How can we chart a brand new course for research and growth in the United States that’s genuinely publicly accountable, not simply publicly funded?
This query is at the coronary heart of a brand new initiative that seeks to reimagine the American public science research ecosystem.
Seventy-five years after Roosevelt administration advisor Vannevar Bush’s report Science—The Endless Frontier, the foundational assumption of American research coverage—that scientific autonomy naturally serves the public curiosity—calls for reexamination. While this association produced outstanding achievements and nice improvements of the final 80 years that improved human wellbeing and elevated alternative and prosperity, it constantly lacked mechanisms for real public accountability. Now, with this research ecosystem at a crossroad, as belief fractures and establishments face systematic assaults, the pressing want for democratic infrastructure in science and expertise coverage has by no means been clearer.
“The Public’s Science—A New Social Contract for American Research Policy” goals to convey collectively a broad vary of voices to create scholarship and coverage suggestions for reorienting science research towards excellence, justice, transparency, and democratic participation.
This two-year initiative is led by two consultants in science and expertise coverage: Jenny Reardon, professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz and founding director of the campus’s Science and Justice Research Center, and Alondra Nelson, Harold F. Linder Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), the place she leads the Science, Technology, and Social Values Lab.
“The lack of mechanisms for genuine public accountability in the science research enterprise is an urgent social and political problem,” Reardon stated. “With this initiative, we are convening people with a range of expertise and experience to focus their energy on developing the practical changes and policies needed to address this.”
Charting a brand new course
While the U.S. is at the moment going through a disaster level for belief in science, Reardon says, the historical past of this distrust might be traced via the growth of the atomic bomb and different wartime expertise. More lately, the COVID-19 pandemic introduced fears and distrust to a head, and the federal authorities has taken steps to defund science.
“It’s not just about this particular moment, but it has come to a crisis point. Many feel that government-funded research does not represent the range of values and experiences that people in this country have,” Reardon stated.
By proposing sensible mechanisms for real accountability, Nelson and Reardon see a chance to tackle this long-building subject.
“The social contract for science is not exempt from the democratic principles that govern other domains of American public life,” Nelson stated. “The postwar arrangement assumed that researcher autonomy would naturally serve the public interest—that assumption no longer holds, if it ever did. This initiative builds mechanisms for genuine democratic accountability: not just consultation, but shared authority over research priorities and resources.”
During the initiative, the mission leaders will convene conferences and workshops throughout the nation, maintain ongoing public dialogue via an interactive platform that makes complicated coverage debates accessible, and produce a particular subject of the ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science devoted towards scholarship and coverage suggestions, to be revealed fall 2026.
This initiative launched in December 2025 with a research workshop hosted at the IAS that gathered greater than 40 individuals representing academia, authorities, philanthropy, and civil society. With a various vary of experience, expertise, and political viewpoints, these students engaged in vigorous debate about how to chart a public-spirited imaginative and prescient for American research and innovation. The individuals examined why the U.S. has arrived at this period of public mistrust and the way to transfer ahead to construct research ecosystems the place accountability is real, advantages are broadly distributed, and science conjures up democratic participation.
Proposing coverage
Now, the students are creating central questions that may information their research. Committees representing a various vary of views will type to create coverage suggestions round every query. Reardon and Nelson envision that these committees will meet in numerous elements of the nation to incorporate views traditionally excluded from science policymaking. The committees will develop concrete governance improvements together with participatory priority-setting mechanisms that give communities real decision-making authority, public profit agreements guaranteeing publicly-funded research serves frequent pursuits, and research translation pathways that heart societal wants over business viability. These proposals construct on current fashions whereas charting new institutional territory.
The mission leaders will synthesize the committees’ output right into a complete set of coverage suggestions detailing the particular mechanisms wanted to make science research publicly accountable. Leveraging Nelson and Reardon’s in depth expertise—notably Nelson’s position as appearing director and principal deputy director for science and society in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) beneath President Biden—the suggestions might be shared with policymakers.
Throughout the course of, researchers will facilitate public dialogue via boards, livestreamed convenings, mechanisms for suggestions on rising coverage proposals, and interactive instruments for exploring various research governance fashions. The platform may even embrace content material to translate complicated scholarly literature for broad audiences.
This effort might be supported by a Civic Science Fellow, funded by the Rita Allen Foundation, who will serve the initiative for 18 months from the IAS.
This initiative is supported by funding from the Dana Foundation, Nelson Center for Collaborative Research at the Institute of Advanced Study, the Kavli Foundation, the Henry Luce Foundation, the Rita Allen Foundation, and the UC Santa Cruz Office of Research. Key crew members embrace UC Santa Cruz sociology graduate pupil James Karabin, Christine Custis and Nicholas Collins of IAS, Northwestern University sociology Ph.D. candidate Jorge Ochoa, and supervisor of the UCSC Science and Justice Research Center Colleen Stone.
