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Is plagiarism afflicting science? In PNAS, Citron and Ginsparg (1) count the number of authors who are submitting articles containing text already appearing elsewhere. They report disturbing numbers of authors resorting to copying, particularly in some countries where 15% of submissions are detected as containing duplicated material. I am on the editorial board of an Institute of Electrical and...

To understand modern science we cannot talk merely about theories. We must recognize the indispensable role of models. By theories we mean basic theories in physics, as described in scientific textbooks. Each basic theory describes a separate aspect of physical reality: movement under forces, gravity, electricity and magnetism, heat phenomena, and the like. Interactions described by basic theor...

In European research today, mobility has become firmly entrenched as a pre requisite for a successful scientific career; however, the reasons behind this emphasis on scientific nomadism are far from obvious. It is all too common for science policy-makers and funding bodies to extol the seemingly endless virtues of mobility, but it nearly amounts to heresy to ponder the possibility that a move a...

A. S. Kheifets, V. A. Sashin, M. Vos, E. Weigold,* and F. Aryasetiawan Atomic and Molecular Physics Laboratories, Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering, Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 0200, Australia Research Institute for Computational Sciences, AIST, Tsukuba Central 2, Umezono 1-1-1, Tsukuba Ibaraki 305-8568, Japan ~Received 22 September ...