Menu
Idea

scientific research

217
Filter by:

Filter by published date

Wooden mannequin propped up with head hung low.

How a Scientific Consensus Collapsed

The curious case of social psychology.
by Jacob Mikanowski via The Chronicle of Higher Education on February 20, 2025

The Naval Scientist Who Wanted To Know How Football Players Would Survive Nuclear War

It wouldn’t take much, the fan explained, just some radioactive material inside the players, who would then undergo a physical examination.
by Chris Roberts via Defector on January 24, 2025
Fanny Angelina Hesse in front of article about her accomplishments.

Meet the Forgotten Woman Who Revolutionized Microbiology With a Simple Kitchen Staple

Fanny Angelina Hesse introduced agar to the life sciences in 1881. A trove of unpublished family papers sheds new light on her many accomplishments.
by Corrado Nai via Smithsonian on June 25, 2024
A herd of caribou walking across a field.
partner

Denying Science to Drill for Oil is a Decades-long Tradition

What the debate about the Arctic Refuge tells us about science denialism.
by Finis Dunaway via Made By History on February 8, 2024
Ella Tyree from "Atom Scientists: Ten Negro Scientists at Argonne Lab Help in Race to Harness Atomic Materials”, Ebony magazine, September 1949, pp. 26-28. Copyright not renewed.
Exhibit

Scientific Americans

An exhibit about some of the ways that pursuits in the natural and physical sciences have helped Americans understand their world.
Robert Millikan and Albert Einstein standing side by side.

The Posthumous Trials of Robert A. Millikan

Robert A. Millikan was once a beloved figure in American science. In 2021, his name was removed from buildings and awards. What happened?
by David Kordahl via 3 Quarks Daily on January 1, 2024
Chaco Canyon ruins.

A Scientist Said Her Research Could Help With Repatriation. Instead, It Destroyed Native Remains.

Federal agencies awarded millions of dollars to scientific studies on Native American human remains, undermining the goals of tribes fighting for repatriation.
by Mary Hudetz via ProPublica on July 20, 2023
Roland R. Griffith and psychedelic mushrooms..

Roland Griffiths' Magical Profession

His research ushered in the psychedelic renaissance. Now it's changing how he's facing death.
by Tom Bartlett via The Chronicle of Higher Education on April 10, 2023
Graphic including images of Percy Julian.

Percy Julian and the False Promise of Exceptionalism

Reflecting on the trailblazing chemist’s fight for dignity and the myths we tell about our scientific heroes.
by Alexis J. Pedrick via Distillations on March 16, 2023
An artistic syringe with RNA sequence in it

The Tangled History of mRNA Vaccines

Hundreds of scientists had worked on mRNA vaccines for decades before the coronavirus pandemic brought a breakthrough.
by Elie Dolgin via Nature on September 14, 2021
A lightbulb with a virus inside

World War II’s Lesson for After the Pandemic

The U.S. needs another innovation dream team.
by Derek Thompson via The Atlantic on June 28, 2021
People dancing at Woodstock

When Science Was Groovy

Counterculture-inspired research flourished in the Age of Aquarius.
by W. Patrick McCray, David I. Kaiser via Science on August 5, 2019
Children in a classroom in the 1950s.

How the Cold War Defined Scientific Freedom

The idea that liberal democracies shielded science from politics was always flawed.
by Patrick Iber via The New Republic on March 25, 2019

The Women Who Contributed to Science but Were Buried in Footnotes

In a new study, researchers uncovered female programmers who made important but unrecognized contributions to genetics.
by Ed Yong via The Atlantic on February 11, 2019
Science for the People at 2017’s March for Science.

Why a Radical 1970s Science Group Is More Relevant Than Ever

A second life for an organization of scientists who questioned how their work was being used.
by Sarah Laskow via Atlas Obscura on January 22, 2018
original

When Science Was Big

This year's Nobel Prize in physics is a blast from the past of Cold War-era research investment. Is that era gone for good?
by David Singerman on October 19, 2017

How a Frog Became the First Mainstream Pregnancy Test

In the 1950s, if a woman wanted to know if she was pregnant, she needed to get her urine injected into a frog.
by Ed Yong via The Atlantic on May 4, 2017
Vannevar Bush

Science in War, Science in Peace: Origins of the NSF

The establishment of a federal agency devoted to space, physics, and more belied a cross-party consensus that such disciplines were vital to national interest.
by Danny Robb via JSTOR Daily on May 28, 2025
An eraser erasing a drawing of man.

