Elise Cutts

Monday Edition

In the last 2 weeks, 4 science magazines shut down, sold, or lost funding

Also: Avi Loeb to head White House UFO committee, overworked ERC peer reviewers, Anthropic's push for AI in science, and more from last week

Monday Edition

Is the NSF slashing research to fund a tech initiative?

Also: SciAm sold, two Max Planck papers retracted, a big study links AI to skill atrophy in schoolkids, and more from last week

What determines how science is done — and how it matters?

The newsletter is back with a new focus on the systems, instincts, and incentives that shape what's discovered, what's believed, and what happens when science hits the real world

Rant

Pluto is MAGA's favorite "planet" for a reason

Jared Isaacman's Pluto push is a master class in science populism

I want to do more than write science entertainment

Let's talk about science, science communication, and how knowledge matters

TLDR

Who gets the job? Here's how computers could help catch unfair rankings

I am weirdly hopeful that it could be easier to notice biased AI than biased humans?

Science Communication

About "to" and "around" the Moon

Technically correct is not, in fact, the best kind of correct in scicomm

TLDR

AI-generated science is now "good enough"

The "AI Scientist" is mediocre and uninspired. Don't dismiss it.

Q&A

How do social movements win?

Timo Damm blends qualitative and quantitative research to understand how small groups push for change

TLDR

You and a frog might have the same taste in music

Citizen science revealed a shared "taste for the beautiful" across species

Science in Society

Are the Stardew Valley wiki authors scientists?

Science is the generational project of finding out true things about the real world — and that project needs catalogers

TLDR

The asteroid Ryugu contains every letter of the genetic alphabet

This is awesome, but does not mean life fell to Earth from space