Opinion in 1989

Mr John Dingell's committee in the US House of Representatives has predictably made very little headway in its inquiry into the immunology of transgenic mice. But it is too soon to celebrate a famous victory for science.

There is just a week in which to find a Western compromise on nuclear weapons in Central Europe.

Preparations for trade retaliation by the United States against Japan nonsense.

All governments worry about the civil spin-off from defence research, but the British government has more reason than most to be alarmed.

Nuclear power might help combat the greenhouse effect, but only if governments are more courageous.

The future health of science in the United States may depend more directly on the support of public education than on the continuation of the past decade's generous support of basic research.

The British government is devising a market in higher education, but customers and contractors are proxies.

NATO is making heavy weather of battlefield weapons in Europe. It would find it easier to modernize its forces if it would negotiate as well, and that way would also keep its friends.

Lacking constitutional protection, British newspapers are under pressure to reform — or be regulated by law.

The United States and the EEC have made some progress towards an understanding that their agricultural subsidies will eventually be phased out, but the pace of change is far too slow.

The appearance next week of one, not two, papers on cold fusion should not be misunderstood.

The palaeontology of the Himalayas has been corrupted by an apparently systematic misplacing of fossils.

The Swiss are nursing the idea of creating a European university and should be encouraged.

Mr Mikhail Gorbachev's visit to London last week has sharpened still further the issue of NATO's tactical nuclear weapons. NATO cannot pretend that the issue is technical and exclusively its own concern.

There is no reason why discoveries should not first be published in daily newspapers, but there are drawbacks.

Even marvellous machines have bugs.

Contradictions built into Britain's system of higher education seem to have persuaded the government towards structural change. One ingredient should be freedom — even the freedom for institutions to become extinct.

Reports that an account of cold nuclear fusion is soon to appear in this journal are premature.

Computerizing the OED should help its publishers to remedy the dictionary's most obvious defects.

The Soviet Academy of Sciences has been made a laughing-stock by the muddle over its constituency election for the Supreme Soviet. But the difficulty should have been anticipated.