Three recent conversations: 1. While in a bookstore perusing the bicycling magazines at length (with only the vaguest intention to buy), a disheveled man beside me starts making loud pronouncements on the nature of time, triggered by the cover art on a popular science magazine. He catches my eye, and partly out of my British obligation to "good manners" and partly because I'll talk with anyone who has an opinion about science, we engage in a shouted exchange about how time is measured, and j

"The existence in every human being of a vast array of attributes which are potentially measurable (whether by present methods or not), and often uncorrelated mathematically, makes quite tenable the hypothesis that practically every human being is a deviate in some respects." --Roger J. Williams1 We're all subtly, and beautifully, different. A byproduct of this individuality, or deviation as Williams called it, is disease. Now for the first time, there exists a reasonable possibility to mea

"The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law."1 Even before we get to the lab bench, the complexities of being a researcher are daunting. In this issue of The Scientist, questions of freedom of conscience and personal rights are raised. Other topics recently addressed on our Web site or in p

As exemplified by the well-publicized cases of Thomas Butler, David Kelly, and Steven J. Hatfill, the fallout from the War on Terror has been particularly hazardous for scientists. Donald A. Henderson, who was inaugural director of the US Office of Public Health Preparedness, which coordinates the national response to public health emergencies, has accused the FBI of losing "all perspective" and of being "out of control" in the Butler and Hatfill investigations.1 The dangers are summed up by

Scientific societies are an essential part of the research landscape. Almost all of us are members of one or more of them, and we have numerous reasons for joining. When I was a PhD student, I joined the British Society for Immunology, in part for the sense of belonging. I was eager to consider myself an immunologist; getting the badge of membership was a small but pleasurable step. My more pragmatic next-door neighbor, Steve, is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Sci

In this issue we take a close look at DNA microarrays, the current amore of biological and biomedical researchers. There's little reason to doubt that the infatuation will continue, at least for awhile. Microarrays are relatively inexpensive, powerful tools for assessing gene expression. On glass or plastic slides, thousands of known DNA sequences are printed, spotted or synthesized. mRNA is isolated from samples, often converted to cDNA and amplified, before hybridization on the slides. The

"Science... is good for the scientist; whether also for the rest of humanity is arguable." Erwin Chargaff Recently, a headline in the UK newspaper The Sun screamed "Your Mother Was Aborted Baby." The story dealt with the possibility of using aborted fetuses as a new source of donor eggs for couples needing fertility treatment. In the same week, the headline "Test-tube 'Monster' Condemned" ran in several publications, dealing with the creation of chimeric human embryos, part-male and part-f

As my intrepid colleague Sam Jaffe reports in this issue (Rebuilding Iraqi Science), Iraqi science is on its knees. Following two-and-a-half decades of a brutal dictatorship, it's been pummeled by sanctions, halted in its tracks by war, and ransacked in the postwar chaos. We probably can add to this list a deep malaise, which appears to be affecting the entire country as it awaits reconstruction. While reading his report, several questions struck me: Just how worthwhile would it be to reconst

Scientists are in general a fair, even high-minded bunch, but if one thing brings them down, it is their superior attitude toward a particular group of coworkers, namely technicians and lab assistants. Towards technicians, scientists can often be condescending, even belittling. Let me illustrate with two examples, which would have appeared in the pages of The Scientist but for editorial intervention. The first comes from discussions on the status of postdocs. The character in question was quo

The voices of patient advocates can be electrifying. Consider the following examples: "I am one of the many millions of Americans who will benefit from biomedical research, made possible by the dollars that you appropriate. I view this invitation to testify as my opportunity to change the world. If I choose the right words, paint the right picture, I hope to give you not only a glimpse of what it's like to have a neurodegenerative disease, but also a sense of the staggering utter despair, fru

Some topics are best depicted through example, so here goes: The Jeremy Norman Molecular Biology Archive, which includes papers from Aaron Klug, Max Perutz, Rosalind Franklin, Francis Crick, and James Watson, was on the auction block at Christie's.1 Its value? Between $2.2 and $3.3 million. Now, as a responsible scientist you surely keep detailed notebooks and retain raw data from your experiments. But in addition to these, do you preserve letters (professional and personal), diaries, and s

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." --Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) This applies equally to women and men. On April 2, 18 basic science grants from the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) were "defunded."1 Months previously, the successful applicants were informed by telephone that funding had been approved (the peer review process took place in November 2002), and they had budgeted on that basis. But on the day after the grants