Opinion in 1998

Agricultural research is being neglected by the US federal government, despite its clear relevance to economic prosperity, social development and environmental stewardship.

The significant boost in funds for UK science is a triumph, above all, for the Wellcome Trust.

China's scientists are highly valued but poorly paid, and great in number but small in productivity. A new initiative by the Chinese Academy of Sciences should improve matters.

The goodwill that greeted the appointment of UNEP's new executive director is in danger of evaporating.

Adapting to reunification has been a painful process for much of the scientific community in the former East Germany. But the city of Magdeburg has shown how a successful outcome can be achieved.

Despite pressures to the contrary, debate on the scientific dimension of policy decisions must take place openly.

A new association of European neuroscientists highlights the opportunities to establish a transatlantic balance of disciplinary activity, and the failure of others to achieve it.

The temptation to eliminate Britain's ‘dual support system’ for university research should be resisted.

Both India and Pakistan have much to gain from closer collaboration between their scientific communities. Such collaboration must not be allowed to remain a casualty of tensions between the two.

The NIH must be ready to take firm action to protect access to the tools that are essential to a researcher's work.

Last week's announcement of an unpublished observation of a possible extra-solar planet raises questions about the wisdom of NASA. The agency's need for visible success could undermine public confidence.

Environmental sciences are not the only disciplines that would benefit from quantitative stiffening.

India's recent nuclear tests are a reminder that, despite recent progress in arms control, nuclear weapons remain a threat to humanity. Helping to prevent their use requires redoubled effort by the scientific community.

British Biotech's problems underline the need for scientific literacy in the stock market.

Those engaged in the publicly funded effort to sequence the human genome should look on their new rival as healthy competition. But they will also need to protect the standards they have fought hard to establish.

It is easy to point fingers at science writers and scientists when newspaper accounts of research throw patients and stock markets into unjustified frenzy. But editors, too, share responsibility.

Conservative resistance to the reform of higher education is alive and kicking in France.

Even with the US federal budget in surplus, the scientific community needs to present a more sophisticated argument than merely demanding an across-the-board doubling of research funding for government agencies.

The success of Britain's Technology Foresight exercise is no grounds for complacency about its successor.

As a series of articles changes direction, science's relevance to art is reaffirmed.