Opinion in 1988

The new US president should worry about the bills that go unpaid as well as the federal deficit.

The British government has reacted with hysteria to the indiscretions of a junior minister and to the wishes of its voters that the genus salmonella would go away.

An agreement between IBM and Fujitsu may bring order to a disordered market.

A draft NIH report rightly rejects suspicions of fraud at the Whitehead Institute, but by its deficiencies points to the need for the more effective self-regulation of research.

Decisions due in the next few months could help costly level as well as help Mr Gorbachev survive

British students have been protesting at the proposed ending of their grants. They have cause.

A canard that Nature has withheld information about fallout from Chernobyl is untrue.

The decision in the United States that engineered strains of animals are covered by patent law has begun a debate among European patents-watchers that must lead to an amendment of European law.

The British government must decide whether its autonomous universities should be autonomous.

New research has shown some schizophrenia to be, in part, genetically determined, which promises new insight into psychiatric illness. But the need for enlightened social policies remains urgent.

Next week's US election will bring long-standing money problems to a head.

The British government is likely further to damage its support of industrial research by the narrow pursuit of what the markets will bear.

Soviet science is tackling its problems realistically, but needs luck if it is to solve them.

A decade of upheaval is about to be followed by another, and then another. . . .