Science

A catalog of cleanup efforts at the 50-plus sites where uranium was processed for nuclear weapons, where polluted water and sickness were often left behind.

A real (but mostly forgotten) patent conjures a world that could have been.

Predicting a hurricane in nineteenth-century South Carolina.

Game theory, computers, the atom bomb—these are just a few of things von Neumann played a role in developing, changing the 20th century for better and worse.

Even its inventors didn’t fully understand the point-contact transistor.

The fact that most doctors like me don't know how to perform abortions is one of the greatest scandals of contemporary medicine in the US.

Solving baseball’s enduring puzzles, to those who could even see them, was its own reward. They changed everything but were never given their due.

The Police Beat Algorithm’s outputs were not so much predictive of future crime as they were self-fulfilling prophesies.

"Female physicians" did a lot more than provide abortions, but abortion soon encompassed how others perceived their work.

From beginning to end, experts saw through Buckminster Fuller’s ideas and theories. Why did so many people come under his spell?

Using the historical record to model long-term wind patterns in remote parts of the world where few instrumental data sets prior to 1957 exist.

Poe’s work reminds us that the separation of “Arts” and “Sciences” into discrete discourses of knowledge is itself a quite recent invention.

Although originalists fail to see it, abortion has had a long and storied history for American women.

Why the history of science is of use to not only the sciences, but all branches of scholarship.

In the 1740s, Bordeaux developed some of the first modern theories of racial difference, even as the city profited from the slave trade.

The conservative successes of the Eisenhower administration have been too quickly forgotten.

Looking back at the misadventures of mid-century whale cardiology expeditions.

Deferrals for gay men who wish to donate blood are outdated, stigmatizing, unnecessary, and need to be removed.

The history of DIY transition offers one path toward what might come after, or in the place of, state-sanctioned care.

Harm reduction strategies, like those pioneered by queer men of color, have the best chance of stopping this disease.

Our food system could have been so different.

The elixir had antifreeze, for flavor. Nobody blinked—at first.

The carefully-tended longleaf pine forests of North America were plundered by European colonizers. They're still recovering.

We want to acknowledge — and learn from — our history.

Heroin, Aspirin, and The Spanish Flu.

Few who encounter Positive Psychology via self-help books and therapy know that its gender politics valorize the nuclear family and heterosexual monogamy.

Our government institutions, and especially our scientific ones, have a duty to rebuild the public trust that has eroded over the last half century.

The world is still reeling from the pandemic, but another scourge we thought we’d eliminated has reemerged.

The B-52’s prolific service career spans not only decades and conflicts, but eras of aviation.

The Office of Malaria Control in War Areas sought to curb malaria transmission in the United States.