Censored papers on bird flu, which could help terrorists, have critics wondering if academic scientists can police their own work. The near-publication has brought out general critics of the federal panel, the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, and the voluntary self-policing approach that it embraces instead of regulation. Members…

Following an encounter with a student at the beginning of fall term, the writer reflects that today's student generation is a singular one: its members want to study, travel, make friends, make more friends, read everything (superfast), take in all the movies, listen to every hot band, keep up with everyone they've ever known. They live to…

Rarely do political scandal and academe collide so publicly as they have now, in Europe. In February, Germany's education minister stepped down after Heinrich Heine University, in Dusseldorf, revoked her doctorate because her thesis lifted passages from other sources without proper attribution. Her departure came after scandals over plagiarized…

In metabolic terms, publishing in the humanities is more couch potato than sprinter. An idea can take years to move from light-bulb stage to manuscript to finished book. Add another year, or two or three, before an author can expect to see reviews of that book in academic journals. That slows down an already glutted system. "It's just appalling…

Arguments between factions advocating more or less teacher education could slow down the reform process enough to allow gains in the trend toward licensing teachers lacking teacher training. (MSE)

By academic standards, Rebecca R. Richards-Kortum has it made. She is a full professor of bioengineering at Rice University, runs a thriving cancer-research laboratory, and is a member of the prestigious National Academy of Engineering. But with four children at home, she sometimes feels like an academic outcast. In fact, Ms. Richards-Kortum says…

The decoding of the human genome was supposed to have been the dawn of the age of personalized medicine. It turned out, though, that health is affected by a lot more than genes. As scientists were already aware, the environment and life experiences also have a huge impact on disease. Researchers, such as Jeremy K. Nicholson, have worked to make…