Articles by Christopher Anderson

Scientists As Advocates I contend that Scott Veggeberg's report on the Boston meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (The Scientist, March 22, 1993, page 1) misquotes me on two key points. He misses the essence of what I was trying to convey. The point I was attempting to make in my talk was that journalists covering scientific disputes should treat with skepticim scientists who adopt advocacy positions that are not directly related to their own research. I used

WASHINGTON--One week after the Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded in April 1986, Soviet contacts called Carnegie Mellon University robot researcher William ("Red") Whittaker to ask for help in saving thousands of Soviet cleanup workers from radiation exposure. Whittaker's autonomous robots were already cleaning up the disabled Three Mile Island nuclear plant, and his technology was widely acknowledged as the world's best in replacing humans in hazardous environments. But a year later, after 5,00

The next big project in high-energy particle physics is likely to use electrons and be cheaper to build Not an inch of tunnel for the 53-mile Superconducting Supercollider has been laid, but already the massive accelerator is casting a long shadow on the future of high-energy physics facilities. As Congress and the nation struggle with the estimated $7 billion cost of the huge machine, many scientists are coming to the conclusion that the SSC may signify the end of the line - a dinosaur as big

Russian robotics experts labored to reduce human cost of cleanup. Would U.S. technology have made a difference?

With human genetics, it seems, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. As the science of genetic diagnosis matures, researchers are learning how to spot dozens of hereditary weaknesses and diseases by simply testing a cheek scraping or a sample of blood. But treating or preventing most of those genetic conditions is still largely the stuff of speculation, and will likely remain so for years. Therein lies an ethical problem, as described by Dorothy Nelkin in her book Dangerous Diagnostics (

WASHINGTON--The Department of Energy's troubled epidemiology program should double its research on the effects of radiation on workers and expand that research to encompass possible nonradioactive hazards, such as magnetic fields and industrial chemicals, an independent advisory panel has concluded. The DOE program is responsible for studying the health effects of radiation on humans, both by following the medical history of the survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan at the end of Worl

They're fast, reliable, and tireless. Now they want a place at the bench. Can machines adopt the scientific method? PITTSBURGH--Repetitive lab work makes John Lindsey's mind wander. After a week or so of compound making - repetitive lab work at its worst - the Carnegie Mellon University chemist begins to think about automation. Robots. In particular, robots that can do his job. Lindsey has spent five years pursuing the construction of just such a machine - a compact and reliable robot that ca

Harold Furth could see the hard times coming. Oil prices were dropping and, with them, the prospects for funding research into alternative energies such as fusion, his specialty. So, like others in his field during the early 1980s, the head of the Princeton Plasma Laboratory started promoting his program as good basic research, rather than as the pursuit of a working fusion reactor. Meanwhile, researchers in pursuit of a malaria vaccine had their own troubles. Serious scientific obstacles h

The National Science Foundation’s cancellation of funding for the John von Neumann National Supercomputer Center has, as might be expected, drawn sharp criticism from supporters of the Princeton, N.J., facility. But here, the move is being watched as a leading indicator of where the program is headed. Assuming the failure of a lastditch effort by the Princeton center to reverse NSF’s rejection of its request for $70 million over the next five years, NSF officials say that the e

WASHINGTON—Four months after one federal agency killed the prospect of government support of cold fusion, a second agency has brought it back to life. The strange phenomenon of low-temperature nuclear fusion, announced at the University of Utah with great fanfare March 23 by two chemists, took another bizarre turn last month when a self-described “upbeat, enthusiastic” panel of experts assembled by the National Sci ence Foundation’s engineering division concluded tha

WASHINGTON—In 1985 the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health decided to find out if computer monitors cause miscarriages. So it did what any good research body would do: It drew up a questionnaire to ask women about their medical history, work and home life, and fertility. But because NIOSH is a federal agency, the survey first had to pass muster at the Office of Management and Budget (0MB). 0MB rejected it, carrying out its authority under a 1980 law, meant to reduce

Six months ago the Antarctic Minerals Convention seemed assured of passage. The treaty, eight years in the making, proposed strict—and some say neatly impossible—environmental standards for oil and mineral prospecting in the Antarctic. But today many observers believe the measure is as good as dead. Australia, France, and several other countries have withdrawn their support of the pact under pressure from environmentalists, who fear that if a mechanism—no matter how rigorou

WASHINGTON—On the second Wednesday of each month, a dozen diplomatic science advisers gather behind closed doors at the French embassy here and talk about the future. The diplomats represent the 12 nations of the European Community (EC), and the focus of their discussion is 1992, the year targeted for the establishment of a unified European economy. Although the EC now controls only a small share of the funds that Europe spends on science, that share is expected to grow considerably in th

For researchers in such fast-growing fields as gene sequencing and crystallography, the end of traditional scientific publications may be in sight. Quietly, over the last year, a trial program in the electronic submission of data has laid the foundations for a revolution that may someday replace the research journal as the vehicle for scientific communication. In an agreement With GenBank, the main U.S. gene sequence database, nearly a dozen journals are refusing to accept papers with sequ

PASADENA, CALIF—Two months after its extraordinarily successful encounter with the planet Neptune, Voyager 2 is battling its failing senses and ebbing vitality in an attempt to wrestle yet more science from the cold and barren expanses of interstellar space. The spacecraft has been flung by Neptune’s gravity out of the plane containing the planets of our solar system and is moving ever farther away from planetary science. For scientists and engineers at the National Aeronautics and