June 1993

With the pandemic mounting and no sure remedies in sight, experts foresee the growing recruitment of skilled researchers On May 21, the World Health Organization announced that 14 million people have been infected with HIV so far, and the global figure could hit 40 million by the year 2000. And the ninth international AIDS meeting in Berlin earlier this month yielded little startling information beyond the general agreement among scientists that they have been, in effect, stymied thus f

Thousands of new college graduates have been rubbing shoulders with some of the science community's heaviest hitters during the past month and a half, thanks to the hallowed tradition of the honorary degree. Adding luster to commencement ceremonies at campuses throughout the United States this year have been such luminaries, for example, as Torsten Wiesel, Anthony Fauci, Walter Massey, Gertrude Elion, Stanley Cohen, D. Allan Bromley, and Maxine Singer. These and dozens of other men and women

Academy members, with high hopes for his administration, expect Alberts to boost NAS's image and influence Members of the National Academy of Sciences say they are eagerly anticipating the presidency of Bruce M. Alberts. The University of California, San Francisco, molecular biologist assumes leadership of the 1,683-member honorary body--as well as the chairmanship of the 1,200-employee National Research Council (NRC)--on July 1. "The academy is going to change under Alberts because

Douglas Bennet, the Clinton administration's newly confirmed assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs, says that after nearly a decade of severed ties between the United States and the United Nations Educational Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), renewal of the relationship is now "definitely a possibility." Bennet's assessment comes at a time of increasing activity on the part of those strongly favoring renewed U.S. involvement in UNESCO. Recently, di

Strong pressure is being brought to bear on Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) officials to reverse a May personnel action at the National Institutes of Health. That move, to reassign fraud investigators Walter Stewart and Ned Feder to new jobs, effectively ended the pair's controversial scientific misconduct research at the institutes. Tactics to influence administrators have included a 33-day protest fast by Stewart and letters supporting the two men and their work from prominent m

Editor's Note: During the past two months, leading members of the international scientific community were awarded honorary doctorates at dozens of universities in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. At many commencement ceremonies, the recipients seized the opportunity to share with the new graduates their views on what they consider matters of profound importance. Some conveyed broad philosophical messages; others offered morale-building advice. Still others took advantage of th

From my window in the University of Pennsylvania's research administration offices, I can see a small but rapidly changing slice of our campus. Three blocks away, a new biomedical building is being adorned with a brick and limestone facing. Behind the library directly across the street, a huge construction crane towers over the site of the latest addition to our hospital. The block-square parking lot next door is the future location of what many consider a critically needed campus center to hou

The fight over Walter Stewart and Ned Feder (Franklin Hoke, The Scientist, May 17, 1993, page 1) is not about plagiarism by a historian, nor about scientific fraud. It is about power. Since World War II, the United States government has given money to biomedical science and let the scientists carve it up among themselves. The system rewards favor-trading, so politicians arose, the skilled ones achieving great influence over funding. Influence and fear permeate our profession. Disagree with

I congratulate The Scientist on its coverage of the Stewart-Feder case in the May 17 issue, including the statement by the two embattled scientists themselves (page 11), and the thoughtful Commentary by Margot O'Toole (page 12). As might be gathered from my quoted remarks here in the same issue (Franklin Hoke, page 1), I am completely on the side of Stewart and Feder. It is true that they ventured outside biomedical research in using their "plagiarism machine" to examine a biography of Abrah

Please forgive my urge to share a few thoughts concerning the Stewart-Feder execution by the establishment. In my view, scientists are divided into two groups, one of which, perhaps best represented by John Edsall, practices science for its own sake and another group that is represented by those who cheer the ignominious action taken against Stewart and Feder. One group has nothing to fear from monitors of misconduct; the other group stands to lose prominence, careers, committee membership,

After a grueling search, the gene causing a disorder is identified. Now what? While hope for rapid development of a cure fixes itself in the public's mind, in the scientific sector, discovery of a health-related gene catalyzes a frenzy of research activity, geneticists say. The first steps following gene discovery have become somewhat routine: completing sequencing of the gene, matching the sequence to a known protein pattern (if possible), deciphering gene expression through tissue and ti

G.F. Smoot, C.L. Bennett, A. Kogut, et al., "Structure in the COBE differential microwave radiometer first-year maps," Astrophysical Journal, 396:L1-L5, 1992. George F. Smoot (Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley, Calif.): "The Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) discovery of the primordial seeds of modern structure is a landmark in cosmology. "The detection of the progenitors of galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and even larger structures defines the general outlines of large-scale structure

Q.-w. Xie, H.J. Cho, J. Calaycay, et al., "Cloning and characterization of inducible nitric oxide synthase from mouse macrophages," Science, 256:225-8, 1992. Carl Nathan (Division of Hematology-Oncology, Cornell University Medical College, New York): "In 1992, Science touted nitric oxide (NO) as `the molecule of the year.' Many articles contributed to this sobriquet. Among them, the most frequently cited has been this paper, produced in a collaboration with Merck Sharpe & Dohme Research Labor

Safe laboratory handling of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) presents paradoxical extremes to lab chiefs: The odds that a lab worker will become infected with HIV on the job are extremely low, according to studies sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta; but experience indicates that the consequences of infection are almost always fatal. Even noting the minority scientific view that HIV is not the cause of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS),

University professors, although highly trained in their subject, often have had no formal training in teaching. Even if they were teaching fellows as graduate students, their performance may not have been monitored, and they may not have had good role models. Also, because teaching skills are often not a qualification for promotion at large research institutions, many scientists acknowledge that they are not motivated to improve their performance in this area. Thus, some of the most innovati

Author: Ron Kaufman, p.22 Madilyn Fletcher has been appointed director of the University of Maryland's Center of Marine Biotechnology (COMB) in Baltimore. Fletcher has been a senior staff scientist and professor at COMB since its founding in 1986. She assumed her new position on April 5. Fletcher says one of her first tasks as director will be to identify four areas of research on which the center should concentrate its efforts in the coming years. She says that the fields of fish and shel

Swiss Cheers AAAS Takes A Stand NYAS Sits It Out All Together, Now New American Research Swiss Cheers The 1993 Rolex Awards for Enterprise--50,000 Swiss francs and a gold Rolex chronometer--were recently presented in Geneva to five researchers. Notable among the recipients is Forrest M. Mims III, who attracted considerable publicity a few years ago over his dismissal as a columnist for Scientific American because of his belief in creation (Forrest M. Mims III, The Scientist, Feb