John Wilkes' article, "Scientists Should Spend More Time Communicating With The Public," is touching but naive. He may have made it from the role of closet scientist to that of teaching scientist literacy, and I agree that there must be at least a smattering of researchers out there with both talent and interest enough to make their work attractive to the poor old layman, but is this really the point? A substantial part of my income is generated from science writing and freelance writing for a

ZURICH—With two Nobel prizes in as many years, something good has to be going on at IBM’s research laboratory in Rüschlikon on the outskirts of this city. But apart from an environment that offers fine wines, Swiss cheeses and, on a clear day, a postcard view of the Alps, is there a lesson for other industrial research labs? The IBM lab’s achievements are by now familiar. Last year’s Nobel Prize in physics went to IBM researchers Gerd Binning and Heinrich Rohrer

ZURICH—Officials at Glaxo, the British pharmaceutical giant that has agreed to purchase the Geneva research laboratory of Biogen N.Y., have promised that the facility will retain a degree of autonomy as an intemational center of excellence in biotechnology. John Barr, a spokesman for Glaxo, said that the laboratory will be integrated into the company’s general research program and renamed the Glaxo Institute for Molecular Biology. The new director of research will be Allan Will

ZURICH—The twin problems of transcending national boundaries and crossing over from academic to industrial labs appear to have doomed a NATO program meant to encourage international scientific exchanges. Begun in 1982, the $1 million program was designed to forge links between universities and industrial laboratories in different countries by using the same exchange mechanisms as those for basic science and inter-university cooperation. These include fellowships, collaborative research