Bye bye, Donald Kennedy

Yesterday (June 21), Science editor-in-chief Donald Kennedy announced he was retiring from the journal, after seven years at the helm. AAAS president David Baltimore is leading a search committee for a new candidate. Kennedy has steered Science through some tricky waters, to say the least. The journal published, then retracted, one of Woo-Suk Hwang's linkurl:now-infamous;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/36969/ papers on human embryonic stem cell research. In 2002, the journal lin

Written byAlison McCook

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Yesterday (June 21), Science editor-in-chief Donald Kennedy announced he was retiring from the journal, after seven years at the helm. AAAS president David Baltimore is leading a search committee for a new candidate. Kennedy has steered Science through some tricky waters, to say the least. The journal published, then retracted, one of Woo-Suk Hwang's linkurl:now-infamous;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/36969/ papers on human embryonic stem cell research. In 2002, the journal linkurl:retracted;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/21593/ a controversial paper that suggested the recreational drug Ecstasy predisposed users to Parkinson disease, causing some researchers to demand to see the referees' reports. Kennedy also recently penned an "expression of concern" over a linkurl:paper;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/52847/ that showed two-cell embryos have distinct cell lineages. But Kennedy was no stranger to hoopla when he took the Science job, having resigned as president of Stanford University after the school became linkurl:enveloped in controversy;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/10955/ over indirect costs. During his tenure, Science has received an linkurl:increasing number;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/23061/ of submissions, "at a rate of growth rivaling the rate of Chinese economic growth," according to Kennedy. What do you think about Kennedy's tenure at Science? Tell us here.