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Top Science Stories of 2016

Wiki Commons
Merging black holes caused the gravitational wave that scientists detected.

Gravitational waves, the Zika virus, and finding water in unexpected places in the solar system were some of the biggest science stories of 2016. In the U.S., it was also a year that highlighted the strained relationship between science and politics.

Climate change and other science policy questions were almost absent from the presidential campaign. The election of Donald Trump came as a surprise to most political pundits and sent scientists scrambling to find out more about the incoming Trump administration’s take on key science issues.

But a few of Trump’s views were already known: he has alleged that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese, and has pledged to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement. He has also repeated the thoroughly debunked idea that there is a link between autism and childhood vaccinations.

The reaction from the scientific community has been notable. In late November, more than 2,300 scientists - including 22 Nobel laureates - sent a letter to Trump urging him to, “adhere to high standards of scientific integrity and independence in responding to current and emerging public health and environmental health threats.” More than 11,900 women scientists have signed an open letter reaffirming their "commitment to build a more inclusive society and scientific enterprise."

Mark Abbott, president of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, says scientists also want to know if their labs will be funded.

“The concern really is, what will be the continuing level of federal support for research,” he told WCAI. Abbott thinks climate scientists should consider talking to the public even more than they had been.

“How can we engage with the business community and other sectors of the economy in helping them understand, what will climate look like," said Abbott. "What are the risks, what are the uncertainties? So they can make more strategic decisions. I think engaging this administration from an economic side is going to be really important.”

Other than the election, there was - of course - plenty of science news in 2016.

Gravitational Waves

“It’s really the most exciting thing that has happened in my lifetime,” said Regina Jorgenson, director of astronomy at the Maria Mitchell Association on Nantucket.

Gravitational waves were predicted by Albert Einstein exactly 100 years ago and are a consequence of his theory of general relativity. But it took until now to detect them. What finally did it? Two black holes that collided.

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) announced the discover in February.

Ice Melt at the Poles

The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet. This November saw a record low for sea ice area in both the Arctic and the Antarctic. In the Antarctic, this was a reversal of several years of record high levels of sea ice.

“Because the Arctic is in communication with the atmosphere, now we’ve got ocean as opposed to ice,” Mark Abbott of WHOI said. “We start changing the weather patterns in the northern hemisphere, we’re starting to see more productivity in that region so we’re going to have impacts on the whole marine ecosystem. It’s a big deal.”

CRISPR Enables Great Things

Scientists continued doing groundbreaking work with the gene-editing technique CRISPR.

“Hardly a week goes by that there isn’t another new advance in some cell type,” said Hunt Willard, president and director of the Marine Biological Laboratory.

One of those advances was in the area of sickle cell anemia therapy.

“The CRISPR technique is highly promising for that because it’s a single mutation that every person with sickle cell anemia or sickle cell trait has,” he said. “In principle, one could take stem cells from a patient, work in the laboratory to reverse that mutation back to the more typical form, and then reintroduce those stem cells back into the patient.”

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