WASHINGTON—Two days after the end of an election campaign in which science was scarcely mentioned, the subject grabbed headlines when Energy Secretary John Herrington announced that Texas would be the site for the proposed superconducting supercollider. All of a sudden, politicians—especially those from Texas—were tripping over each other’s superlatives to praise basic research. “We need to reestablish the primacy of the United States in science,” thundere

WASHINGTON—Elections are supposed to bring change. But the November 8 vote that denied Sen. Lowell Weicker (R-Conn.) a fourth term in office was not the sort of change scientists had in mind. “I have to talk through my tears,” laments lobbyist Lynn Morrison of the American Federation for Clinical Research. “Losing Lowell Weicker from the Senate is going to be tough for the entire biomedical community.” Weicker’s narrow defeat at the hands of Connecticut&#

WASHINGTON—Drummond Rennie is a self-professed “fraudy”— his term for members of the coterie of journal editors, university administrators, science lobbyists, and government officials who are called on to affer testimony, give lectures, and attend meetings on science fraud. But that doesn’t mean that Rennie, deputy editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, enjoys the title. In fact, he doesn’t think that fraud is very common within the resear

WASHINGTON—The research establishment has beaten back Congress’s most serious attempt yet to grab control of investigations and punishment of scientific misconduct. But the victory may be shortlived unless scientists can demonstrate greater will and prowess in policing their own house. The latest threat to the autonomy of universities and other research institutions was a last-minute congressional proposal to create an independent Office of Scientific Integrity. The measure was dra

WASHINGTON—Most members of Congress and the executive branch have a nagging fear that visiting foreign scientists are stealing research secrets from United States labs and turning them into products that compete successfully against those of U.S. firms. Indeed, the Reagan administration wants to both restrict foreign access to information from U.S. government labs and pressure foreign nations to open up their labs. THE EXTENT OF FOREIGN PRESENCE As part of its attempt to gauge the exten

Peter Carruthers has turned also-ran Arizona into a contender in the final lap of the supercollider marathon WASHINGTON—Seven states remain in the marathon race to be chosen as home of the superconducting supercollider, and each faces the scientific version of Heartbreak Hill this week. The challenge: a one-on-one meeting with Energy Secretary John Herrington during which each state delegation makes its pitch. Although Energy Department officials have been tight-lipped about the like

WASHlNGTON—In less than six weeks, energy Secretary John Herrington will announce where he plans to build the $5.4 billion Superconducting Supercollider Will the decision be remembered as another flagrant example of pork-barrell science ? Or will the secretary actually manage to avoid politics and make his decision on technical and scientiftc merits. Most observers feel that the Department of Energy must avoid even the appearance of political patronage if it wants its decision to be ac

WASHINGTON—Starting next month, NSF will be allowed to pay up to $95,000 to scientists accepting temporary positions in Washington. The new rule represents a boost of $17,500 in the federal pay ceiling created last December by Congress. But the higher cap comes at a price—a new ceiling on salaries for thousands of NSF grantees. That annual ceiling has also been set at $95,000, although typically NSF funds only the summer salaries of university scientists. The ceiling will be appl

At least six experiments are aimed at improving the odds for innovative, cross disciplinary, and high-risk proposals WASHINGTON—The National Institutes of Health is changing the way that it does business with the research community. More than a half-dozen experiments are underway to improve the peer-review system—the tool NIH uses to weed out nearly two-thirds of the proposals it examines from those it will find. Most researchers consider peer review to be a pillar of science, ran

Some advisers doubt the Japanese will comply with the terms of the science treaty signed in Canada last June WASHINGTON—The ink had hardly dried on the agreement signed by Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita to foster United States-Japan cooperation in science when the sniping began. But the snipers weren’t Democrats running for office, nor were they diplomats representing Japan’s commercial rivals. The criticism was coming from hardliners in the White House

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

Inside the Bush, Dukakis camps: Science advisers are named, but most downplay their role, and their advice seems absent WASHINGTON—With the presidential election hardly more than four months off, U.S. scientists face the possibility of seeing the issues dearest to them ignored in the campaign. While economic and national security questions have been batted back and forth for months now, science policy has yet to be a major topic of discussion for either George Bush or Michael Dukakis.