Although it appears to be trying its damnedest, 2021 has not yet sapped me of my hope that humanity can turn a corner and put the horrors of 2020 in our rearview mirror. As I’ve written in previous dispatches, what anchors me to this hope is science.

Since the calendar turned, the COVID-19 pandemic has worsened; new, more-infectious SARS-CoV-2 variants are cropping up around the globe; vaccine rollout has been slower than anticipat-ed; and political division has reached a fever pitch here in the US. But the steady pace of scientific discovery and development churns on. And even with so many aspects of our lives and work bearing the scars of 2020’s tumult (some wounds are indeed still fresh), we at The Scientist, as well as those in the research community we serve and like-minded members of the general public, continue to look to science, reason, and fact as the ...