This Week’s Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through June 2)

BIOTECH

Gene Therapy Is Saving Children’s Lives—but Screening to Discover Who Needs It Is Lagging Behind
Emily Mullin | MIT Technology Review
“The company behind the drug, AveXis, is seeing the most dramatic results in children who are treated in the first month or two of life. That means identifying patients as soon as possible—ideally at birth. Finding them early could mean the difference between life and death. But as AveXis and other biotech companies race to bring transformative gene therapies to market, states have been slow to adopt screening tests for genetic diseases that are, increasingly, treatable.”

TRANSPORTATION

Hybrid Electric Airliners Will Cut Emissions—and Noise
Philip E. Ross | IEEE Spectrum
“To get hybrids up in the air will require lots of technological advances. These advances will come, of course, from R&D programs aimed at building hybrid planes. But they’ll also come out of efforts—such as Siemens’s—to introduce electric trainer aircraft and, perhaps most of all, to build an envisioned industry of intra-urban air taxis whisking people around in what amount to overgrown drones.”

SCIENCE

The Man Who Says Science Blew Its Best Shot at an AIDS Vaccine
Adam Rogers | Wired
“Science—the institution, not the set of methods—is made of people doing the hard work of apprehending the world and trying to change it. But those people are just as subject to social forces as any other group of humans. They are vulnerable to bias, blind spots, and groupthink. That’s not an excuse to stop believing in scientific conclusions. (Vaccines prevent disease. Life on Earth develops and continues to change through a process of evolution. Human industrial emission of carbon into the atmosphere is altering the planetary ecosystem.) It just means scientists aren’t always right.”