The Scientist - Home

Caviling, carping, and quarreling, is this any way to advance science? New HAVEN, CONN. "For a science that deals with the apparently simple question of who is related to whom, phylogeny has been positively littered with bones of contention. The root problem, explains former Yale University taxonomist Charles Sibley, is that a creatures appearance may not always bean accurate guide to its place in the pantheon of beasts. So until recently, phylogenists were left to cavil over the appropriate

Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department revolutionizes psychology CAMBRIDGE, MASS--Daniel Osherson works with equations on paper. He is interested in the abstract and arcane topic of "inductive inference”" in particular, the theory of how evidence can support a hypothesis. William Quinn toils over collections of fruit flies in a biology lab, trying to discern how small genetic differences can cause subtle changes in memory and learning among populations of Drosophila. As unlikely as it m

Competition with fancy machines and wads of cash, state schools steal national center scientists Christmas came early in 1985 for serious number crunchers. In the spring of that year, the National Science Foundation christened five national supercomputing centers and sent them forth into the world to meet the grand challenges of science and engineering. The NSF's idea was to fund these silicon meccas so that they could maintain state-of-the-art technical facilities and provide supercomputing

The foundation battles to get the best and the brightest WASHINGTON--William WuIf is the kind of person who believes that when you’ve been supported by a system, you have an obligation to give something back someday. So the University of Virginia computer scientist was sorely tempted when the National Science Foundation asked him to come to Washington for two or three years to run its computer and information science and engineering directorate. As a young professor, Wulf had benefited f

Few issues have caused more fear and confusion than the question of the hazards of low-level radiation. There has been a remarkable failure to examine closely the evidence when discussing the issue and planning future studies. As a result, the public’s radiation phobia has been needlessly reinforced, and public money is being used on studies that are bound to be inconclusive. The problem arises, in part, because the general public—and even most scientists—are not aware that

In 1955, a puckish, 30-year-old Weishman resigned as lecturer in theoretical physics at the University of Manchester to become science correspondent of the Manchester Guardian. Unwittingly, the energetically eclectic John Maddox thus took his first step toward the editorial chair of Nature, which he has occupied with distinction on two occasions—between 1966 and 1973, and from 1980 until the present. A robust defender of what he calls “the scientific enterprise,” Maddox has

The Scientist has asked a group of expert. to periodically comment upon recent articles that they have found noteworthy. Their selectIons, presented here in every issue, are neither endorsements of content nor the result of systematic searching. Rather they are personal choices of articles they believe the scientific community as a whole may also find i.nteresting. Reprints of any articles cited here may be ordered through The Genuine Article, 8501 Market St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19004. BY SOK

Until recently, most artificial-intelligence researchers accepted the view that thinking consists of the manipulation of discrete symbols, such as the written or spoken language. With this understanding, they achieved a degree of progress, notably in machine understanding and generation of natural-language communication, in symbolic mathematics programs, and in the automatic proving of theorems and assertions by machines. Groups at MIT, Carnegie-Meilon, and Stanford dramatically extended theore

E.O. WiLson, editor, NationalAcademy Press; Washington, D.C.; 496 pages, $19.50 (paperback); $32.50 (hardback) People have far fewer genes than do salamanders or many flowering plants, says Wilson as he piles up statistics to demon- strate the abundance of genetic information stored in living things. This richness—and its fragility—are examined from different angles by this volume’s 55 contributors. PATTERNING IN SEED PLANT SPECIES Jonathan D. Sauer, University of Californi

Congress is in a tizzy; science leaders are worried legislation could do harm to the innocent WASHINGTON--Fraud in science has become a cause célébre among Washington politicians. For a two-week period this spring, it seemed that everywhere one looked there were concerned and aggrieved congressmen. And as the politicians aired the dirty linen of science in public and fulminated over measures they claimed needed to be taken to assure the public that science would be pursued in a spot

Scientists, beware! The West German hacker who invaded scores of U.S. military computer systems last year could easily strike again. Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory who finally tracked the electronic wizard down have been studying his M.O. Their conclusion: His tactics were often ridiculously simple. Many of the systems he entered used account names and passwords so obvious as to be worthless. And many current systems continue to use similar passwords. The best defense? Difficult p

Between 1977 and 1986, the United States produced more than 42% of all articles on mapping and sequencing the human genome that appeared in 3,200 of the world’s leading scientific journals, the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) reported in a study issued in late April. “The United States is the clear leader in basic research, publishing more articles on mapping and sequencing than European or Asian nations,” it concluded. The next largest contributor over t