October 1996

Illustration: John Overmyer If you feel anxious and depressed about your prospects for landing a permanent job in science, you are not alone. Reports of a substantial oversupply of science-related Ph.D.'s have been featured in many scientific journals as well as in popular publications such as Newsweek and the Washington Post. In a recent poll of young members of the American Geophysical Union, a 33,000-member scientific society based in Washington, D.C., more than 60 percent describe the cur

Scientists as a rule are very busy, conducting experiments and analysis, plotting data, giving talks, writing, and advising. However, much of their work never makes it into print. A large percentage of published abstracts never become finished papers. Drawers full of data are collected but never analyzed. This is the productivity paradox in science: Why, among professionals whose time is largely under their own control, is so much of their effort apparently wasted? I believe we can discover t

T.L. Gilbert, who thinks that scientific fact is a language-based social construct (The Scientist, Sept. 2, 1996, page 12), is actually beginning to think like a physicist. For ages, physicists have agreed with Gilbert's example that meters and seconds (and kilograms, and the imperialist feet and pounds mass) are arbitrary. Hence they use "natural" units, by taking ratios with natural constants. As an example, one measures velocities by comparing them with the greatest velocity-that of light. I

Eugene Garfield's commentary ("An Old Proposal For A New Profession: Scientific Reviewing," The Scientist, Aug. 19, 1996, page 12) elegantly reiterated the importance of scientific reviewing. However, the commentary did not recognize that one of the main reasons there are not many reviews from young scientists is the difficulty the not-yet-established have in getting reviews published. I, like many other young scientists, would love to take a break from heavy bench work to write review article

A recent article on xenotransplantation (R. Finn, The Scientist, Aug. 19, 1996, page 1) and two responses to my commentary (M. Jasienski, The Scientist, March 4, 1996, page 10), which was critical of a single-subject baboon bone-marrow transplant trial, prompt me to explicate some methodological issues further. What insights can a single-subject study provide? While, as pointed out by J.E. Janosky (The Scientist, May 27, 1996, page 12), there could be some room for N = 1 studies, J.G. Llaurado

Regarding "How To Spur Scientific Revolution: Amass Copious Data, Keep It Simple" (K. Hopkin, The Scientist, Aug. 19, 1996, page 18): Thomas Kuhn's paradigms and the idea that little problems with a theory result eventually in a scientific revolution may fit for some accomplishments in physics and chemistry, but they do not chart developments in the biological sciences very well. Without a microscope, would we know anything about sperms? Without a developed X-ray film in Rosalind Franklin's de

Isn't it ironic that the biology scientists receiving MacArthur fellowships [K.Y. Kreeger, The Scientist, Sept. 2, 1996, page 1; T.W. Durso, The Scientist, Sept. 2, 1996, page 3] are interested in broadening their studies to areas combining disciplines while university administrations are subdividing disciplines? My own university (the University of Arizona) has subdivided the old biological sciences into (1) ecology and evolutionary biology; (2) microbiology and immunology; and (3) molecular

The article "Citation Records Show U.S.'s Top Schools In Clinical Medicine Research" (The Scientist, Oct. 30, 1995, page 14), reprinted from the Institute for Scientific Information newsletter Science Watch, omitted the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. This institution should have been ranked eighth in output of clinical medicine papers during the five-year period 1990-94 and 24th in impact (citations per paper). The complete statistics for Baylor College of Medicine in clinical medicine,

Top Three Australian Universities In 21 Fields, Ranked by Total Citations, 1990-94 Top Three Australian Universities in 21 Fields, Ranked by Citation Impact, 1990-1994 Editor's Note: Noting that Australian institutes are becoming more prominent in the world research scene, the newsletter Science Watch, published by the Philadelphia-based Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), recently analyzed the citation records of that country's universities for the first time. This reprint from the J

Field123 PhysicsAustralian National University (2,790) Institute of Advanced Studies (2,305) University of Melbourne (1,844) ChemistryAustralian National University (2,596) Institute of Advanced Studies (2,347) University of Sydney (2,227) Materials ScienceUniversity of Sydney ( 340) University of New South Wales ( 330) Australian National University (166) EngineeringAustralian National University( 895) University of New South Wales ( 855) University of Sydney ( 616) GeosciencesAustralian N

Field123 PhysicsUniversity of Queensland (3.5) University of Adelaide (3.2) Australian National University(2.8) ChemistryInstitute of Advanced Studies (4.1) Australian National University(4.0) University of Sydney (3.7) Materials ScienceAustralian National University(2.7) University of Sydney (2.4) University of Western Australia(2.0) EngineeringInstitute of Advanced Studies (2.2) Australian National University(2.0) University of Newcastle (1.9) GeosciencesInstitute of Advanced Studies (5.7

SELECTIVITY: Supelco's SUPELCOSIL ABZ+Plus columns works like other reverse-phase columns yet provide selectivity for polar and charged compounds. For academic researchers and scientists who produce proteins on a large scale, separating substances by chromatography has never been easier. New and improved chromatographic support media, along with fully automated, computer-controlled instruments that are becoming increasingly user-friendly, have made it much simpler for even the most analytical

Acetylcholine Transporter Antibody The new goat polyclonal antibody to vesicular acetylcholine transporter (VAChT) has been used for immunohistochemistry on rat and mouse tissue. It labels cholinergic cell bodies in the septum and nucleus basalis as well as cholinergic fibers in the brain stem and spinal cord. The antibody is claimed to be useful in Alzheimer's disease research because acetylcholine (Ach) is one of the first transmitters to be reduced in this disease. It also has application

As Congress readied for recess, approaching the end of the 1996 fiscal year on October 1, it hurriedly passed several spending bills for fiscal year 1997. Some, such as the Veterans Administration, Housing and Urban Development, and Independent Agencies bills, included provisions for various R&D agencies, including the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Other agency budgets, such as that of the Department of Health and Human Services, weren't