Opinion in 1989

Chernobyl is not the only reason why Soviet civil nuclear power is behind target. Can it pull back?

Recent improvements of the climate in British research do not imply that the dangers have passed. Indeed, the most serious — complacency — is more serious now than ever.

The US budget problem is not its size, but how to cut it.

Last week's US budget promises generosity to science, but only the Congress can decide.

Last week's conference on chemical weapons was ruffled by the flawed argument that Israel's adversaries need them to counter Israel's nuclear pretensions.

One of Britain s largest companies may disappear because, as in the par able of the talents, it has been over-thrifty.

British Telecom, a nationalized industry now private, seems still to hanker after old ways.

A dispute over the attribution of priority for a neo-lamarckian mechanism is premature and unseemly, to say the least, and may help make science seem ridiculous.

The British government's latest view of higher education hangs on assumptions still unproven.

The impending trade dispute with the United States will confirm fears about the new Europe.

In the knowledge that the scientific enterprise is genuinely international and in the belief that Mr Mikhail Gorbachev's speech to the United Nations on 3 December offers us all the promise of a different world, Nature makes the following announcement to and solicitation of its readers.