Last week, the results of a successful trial of a new diet pill – lorcaserin – were published in the New England Journal of Medicine and immediately hailed by some as a “holy grail” in the fight against obesity. The study of 12,000 people in the US who were obese or overweight found that those who were given the pills lost an average of 4kg over 40 months.

Was it too good to be true? The conventional coverage of a scientific breakthrough quickly began to be questioned on social media and elsewhere. Who funded the study? Who stood to gain? Given the problematic history of diet pills as a treatment for obesity, would lorcaserin ever be licensed for use in the NHS? Is it worth the £200 per month per patient that it would cost? And were the results so impressive compared to lower-tech public health options, such as slimming clubs, weight management clinics or better food labelling? As with many science stories, complex politics lurk just beneath the shiny veneer.

Scientists and innovators are under intensifying pressure to deliver soundbite solutions and world-changing interventions. Despite his ridiculous outbursts on twitter, one can almost feel a pang of sympathy for Elon Musk as he experiences very publicly the pressure of delivering on his own hype. He promised the world that, by now, we would have safe and affordable driverless cars. The reality has been far messier, as we’ve discussed regularly on this blog.

Both diet pills and driverless cars remind us of the need to look beyond the headlines of any science story and ask questions about its social, political and historical context. Too often, we are dazzled by novelty and creativity. But science journalism should be no different from political journalism. It should hold powerful interests to account and ask repeatedly: who says? who benefits? who decides?

This is what we’ve tried to do over the past five years through the Political Science blog – part of the network of Guardian science blogs, which is now drawing to a close. Since the start of 2013, with our colleagues Alice Bell, Jess Bland and Georgina Voss, we’ve run 430 articles on a diverse array of topics across the politics of science, technology and innovation. We’ve given a platform to policy experts from the UK and US, but also China, South Africa, Japan, Argentina and Rwanda. Our contributors have included eminent scientists, early career researchers, MPs, ministers, activists and leading scholars in science and technology studies.

It has been a privilege to be hosted by the Guardian, which has done far more than most to ring alarm bells about the unaccountable power of technology. Our blog has provided a space for those in and around science and technology to ask questions that can only become more important as we navigate the possibilities and dilemmas of AI, algorithms, gene editing, geoengineering and other emerging technologies.

Many of our best posts have been historical (inspired in part by our sister blog, the H Word). Whether exploring UK attitudes to Euratom, lessons from Concorde, or the fiftieth anniversary of Harold Wilson’s speech on the “white heat” of technology, we’ve tried to reflect (to borrow from the title of a wonderful book, Never Pure, by Steven Shapin) that science is always produced “by people with bodies, situated in time, space, culture, and society, and struggling for credibility and authority.”

We’ve published a lot on the relationship between evidence, expertise and policy-making – debates that have taken on fresh urgency in the wake of the EU referendum and the election of Donald Trump. We’ve grappled with problems in science culture, science communication, diversity in science and public engagement. We’ve unpacked notions of excellence, openness and precaution. We’ve repeatedly made the case for investment and the need to protect UK science after Brexit, while also shining a light on the (often hidden) politics of research funding – in areas like nuclear energy, environmental science, biomedicine and health.

None of these issues is going away. And neither is the Political Science blog. From September 2018, we’ll be moving to a new home on the *Research site. With a refreshed line-up of contributors, and in partnership with the *Research team, we look forward to continuing to write, debate and interrogate the politics of science, technology and innovation. We hope you’ll join us.

Kieron Flanagan, Jack Stilgoe and James Wilsdon are co-editors of the Political Science blog which will be moving from September 2018 to *Research.