January 1992

Rejection Rate Rises at NIH Bromley Bids Farewell to Sununu Good Swaps Science Advisory Post Kassirer Won't Play the Name Game Stick to Politics and Religion Congress thinks that NIH's peer reviewers, who in 1990 rejected only 5 percent of the proposals they judged as members of NIH study sections, are too easy on scientists, and last year they asked NIH to do something about it. So last fall, as part of a broader series of changes in the peer review system, NIH created a new category-

More than a decade later, it seems that Gibbons has met the challenge. He presides over a $21 million budget and a 150-member staff of scientists and technologists who, with the help of outside experts, produce more than two dozen major reports each year, conduct hundreds of briefings for federal officials, and appear regularly before Congress and at scientific meetings and conferences. A recent report from the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology, and Government cites the agency's "sol

Date: January 20, 1992 Forrest Mims III (The Scientist, Oct. 28, 1991, page 12) responds to the three questions I posed in my letter in the July 22 issue of The Scientist [page 12]. The first concerned the creationist claim that animals were drowned by the Great Flood, and the fossilized bones of the best swimmers are in the top layers. The book Scientific Creationism (San Diego, Creation Life Publishers, 1974, pages 118-20) states that fossils of "mammals and birds would be found in general at

I believe my impression of a lack of opportunity for foreign scientists in upper-level academia currently is realistic. However, that is not the stated goal of my sponsoring program (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science), nor was it my own. The difficulties in attaining such a position are certainly enhanced by cultural differences; however, I do not believe that this reflects any cultural bias on the part of the Japanese. Their intention of generating research collaborations and dialogu

I read with interest the article by Linda Marsa entitled "Mentoring: A Time-Honored Tradition Changes Over Time" (The Scientist, Oct. 28, 1991, page 19). As a faculty member over the past 20 years with a modest number of prot‚g‚s, I recently became interested in a more thorough investigation of this important and elusive process. I enlisted the services of a colleague, Don Petersen, and in our search through the literature we read many of the same key phrases found in the article, s

So, with the public's trust in its institutions already crumbling, the scientific community must get serious about the way it deals with alleged fraud and misconduct. To be convinced of this, we can call to mind the protracted, torturous unwinding of the notorious Baltimore case. As most of us are aware, it was back in 1986 that a paper bearing the name of Nobelist David Baltimore was published in the journal Cell (45:247, 1986). It contained an important conclusion based on data that did not

In Blaenavon, South Wales, on a warm September morning last year, a psychotherapist from Colorado and a computer repairman from northeastern England, both on vacation, sat on a grassy hill slope and measured how water flowed through the layer of topsoil covering the hill. Their readings will help determine the quality of this land, which is currently used for sheep grazing. The next day, on a nearby tract of land, a California elementary school teacher and a New Hampshire accountant, both als

Base pay for many research-and-development scientists was restrained by economic forces in 1990, with increases in some cases managing only to match the rate of inflation, according to a survey report recently released by the Washington, D.C.-based Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology. For instance, chemists with a bachelor's degree and two years' experience made an average of $2,465 per month in 1990, 4.2 percent more than in 1989. Atmospheric scientists with a master's deg

Edward R. Perl, Sarah Graham Kenan Professor of Physiology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, is the recipient of the fourth annual Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Pain Research. The award, which consists of a $50,000 prize and a silver medallion, was presented to Perl in November at the annual meeting of the American Pain Society in New Orleans. Perl, 64, was recognized for his discovery of nociceptors, nerve endings in skin and tissue that convey i

The GTE Corporation Lectureship Program in Technology and Ethics offers U.S. colleges and universities grant support for an on-campus lecture series to promote public discussion of ethical issues in science and technology. Programs will be open to the public as well as to members of the sponsoring institution, and are designed to promote interdisciplinary discussion of technology issues and allow the institutions' faculty and students to hear the views of outside experts. Eligible institutio

The Louis Jeantet Foundation for Medicine will support one to three clinical or basic biomedical research projects in 1993 by distinguished scientists, at a total funding level of approximately $1.2 million. Scientists, physicians, and institutions are invited to nominate researchers for the awards on the basis of the excellence of nominees' past and present research. Candidates being considered for final selection will be asked to submit specific research proposals. Eligible candidates may b

YUDI P. GUPTA has been appointed to head the new Arlington, Va., office of the Houston Applied Research Center (HARC). HARC is a private, nonprofit organization that fosters ties between science and the marketplace. Its research interests include high-energy physics, space technology, materials science, lasers, geotechnology, supercomputing, and molecular biology. The Arlington office will focus on working with federal agencies and with the Washington, D.C., offices of HARC's partners in industr

In the last few years, developers of statistical software have tried hard to reach the nonstatistician. User-friendly, menu-driven programs, with high-resolution graphics to visualize the results of statistical analyses, are becoming increasingly available. And while software packages may not take the place of a fundamental understanding of statistics, they can help improve the statistical literacy of a scientist who understands the basics. Many of the software manuals include detailed explanat