'A virtuoso feat ... a book of panoramic breadth' New York Times Book Review 'A devastating analysis ... Wright is a master of knitting together complex narratives' The Observer Just as Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower became the defining account of our century's first devastating event, 9/11, so The Plague Year will become the defining account of the second. The story starts with the initial moments of Covid's appearance in Wuhan and ends with Joseph Biden's inauguration in an America ravaged by well over 400,000 deaths - a mortality already some ten times worse than US combat deaths in the entire Vietnam War. This is an anguished, furious memorial to a year in which all of America's great strengths - its scientific knowledge, its great civic and intellectual institutions, its spirit of voluntarism and community - were brought low, not by a terrifying new illness alone, but by political incompetence and cynicism on a scale for which there has been no precedent. With insight, sympathy, clarity and rage, The Plague Year allows the reader to see the unfolding of this great tragedy, talking with individuals on the front line, bringing together many moving and surprising stories and painting a devastating picture of a country literally and fatally misled. 'Maddening and sobering - as comprehensive an account of the first year of the pandemic as we've yet seen' Kirkus

On 28 April 2021, the Indonesian government, under President Joko Widodo, dissolved the Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher Education (Kemenristek-Dikti). Since then, the management of higher education has been taken over by the Ministry of Education and Culture, while research and innovation are now the responsibility of the National Research and Innovation Agency (Badan Riset dan Inovasi Nasional, or BRIN). Based on Presidential Regulation (Perpres) Nos. 33 and 78 of 2021, various research institutes, such as LIPI, BATAN, LAPAN and BPPT, and research agencies in some ministries have been or will be merged into BRIN, making it a "super-government agency" with an "overarching" role. With a Rp26 trillion budget allocated by the government for research per year and with a large number of researchers, BRIN is expected to boost national research and innovation, and help the country catch up with countries such as Singapore and South Korea.

Notwithstanding the importance of modern technology, fieldwork remains vital, not least through helping to inspire and educate the next generation. Fieldwork has the ingredients of intellectual curiosity, passion, rigour and engagement with the outdoor world - to name just a few. You may be simply noting what you see around you, making detailed records, or carrying out an experiment; all of this and much more amounts to fieldwork. Being curious, you think about the world around you, and through patient observation develop and test ideas. Forty contributors capture the excitement and importance of fieldwork through a wide variety of examples, from urban graffiti to the Great Barrier Reef. Outdoor learning is for life: people have the greatest respect and care for their world when they have first-hand experience of it. The Editors are donating all royalties due to them to the environmental charity, The Field Studies Council, to support student fieldwork at the Council's field centres.

The scientific advances that underpin economic growth and human health would not be possible without research investments. Yet demonstrating the impact of research programs is a challenge, especially in areas that span disciplines, industrial sectors, and encompass both public and private sector activity. All areas of research are under pressure to demonstrate benefits from federal funding of research. This exciting and innovative study demonstrates new methods and tools to trace the impact of federal research funding on the structure of research, and the subsequent economic activities of funded researchers. The case study is food safety research, which is critical to avoiding outbreaks of disease. The authors make use of an extraordinary new data infrastructure and apply new techniques in text analysis. Focusing on the impact of US federal food safety research, this book develops vital data-intensive methodologies that have a real world application to many other scientific fields.

The United States government supports a broad range of scientific and engineering research and development R&D. Its purposes include addressing specific concerns such as national defence, health, safety, the environment, and energy security, as well as advancing knowledge generally, developing the scientific and engineering workforce and strengthening U.S. innovation and competitiveness in the global economy. The federal government has played an important role in supporting R&D efforts that have led to scientific breakthroughs and new technologies. This book examines the federal role in funding research and development in such areas as energy technology, colleges and universities, and others.

