Editorials in 2005

The first cloned dog was born at some cost, and there needn't be many more.

Mathematicians might think they have an image problem, but the public holds them in great esteem.

Frank international discussions need to start immediately if anything is to be salvaged from the space station, whose completion currently relies on the ailing space shuttle.

The proposed European Research Council will be safest under the wing of the European Commission.

The nuclear technology transfer deal agreed by the United States and India makes some sense on its own merits — but it leaves international non-proliferation efforts in disarray.

The US Food and Drug Administration badly needs some strong and stable leadership.

The decision to site the fusion experiment ITER in France left relatively little bad blood between the international partners, who must now rally behind the project.

Conflicts-of-interest at the US National Institutes of Health justify the agency's ethics crackdown.

Cuba's scientific community has made substantial progress in addressing social problems.

Japan is beginning to recognize that the status and treatment of women researchers must change — but it has yet to take decisive action to address the problem.

A map in a Nature supplement is being used to divert debate about science funding in China.

World leaders made modest but welcome progress on poverty in Africa and climate change.

Biologists may soon have little option but to sign up to codes of conduct.

Stem-cell biologists should not try to change the definition of the word ‘embryo’.

Six months into President George W. Bush's second term of office, partisan politics continues to widen the gulf between researchers and the administration.

African nations will be more likely to support development projects whose outcomes are indispensable to them. Participants at next week's G8 summit should focus aid in this direction.

Clarifying the Nature journals' policy on data deposition for chemical structures.

Is the US National Science Foundation jumping the gun with its plans for education?

Japan's approach to industrial innovation may be out of fashion, but it still delivers the goods.

Research assessment rests too heavily on the inflated status of the impact factor.