From the New Scientist

From New York Times to Mark Thoma's site, more and more articles are appearing which many may consider leftist. Hopefully, as Daniel Bell said, the age of big ideologies is over and many are discussing issue by issue for the general good. In this direction are the current editorials in New Scientist (20th February, 2007). Recently there has been condemnation of Indonesia, including in some of the science blogs, for withholding birdflu samples. The editorial (unfortunately needs subscription) supports Indonesia's stand:

"In a fair world, Indonesia would send its virus to the best labs and share in any vaccine made from it. In our world, Indonesia sends off its virus, companies make vaccine from it and sell it to countries that can pay. Indonesia is not one of them, and neither are the other countries suffering badly from H5N1.
Indonesia is treating this as a case of biopiracy. Like other tropical countries, it is a hotspot of biodiversity. For decades foreign companies have helped themselves to its plants, microbes or whatever, and made lucrative products from them. In response, it has passed laws to stop exports of genetic material without agreement. It is invoking such a law to control samples of H5N1 and asking developed countries to respect the sort of intellectual property rules that they themselves have imposed for decades."

The rest of the editorial needs subscription. I hope that New Scientist can take a leaf out of its own book and make such editorials and articles accessible to all.
The second editorial is about the travails of a young scientist:
"This week a paper is published by a young researcher named Shahriar Afshar describing an experiment that he believes explodes an 80-year-old orthodoxy in quantum theory (see "Quantum rebel wins over doubters"). It has been a long road. Afshar failed to post his paper on the Arxiv database apparently because of a mix-up over his affiliation. Journals rejected it out of hand. New Scientist covered his work after quantum physicists advised us that, right or wrong, it raised important issues. Regrettably, Afshar was then chastised for talking to the press.

Aspiring scientists should expect to run the gauntlet of their peers, but they should not have to put up with the abuse to which Afshar was subjected, including attacks on his honesty and his religion. Why the extreme reaction? Perhaps people thought an experiment as simple as his must be wrong. Perhaps those who interpret quantum theory are unused to seeing their pronouncements put to the test. Whatever the reason, there can be no excuse for this kind of treatment."

Young scientists are increasingly being forced to go along with the prevailing orthodoxies and increase the research output of their seniors rather than persuing interesting and risky topics. In many universities tenures, increments, and promotions are measured by the number of papers rather than quality. And young researchers are pressurized to spend their most of their best productive years in such activities to increase the output of their seniors. The concept of universities where one is exposed to exciting ideas, connections between desciplines, connections to improving real life etc seem to be becoming more and more of a rarity as administrators, administrative type professors are increasing in numbers and taking over the universities.