Scientific and technical knowledge and guidance influences not just policy related to science and technology, but also many of today's public policies as policymakers seek knowledge to enhance the quality of their decisions. Science and technology policy is concerned with the allocation of resources for and encouragement of scientific and engineering research and development, the use of scientific and technical knowledge to enhance the nation's response to societal challenges, and the education of Americans in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Science and engineering research and innovations are intricately linked to societal needs and the nation's economy in areas such as transportation, communication, agriculture, education, environment, health, defence, and jobs. As a result, policymakers are interested in almost every aspect of science and technology policy. The three branches of government; executive, congressional, and judiciary; depending on each branch's responsibility, use science and technology knowledge and guidance to frame policy issues, craft legislation, and govern. The science and engineering community, however, is not represented by one individual or organisation. On matters of scientific and technical knowledge and guidance, its opinions are consensus-based with groups of scientists and engineers coming together from different perspectives to debate an issue based on the available empirical evidence. In the end, consensus is achieved if there is widespread agreement on the evidence and its implications, which is conveyed to policymakers. Policymakers then determine, based on this knowledge and other factors, whether or not to take action and what actions to take. If there are major disagreements within large portions of the community, however, consensus is not yet achieved, and taking policy actions in response to a concern can be challenging. Several organisations, when requested by the federal government or Congress, provide formal science and technology policy advice: federal advisory committees, congressionally chartered honorific organisations, and federally funded research and development corporations. In addition, many other organisations and individuals -- international intergovernmental organisations, policy institutes/think tanks, the public, professional organisations, disciplinary societies, universities and colleges, advocacy, special interest, industry, trade associations, and labour -- also provide their thoughts. These organisations may agree on the scientific and technical knowledge regarding an issue, but disagree on what actions to take in response, as their values on a proposed policy may differ. Policymakers may be overwhelmed with an abundance of information from these organisations. Despite these challenges, scientific and technical knowledge and guidance can provide policymakers with an opportunity to make their decisions based on the best information available, along with other factors they might take into account, such as cultural, economic, and other values, so that societal and economic benefits are enhanced and losses are mitigated.

In recent years the news media have been awash in stories about increasingly close ties between college campuses and multimillion-dollar corporations. Our nation's universities, the story goes, reap enormous windfalls patenting products of scientific research that have been primarily funded by taxpayers. Meanwhile, hoping for new streams of revenue from their innovations, the same universities are allowing their research--and their very principles--to become compromised by quests for profit. But is that really the case? Is money really hopelessly corrupting science?
With "Science for Sale," acclaimed journalist Daniel S. Greenberg reveals that campus capitalism is more complicated--and less profitable--than media reports would suggest. While universities seek out corporate funding, news stories rarely note that those industry dollars are dwarfed by government support and other funds. Also, while many universities have set up technology transfer offices to pursue profits through patents, many of those offices have been financial busts. Meanwhile, science is showing signs of providing its own solutions, as highly publicized misdeeds in pursuit of profits have provoked promising countermeasures within the field.
But just because the threat is overhyped, Greenberg argues, doesn't mean that there's no danger. From research that has shifted overseas so corporations can avoid regulations to conflicts of interest in scientific publishing, the temptations of money will always be a threat, and they can only be countered through the vigilance of scientists, the press, and the public.
Based on extensive, candid interviews with scientists and administrators, "Science for Sale "will beindispensable to anyone who cares about the future of scientific research.

Toward what end does the U.S. government support science and technology? How do the legacies and institutions of the past constrain current efforts to restructure federal research policy? Not since the end of World War II have these questions been so pressing, as scientists and policymakers debate anew the desirability and purpose of a federal agenda for funding research. Probing the values that have become embodied in the postwar federal research establishment, Politics on the Endless Frontier clarifies the terms of these debates and reveals what is at stake in attempts to reorganize that establishment.
Although it ended up as only one among a host of federal research policymaking agencies, the National Science Foundation was originally conceived as central to the federal research policymaking system. Kleinman's historical examination of the National Science Foundation exposes the sociological and political workings of the system, particularly the way in which a small group of elite scientists shaped the policymaking process and defined the foundation's structure and future. Beginning with Vannevar Bush's 1945 manifesto The Endless Frontier, Kleinman explores elite and populist visions for a postwar research policy agency and shows how the structure of the American state led to the establishment of a fragmented and uncoordinated system for federal research policymaking. His book concludes with an analysis of recent efforts to reorient research policy and to remake federal policymaking institutions in light of the current crisis of economic competitiveness.
A particularly timely study, Politics on the Endless Frontier will be of interest to historians and sociologists of science and technology and to science policy analysts.

