Opinion in 1987

The largest British research council is in a hurry to set up novel research centres. Will they succeed?

The US government needs an effective cabinet; British government should not gag its press.

A calculation in this issue shows X-ray lasers might be feasible, and points to horrendous difficulties ahead. But the case for putting and end to the search for ballistic missile defences rests elsewhere.

The British are a fitfully impulsive lot. Having let their universities and other research institutions moulder for years, they now propose to engineer a revolution in them.

Too many promising international research collaborations, from AIDS research to the sequencing of the human genome, languish for lack of a workable framework for tangible and short-term research.

The United States advocates rationality in agriculture, not before time.

Western banks should tell their customers they have lost money on loans to poor countries.

Nature will now be printed in Japan as well as in Britain and the United States. One objective is to give readers a better service. Another is to draw the scientific community of Japan more into the general swim.

The plight of the Geological Survey shows what is wrong with British research administration.

Last week's decision by the US Supreme Court on the teaching of evolution is a splendid affirmation of the cause of reason, but that does not mean that nothing more will be heard of the creationists.

In the long run, innovation does not destroy jobs but creates them.

Do the new ceramic superconductors threaten the largest accelerator with obsolescence?

The new British government should think hard about its plan to denationalize electricity.