Anti-Science Sentiment Author: LEON M. LEDERMAN Anti-science sentiments have waxed and waned over the past few centuries, shifting with public awareness of science and its conflict with authority. There is little doubt that we are in a waxing phase today (see story on page 1). For the scientific community to react to the new onslaught, it is important to appreciate the diversity of anti-science armies arrayed in the field. Most familiar among them are the religious fundamentalists, some left

Editor's Note: Nobel laureate Leon Lederman, director emeritus of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory who is also a professor of science at the Illinois Institute of Technology, is perturbed about what he believes is a lack of zeal in the way top-level administrators at United States research universities are confronting a general decline in the fortunes of their institutions. Federal policies in the support of research and increasing administrative pressures are putting them at risk, Le

The Oct. 30, 1989, issue of The Scientist contained a report in the University Briefs section [page 6] about the creation of a Western Hemisphere sister institute to the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy. We at Fermilab have had a similar program of cooperation with developing nations of Latin America. However, we put major stress on experimental science and technology, with the thought that collaboration here would be more relevant to the needs of development. Our

Wisdom is truncated by the chemistry of the adviser and advisee. The president has available an awesome armament of potential sources of science advice if he feels the need for advice. Let’s see: there's the science adviser and his apparatus in the Office of Science and Technology Policy. There is President’s Science Advisor Council or the White House Science Council equivalent (roughly). There is the National Science Foundation Director and the entire NSF with its manifold infini

For several years I’ve been trying to sell people on an idea I have that derives from my deep appreciation of the talents of the Latin American scientists I’ve encountered over the past 30 years. These scientists are to be found in laboratories all over the world, usually as valued and honored émigrés or refugees from some political crisis. This idea is available to any statesman who would like to become at least as immortal as Fulbright or Rhodes. It is this: the United

Philip Anderson recently spoke out in these pages against the project to build the Superconducting Supercoilider (THE SCIENTIST, June 1, 1987, p. 11). It is true that no major project in history has been without its critics; a requirement of unanimity would have been fatal to all such projects, including the pyramids, the Panama Canal, and all modern accelerators. But I do think we deserve better criticism. Anderson, a distinguished scientist and Nobel laureate, wrote about high-energy physi