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David Matthews

@davidmjourno.bsky.social
91 followers 42 following 49 posts

Reporting on science and technology policy. International editor at @sciencebusiness.net. I also write for @nature.com. Based in Berlin. davidjackmatthews.journoportfolio.c…

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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 13/10/2025
This account is mothballed. You can read my @sciencebusiness.net articles here: sciencebusiness.net/author/david... And a wider selection of my writing here: davidjackmatthews.journoportfolio.com
sciencebusiness.net
David Matthews | Science|Business
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Jessica Green @greenprofgreen.bsky.social · 04/09/2025
Hey #polisci: we need more work like Gilman’s new FP piece: plausible scenarios of how world order is reorganized by climate, or more accurately, the shift from fossil to green assets. 🧵 foreignpolicy.com/2025/09/01/e...
foreignpolicy.com
The Coming Ecological Cold War
Decarbonization isn’t just about technology and markets—it’s a geopolitical revolution.
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 27/08/2025
This piece could take the comparison with the Opium Wars even further - in that you could argue, at a stretch, that (some) US digital products are the modern equivalent of opium. Lucrative for the exporter, rather unhealthy for the population on the receiving end.
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 19/08/2025
I still often think about this story. If the US proves to have massively over-invested in LLMs, should we start considering the credulity of the US's tech media ecosystem, so prone to overhyping new products, a strategic weakness? What will China have invented while the US was obsessed with AI?
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 07/08/2025
But still, the scientists, economists and public health experts we spoke to think, given promising animal results and diminishing returns in curing individual disease, the time is right for a major scientific shift of money and focus to ageing.
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 07/08/2025
We can't say with certainty whether a scientific push to slow ageing would actually work, of course. And anti-ageing has no shortage of charlatans and dubious claims.
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 07/08/2025
Scientists trying to run these trials complain they just can't raise the cash. The EU’s Horizon Europe spends just 0.08% of its collaborative grant funding on ageing biology, less than an eighth of what it does on cancer.
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 07/08/2025
But there's mounting scientific evidence that some drugs and therapies prolong life in animals. It's just that there's very little money, or political will, to test them in humans, or to research the underlying biology of ageing.
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 07/08/2025
In the rich world, life expectancy increases are slowing. Better treatments for diseases of age make limited impact, as in old age, after you're cured of one, you'll be hit by another. For example, it's estimated that if we completely cured cancer, this would only add 2-3 years to life expectancy.
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 07/08/2025
Today, we've published a feature that asks a fundamental question for anyone involved in science policy: should we focus less on curing individual diseases like cancer or Alzheimer's, and instead try to understand and slow ageing? sciencebusiness.net/news/drug-de...
sciencebusiness.net
Anti-ageing therapies: have we got health research funding wrong?
Last year, researchers published an analysis that made grim reading for anyone hoping to live a much longer, healthier life this century.
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 05/08/2025
When Berlin airport was overbudget and late, that was rightly the focus of every article. Science and technological development is much more complex and uncertain that building an airport! But is it so fundamentally unpredictable that we can't at least ask a few questions about budget/timing?
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 05/08/2025
Important point in this @nature.com piece about science journalism - too much reporting is just about the outcome, not the process. The question often missing in sci/tech breakthroughs stories is: why now? Why did it take this long to understand/build this? www.nature.com/articles/d44...
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
As the EU fails to agree on scientific sanctions against Israel, there's one under-reported reason why Berlin might be blocking them - Germany is currently buying a $3.5 billion Arrow 3 missile shield from Israel. sciencebusiness.net/news/interna...
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
Full link here: commission.europa.eu/document/dow...
commission.europa.eu
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
Believe it or not, the EU's new €410 billion European Competitiveness Fund will fund...the Metaverse ("virtual worlds", as Brussels calls it). For how many years does an idea have to be dead before the EU removes it from their policy roster? At least there's no mention of blockchain.
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 26/05/2025
(one of the metascientists quoted in the piece actually thinks the obsession with metrics may itself explain the purported decline in disruptive science). In other words, the quest to quantify disruptiveness, however measured, could end up dampening disruptiveness itself.
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 26/05/2025
Because if we find a good measurement, the risk is that researchers then try to optimise their work to maximise this metric, rather than actually producing "disruptive" or "novel" science (like how citations are gamed now). Perhaps the science system should quit its addiction to metrics.
