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The history of science is replete with successes achieved through repudiation of the common wisdom. In the following, I offer some unconventional and speculative challenges to how we think about some large problems in contemporary biology. Most are not new thoughts, but to my knowledge they have not been refuted. I know they are mostly wrong; but I am not sure all are. They will surely be addressed, and most solved, during the next century. If I could foretell exactly how, I would be wasting

Which multidisciplinary journal of science has the greatest impact in terms of citations? It’s Nature by a nose. From 1979 to 1987, Nature nearly tripled its impact, a measure of quality and utility calculated annually by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). Science also dramatically improved its impact rating over the period, while Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (PNAS) remained mostly unchanged. To determine a journal’s impact, ISI coun

Tumor necrosis factor (TNF) has been over the past few years one of the more actively investigated proteins among those involved in inflammation, immunity, and the growth and inhibition of cells. TNF is destructive to cancer— hence, its name. Loyd J. Old and colleagues at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York discovered TNF some 15 years ago. But it was only in 1984 that research into TNF really began to take off. “The decade-long effort to purify tumor necrosis

At a groundbreaking celebration last fall in Kyoto, Japan, officials of the Kyoto Research Park Corp. and Philadelphia’s University City Science Center (UCSC) watched as a Shinto priest blessed the construction site. Several months later, in March of this year, the Japanese officials visited Philadelphia and planted a symbolic cherry tree on the Science Center’s grounds. Both ceremonies were held in honor of an unprecedented agreement, formally announced at the Philadelphia tree-p

Before engaging in joint research projects with foreign companies, directors of national labs must find out if the companies have barred U.S. scientists from their facilities. The problem with that bit of congressional xenophobia, buried within the 1986 Technology Transfer Act that encourages commercial spinoffs from federal labs, is that no one has yet discovered any such shut-outs. In an effort to uncover culprits, the executive branch has told the Commerce Department to collect case histor

BIOLOGY: Stable isotope research lab. $350,000 over three years from Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to Marine Biological Laboratory Ecosystem Center, J. Hobbie BIOMEDICINE: The Lalor Foundation made the following research grants: Inhibition and reinitiation of spermatogenesis in rats: development of a male contraceptive. $20,000 to Johns Hopkins University; B. Zirkin In vivo analysis of oviducal and uterine muscle during early pregnancy and its modification by drugs. $20,000 to University of Que

Organic chemists and biochemists are likely to find ChemText, a scientific word processor from Molecular Design Ltd.; a powerful tool for smoothly integrating graphics and text in scientific documents. This versatile software package is equally suitable for both academic and industrial scientists. My experience with ChemText Version 1.1 stems from teaching a traditional two-semester organic chemistry course. However, I recently received the new Version 1.2 and have fiddled with it enough to

IDEALS AND REALITIES: Selected Essays of Abdus Salam Abdus Salam; C.H. Lai, editor World Scientific, Singapore; 379 pages; $44 (hardback), $28 (paperback) In this wide-ranging and delightful collection of essays, Nobel laureate Abdus Salam reflects on three of his major preoccupations: the Third World, Islam, and physics. Salam draws on his own experiences to present the plight of scientists in developing countries “When I returned to Pakistan in 1951 after working at Cambridge. and

IBM PS/2 HANDBOOK Richard Dalton with Scott Mueller Que Corp.; Carmel md., 359 pages, $19.95 Like it or not, the PS/2 will be the standard personal computer of the future. Why? Because IBM says so. That’s the underlying premise of the IBM PS/2 Handbook, and since it’s my best guess too, that explains some of my enthusiasm for the book. And what are the implications of the new machine’s inevitable ubiquity as far as scientists are concerned? Well, although the PS/2 will be

Jack E. Oliver took two major risks 17 years ago when he moved from Columbia University to Cornell University to rebuild the geology program. First he proposed a research project that relied on an untested scientific technique. Then he proposed an unusual strategy for carrying out the fieldwork. In his quest to probe the 25-mile-thick slab of rock that makes up the earth’s crust, Oliver wanted to use sound waves to describe subterranean structures. But he didn’t buy the fleet of

The Department of Energy’s recruit is said to signal ambitious plans in gene sequencing research WASHINGTON—When the Department of Energy announced last month that Charles Cantor would direct its new center for the study of the human genome at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory it was making clear its intention to remain a major player in that field of study, despite NIH’s primary role. Cantor is a world-renowned bioengineer who has done pioneering work on techniques to separat

Mononucleosis, the “kissing disease,” has brought the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation and Johnson & Johnson closer together. Last month, the FDA approved a six-minute mononucleosis test, named Monoalert, that is the first product to reach the market as a result of a 1983 agreement between the research institute and the company. Scientists at Scripps originally identified the amino acid sequence in the virus that causes mono, and constructed a synthetic peptide that detects a