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WASHINGTON—Drummond Rennie is a self-professed “fraudy”— his term for members of the coterie of journal editors, university administrators, science lobbyists, and government officials who are called on to affer testimony, give lectures, and attend meetings on science fraud. But that doesn’t mean that Rennie, deputy editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, enjoys the title. In fact, he doesn’t think that fraud is very common within the resear

Erik Kiviat knows where the endangered Blanding’s turtle lives—and that has made him a popular man in Dutchess County, N.Y On the one hand, environmental groups opposed to a local housing development have offered to pay Kiviat, who is an environmental consultant, to say that the creature is threatened by the project, even though they know perfectly well that no turtles live in the area. On the other hand, the developers have suggested to Kiviat that if he somehow were to find a turt

The Freestone, Calif.-based C.S. Fund (the initials stand for “charitable source”) rejected about 570 proposals last year in the process of selecting recipients of $1.5 million in grants. And, out of the kindness of its institutional heart, it has some advice to offer scientists who are thinking about submitting proposais for the coming year’s round of awards. First of all, says the foundation’s executive director, Marty Teitel, applicants should take the time to learn w

Onchocerciasis. $99,000 from the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, New York, to Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, to develop a vaccine. Hearing research. Three grants each of $13,500 each under the Otological Research Fellowship Program of the Deafness Research Foundation: University of California, Davis, K. Adachi University of Michigan, M. T. Tsai; University of Washington, P. S. Bobrer Vision research. From Gannett Foundation: $40,000 and $31,390 to Baylor College of Medicine for genetic

Getting Nobel Fever All Over Again A quarter-century ago, three Brookhaven National Lab physicists discovered the muon-neutrino, for which they were awarded this year’s Nobel Prize. Today plans are afoot to bring new glory to the aging accelerator that was the site of their research. The Department of Energy wants to use the 28-year-old machine, known as the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron, as an injector for a much larger proposed accelerator, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. ̶

Sensing Chemicals In People, Food Until now, sensors for salicylates—the active pain-killing ingredient in aspirin—and sulfites, which are commonly found in preserved foods, certain beverages, and even acid rain, have not been available. But using established electrochemical membrane-sensing technology, University of Michigan chemist Mark Meyerhoff has developed two polymeric-membrane electrodes that he says have potential for monitoring aspirin toxicity in patients taking large am

In 1914, an ambitious trans-antarctic expedition was organized by scientist/explorer Ernest Henry Shackleton. But during the middle of winter, his ship, the Endurance, was caught and crushed in the pack ice of the Weddell Sea. It wasn’t until 1988 that another ship ventured into that part of the ocean during the antarctic winter, this time with the goal of studying the delicate and complex food web of the region’s ice-edge zone, where the frozen and open ocean meet. Thoughts of Sh

Baseball 1, Science 0 World Series hero Orel Hershiser has pitched another shutout—this time against U.S. science and math teachers. Last month President Reagan passed up a ceremony honoring 104 of the nation’s top junior and senior high school science and math teachers, even though the White House began the program in 1983 to demonstrate its commitment to improving science education in the U.S. His excuse? The Los Angeles Dodgers were coming to town—at his invitation—a

We Want To Be Your Neighbor Cold Spring Harbor Lab was once the ‘best-kept secret” on Long Island, says Susan Cooper, director of public relations. But no longer. The lab is now mailing free copies of its quarterly newsletter, Harbor Transcript, to every household in the immediate vicinity, some 2,500 in all. In addition, the institute hosted 750 neighbors at the dedication of its new exhibit on modern biology, the DNA Learning Center, in September. Why the community relations effo

Space Center Citizenship Rule Relaxed When NASA solicits the next round of proposals for its university space engineering centers it is ‘highly likely” that the space agency will drop the requirement that faculty who receive direct funding from the program must be U.S. citizens, says Steven Hartman, a NASA program manager for university programs. This decision comes after the Association of American Universities and 11 individual universities complained that the citizenship require

The University of Arizona thought it had a perfect plan to pull astronomy in the United States out of its doldrums. In a single bold stroke the university would end the nation’s serious shortage of telescopes (The Scientist, August 8, 1988, page 1)—and establish itself as one of the leading observatories—by building the world’s largest instrument and six other scopes on the 10,000-foot peak of southeastern Arizona’s Mt. Graham. The university dubbed the plan the Co

New Canadian Patent Law Promotes R&D It looks like a change in Canadian patent law is achieving its goal increased R&D spending by pharmaceutical firms. Last November, the government decreed that the makers of generic drugs could no longer copy new drugs as soon as the pharmaceuticals hit the market, but instead must wait 10 years. In return for this guarantee of increased revenues, drug firms promised to double their R&D spending over the next decade. And last month the Canadian government go