.
Spring 2026
A Discussion of
Response By
Spring 2026
A Discussion of
Responses By
In an alternative legal system built on the concept of “an eye for an eye,” if you commit a crime, your punishment is that someday a network of state agents will perpetrate the same crime against you. These ministers, themselves survivors of violence, follow the principle of “commensurate severity.” When one such minister is assigned to a kidnapping case, she’s forced to determine what justice really looks like.
What does it mean for a punishment to truly fit a crime? A post-conviction attorney explores the limits of a criminal legal system built on retribution.
Response
What happens when a technology moves from groundbreaking scientific discovery to mass consumer product? Gunnar Anderson’s story explores a mysterious new discovery that breaks the bounds of physics as we once understood them. But quickly, scientific awe morphs into commercial prospecting—with little regulation and horrifying consequences.
Even inventions with the loftiest of goals can be commandeered for unscrupulous—or nefarious—ends. Where does that leave the inventors?
Response
An Indian actor in a future Mumbai has authorized politicians, entertainers, and businesses to use his likeness. When he discovers his image is being used as a tool for repression—and when two kids he’s close to disappear—the actor is forced to confront what he really gave away.
Moira Shourie returns to Mumbai, the city she once called home while working at MTV India. She reflects on how a culture of celebrity, rampant inequality, and complex urban design divide some residents and bring others together.
Response
To improve the relationship between science and the public, funders should embrace a new ontology of scientific work that aligns incentives with society’s goals.
University leadership needs to shift attention from chasing prestige to crafting strategies for long-term success.
If the public funds science and gives it autonomy to govern itself, then benefits such as economic growth, innovation, and national security will follow. This unwritten social contract was long thought to underpin policymakers’ relationship to the scientific enterprise, but recent events suggest those days are over.
Why has the idea of an implicit social contract between society and science had a hold on scientists’ imaginations for so long? And what does it mean now that the relationship has frayed?