How do scientists impact society in the twenty-first century? Many scientists are increasingly interested in the impact that their research will have on the public. Scientists likewise must answer the question above when applying for funding from government agencies, particularly as part of the 'Broader Impacts' criterion of proposals to the US National Science Foundation. This book equips scientists in all disciplines to do just that, by providing an overview of the origins, history, rationale, examples, and case studies of broader impacts, primarily drawn from the author's experiences over the past five decades. Beyond including theory and evidence, it serves as a 'how to' guide for best practices for scientists. Although this book primarily uses examples from the NSF, the themes and best practices are applicable to scientists and applications around the world where funding also requires impacts and activities that benefit society.

A proposal for using cost-benefit analysis to evaluate the socioeconomic impact of public investment in large scientific projects. Large particle accelerators, outer space probes, genomics platforms: all are scientific enterprises managed through the new form of the research infrastructure, in which communities of scientists collaborate across nations, universities, research institutions, and disciplines. Such large projects are often publicly funded, with no accepted way to measure the benefits to society of these investments. In this book, Massimo Florio suggests the use of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) to evaluate the socioeconomic impact of public investment in large and costly scientific projects. The core concept of CBA of any infrastructure is to undertake the consistent intertemporal accounting of social welfare effects using the available information. Florio develops a simple framework for such accounting in the research infrastructure context and then offers a systematic analysis of the benefits in terms of the social agents involved. He measures the benefits to scientists, students, and postdoctoral researchers; the effect on firms of knowledge spillovers; the benefits to users of information technology and science-based innovation; the welfare effects on the general public of cultural services provided by RIs; and the willingness of taxpayers to fund scientific knowledge creation. Finally, Florio shows how these costs and benefits can be expressed in the form of stochastic net present value and other summary indicators.

"Limited by Design" is the first comprehensive study of the varying roles played by the more than 16,000 research and development laboratories in the U.S. national innovation system. Michael Crow and Barry Bozeman offer policy makers and scientists a blueprint for making more informed decisions about how to best utilize and develop the capabilities of these facilities. Some labs, such as Bell Labs, Westinghouse, and Eastman Kodak, have been global players since the turn of the century. Others, such as Los Alamos National Laboratory, have been mainstays of the military/energy industrial complex since they evolved in the 1940s. These and other institutions have come to serve as the infrastructure upon which a range of industries have relied and have had a tremendous impact on U.S. social and economic history.

Michael Crow and Barry Bozeman illustrate the histories, missions, structure, and behavior of individual laboratories, and explore the policy contexts in which they are embedded. In studying this large and varied collection of labs, Crow, Bozeman, and their colleagues develop a new framework for understanding the structure and behavior of laboratories that also provides a basis for rationalizing federal science and technology policy to create more effective laboratories.

The book draws upon interviews and surveys collected from thousands of scientists, administrators, and policy makers, and features boxed "lab windows" throughout that provide detailed information on the variety of laboratories active in the U.S. national innovation system.

"Limited by Design" addresses a range of questions in order to enable policy makers, university administrators, and scientists to plan effectively for the future of research and development.

Officials and religious scholars in the Gulf states have repeatedly banned the teaching of the theory of evolution because of its association with atheism. But Jorg Matthias Determann argues here that, despite official prohibition, research on biological evolution has flourished, due in large part to the development of academic and professional networks. This book traces these networks through the history of various branches of biology, including botany, conservation research, ornithology and palaeontology. Typical of rentier societies, some of the scientific networks in this region consist of vertical patron-client relationships. For example, those in power who are interested in wildlife conservation have been known to offer patronage to biologists working on desert ecology. However, just as important are the horizontal links between scientists both within the Gulf region and beyond. Given the strengths and importance of these two forms of professional networks, Determann argues that we should look at the Arab world as an area interconnected with global science, and therefore fully integrated into the scientific and technological advances being pioneered worldwide.

The primary data driver behind US drug policy is the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. This insider history traces the evolution of the survey and how the survey has interacted with the political and social climate of the country, from its origins during the Vietnam War to its role in the war on drugs. The book includes first-hand accounts that explain how the data was used and misused by political leaders, why changes were made in the survey design, and what challenges researchers faced in communicating statistical principles to policymakers and leaders. It also makes recommendations for managing survey data collection and reporting in the context of political pressures and technological advances. Survey research students and practitioners will learn practical lessons about questionnaire design, mode effects, sampling, nonresponse, weighting, editing, imputation, statistical significance, and confidentiality. The book also includes common-language explanations of key terms and processes to help data users understand the point of view of survey statisticians.