"With the U.S. and Iran staggering toward war, it bears asking: How would U.S. interests be served by war with Iran?" writes fellow Jim Krane. Read his argument for why U.S. interests would be deeply undermined by any such war on the Baker Institute Blog.
This post originally appeared in the Forbes Blog on June 17, 2019.
While the U.S. still maintains the overall lead in Nobel prizes (with the exception of literature), the rate at which American scientists have been awarded the prize has declined since the late 1970s. Fellow Kirstin R.W. Matthews and postdoctoral fellow Kenneth M. Evans explore the state of scientific collaboration in the U.S. in this Baker Institute blog: https://bit.ly/2yiNhzF
Kenneth M. Evans, Kirstin R.W. MatthewsOctober 5, 2018
Saudi Arabia recently ended its legal ban on women driving. The long-term consequences of this change on transportation, energy, labor, and health remain unclear, write fellows Farhan Majid and Jim Krane in an op-ed for the Houston Chronicle: https://bit.ly/2Lrqnja
Baker Institute experts blog on opportunities for the U.S. and Mexico to jointly address the neglected tropical diseases found among the poorest people living in both countries.
Peter J. Hotez, Jennifer R. Herricks, Kirstin R.W. MatthewsSeptember 28, 2015
In physics, extensive collaborations, access to colleagues’ data and rigorous peer review make it extremely difficult for individual researchers to bend the rules. Furthermore, physics does not harbor the types of ethical minefields characteristic of the biosciences. No thorny questions arise pertaining to human or animal life, nor do physicists commonly grapple with the ethical haze of intellectual property when patents and money are at stake. Things seem to be black and white in physics. But are they?
Elaine Howard Ecklund, Kirstin R.W. MatthewsJune 1, 2015
In a recent commentary, Baker Institute science and technology policy experts described two international court cases that aimed to define “research” — and that ultimately arrived at two different answers.
“What makes this interesting is that the courts’ definition of ‘research’ was based on politics — what the court wanted the end result to be,” said Kirstin Matthews, the institute’s fellow in science and technology policy. To reach a decision prohibiting human embryonic stem cell (hESC) patents, the EU court ruled that “research” occurs in a continuum. To reach a decision supporting federal funding of stem cell research, the U.S. court ruled that “research” involves a specific project.
