Articles by Carl Leopold

Two years ago, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, one of the largest organizations of practicing researchers in the world, circulated a questionnaire among its members in an effort to identify what they thought should be the highest priority for the science profession. Among 57 possible choices offered by the questionnaire, the membership cited the development and articulation of ethical principles as the most urgent requirement of today's science profession. The res

My baptism in the conflict between academic productivity and the acquisition of indirect costs occurred some years ago when my university unilaterally canceled a research grant made to my laboratory by the Rockefeller Foundation. The shock to my research program was hardly mollified by a vice president's explanation that the cancellation was necessary because the foundation had refused to pay indirect costs. The unpleasant possibility that the university administration might be more interested

Do you relish the idea of having an Army or Navy officer looking over your shoulder and deciding whether your research is worthwhile or not? This is not an idle imagining, given the already considerable and ever-expanding influence the military sector is exerting on university campuses. It is a fact that with dollars comes clout, and as the second largest source of federal research support, the military, whose top priority is the development of arms technologies, is increasingly defining the

In 1978, physicist Richard A. Muller of Berkeley was awarded two distinguished prizes—the Waterman Award and the Texas Instruments Foundation Founders’ Prize—for his research on cosmic rays and adaptive optics. The event was particularly notable because Muller had been refused support for this work after peer review by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Department of Defense. Many innovative