Meanwhile, back “At the National Academies”

Abstract

The National Academy of Sciences was created by an act of Congress in 1863, empowering “fifty men of science” to form an academy that would “whenever called upon by any department of the Government, investigate, examine, experiment, and report upon any subject of science or art” and to “receive no compensation whatever for any services to the Government of the United States” (1). Thus, the “sole obligation” of the National Academy of Sciences at its creation was to provide objective scientific advice to the nation—its honorific function, for which it is arguably better known by the public, developed later. Over the years, Academy members, empowered by Congress to make their own rules, added elements to the Academy to help fulfill that obligation—creating PNAS (1914), a journal to disseminate scientific advances, the National Research Council (1916), an investigative arm to support the use of scientific research for evidence-based policy making, and two additional academies, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in 1964 and the Institute of Medicine in 1970, rechartered as the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) in 2015, to broaden its scope across the burgeoning national scientific enterprise. So, a lot has changed since 1863. Collectively, NASEM (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine) has almost 7,000 members, many of whom are not even “ men of science.” Although the … [↵][1]1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: maybe{at}illinois.edu. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1