Opinion in 1993

Virtual reality may be more than an extension of the cinema, but quite what is not yet clear.

British plans to plot a strategy for research by untested iterative consultation are jeopardized by haste and are potentially flawed by the appearance of consensus.

Congress's conference on the budget for the US National Institutes of Health has agreed on a 6 per cent rise.

This year's most celebrated political autobiography seems not to be recognizable as history of science.

The seismic causes of last week's tragedy are less forbidding than the ultimate cause: rural poverty.

If the fighting on the streets of Moscow gets out of hand, Russian science will be finished, but this or the next Russian government needs outside advice on how it should reorganize the research enterprise.

The path to European unity has been strewn with obstacles since the collapse of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism and will hardly be clarified at the summit meeting arranged for 29 October. But something can be done.

The British government's plans for law and order are potentially calamitous.

This week sees the appearance of yet another new section of Nature, under the somewhat old-fashioned title "Progress".

Post-war Germany's enviable reputation as a law-abiding state is threatened by the harsh treatment of a handful of academics in the eastern Länder who once belonged to the Communist Party of the German Democratic Republic.

Britain's prime minister has acknowledged in Japan what he would not in Britain — that British science has been mishandled.

It is not too soon to plan how the rest of Europe will respond to the slow ending of the Bosnian fighting.

US President Bill Clinton has made a brave start on his campaign promise to extend health care to those not now insured, but his plans will cost more than he predicts.

Britain's best broadcaster may be making a mess of its strategy to win a new charter on favourable terms.

The peace agreement over Palestine has been widely taken as a sign that technical and financial assistance is needed urgently in Gaza; the Israelis have a bigger and special part to play.

The governments of France and the United States have independently set out to develop a strategy for research.

The Soros fund will need the help of an army of referees in the weeks ahead. It should be given what it needs.

A rash of anxiety in Britain about prion diseases apparently caused by infectious proteins suggests it is time for the government to change its line on the risks to people of bovine spongiform encephalitis.

The United States government would do well to follow the advice of Gore's task force.

Contrary to popular belief, the nuclear industry is not dead. It needs to be kept alive.