Opinion in 1994

Britain's national lottery is a bad business, but research should make good use of it while it can.

Japan's universities are still urgently in need of the autonomy that would enable them to reform themselves; the ministry in charge of them should embrace that as its goal.

Universities are not businesses; attempts to run them as if they were risk trouble, as with two minor embarrassments at new British universities.

There is no merit in the campaign of the Apache Survival Coalition against the Mount Graham telescope.

Even well-heeled governments are hostages of global markets, and should band together for greater strength.

Two decisions by the British Appeal Court raise questions about the allowable breadth of biotechnology patents, but point to the charges patent-holders should be free to make.

Politicians have a responsibility to say openly where they stand on the activities of the research enterprise.

The European Commission has grown to be a powerful influence on research, and should not now be surprised that its activities will in future be scrutinized more closely. Winning the respect of the research community is its chief task.

A disputed article in a British journal again reveals that co-authorship is not a free gift.

Hopes that there would be a test-ban deal before the NPT must be renewed are fading fast.

Too many fields of modern technology contribute less than they might to social well-being because they are regulated nonsensically; telecommunications are the glaring example.

Cosmologists had better say something about the recent measurement of the Hubble constant.

The British government has hit on a way of making taxation popular and seeming to be fun.

British arguments about the amount of time for science in schools should instead be about the quality of teaching.

The Republican majorities in both houses of the US Congress will complicate the president's life, but do not necessarily presage disaster and may even bring out the best in the present incumbent.

The Russian government is about to institutionalize applied research disastrously.

The British and Irish governments could settle some contentious issues quickly.

Britain's Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution has joined the lobby against the motor-car without paying enough attention to the political obstacles to the pursuit of draconian policies.

The European Commission in the New Year will influence European science, but nobody can yet tell how.

Nature's pride in its survival this far should not be mistaken for evidence that the future can prudently be an extrapolation of the past. There are challenges and opportunities ahead.