Scene One: A couple of professors with fine credentials publish a paper saying that a drug they tested is superior to competing products. Their article, appearing in a well-known peer-reviewed journal, reassuringly states that the authors report no conflict of interest relevant to their findings. The drug manufacturer’s stock soars. Not long afterward a news report reveals that the study was financed by the manufacturer and the professors hold shares in the company.

Scene Two: The editor of the journal expresses indignation, noting that all contributors must certify adherence to clearly stated conflict-of-interest disclosure regulations. The authors respond that apparently a “misunderstanding” has occurred, pointing out that part of the study was also financed by the National Institutes of Health, and the research protocol was approved by their university’s Institutional Review...

Unsolicited advice for students contemplating a career in scientific research:

Don’t — unless you’re passionate about life in the lab and willing to undergo a long apprenticeship, at low wages, with an uncertain outcome, gain a situation where, against long odds, you can compete for position and money to do the research that interests you. Understand this: The chances of making it are not good.

The rhetoricians of academe and their political, industrial, and editorialist pals regularly spout off about the urgency of enticing more young Americans into scientific careers. Nonetheless, long-standing impediments remain in place.

Thousands of young Ph.D.‘s are stacked up in minimum-wage postdoc holding patterns for lack of full-fledged positions. For years it’s been predicted that droves of old-timers would be stepping down from academic posts, making room for a new generation. But the...

From the outpouring of derision and anger inspired by academic earmarks — a.k.a. the Congressional pork barrel — you might conclude there’s nothing good about legislators delivering money to the local university. The pork total for 2008, reported in The Chronicle of March 28, is a record $2.25 billion for 2,300 projects at 920 institutions. In the quoted assessment of Michael S. Lubell, director of public affairs at the American Physical Society, the numbers show “a system that’s out of control.”

Under the principle of “give a dog a bad name,” earmarks are routinely denounced and rarely defended. But the reality is that political pork helped build America, and political pork has financed or buttressed some of our leading research universities. The opponents of earmarks insist that scientific peer review is the soundest method for distributing federal money for science. They’re right, ...

How transparent is your university?

In making journalistic rounds, I’m struck by odd streaks of secretiveness in the operations of some institutions of higher education. But why should they unveil their operations and dealings to the campus community and, even worse, to outsiders?

Answer: Because, wisely or not, we put a great deal of faith in universities. We trust them with our children and huge sums of personal and public money. Even private universities are public in the sense that they depend heavily on public support — financial, political, and spiritual. In addition, we rely on specialists from universities to advise the government and the public on health, national security, economics, and other crucial issues. So it’s important for universities to make clear their loyalties, obligations, debts, connections, values, and interests. That’s transparency.

Nonetheless,...

If we can send a man to the moon, why can’t we invent tobacco that’s not bad for us?

We can all think of blockbuster discoveries that we’d like to see coming from science. Cures for terrible diseases would rank very high on the list. So would abundant supplies of cheap, reliable, and clean energy. Add in methods for controlling hurricanes, tornadoes, and other destructive natural phenomena. Of this partial wish list, we can be sure none will be quickly delivered.

Meanwhile, as work proceeds on these prime problems, we might realistically hope for swifter solutions to far-smaller problems. Though of lesser importance and difficulty, their solution would make life a bit nicer, easier, convenient, and congenial. For some of these problems, solutions may already exist but remain poorly or not at all implemented; research on others might have to start from scratch.

For an unmet...

The talent shortage that never materializes was proclaimed again this week on Capitol Hill, this time by Microsoft’s Bill Gates, who warned that American companies “face a severe shortfall of scientists and engineers with expertise to develop the next generation of breakthroughs.”

To bring on those breakthroughs, Gates, and many others, call for allowing the entry of more foreign talent, as well as improving American science and math education to produce more home-grown talent.

The scientist and engineer shortage or shortfall—we’ll get to the difference in a moment — is a familiar specter at Congressional hearings. The reason is, in defiance of facts, it suits the needs of higher education, industry, and the federal research bureaucracy, even if it doesn’t exist. For academe, a dearth of scientists and education clearly means Washington must provide more money for academic science an...

It’s late in the day for the Bush administration to be developing ambitious plans to enlist the social, behavioral, and political sciences for dealing with nations that are collapsing, strife-ridden, or otherwise worrisome for U.S. interests. But that’s what’s proposed in a high-level report that has gone virtually unnoticed since it was issued in February.

Though Bush and company depart next January, presidential directives to the federal bureaucracy can linger on and even thrive in subsequent administrations. The proposal invites recall of past controversies, dating back to the Vietnam war, over the involvement of social and behavioral researchers in government missions under the guise of scholarly inquiry.

Titled ”Research and Development Challenges for Regional Stability and Capacity Building,” the report bears the...

If the science establishment performs according to form, it will effectively sit out the coming presidential election. Too bad, because the influence of science in Washington has been on a downward slope for decades, to the detriment of science and wise national policy making. The cause of decline is an absence of the political bite that comes with organized participation in the political process.

Wake up, mandarins and boffins! The pols don’t even know you’re there.

They once did, but that was back in the early post-World War II days, when scientifically illiterate politicians humbly invited scientists to the inner councils for guidance on the mysteries of the atom, space flight, exotic treatments for disease, and research as a creator of jobs and prosperity. The illiteracy continues to this day, but through repetition and familiarity, policy making for science has usually...

The battle cry of passivity, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” can properly be applied to the organization of federal support for research. Conceded at the outset: It ain’t broke and organizational neatness is unimportant.

But much of Washington’s layout for science is musty with age, having originated in long-ago times and circumstances, often in response to foreign or domestic crises. For long-forgotten reasons, some research organizations are free-standing “independent” agencies, while others are embedded in cabinet departments. Dispersal of functions has its merits, but sometimes incurs a loss of critical mass. For sure, the voice of science in Washington is hard to hear.

NASA, the last major addition to the roster of federal research agencies, was established in 1958 as an independent agency in response to the panic induced by Sputnik, which also spawned the White House...

Can breaking into the news help propel a scientific career? I’ve often heard scientists say it can, though usually in disapproving reference to a colleague they regard as undeservingly successful via self-promotion. The subject, as far as I know, has not been systematically studied, and herewith is offered gratis to anyone interested in taking on the task.

That research organizations conspire to get into the news is a given of contemporary research. A lab without a PR office is relic of the dark ages. Promotion of the public understanding of science is a holy cause among the managers of science. Torrents of press releases about new scientific findings flow daily to news organizations and science writers. A major underlying assumption behind these efforts is that public knowledge of research somehow gets transmuted into public support of research. And, supposedly, career and grant...