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 26/05/2025
Since writing this feature, I've had a nagging thought. In part, the article describes how metascientists are trying to find good metrics to measure "disruptive" or "novel" science. But do we actually want them to succeed?
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 21/05/2025
Thank you Alexandra! Yes, appropriate to see that coming out the same day. My view is that we don't yet have a settled good metric on disruptive/novel research. It's not that these metrics are contradicting each other exactly, they're just measuring things in different ways.
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Alexandra Witze @alexwitze.bsky.social · 21/05/2025
There's a fascinating feature out in @nature.com today from @davidmjourno.bsky.social, on whether and why scientific breakthroughs are getting harder to achieve. It's a narrative being discussed by some of the most powerful science officials in the world, such as OSTP director Michael Kratsios. 🧪
nature.com
Are groundbreaking science discoveries becoming harder to find?
Researchers are arguing over whether ‘disruptive’ or ‘novel’ science is waning – and how to remedy the problem.
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
Kratsios says a lot on research bureaucracy, for example, that the average academic would agree with. But he also has the brass neck to say that "America’s national laboratories and universities are its crown jewels" just as the Trump administration tries to foist ideological appointees on Harvard
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
There's a doom-loop risk here: returns to research investment are falling, which allows politicians to make cuts, which further stagnates science and technology breakthroughs, leading to further falls in public and political support.
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
But on my reading, he's using this diminishing return on science investment to justify the huge cuts to research currently being pushed by the White House. No one I can think of in the metascience world worried about declining research disruptiveness would support cuts!
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
Another very revealing - and perhaps ominous - speech from Michael Kratsios, Trump's appointee as OSTP director. He argues - correctly, in my view - that we're seeing diminishing returns from science spending, and we need new ways of organising research. www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-st...
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 19/05/2025
Great piece arguing scientific incentives have led researchers to predominantly invent new materials that are difficult to scale up into real world use: www.worksinprogress.news/p/why-its-so...
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
He also wants to shake up how the state funds research: "Prizes, advance market commitments, and other novel funding mechanisms, like fast and flexible grants, can multiply the impact of government-funded research." The Institute for Progress et al research agenda reaches the White House.
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
Fascinating speech by the US's new OSTP director, Michael Kratsios, last week. He accepts the Robert Gordon etc argument that sci/tech has slowed down. "Progress today pales in comparison to the huge leaps of the 20th century." www.whitehouse.gov/articles/202...
whitehouse.gov
Remarks by Director Kratsios at the Endless Frontiers Retreat
THE GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICAN INNOVATION AS PREPARED FOR DELIVERY Endless Frontiers Retreat, Austin, Texas April 14, 2025 THE DIRECTOR: Thank you for the
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
Eg english.elpais.com/technology/2...
english.elpais.com
The failure of the ‘hyperloop’, Elon Musk’s dream of traveling at 1,000 km/h by train that is fading
Technology that promised travel at near-supersonic speeds in capsules through vacuum tubes deflates after a decade of projects that did not come together
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
www.spd.de/fileadmin/Do... This is an idea dreamed up by Musk 12 years ago, but was found to be completely technically and economically unfeasible, and no replacement for trains. Frankly embarrassing of the German gov to resurrect this idea. Do they read the news on a ten year delay?
spd.de
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
In Feb, I criticised Europe for wasting money and attention on over-inflated US tech hype cycles like genAI, the metaverse and blockchain: sciencebusiness.net/viewpoint/ai... Well, Germany's incoming government has gone one further. They're promising a test hyperloop route in their governing plan!
sciencebusiness.net
Viewpoint: Europe must stop chasing US technology hype cycles
Three weeks ago, the low-cost Chinese AI tool DeepSeek sent investors into a panic. On a shoestring budget, by AI standards, it managed to create a model that was comparable with the very best US tech...
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
Harvard's response: The majority of the demands "represent direct governmental regulation of the 'intellectual conditions' at Harvard...The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights." www.harvard.edu/president/ne...
harvard.edu
The Promise of American Higher Education
No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
It's worth reading the US government's demands to Harvard in full. They want nothing less than the mass hiring of pro-Trump academic and students, on pain of losing $2.2 billion. Seems to go well beyond Columbia demands. No wonder Harvard had to say no. www.harvard.edu/research-fun...
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
More chatter from European businesses about how to quit US cloud providers www.ft.com/content/eabd...
