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Old-Boy Network Alive, Poll Says

By Victoria Contie | December 15, 1986

Date: December 15, 1986 WASHINGTON-Irregular funding and public ignorance are major problems facing scientists today, according to a survey of members of the scientific honor society Sigma Xi. The respondents believe that the distribution of government grants depends largely on "who you know" and that it is difficult for institutions lacking state-of-the-art equipment to obtain funds. The survey of more than 4,000 scientists in the United States and Canada was conducted by Sigma Xi as part of it

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Profile of Sewall Wright: More Than A Biography

By Douglas Futuyma | December 15, 1986

SEWALL WRIGHT AND EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY William B. Provine. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1986. 561 pp., illus. $30. William Provine's important and excellent book is more than a biography of a towering figure in population genetics; it is an examination of the development of the neo-Darwinian synthesis that is the core of modern evolutionary theory. Every student of evolution will profit by reading the book. Wright, whose publications span the years 1912 to (most recently) 1984, made

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Rosbaud: Midwife to Fission

By Arnold Kramish | December 15, 1986

Educated, cultured, sophisticated, the scientist Paul Rosbaud was a leading figure in Nazi society. But operating as “The Griffin,” he was also Britain s most valuable agent-in-place, relaying reports on arms and technology to the Allies. He authored the “Oslo Report,” which documented Ger man rocket work at Peenemünde—a warning that went unheeded until it was too late. In his book The Griffin (Houghton Muffin Co., 1986), Arnold Kramish reports for the first ti

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Royal Society's New Annual Journal

By Eugene Skolnikoff | December 15, 1986

SCIENCE AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS Number 1, 1986. Sir Alec Merrison, ed. The Royal Society, London, 1986. With this new journal, the Royal Society is entering the lists of organizations determined to contribute to public understanding of science and of the consequences of science. The journal, to appear once a year, is intended to contribute to the Society's “responsibility . . . to scientists and the public . . . as expositor of the one to the other.” It has a practical objective as wel

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Science Lobby Seeks Funds

By Jeffrey Mervis | December 15, 1986

WASHINGTON—A clearer focus and greater financial support from private industry hold the key to the survival of the National Coalition for Science and Technology. The Coalition, formed in 1981, has struggled to persuade the scientific community that it needs an overtly political organization to advocate greater resources for science. Its new slogan, “NCST—The Science Lobby,” is meant to highlight its broad focus and set it apart from the hundreds of associations and orga

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Search for Animal Alternatives Faces Rough Road

By Tom Watkins | December 15, 1986

NEW YORK—Revlon has decided to end its support of a major university research effort into in vitro alternatives to the use of animals in product testing and research. Its action is the latest obstacle to progress in a field hampered by inadequate funding and differing approaches to the problem. The Laboratory for In Vitro Toxicologic Assay Development at The Rockefeller University was created six years ago by Revlon after intense pressure by animal rights activists to find an alternative

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Select Scientists Get Long-Term NIH Grants

By Mark Bello | December 15, 1986

WASHINGTON-Her scientific challenge is daunting: to understand better how the AIDS virus is transmitted among heterosexuals. But an even bigger problem facing Margaret Fischl was her prolonged absence from the task to prepare her application for renewed support from the National Cancer Institute. An associate professor of internal medicine and director of the AIDS Clinical Research Program at the University of Miami Medical Center, Fischl knew the renewal process also would mean a new round of r

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Small Business Grants: A Program That Works

By Don Veraska | December 15, 1986

WASHINGTON—A small Salt Lake City horticultural firm thought it had a marketable idea when it found strains of a fungus that significantly improves the ability of plants to absorb water and nutrients. But Native Plants Inc. didn't have enough money to conduct the necessary research, and venture capital companies weren't interested in an unknown company. Enter the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, an attempt to share a small part of the federal R&D budget with small, high-

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The Human Face of Science

By Eugene Garfield | December 15, 1986

Why do we wait until the death of our colleagues to commemorate the achievements of their lives? Among scientists, the first biographical account is too often the obituary notice. And even when written by a well-informed associate, the biography or obituary, being essentially a view from the outside, cannot substitute for the rich personal details and revealing statements found in first-person accounts. There are many kinds of records that we and later generations require for a substantial under

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The Revenge of the Soft Scientists

By Beverly Halstead | December 15, 1986

I have nothing against the hard sciences, mathematics, physics or chemistry. Sadly, however, some philosophers take physics as the measure of what science is all about: you measure and count and weigh and perform experiments, which you can do over and over again. Biology hovers uncomfortably between the two worlds—the hard and the woolly. Hard biology tends to be molecular, physiological, experimental, while at the other extreme is woolly natural history— bug collecting and such like

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