February 1997

I was completing my New Year's desk cleaning and came across the commentary by Murray Saffran in the Sept. 30, 1996, issue of The Scientist ["Senior Scientists' Experience Can Offer A Valuable Resource To Today's Students," page 11]. I want to affirm Saffran's comments. Through the years, I have had the pleasure of working with senior scientists. I have always referred to these individuals as gems. I started my position at Southern Illinois University in September 1995 and, for the first time

N.A. Halasz's summary of the tenure question (Letters, The Scientist, Jan. 6, 1997, page 13) is too simple. It may well be that those who deserve tenure don't need it, in the sense that they would be kept on by their institution even without it, but he ignores the range of psychological needs of different people. Some able people have superb self-confidence, and if they lose one job they are sure they'll find another. But others, able, even brilliant, have little self-confidence, fear for thei

In response to your article on academic job security and tenure [R. Finn, The Scientist, Nov. 11, 1996, page 1], I feel compelled to point out that it is indeed the academic institution per se that is threatened. The anti-tenure sentiment often displayed as a necessity, based on financial consideration, is merely a change in the sentiment of a new breed of flashy, superficially educated and insignificant administrators who must control and who are now conveniently giving in to public sentiment

The Dec. 9, 1996, issue of The Scientist discusses researcher disagreement with the National Institutes of Health plan to improve its peer-review processes [T.W. Durso, page 1]. My reading of the peer-review literature, supplemented by the conduct of hundreds of peer reviews, leads me to the following documented conclusions on the subject (R.N. Kostoff, "The Handbook of Research Impact Assessment," 6th ed., Summer 1996, Defense Technical Information Center Report No. ADA296021; R.N. Kostoff, "F

Edited by: Karen Young Kreeger REAL RISKS: Harvard’s Graham Colditz found a higher risk of breast cancer in women who took estrogen and progestin. G.A. Colditz, S.E. Hankinson, D.J. Hunter, W.C. Willett, J.E. Manson, M.J. Stampfer, C. Hennekens, B. Rosner, F.E. Speizer, "The use of estrogens and progestins and the risk of breast cancer in postmenopausal women," New England Journal of Medicine, 332:1589-93, 1995. (Cited in nearly 140 publications as of December 1996) Comments by Graham

Edited by: Karen Young Kreeger M.S. Marber, R. Mestril, S.-H. Chi, M.R. Sayen, D.M. Yellen, W.H. Dillman, "Overexpression of the rat inducible 70-kD heat stress protein in a transgenic mouse increases the resistance of the heart to ischemic injury," Journal of Clinical Investigation, 95:1446-56, 1995. (Cited in nearly 50 publications as of December 1996) Comments by Wolfgang H. Dillman, University of California, San Diego CARDIAC PROTECTION: UC-San Diego’s Wolfgang Dillman, right, and

Sidebar: A Trio of Innovative T.A. Training Programs Teaching assistants (T.A.'s) were once regarded as second-class citizens by science graduate students with research assistantships. But things have changed over the past decade. Several factors-including recognition of the value of teaching skills, a tight job market, and public demand for quality in undergraduate instruction-have converged to stimulate academic departments to invest more in T.A.'s. As a result, many colleges and universitie

A Trio Of Innovative T.A. Training Programs Date: February 3, 1997 The Principal Investigator Program, Bates College, Lewiston, Maine: At Bates college, the laboratory component of four core life science courses is conducted in the manner of a real research lab. Instead of cookbook-like instructions, students design experiments. In lieu of seeking answers to age-old lab exercise questions in fraternity house archives, students hand in formal write-ups as if they were principal i