When I was at university studying chemistry, every Wednesday afternoon was blocked out for a five-hour practical. Unfortunately, the laboratory was not my natural habitat. Asked for a pure, blue crystalline solid, I would end up with a test-tube full of something black and gooey. My Liebig condenser would unaccountably run dry. In the balance, I always came up a few grams short.

Perhaps my scientific fallibility explains why I do not fully share the alarm of mathematicians at the dumping by OpenAI on October 6th of more than 700 academic papers claiming progress or solutions for 372 problems that had baffled ­scholars for decades. 

The implications of this feat extend to all science. The mathematicians warn of a future in which scientific understanding could belong to machines impenetrable to human minds. And yet the technology also promises a cornucopia of insights and life-enhancing invention.

The mission of our leader, our cover in Asia, and a special, seven-page science section is to subject these contrasting claims to rigorous analysis. I can report that my colleagues have more to show for their efforts than I ever did at the laboratory bench.

In our other editions we use the cover to argue that Mark Carney and Canada have something to teach a dangerous world. In January, at the ­annual jamboree in Davos, Mr Carney declared that the “middle powers” should respond to attacks and bullying by President Donald Trump by clubbing together. Nine months on, Canada’s prime minister is thriving. Having once been unrecognisable to nine in ten Canadian voters, he now enjoys an approval rating near 70%.

Canada and its allies cannot hope to fill in for America and China, which are both taking a brutally transactional attitude to their hegemony. But they can still mitigate the damage. Most importantly, Mr Carney is using the threat from Washington to galvanise a badly needed programme of domestic reform.

Jean-Claude Juncker, a Belgian prime minister who later became president of the European Commission, once defined the curse of modern governments: “We all know what to do,” he said, “we just don’t know how to get re-elected after we’ve done it.” So far, at least, Mr Carney is proving him wrong.

For The Insider this week our editor-in-chief, Zanny Minton Beddoes, travelled to Berlin to interview Alice Weidel, a leader of the Alternative for Germany, or AfD. The right-wing populists have been riding high in state elections, taking them ever closer to national office. If the AfD wins power, how would it govern? You can watch it now.