News & Comment

Survey methods are used to collect informative data in a wide range of scientific contexts. This Comment outlines how to ensure that a survey is fit for its intended purpose and to avoid the many potential pitfalls associated with survey research.

Formal education systems rarely include the knowledge and skills of hunter-gatherer societies. This can lead to cultural erosion and knowledge decline. For education to be both high quality and sustainable, Indigenous knowledge should be recognized and valued.

Milad Malekzadeh was once told that to be successful in academia, developing unique expertise was necessary. Over the years, he learned that diversification is more valuable.

An academic website serves as both a public-facing window on the world wide web and an important internal laboratory resource. In this ‘How to’ piece, I outline how to build your academic website, including what content to include, and ways to build and launch your site.

Designing good research questions goes well beyond the standard definitions of clarity, focus and tractability, and even beyond ‘novelty’ in the strictest sense. This Comment describes the iterative creative process for designing good research questions, and includes practical suggestions and ways to avoid common traps.

Behaviour change interventions that are unsuccessful may often be limited by structural constraints. Accumulating evidence across contexts helps to diagnose these barriers. Policymakers should combine structural and behavioural insights to enact systemic reforms to better address environmental and societal challenges.

Despite its prominence in public discourse, economic growth does not translate into lasting improvements in well-being. To improve people’s lives, policymakers should shift their focus from economic growth to well-being. We provide example policies that could foster thriving, sustainable and inclusive societies.

Although individualism and isolated work remain common in academia, coordination offers substantial benefits. This Comment calls on researchers, funders, policymakers, journals and universities to create systemic change towards greater coordination in science.

Interdisciplinary collaboration is essential to understanding and addressing complex public health challenges. On the basis of complex systems science, we suggest actions that public health funders, institutions and researchers can take to fully engage in interdisciplinary work.

Federal funding of science has been cut, and trainee scientists in the USA face an unstable and uncertain future. Nicole Rust explains how and why we should act to support junior US researchers at this time.

Qian Di talks about what it was like doing public health research as a Chinese scientist in the USA during the first Trump administration. His experiences foreshadow challenges that lie ahead this time around.

The Trump administration has launched an extraordinary and dangerous attack on US science. Climate and water scientist Peter Gleick calls on scientists who are able and willing to do so to speak out publicly, and argues that although dissent carries risks, it is riskier to stay silent.

Degrowth is a socioeconomic paradigm that prioritizes planetary health and human wellbeing through a democratically planned reduction of unnecessary production and consumption. We urge psychological and behavioural scientists to study this important topic and suggest ways to develop an integrated research agenda for degrowth.