Research Library

Read the Baker Institute Blog for the latest updates on the spread of Covid-19 and the best defenses against it.

Baker Institute health policy experts provide links to some of the sources they found helpful in understanding developments in the coronavirus outbreak.

Despite internal changes in how scientists are nominated for the Nobel Prize, there is still a substantial gender bias in prize recipients. Concrete policy changes are needed to ensure more diversity is reflected in the world’s most visible and prestigious scientific honor, write experts Kenneth M. Evans, Kirstin R.W. Matthews and Daniel Moralí. Baker Institute blog: http://bit.ly/2MDRDbW

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

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.

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?

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.