• The future of grant proposals is video — Nature

• Open access to genomics data: difficulties and cool initiatives in the works — Nature

  • Sharing GWAS summary statistics protects patient privacy, but is inadequate for full use of data
  • Matchmaker Exchange: connects researchers with data for rare genotypes

• Many-analyses studies: different researchers analyzing the same data in many ways show how publication bias isn't the only problem in science, and why collections of papers matter more than individual studies — Matt Clancy

• Calling into question the validity of behavioral economics: "We can't afford to defer questions about human nature, and the social and political policies that come from them, to commercialized 'research' that is scientifically questionable and driven by ideology." — New York Times

• Why academia isn't optimized for discovery, and suggestions for another path — Noah Smith

• There are no statistics in the kingdom: how statistics compromise our pursuit of knowledge — "God wants us to discover truths about the universe, but our hearts are hard, so he begrudgingly allows us to use statistics" — Experimental History

• Degrees of uncertainty: an animated documentary about climate science, uncertainty, and knowing when to trust the experts — and how to balance the latter two, given that science is built on healthy skepticism; also on how imagination is a critical part of the scientific method — Neil Halloran

• Gaia, the scientist: what if the first woman scientist was simply the first woman? — Hope Jahren, Nautilus

  Now that I've learned and practiced both, why doesn't cooking count as chemistry? Why doesn't sewing count as geometry? Is gardening so different from botany? Does budgeting not involve math? Were my four grandmothers scientists, the ones who produced enough from too little, refining their techniques as they went along, working and working, in between babies, in between wars, in between being born and being dead?

• Fund Black scientists: Black scientists receive 2-fold fewer grants in biomedical sciences than white scientists — Cell

  • 2014–2016: Black applicants' award rates remained at ~55% of those for white PIs, despite years of words written and said about the disparity
  • For NIH: acknowledge the racism explicitly, set up policies to ensure equity, prioritize diversity in reviewing (scoring, panels), train staff to recognize and stop racism
  • For individuals: score Black grant applications well, call out and stop racist remarks and behaviors, value and promote diversity in your own scientific collaborations

• The hazards of medicine by tweet: the case of anti-cytokine therapy for Covid-19: how the polarizing, all-or-nothing dynamic of science on Twitter is affecting the execution of rigorous clinical trials and decision making — Paul Monach and Westyn Branch-Elliman, STAT

• Breaking Bio: the value of doing biology beyond ultra-controlled, artificially-sterilized conditions — Andrew Pelling

  "I love, and also fear, the exquisite mess of biology."

• We exist. We are your peers.: a striking reminder when answering many questions — "Be careful with responding, because one answer is racist and the other is not." We cannot "know" whether someone is racist "at heart," but as James Baldwin implies, actions (and the statistics of funding) speak louder than words — Manu O. Platt, Nature

  "See colour. Be intentional with diversifying your programs, your departments and your faculty. Be anti-racist. Call out racist statements in closed-door meetings and bias in review panels. Address racist actions in public settings. Believe Black people. Believe Black graduate students. Believe Black professors. We walk among you. We exist and we are your peers."

• The Diversity-Innovation Paradox in Science: underrepresented people are more innovative, but their ideas end up being less impactful — and even their impactful innovations translate less to career success — Bas Hofstra, Daniel A. McFarland

• An interactive, visual article on why we should question science headlines in the news... and the actual claims made by scientists themselves — The Pudding

Related

• The Code Breaker — Walter Isaacson