Funding, salaries, human genomes—the hot topics of interest to scientists in the 1980s are still making headlines today. Here, The Scientist revisits some of the stories featured in its premiere issue, published on October 20, 1986.
In 1986, US scientists celebrated a 17.5 percent increase in the National Institutes of Health’s budget for the next fiscal year. Today, despite continued economic hardship and threats of budget cuts, NIH funding continues to climb, reaching $30 billion in 2010—nearly six times what it was when The Scientist published its first issue, and more than three times what would be predicted based on inflation. “It’s a very healthy thing,” says Alan Edwards, product leader for Kelly Scientific Resources, a scientific and clinical research staffing company. But, he adds, ...
