Editorials in 2015

Conflict at the Arecibo Observatory highlights the need for funders to become more flexible.

Researchers should add their voices to the effort to stop attacks on health workers in war zones.

Reform is long overdue for Germany’s archaic medical-education system, which puts undue pressure on students and contaminates the scientific literature.

A tribute to the nineteenth-century polymath whose algebra lets you search the Internet.

Two medical-technology companies illustrate the ups and downs of innovation.

The problem of abandoned fishing gear and its effects on marine life deserve greater attention.

The UK government’s decision to subsidize a nuclear power station while cutting support for renewables is short-sighted.

Scientists, meeting organizers and the media must take care with preliminary findings.

Food regulators are right to place new forms of data on the safety menu.

Attempts to keep foreign interests out of Russian research will only suppress the exchange of information, and risk damaging East–West relations.

The wiring diagram of the male nematode’s nervous system is only a beginning.

Scientist-led conferences are no longer the best way to resolve debates on controversial research.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has done much to alert politicians to the effects of global warming. But to push climate change up the agenda, it will need to do the same for the public.

In difficult times, Turkey is investing in a clutch of new scientific research centres.

The human brain’s habit of finding what it wants to find is a key problem for research. Establishing robust methods to avoid such bias will make results more reproducible.

Formal recognition of drug pollution will help to protect humans and ecosystems.

The latest global targets from the United Nations must be translated into realistic policies.

An effort to sequence thousands of people’s genomes reaches the end of the beginning.

The unfolding Volkswagen saga highlights the need for better funding of regulatory science — and should prompt regulators to keep a closer eye on whether their rules are working.

Reanalysis of the controversy provides a strong example of the self-correcting nature of science.