AUTHOR: PETER NICHOLLS, p.12
Regarding the commentary "A Pat On The Back For Westinghouse Finalists -- And For The Talent Search Sponsors, As Well" (Eugene Garfield, The Scientist, March 8, 1993, page 12): Why does my heart sink when I read the titles you listed of projects by two 17-year-old high school students--"Undocumented Complex Social Relations in Captive Theropithecus gelada" and "Loop Two Amino Acids Important for Ability of P-glycoprotein to Confer Multidrug Resistance"? They have obviously been trapped in the ephemeral scientific culture of their elders and channeled at an early age into trying to make tiny contributions to vast enterprises, the nuances of which they are probably quite unaware.
Would any 17-year-old who had not been instructed in the acceptable minutiae of current scientific paper nomenclature have come up with such titles? Don't the titles reek of medical and social significance, scientific "political correctness," and the big money ...
