Articles by David Pendlebury

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A news story you might be reading in 2003: LOS ANGELES--A bidding war broke out yesterday for the rights to publish a scientific study identifying a master gene that con~trols aging. In the end, the journal Genes & Proteins topped offers from four other journals and agreed to pay the authors of the breakthrough paper $137,000--a new record for a scientific paper sold at auction. "With this money, we'll be able to hire a couple of postdocs, and that will help speed up the work in our lab," R

The institution that David Baltimore will guide in the coming years has a well-earned reputation as one of the world's best biomedical research establishments. But is Rockefeller University still riding high, or is it resting on its laurels? According to data from the Science Citation Index (SCI) of the Philadelphia-based Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), Rockefeller University is not only maintaining its dominant position, but also moving ahead. The accompanying chart illustrates

During its centenary year in 1987, scientists and policymakers alike hailed the National Institutes of Health as the "crown jewel" of the U.S. government's biomedical research enterprise. And today, despite administrative problems, such as complaints of noncompetitive pay for senior investigators and occasional public embarrassments, such as undisclosed conflicts of interest (see Science 248:676, 1990), NIH is still home to some of the world's most distinguished biomedical scientists. The Scie

Who will be the science leaders of the decade? 

It is all too easy to focus on the deficiencies of Soviet science. Ask Soviet scientists themselves and they will readily recite a laundry list of their research system's failings. Perhaps the greatest impediment, they say, is a lack of lab equipment and computers. Now that Soviet scientists can more easily travel to the West, if only temporarily, many are jumping at the opportunity. In fact, among eight of the most-cited living Soviet scientists (see below), at least four are visiting professo

The political and social tidal wave that recently swept over Eastern Europe is sure to change the lives of its scientists. Restructuring the centralized economies will probably make conditions worse before they get better, and that means government support for science may shrink. On the other hand, if investment from joint ventures with science-based companies in the West begins to flow in, scientists may find their laboratories filled with equipment they could never before afford, owing to the

With a new decade as well as a new year upon us, The Scientist conducted a review of the scientific literature of the past 10 years to identify the 1980s' most significant research developments. There are, of course, many ways to pinpoint important events or trends, but in this case the criterion used was the number of citations to scientific papers published since 1980, as recorded in the Science Citation Index (SCI) of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) in Philadelphia. Using thi

When Stockholm speaks—as it does each October—scientists worldwide turn an ear to the news broadcasters. The names of this year’s Nobelists were easily recognized by their peers in the scientific community, since their work has had such a significant impact. The following, while briefly reviewing the nature of the landmark research singled out by the Nobel Assembly, emphasizes the citation impact of each author’s work, as reflected in the Institute for Scientific Infor

Pity the Nobel committee now trying to make its selection for the next prize in physiology or medicine, soon to be announced. The committee has a very difficult task. The five-member group at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm is sifting through dossiers on more than 100 candidates. The committee members are no doubt asking themselves, as they must ask themselves every year, “How are we to select from among this collection of outstanding, world-class researchers just one (or at mos

The size of science as measured by the number of journals being published "tends to double within a period of 10 to 15 years," Derek J. de Solla Price observed in his 1963 classic book Little Science, Big Science (New York: Columbia University Press). Price found that this "fundamental law," as he called it, held true not only for the period between the end of World War II and the early 1960s, but also consistently since the early 18th century. However, while Price's data sup

The University of California, Irvine, has set its sights on an ambitious goal: to become one of the most distinguished research and teaching universities in the United States. Last month, thanks to the generosity of Orange County real estate developer Donald Leroy Bren, UCI took a giant step toward meeting that goal. At a July 18 news conference, the school announced a $1 million contribution from Bren, which, together with his gift of $1.5 million last August, will serve as the founding capital

“If you were stranded on a desert island,” as the proverbial question goes, “which 10 books would you want to have with you?” The Scientist recently asked itself this question, but with a twist: “Which 10 journals publishing orig nal research reports would a cast-away life scientist wish to have regularly air-dropped to his or her island?” Certainly, the answer depends on the individual scientist, but one method of pursuing a general answer might be to ide

Last issue’s Special Report focused on the research institutions and nations that contributed in greatest measure to the 100 life sciences articles that have been listed during the past year in The Scientist’s ‘Hot Papers” column (See “Life Sciences 100, 1987-1988. Pt. 1: Surveying the Players,” The Scientist, May 1, 1989, page 12). These 100 research reports, originally published in 1987 and 1988, were identified as hot because they were so frequently cited

About one in five of the 100 life sciences articles listed in the past year in The Scientist’s “Hot Papers” column was written by scientists at just three research institutions— Harvard University, Stanford University, and the Salk Insitute in San Diego. These three produced about 22% of this corpus of strong citation getters in the life sciences, papers that were originally published from early 1987 to late 1988 and that within their first year after publication, rece