A Year Of Incredible Science News Complemented With Extensive Commentary Scientific AmericanIn our opinion section, we’ve featured the best and brightest minds to bring us to the front lines of COVID, telling us about science and evidence, including many Supreme Court rulings, and more. For example, we learned about the pitfalls of artificial intelligence, how racists abuse evolutionary biology, and how compromising children’s mental health is another ongoing epidemic. Whether they were thought-provoking, deeply moving, or challenging long-held beliefs, here are some of our editors’ favorite opinion pieces for 2022.
asked GPT-3 to write an academic paper about itself and attempted to publish it
This year, language models proved they can write human-like text, and one AI chatbot generated responses so impressive that engineers were convinced they had a sense. But once you have AI-generated text, what do you do with it? We have a system that works for human writing, but can it handle non-human writing? I enjoyed how you explored these issues and the very human ethical issues that arose when you decided to publish your paper.
— Sophie Bushwick, Technical Editor
Exploration is fundamental to human success
I thought it was novel to use the agenda (editorial) section of the magazine to uplift and inspire about science itself. We are a scientific journal! Sometimes it is worth reminding our readers and ourselves that exploration and discovery are cool and fundamentally important to improving our lives. , I’m also happy to have portrayed a scientist as an explorer. Hopefully, it will help encourage young people to consider a career in science.
— Mark Fischetti, Senior Sustainability Editor
Space elevators aren’t as sci-fi as you think
Space elevators have long been a piece of science fiction, but Stephen Cohen thinks they could one day become a reality. In a fascinating editorial, he lays out his research on the topic through years of conversations with friends and colleagues against the backdrop of a bemused wife who wants nothing more than a new topic for conversation at the dinner table. This witty and engaging essay is full of fascinating physics explanations and hopes that one day it will be easier to get people and things into orbit than it is to ride a rocket. filled with optimism that it will become and thrive in space.
— Clara Moskowitz, Space and Physics Senior Editor
From one dying breath to the next
The COVID pandemic has made crash courses in infectious disease science and terminology available to the general public. But like me, many of us didn’t fully understand what it was like on the front lines. A statement by respiratory therapist Victor Ruiz brought me into his world at the forefront. He also brought so many perspectives to struggles I had the privilege of not having to think about, such as how to say goodbye to a stranger who takes his last breath with his family and loved ones. The article broadened my insight into the challenges of working in healthcare during a pandemic and the lasting impact it has.
— Jeanna Bryner, Editor-in-Chief
Childhood gun deaths are a big problem in the US
The prevalence of gun deaths in the United States is heartbreaking. More children in this country are now dying from guns than from car accidents, cancer and other diseases. how emergency physicians Eric Fliegler and Lois Lee took lessons from the auto industry and other fields that have successfully reduced unnecessary deaths, and how this became a problem unique to America; I will explain what we can do as a society to alleviate it. Let’s face reality. All child gun deaths are unnecessary and unthinkable.
—Tanya Lewis, Senior Editor, Health & Medicine.
The Anti-Science Supreme Court Is Damaging American Health
There was a time when the Supreme Court viewed scientific expertise as a central guide for protecting public health through policy. This powerful essay by Wendy Parmet examines decades of evolving science and its relationship with the nation’s Supreme Court. It also provides important background on the disturbing trends in anti-science and rejection of expertise, science, and data that we have witnessed in court decisions this year. I invite you to present Parmett’s fascinating long analysis of the dynamics between state and federal rights on policy issues.
— Andrea Gawrylewski, newsletter editor
Contagion Worse Than COVID Spreads as Global Public Health Ignorance Continues
Science journalism, or any kind of journalism, should always be proactive, see what can be learned from major social upheavals, and what can be done to avoid running headlong into another catastrophe. try to point out One painful lesson from COVID is that we (and the world) have failed to improve public health, or even make significant progress toward achieving that goal. We are once again in danger of another pandemic, and our willingness to do what it takes to prepare for the next or the next pandemic is greatly diminished. That’s why I wrote this article — as a reminder that we all fail to learn from unforgettable experiences.
— Gary Stix, Mind & Brain Senior Editor
Artificial general intelligence is not as imminent as you think
Artificial general intelligence, or “AI with the flexibility and resourcefulness of human intelligence,” is still far from a reality. But if you’re listening to the hype coming from tech companies working on these products, such features already exist. One of his problems, as Gary Marcus explains, is that “AI’s largest team of researchers is in corporations, not in academies where peer-review of him was the coin of the realm.” Even if companies want investors to believe otherwise, it’s a strong reminder that the basic, foundational science in this area is still sorely lacking.
—Jen Schwartz, Senior Editor, Features
Nurses weather new COVID wave with anger and compassion
We started a pandemic celebrating “healthcare heroes,” but quickly forgot about them as we debated masks, vaccines, mandates, and the realities of disease. In his poetic writing, he reminded us of what was happening in the hospital, talking about our anger at our ignorance, our frustration, our endless sadness, and our refusal to give up. She was a story that brought tears to my eyes both when I read the first draft and when I read it again now. She said, “This is what it means to be a nurse. She faces that darkness and tells her not to be afraid.”
— Josh Fischman, Senior Editor
Children’s suicide risk increases on school days
Childhood suicide is hard to think about, but you can’t solve the problem unless you understand the underlying factors. I know it could put me in a health crisis, but I looked at the data to confirm what I observed in his study. It was uncomfortable for me (a parent whose child is just beginning her school career) because But the essay’s greatest strength is that Black offers solutions, and they’re all very doable if you decide to prioritize your children’s mental health.
— Amanda Montañez, Associate Graphics Editor
No wonder 1 million people have died from COVID
I think we all want the COVID pandemic to end, but the COVID pandemic did not end with us.As Tanya Lewis, one of our health editors Scientific American, As I wrote earlier this year, humans, not science, will decide when the pandemic will end. But it is not only those with power and motivation who argue that we need not worry so much about death and disability, or the prevalence of death and disability.Stephen Thrasher Scientific American Columnist and new book author viral underclass, I wrote a powerful essay about not accepting or normalizing the horrific toll of COVID. When he wrote his commentary, he had a million dead in the United States. Better access to health care, fairer public health, more compassion and less politicization can reverse the continuing decline in life expectancy in the United States. The US has only lost 26 years of her progress. Other countries are recovering from the pandemic.
— Laura Helmuth, Editor-in-Chief
Cities make better biologists
Having spent most of my adult life in the big cities of America, I have seen all kinds of urban wildlife, and this essay has helped me reconnect with science and scientists. I was. I, like many others, viewed ecology as the study of sparsely populated areas. Nearly every ecologist I’ve met in my career has been white. In writing this essay, Nyeema C. Harris takes us into her early life, shares moments of vulnerability, and explores what an ecologist looks like, what ecological space looks like. challenged our views on I now think differently about my city and its ecological complexity. One of my goals for the Opinion section is to bring in work that makes you go, “Oh, cool!” and makes the world look a little different. This essay is one of the best examples of that in 2022.
— Megha Satyanarayana, Chief Opinion Editor
