Comment in 2016

In these tumultuous times, Nancy Baron urges scientists to speak from the heart to build public trust in research.

At the end of a difficult year for evidence, Ian L. Boyd, a chief scientific adviser to the UK government, draws lessons for making research more relevant.

Design and test new polymers with clinical uses in mind, urge Nicholas A. Peppas and Ali Khademhosseini.

The causes of Earth's transition are human and social, write Erle Ellis and colleagues, so scholars from those disciplines must be included in its formalization.

Better surveillance data and analyses are urgently needed to control disease in the developing world, argue Scott F. Dowell, David Blazes and Susan Desmond-Hellmann.

For sustainable, equitable nutrition we must count the true global costs and benefits of food production, urge Pavan Sukhdev, Peter May and Alexander Müller.

Lawrence Haddad, Corinna Hawkes and colleagues propose ten ways to shift the focus from feeding people to nourishing them.

Challenges in preventing pollution from ballast water highlight reforms needed in global shipping regulation, write Zheng Wan and colleagues.

Pay more attention to developing thin, mass-produced, affordable photovoltaic devices, urge Yi-Bing Cheng and colleagues.

Rethink electron microscopy to build quantum materials from scratch, urge Sergei V. Kalinin, Albina Borisevich and Stephen Jesse.

Design with the natural cycle in mind to ensure that carbon ends up in the right places, urges William McDonough

The IPCC should supply policymakers with realistic regional projections of how the seas will respond to warming, write Daniela Schmidt and Philip W. Boyd.

Focused grass-roots collaborations that start small and scale up could overcome technical and sociological barriers to 'big' neuroscience, argue Zachary F. Mainen, Michael Häusser and Alexandre Pouget.

A vibrant scientific culture encourages many interpretations of evidence, argues Avi Loeb.

To explain why our planet is habitable, geoscientists studying Earth’s surface and interior must work with each other and with communications scholars, write Ariel D. Anbar, Christy B. Till and Mark A. Hannah.

Demand for steady output stymies discovery. To pursue the most important research, scientists must be allowed to shift their focus, say Tolu Oni and colleagues.

Scientific quality is hard to define, and numbers are easy to look at. But bibliometrics are warping science — encouraging quantity over quality. Leaders at two research institutions describe how they do things differently.

Fears about the future impacts of artificial intelligence are distracting researchers from the real risks of deployed systems, argue Kate Crawford and Ryan Calo.

An analysis by Alice B. Popejoy and Stephanie M. Fullerton indicates that some populations are still being left behind on the road to precision medicine.

A United Nations conference seeks urban sustainability. But the agenda will fail without input from researchers, warn Timon McPhearson and colleagues.