Articles by Thomas Steffens

I found Joshua Lederberg's representation of knowledge as akin to natural disaster--an avalanche of bits of information increasing exponentially, threatening to bury us all--a bit daunting (The Scientist, Feb. 8, 1993, page 10). His solution for storing his voluminous notes using document scanners and CD-ROMs reminded me of an encounter in Paris between French writer Paul ValEry and Albert Einstein. Valery, who always noted each and every one of his ideas meticulously, asked Einstein if he carr

Scientific fraud continues to be a great moral debate, as evidenced by articles in The Scientist and general media. Sometimes our zeal to take part in these debates hinders our resolve to find practical solutions for them. To greet with hushed shock the possibility that something may have been put into a journal that was not true is to imply that it is a rare event. Not only is it not a rare event, but it is common. Since science does not depend on every detail's being absolutely and irrevocab

The article by William Provine championing the superiority of science over religion was disturbing to me. My concern is not at all due to my religious sensibilities being shocked, but rather the shock is to my scientific sensibilities. Historically, the revolution brought by scientific knowledge was in kind and not in content. It was the nature of scientific knowledge—not its content—that contrasted so violently with the absolute authority of the medieval church. This is the real co