When The Scientist was launched in September 1986, the idea of a newspaper for scientists had been brewing in my mind for more than 25 years. In the post-Sputnik era, scientists and policymakers became aware of the need to facilitate communication across established disciplines, and it was my intention to meet that need. At the time, the cognitive aspects of research were adequately reported--as they are today--in large-circulation science magazines and primary research journals. But none of these publications, in my view, dealt in appropriate depth with the science community's bread-and-butter career concerns. Although I frequently used Current Contents and the Science Citation Index as a vehicle to explore such nontechnical matters, the scientific community still lacked a publication fully devoted to them.
In the last four years, The Scientist has addressed that need, emphasizing that science is, at the core, a human, social activity. We have carved our niche ...
