Today we wrote an article covering the issue of Final Five voting. There is a serious movement underway to introduce Final Five voting in several states, and while we were originally skeptical we find the idea intriguing, particularly for conservatives who worry about Republican voters' views being accurately represented by their elected officials.

Policy News You Need To Know

Washington is empty. Everyone is looking at the election. So what can we write about? Recently, there has been a lot of science & engineering news. Put together, they paint a dismal picture.

#Space — Once again, the biggest news by far was produced by Elon Musk. Yesterday, SpaceX launched the fifth test flight of its Starship vehicle from its Starbase facility in Texas. The most significant achievement was the unprecedented recovery of the Super Heavy booster. For the first time ever, SpaceX successfully "caught" the massive Super Heavy booster as it returned to the launch site. The booster was cradled by two mechanical arms (nicknamed "chopsticks") attached to the launch tower about 7 minutes after liftoff. This precise maneuver required the booster to perform accurate boostback and landing burns to guide itself back to the launch pad. To put it in plain English, this means that a piece of machinery the size of a skyscraper and propelled by rockets was able to fly itself down so that it could be snatched mid-air, without being damaged, by two giant mechanical arms. It's almost impossible to describe what an impressive feat of engineering this is. But it's not impressive just for abstract reasons: it's a giant leap forward (pun very much intended) in the direction of making humanity a spacefaring species. The ability to do this potentially allows for much faster turnaround times between launches of the Starship vehicle, as the booster can be quickly prepared for another flight. SpaceX envisions being able to relaunch a Starship within days or even hours of landing. Reusability and quick turnaround is key to making launches of interplanetary vehicles a routine event, and SpaceX have gone much further toward making that a reality than literally any other group in the history of humanity. All of which makes it even more infuriating, unacceptable, and outright un-American that various government bodies, as we have repeatedly reported here, seem determined to harass SpaceX to punish Elon Musk for his political activities.

#Engineering #Chyna — Speaking of breakthrough engineering: Chinese scientists report using a quantum computer to hack widely-used encryption algorithms. It's China, so who knows whether it's true, but it's certainly theoretically possible, and it's hard to understate how vulnerable we would be if China broke through in quantum computing before the West. Which only underscores the point that our governments should be supporting, not obstructing, our greatest innovators.

#Science — Speaking of gratuitously hobbling Western science and engineering, terrifying fact about the National Science Foundation under the Biden-Harris Administration: the proportion of NSF grants prioritizing DEI in grant proposals has increased from <1% before the Biden-Harris Administration to more than a quarter (27%) by early this year. This is from a new Senate report covered by The Free Press.

#Science — Speaking of the state of Western science, there is also a widespread fraud problem. For example (and it is hardly a unique one), one of the most cited and esteemed Alzheimer's and Parkinson's researchers, Eliezer Masliah, has turned out to be a fraud. Not only that, but he headed the National Institute of Aging's neuroscience division, which meant he not only produced his own research but directed a lot of research in the field. As a result, he might have set back the field by years or even decades. (Via Crémieux Recueil)

#Science — Another example, this time in sociology. A new study in a top sociology journal examines "how young people experience policing." At first glance, this is (at least arguably) a legitimate topic for research. However, the researchers drew only on interviews of youth…in a police-abolition organization. (Via Justin T. Pickett)

#Science #Chyna #Immigration — Also related: ethnically Chinese scientists living in the U.S. are increasingly swapping their affiliations away from American universities to Chinese ones. (Via PNAS) Everyone loves high-skilled immigration, but what if immigrants retain ethnic loyalty to their home countries?