For the past 23 years, The New Atlantis has been warning that there are dangerous cracks in the foundations of America’s social compact for science. In biology and biotechnology, scientists have at times pursued research that poses serious moral peril — research that aims to fundamentally alter human nature or poses safety risks to the public. In medicine, researchers have too often seen their goal as adding years to life rather than life to years, adopting a denuded view of the human person. And scientific research generally has seemed to be losing its way, even judged by its own deep disciplinary imperatives. Most fundamentally, the values of American scientists have steadily grown apart from those of the public that science is supposed to serve.
Taken together, these trends have created steadily growing conditions for a public backlash against the scientific establishment. In 2026, that backlash is plainly at hand. The hardline critics of the old establishment are in power, and they are proposing to cut government funding for science across the board. Remarkably, there is as yet no force in American public life coherently depicting what comes next for science. Those who view the backlash as a form of reckless destruction have little to say other than to defend the old order as good. Those who are leading the backlash are offering few serious ideas for what should be built instead.
It is into this void that The New Atlantis aims to step with this project. As worrisome as the present moment is, it is also an opportunity. The 2020s are shaping up to be the most important reset in the life of America’s relationship to science since the dramatic reconfiguration of World War II and the early postwar period. Over the next three years, The New Atlantis will develop 15 original articles that will identify what went wrong and propose what might come next.
