Exploring JASON’s past, present, and future

Nature : Online at Nature, Ann Finkbeiner discusses at length the small group of elite US science advisers known as JASON—named for the Greek mythological hero. Formed some 50 years ago primarily of scientists involved in the Manhattan Project, JASON today comprises 30–40 members who meet for six weeks each summer in La Jolla, California. They answer technical questions posed by government agencies and are famously neutral and notoriously secretive. Incoming head Gerald Joyce, a biochemist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla who has been a member for 14 years, says that the biggest challenge for the group today is attendance; many members attend only sporadically because of other obligations to research, career, and family. When Joyce takes over the helm this fall, he plans to review the members’ areas of expertise and to try to redirect the group away from social science studies and policy and back to its origins in nuclear policy.