DNA fingerprinting has been hailed by law-enforcement officials as the 20th century’s most important breakthrough in forensic science. They are eager to use the new technology to identify and prosecute violent criminals as well as to exonerate innocent persons who are suspects in criminal cases. Although DNA finger printing has not yet been adequately tested in the courts, the State Attorney General of California recently proposed creating a computerized data base of genetic information

For practical reasons, the Pasteur Institute in Paris recently decided to publish its venerable Annales de l’Institut Pasteur in English. The new title is Research in Virology (or Immunology or Micro biology, depending on the specialty). Institute officials explained that almost 100% of the articles submitted to the journal in 1987 were in English, compared to about 15% in 1973. The officials also noted that the journal’s French title gave researchers the impression that it was no

National Science Foundation statistics show that in 1986 there were 835,500 U.S. scientists and engineers who were 55 years of age or older and still employed. Surprisingly, there are no reliable statistics on the number of retired scientists and engineers, according to the American Association of Retired Persons. Despite this knowledge gap, it is reasonable to assume that many thousands of scientists are nearing or in retirement. This number will increase in line with the well-established de

Information overload is a frustrating problem that is all too familiar to those of us engaged in research. No matter how many articles, reports, and books we manage to plough through, the stack seems only to grow higher. Like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice in Walt Disney’s Fantasia we wish for a magical com- mand to stop the bucket brigade of information before it drowns us. The problem of too much information and too little time to manage it is not a new phenome non. It is just much m

Almost daily we hear or read about yet another survey documenting the woeful ignorance of American children in a variety of subjects—mathematics, science, geography, current events, and history. In science particularly, the apparent illiteracy of U.S. students raises serious questions about our nation’s ability to maintain its economic comppetitiveness and scientific preeminence in the future. These questions are compelling task forces and expert panels to develop and debate new

A truly healthy publication must maintain the attitude that its readers are its partners. That’s the way we run The Scientist, and that’s the way we will continue to run it. The Scientist was started with you, the working scientist, in mind. Every two weeks we bring you stories about your colleagues, your working environment, funding, trends in research, and career and professional opportunities—stories that you just won’t find anywhere else. We also are very responsi

In our last issue, chemist James Collman of Stanford University took us to task for listing a controversial paper on a new theory of superconductivity in our Hot Papers section (see his letter in The Scientist, February 6, 1989, page 11). The paper in question, by Yuejin Guo, Jean-Marc Langlois, and William A. Goddard of the California Institute of Technology ("Electronic structure and valence-bond band structure of cuprate superconducting materials," Science, volume 239, number 4842, pages 89

It is a truism that we live in a litigious age. More than ever before, it seems, neighbor is inclined to sue neighbor - and at the drop of a hat. As I know all too well, proprietors and managers in business spend inordinate time with lawyers. Frequently, business people must appear in court to deal with what can only be described as nuisance suits. Physicians, too, have been forced into a defensive posture. Many are ordering more diagnostic tests than their patients really need to avoid malpra

This year marks the golden anniversary of The Nature of the Chemical Bond and the Structure of Molecules and Crystals: An Introduction to Modern Structural Chemistry, published by Linus Pauling in 1939. This classic book certainly ranks as one of the greatest chemistry texts of this century. In 1984, Pauling wrote an autobiographical commentary on The Nature of the Chemical Bond for the "Citation Classic" section of the Institute for Scientific Information's Current Contents. He noted that "fr

Citing Nazi `Research':How To Do It, If You Must Elie Wiesel, the concentration camp survivor and 1986 Nobel laureate, has often spoken and written about the difficulty of translating the events of the Holocaust into words. To do so, he has explained, begins to limit and make objective what can neither be, nor should be, easily defined and comfortably separated from our daily lives as just another grim episode in history that happened long ago and here. The Holocaust was qualitatively differen

Of some 69 letters from readers that have been published in The Scientist since our format and editorial changes of last May, over 40% deal with just three subjects: the difficulty of reconciling religion and science (prompted by William Provine’s provocative opinion piece published in our September 5 edition, page 10); the issue of whether to accept rebel or “heretic” scientists who espouse minority views; and the inadequacies of peer review. While this tabulation is admitt

The visit last month of Andrei Sakharov to the United States represents not merely a personal victory for the Nobel laureate and the scientists who have worked persistently for his rehabilitation. It is also a reflection of the profound changes going on in the Soviet Union, especially through the Soviet Academy of Sciences— changes that are reshaping that nation’s scientific enterprise. I was honored to be present at two occasions Sakharov attended while he was in Washington