Commentary

There is much concern about the state of West Germany's large forests which are threatened by an unprecedented decline. Research into its causes no longer focuses on acid rain, but on a possible interaction of increased ozone concentrations, acid mist and climatic factors.

If the bill recently presented in the British Parliament were to become law, many promising avenues of research would be blocked.

Nitrate and nitrite were measured in the saliva of two populations who differed in their risk of developing gastric cancer. Surprisingly, the levels of both ions were significantly higher in the low-risk group.

It is possible for economics to become a science — if only the discipline would abandon its present practice of eschewing empirical tests of its theories in favour of ‘formal’ ones  

A university researcher with long experience of British universities, but now working in the United States, reflects on the differences between the two systems and advocates modest reforms.

Calculations of the effects of nuclear explosions over London suggest that the proportion and absolute number of radiation fatalities are higher than previously estimated. They are sensitive to the value of LD₅₀ assumed for people, but the number of total casualties, deaths plus injuries, is practically independent of the LD₅₀.

Despite the appearance of analytical rigour, IIASA's widely acclaimed global energy projections are highly unstable and based on informal guesswork. This results from inadequate peer review and quality control, raising questions about political bias in scientific analysis.

While a British committee is considering the question whether the United Kingdom can afford to remain a member of the European high-energy physics consortium CERN, particle physics itself is at an exciting stage. Here a British theorist describes the prospects for the coming decade.

To scientists, the philosophy of science seems an irrelevance, as does the empirical practice of science to philosophers, preoccupied as they are with the logical consistency of their methods. The gulf between the philosophy of science, which has its roots in the growth of positivism in the late nineteenth century, impoverishes both. But there is now hope that the gulf will be bridged by the evolution of philosophy into theory of science.

Genetic engineering now allows biological synthesis and large-scale production of several proteins with therapeutic potential. The principal challenge in this sphere is to identify new, medically and commercially significant targets — the province of cell biologists, physiologists and biochemists. In the future, genetic engineering will surely provide invaluable tools for the study of the molecular basis of cellular control and pathophysiology, which will permit biochemists and medicinal chemists to design novel medicines.

The European nations could easily be tempted into a very expensive alliance with the United States to produce a space station. But is it worth it?

Will the establishment of local review committees for animal experiments in Britain modify attitudes of researchers and the public?

There is now an opportunity for legislators in the United States to rescue medical researchers from themselves.

The destruction of science in Argentina will probably never be more than a footnote to the history of the recent military government, whose major accomplishment was the kidnapping, torture and murder of 30,000 of its citizens in the name of Christian and Western civilization. Official neglect of Argentina's dogged potential for scientific excellence is nothing new; inevitably, there is a tendency to see even the most deliberate and calculatingly destructive acts of the military as a mere extension of what passed before.

The discussion on the so-called “nuclear winter” is continued here, with further contributions to come in future issues of Nature.

Radioactive fallout and depletion of the ozone layer, once believed catastrophic consequences of nuclear war, are now proved unimportant in comparison to immediate war damage. Today, “nuclear winter” is claimed to have apocalyptic effects. Uncertainties in massive smoke production and in meteorological phenomena give reason to doubt this conclusion.

An ICSU committee on the geological disposal of high-level radioactive wastes has concluded that century-long interim storage is essential and that disposal in subduction trenches and ocean sediments deserves more attention.

In spite of improvements in seismic techniques, the remote identification of seismic events as nuclear explosions remains limited.