Kudos to Mary Clutter and advisers who are responsible for NSF's new policy on grant proposal format ("NSF Stresses Publication Quality, Education With New Grant Format," The Scientist, Dec. 11, 1989, page 2). By limiting biographical sketches to 10 publications, NSF joins Harvard Medical School in spotlighting quality rather than quantity as the principal determinant of an investi-gator's performance. By requiring investigators to include statements about the educational and training value of proposed research, as well as documentation of previous training supervision, NSF leads a chorus of government and academic voices that have called for the provision of more incentives for training in scientific research at all educational levels in the university. If the steps taken by NSF to enlarge the educational pipeline and to foster high quality research stimulate more widespread changes in the system of incentives and rewards adopted by the government and academic institutions, we can...
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