The Biosafety Mess
| January 31, 2005
For 20 years, I was the curator of the world's largest bacteriophage collection: the Felix d'Herelle Reference Center for Bacterial Viruses (HER 607).
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Citizen Scholars
| January 17, 2005
Public research universities face enormous challenges in the 21st century, perhaps none more compelling than the obligation to serve society.
When Hypotheses Dominate
| December 6, 2004
Scientific experimentation is based on examining falsifiable hypotheses, and not simply using relatively meaningless experiments to prop up thedogma du jour.
Middle-Aged Scientists are Most Potent
| November 22, 2004
Is science a young person's game?
Downsizing the Status of Science
| November 8, 2004
Contemporary Western society has a love-hate relationship with scientific knowledge. We pursue it and celebrate it, employing people to gain knowledge of our genetic makeup, market conditions, or the nation's mood. Often we complain that we lack sufficient knowledge to find a cure for AIDS or for minimizing the consequences of global warming. Outwardly we take knowledge very seriously, with expressions like 'knowledge is power.'Yet, society is uncomfortable with the pursuit of knowledge, and oft
Bush-Kerry: More of the Change?
| October 25, 2004
US Presidential campaigns involving an incumbent usually boil down toa simple choice: the challenger's proposal for change against thesitting president's argument for more of the same. This year's race, however, reverses the terms of reference. George W. Bush, spurred and empowered by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, has precipitated far more dramatic policy changes than could have been predicted from his narrow margin of victory in 2000. Voters this year must consider whether those
Crafting a Consensus on Therapeutic Cloning
| October 11, 2004
American scientists seem to have forfeited their chance to convince the government to support research into therapeutic cloning as the source of a new generation of rational therapies. It was not always this way. As a young scientist working at Cold Spring Harbor in the early 1970s, my telephoning Paul Berg at Stanford University concerning his work on recombinant DNA and tumor viruses led to the Asilomar conferences, from which the voluntary moratorium on recombinant DNA work emerged, leading t
The Wizard's Warning
| September 27, 2004
Once upon a time, just over a hundred years ago, a wizard addressed a large gathering of industrial and scientific leaders. Drawing on his 20/20 foresight, he described the powerful discoveries that could enrich the coming century. "Your current language is inadequate," he said. So he conjured visions of energy quantization, relativity theory, atomic and nuclear structure, quantum mechanics, and molecular biology to give some impressions of the sciences that might come. With mounting excitement,
Stop Whispering About Peer Review
| September 13, 2004
You switch on the evening news to hear a headline report of a small new study claiming unforeseen risks to health. The startling nature of the claims is, as so often happens, in inverse proportion to the study's sample size. The news program has already located a group of concerned parents and an apparently off-hand response from health officials. Over the ensuing days, add into the mix other interested parties, a 'maverick' scientist, vitriolic commentary drawing comparisons with thalidomide, a
Nanotech Needs a Hard Sell, Plus Education
| August 30, 2004
Startling advances are being made in the emerging field of nanotechnology. For example, Naomi Halas and Jennifer West of Rice University in Houston recently announced that their nanoshells had proven effective at eradicating tumors in lab animals1; researchers at Harvard University reported creating hybrid nanowires that could be linked to conventional silicon circuits2; and government scientists at Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago documented how they had engineered nanoparticles capable o
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