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 08/04/2025
1 in 3 Europeans think a cure for cancer exists, but is being hidden from the public for commercial reasons. A similar number say that “viruses have been produced in government labs to control our freedom.” 23% think early humans lived alongside dinosaurs. sciencebusiness.net/news/r-d-fun...
sciencebusiness.net
Data corner: Europeans’ views of science and technology
Europeans have widely divergent views on whether the private sector should be free to exploit new science and technology, or if the government should take firm control, according to a major survey of ...
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 02/04/2025
It's tricky to disentangle exactly why each project has been canned, as plenty of projects on, say, women or HIV also look at trans populations too. But there are several examples we found of cancelled projects purely looking at gender or racial health differences.
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 02/04/2025
We totted up which types of research project the NIH has cancelled under the new Trump administration. Research on transgender people is the biggest target, followed by projects related to diversity, HIV, race/racism, and women. sciencebusiness.net/news/r-d-fun...
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 02/04/2025
My interview with the new Commissioner. What seemed to animate/exasperate her most was the level of inflexibility and red tape for Horizon Europe grants. "We talk about academic freedom, but if our applications and grant contracts are too complicated, there will be no freedom for researchers."
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 28/03/2025
Also, just speculating, but couldn't the fall in developers be due to the end of cheap money and subsequent tech layoffs? Possible they were hit harder than the wider computing and data services sector. Gen AI is the tech bet of the century so far - and a very high stakes one for the US.
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 28/03/2025
Generative AI may have contributed to a c.5% dip in the number of developers and a c.15% fall in writers, this @jburnmurdoch.ft.com piece estimates. All seems a little meh for a technology the US plans to spend nearly $2 trillion on over the next five years. www.ft.com/content/471b...
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
Detailed table of the 350-odd projects cancelled by the NIH under the new Trump administration. The best overview I've come across of exactly what kind of science is now verboten under Trump (at least at the NIH)
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 25/03/2025
The most lucid analysis I've read on how the US has bet the house on generative AI. And how difficult it will be to recoup its spending (estimated at close to $2 trillion over the next five years). prospect.org/power/2025-0...
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 25/03/2025
This @wired.com piece now also hearing signs that European business are getting nervous about relying on US cloud services www.wired.com/story/trump-...
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
The Trump administration is now seen as so erratic and hostile that European businesses worry their own products are uninsurable because they are built on US digital tools. In other words, the US has a "kill switch" over much of the European economy. sciencebusiness.net/news/soverei...
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 12/03/2025
I leave otter.ai running while trying to stop my toddler from interrupting an interview and this is the AI generated summary. "Confused conversation with mixed topics" - fair
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
Despite China's continued rise as a science power, it actually seems to be attracting fewer, not more, foreign academics. There seems to have been an exodus during the pandemic - many just couldn't take the often draconian lockdowns. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
Foreign researchers in China face tightening restrictions
Data and security laws are affecting scientists who stayed in China after COVID — but for some it’s still a great place to do research.
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
EU to US: please stop messing around European winners of NIH grants, or we might have to reconsider giving your scientists access to Horizon Europe sciencebusiness.net/news/interna...
sciencebusiness.net
NIH turmoil risks reciprocal EU-US access to health research funding
A clampdown on diversity-related projects at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) is causing uncertainty and fear among European grant recipients, raising questions over whether the EU should co...
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
Harks back to this Covid fast grants survey, which found about 80% of researchers would be studying something completely different if money was no object: future.com/what-we-lear...
future.com
What We Learned Doing Fast Grants
We launched an abnormally fast source of emergency science funding during COVID-19. The results revealed flaws in current science funding models.
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
Every time I do a story about high-risk, high-reward research, it seems like most scientists have some potentially world-transforming, crazy-sounding idea tucked away in their brain. But they've just had to forget about it because the money isn't there. sciencebusiness.net/node/59737/p...
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 25/02/2025
Perhaps the most alarming thing in this story about US postdocs hit by Trump administration grant freezes is that several are too fearful to go on record. This is the kind of anonymisation you sometimes need when reporting on, say, science in China. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
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David Matthews @davidmjourno.bsky.social · 24/02/2025
thebaffler.com/salvos/of-fl...
thebaffler.com
Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit
A secret question hovers over us, a sense of disappointment, a broken promise we were given as children about what our adult world was supposed to be like. I am referring not to the standard false…
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