R.F.K., Jr., Anthony Fauci, and the Revolt Against Expertise

It used to be progressives who distrusted the experts. What happened?
by Daniel Immerwahr via The New Yorker on May 19, 2025

How to Not Get Poisoned in America

"We should go back into history and ask: Why did we need the federal Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906?"
by Deborah Blum, Talia Lavin via The Sword And the Sandwich on April 30, 2025
American Flag with Stars replaced with atoms and stripes replaced by syringes and graduated cylinders

The Rise (and Fall?) of the National Science Foundation

In the ’50s, America declared science an ‘endless frontier.’ We may be reaching the end of it.
by Carly Anne York via The Chronicle of Higher Education on February 21, 2025
Eastern State Penitentiary in Pennsylvania.

Who Shall and Shall Not Have a Place in the World?

Can the racialist and eugenicist roots of statistics can be cordoned off from “proper” science?
by Lily Hu via Los Angeles Review of Books on February 13, 2025
A “mosser” with a load of seaweed bound for the agar factory in Beaufort, N.C.

When Fishermen Harvested Seaweed: The Agar Industry in Beaufort, N.C. during the Second World War

How a small factory off the coast of North Carolina played a role in the war.
by David Cecelski via davidcecelski.com on February 12, 2025
Sign along empty road reading "Private Road No Entry" in Hebrew and English.

How Israel Deceived the U.S. and Built the Bomb

Newly declassified documents reveal how Israel operated under the noses of U.S. inspectors.
by William Burr, Avner Cohen via Foreign Policy on February 7, 2025
An illustration of space, with two silhouettes of heads overlapping.

The Fraught U.S.-Soviet Search for Alien Life

During the Cold War, American and Soviet scientists embarked on an unprecedented quest to contact extraterrestrials.
by Sophie Pinkham via The New Yorker on February 6, 2025
A collage of rats, trash, rat exterminators, and a rat mascot.

Rats!

Baltimore's long history with its most polarizing pest.
by Lydia Woolever via Baltimore Magazine on January 2, 2025
CIA memo about LSD use.

CIA Behavior Control Experiments Focus of New Scholarly Collection

Agency sought drugs and behavior control techniques to use in “special interrogations” and offensive operations.
by Michael Evans via National Security Archive on December 23, 2024
John B. Calhoun and his rats from a 1970 photograph.
partner

Rats Are as Bad as Human Beings in Some Ways

In which John B. Calhoun begins to study the lifestyles of rodents, and the public listens.
by Lee Alan Dugatkin via HNN on October 9, 2024
Advertisement promoting cocaine toothache drops, 1889.

An Undulating Thrill

Once lauded as a wonder of the age, cocaine soon became the object of profound anxieties. What happened?
by Douglas Small via Aeon on October 4, 2024
John Mack speaking on the Oprah Winfrey Show, with a tagline that reads "John Mack, M.D., Harvard Psychiatrist Who Believes Patients Were Abducted By Aliens."

John E. Mack and the Unbelievable UFO Truth

The controversial career of John E. Mack, the Pulitzer Prize–winning Harvard psychiatrist who wrote best-selling books on UFO abduction.
by Michael J. Socolow via Los Angeles Review of Books on September 21, 2024
A collage of a Teflon pan frying an egg, surrounded by nuclear bombs and the molecular structure of Teflon.

The Long, Strange History of Teflon

First discovered in 1938, Teflon has been used for everything from helping to create the first atomic bomb to keeping your eggs from sticking to the pan.
by Rudy Molinek via Smithsonian on August 20, 2024
View More
30 of
217

Filter Results:

Suggested Filters:

Idea

Person

brought to you by
© Bunk History