Letters

As a disenfranchised victim of the peer-review system, I consider that the myriad proposals for modifying peer review are less than encouraging. In his letter “Can Peer Review Be Improved?” (May 4, 1987, P. 10), Moshe Wolman is more than correct when he points out the inhibitory effect peer review has on science. Innovative, creative ideas that depart from dogma are usually given unfundable priorities, especially when dealing with NIH. In 1985 NIH received more than 30,000 proposals and was able to fund only 19.6 percent of them. Looking at it another way, this figure tells us that only about 20 percent of our graduates are competent people. This terrible waste of human talent, money and national resources is a direct result of the inequitable, politically motivated, club-run peer-review system. But scientists themselves are also to blame. Privately they complain a great deal about peer review, but never seem to roll up their shirt sleeves and pitch in. More than two years ago I founded the National Scientific Coalition to End Peer Review. The response initially was overwhelming, but when it comes to putting their money, energy and time where their moutha are, many biomedical scientists fall short. It is only with strong political pressure on Congress that peer review will develop into a reasonable funding instrument. Right now, the system stifles innovative research, feathers the nest of large coastal institutions, discriminates against those without scientific-political connections, often funds mediocre research because of “club” affiliations, destroys potentially productive careers, wastes large amounts of money on study sections, has severely imbalanced funding schemes, and funds the most faddish research rather than the best (molecular biology being in the spotlight today). The system is truly an anachronism in the 1980s and needs drastic overhaul from the bottom up. The exclusivity of the club needs to be dissolved by developing funding instruments that bring in more of our national brainpower, not exclude 80 percent of it. —Ronald E. Paque 7203 George Burns Dr. San Antonio, TX 78240 SDI Is the Term The June 1987 issue of Physics Today includes the following headline (p. 55): “APS Star Wars study given prominent coverage in US press.” About a year ago I sent NBC News a letter strongly criticizing regular use of the term Star Wars in its news and feature programs about President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative. A few weeks later NBC responded with an offer to tape a one-minute account of my views at its Austin affiliate. The item was broadcast nationally on NBC’s “Mail Bag” feature. What I had to say was obvious—namely, that the term Star Wars is part of a Soviet propaganda campaign to malign the Strategic Defense Initiative as a comic strip fantasy with aggressive, warlike intent, that the term had never been used by the president, and that SDI is a handy, widely understood abbreviation. Of course, those criticisms apply with special force to the use of Star Wars by Physics Today, the premier publication of the American Institute of Physics. Physics Today’s use of the term is particularly reprehensible in reporting on what purports to be an objective scientific study of SDI by an elite panel of American physicists under the auspices of the institute and the American Physical Society. Tt is a significant indication of the enormous power of the media today that a scholarly journal like Physics Today will adopt a pejorative nickname coined by the media, rather than set an example for the media by consistently using accurate, noncommittal nomenclature. —Lawrence Cranberg 1205 Constant Springs Dr. Austin, TX 78746 Are Viruses ‘Biological SDIs’? There have been a number of recent reflec- tions in THE SCIENTIST on viruses—what they might do for a living (April 6, 1987, p. 13, by Lewis Thomas), what their basic function might be (July 13, 1987, p. 10, by Aydin Örstan), and even the possibility that they might have no real functions, only properties (July 13, 1987, p. 10, by N.W Pirie). We would like to draw attention to some ideas we published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology last year (vol. 118, pp. 395-404) about a possible role for at least some small DNA viruses as strategic defense initiatives (biological SDIs! Might be a title with some current cachet.) of normal somatic cells. We hypothesized the evolution of sequences of cellular “junk’t DNA evolving into protective interfering transposons. These transposons would interfere with invading pathogenic viruses by competing with the pathogen DNA for replicative enzymes. This would slow down pathogen DNA replication and expression and allow the host immune response to be mounted with minimal pathogen spread and host damage. We also envisioned these protective “junk” transpososns evolving further into small defective viruses. We speculated that a small, usually defective parvovirus, the adeno associated virus (AAV), which usually requires the presence of a pathogenic helper virus to replicate, may have arisen from such a piece of cellular DNA. There is a lot of apparently functionless DNA (so-called “junk” or “selfish” DNA) in normal eukaryotic cells. The little adeno associated virus has many properties that suggest an origin from protective selfish DNA—replication of its own DNA usually inhibits that of the helper virus, its DNA structure resembles that of transposable cellular elements, and its gene in its replicative form also has a marked ability to move in and out of cellular chromosomes, thus leading to the establishment of a latent state as a resident there. We recently have been using the computer to look into the Genetic Sequence data bank (GENBANK) and the European Molecular Biology data banks for close homolegies between the end pieces of adeno associated virus DNA (the part that attaches the virus’s gene to the cellular chromosome) and the DNA’s of viral and primate origin. As would be expected, most of the entries in DNA libraries are from useful or functional sequences, sequences that cede for some protein product. However, in our preliminary blind search we were presented with some very close homologies with a few cellular junk DNAs. These are all DNAs of human origin—a non-transcribed ribosomal spacer and a number of repetitive “alu” sequences. As more and more of the human chromosome is sequenced it would not be surprising if these homologies might appear more frequently. The idea has been around for some time that certain viruses may have had a cellular origin. What is new and interesting is that all viruses are not essentially bad news. This point was made in our paper and is of course, the main thrust of both Thomas’ and Orstan’s recent pieces in THE SCIENTIST. In our scenario, defective viruses such as adeno associated virus might act as genetic messengers, protecting neighboring hosts during viral epidemics. —Heather D. Mayor Ronald E. Fisher Depts. of Microbiology and Neuroscience Baylor College of Medicine One Baylor Plaza Houston, TX Omni Is Growing, Not Dying Bruce V. Lewenstein’s description of the death of the science boom (“The Arrogance of ‘Pop Science’ ,“ July 13, 1987. p. 12) fell woefully short on a number of accounts. None, however, was more glaring than his opening statement that with Time Inc.’s sale of Discover, “no major magazine or commercial television show started during the popular science ‘boom’ of the last decade has succeeded.” As president of Omni magazine, the world’s first, largest and most widely read consumer science magazine, I am more than a bit disconcerted at Lewenstein’s misconceptions and feel compelled to offer a few facts. Omni virtually invented the popular science category for publishing when its first issue came off the presses in October 1978. Nearly 5 million science-minded individuals read Omni each month and the magazine will increase its rate base from 855,000 to 880,000 with its October 9 anniversary issue. Ad pages for the first six months of this year climbed a respectable 3.6 percent, and revenues are at their highest level ever (more than twice Discover’s ad page revenues). Omni’s book division boasts close to 50 titles, including a Literary Guild selection, and its television series ran in more than 100 U.S. markets and 60 foreign countries. Omni has created two new publications in the last two years alone. Longevity, a monthly newsletter on the art and science of staying young, now boasts a circulation nearing 40,000. Omni’s special medical editions— single-sponsored editions sent to leading U.S. physicians—have been judged by an independent research firm to be among the most successful single-sponsored editions ever produced. Omni regularly features more Nobel laureates, and has won more awards for journalism, art and graphics than any other science publication. Does this look like a magazine that is dying from a lack of public interest? Of course not. In fact, Omni is growing at a prodigious rate. Perhaps that explains why Lewenstein neglected to mention Omni in his pessimistic summation of the public’s demand for scientific and technological information. —Kathy Keeton Omni Publications 1965 Broadway New York, NY 10023-5965

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October 1987

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