FORUM

摘要

In "Science Institutions for a Complex, Fast-Paced World" (Issues, Winter 2020), Marcia McNutt and Michael Crow provide an important wake-up call for those who are deeply concerned about the current state of world, with its urgent need for more tolerance, evidence-based thinking, and science-based policy-making. The authors rightly argue that major institutions must move much more quickly and aggressively to address the enormous challenges facing the crowded, fast-changing planet. The US National Academies and research universities they discuss are well known to me, inasmuch as I have spent more than 50 years in research universities and 12 years as the president of the US National Academy of Sciences. Both are by nature conservative organizations: the Academies because they have critical reputations to protect as the provider of authoritative scientific, engineering, and health advice to the nation, and universities because their academic traditions so heavily value individual intellectual achievement over collaborative efforts with a more practical bent.