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BY TRADITION, this page of New Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ has been anonymous. There are
several reasons for this, the most important being that there is no reason
why even one of more than half a million readers should have any interest
in the views of the usual hacks who churn out these weekly rants. We break
tradition this week, hang on, there is nothing royal about this operation,
so let’s start again: I break tradition this week, because this is my last
issue as editor of New Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ.

As the editor throughout the 1980s, I have had to grapple with the most
rapid period of growth in the magazine’s history. My predecessor, Bernard
Dixon, spent the 1970s knocking the beast into a shape that would find favour
with readers (and, to a lesser extent, advertisers). In the past decade
we (the singular isn’t appropriate here) have built on those foundations
to such an extent that New Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ is now one of the more successful magazines,
let alone science magazines, in Britain, which is one reason for making
way for someone else to navigate the ship through the ‘caring ’90s’, as
the media phrasemakers call the current decade. Which raises the issue of
the state of science in Britain today.

It is paradoxical that the expansion of New Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ coincided with
the hardest battering that British science has ever seen. The rest of society
also saw the odd upheaval during the 1980s. Unfortunately, unlike some other
institutions, there aren’t yet the signs that true vigour will return to
science as it has to other areas of society.

British Telecom is no longer the ministry of red tape – I recently had
a new telephone line installed within two weeks, and it works. Even British
Leyland, or Rover as we are supposed to call it these days, seems to have
come up with a couple of cars that people want to buy and that don’t grind
to a halt the minute you get them out of the showroom. Science, though,
continues to muddle along. But is the whining appropriate? Only last week
the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals warned that Britain’s universities
still run the risk of falling apart – physically as well as intellectually.
The Ministry of Defence continues to squander billions on something that
it calls R&D, but which most scientists, not to mention the rest of
the world, would call playing with toys.

Even in many of Britain’s newly revived companies, research and development
is seen as a luxury rather than a contribution to future prosperity. (One
research director once suggested to me, only partly in jest, that I should
ask my contacts in the City to persuade his boss that their company should
spend more on R&D) Or, to put it in City talk, short-termism emphasises
quarterly profit figures and share prices rather than continued growth.

And yet companies continue to recruit scientists apace. Unfortunately,
this is partly because the greedy ’80s seem to have persuaded youngsters
that their future lies in accountancy, thus starving the flow of new talent
into the sciences.

This is beginning to sound depressing, which wasn’t the idea. Science
was still fun during the 1980s. Doubtless someone will misinterpret this
– they usually do – but even something like AIDS has been a fascinating
intellectual challenge and, let’s repeat the word, fun. It would have been
far better not to have had the challenge; but to suggest that the pursuit
of the virus, and ways of beating it, has been unmitigated misery is silly.
If anything, the more severe the problem, the greater the scientific challenge
which, in turn, should mean that scientists have more fun.

More obvious fun was the hilarious case of cold fusion, a subject dear
to my heart as a lapsed hot-fusion researcher. Also fun, but again likely
to be misinterpreted by those who take every word that appears on this page
as dead serious, has been watching the developing realisation that environmental
issues weren’t just a passing fad. In the 1970s, New Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ pioneered
reporting of the scientific investigations of what was going on in the environment
– a particular cover, with a mock-up spray can and the cover line ‘Good
buy, or goodbye’, sticks in the mind, and that appeared in 1974. At the
time, industry poured scorn on this heresy, with one company going so far
as to withdraw its advertising.

If nothing else, the issue of the environment has forced a lot of people,
including not a few politicians and journalists, to try to understand some
complex science. This may help to explain the recent boom in science reporting
in the newspapers, another gratifying sign of change in the 1980s. No self-respecting
broadsheet is without its weekly science section.

Coming back to fun, that is the reason for handing over the editor’s
badge of office – a corkscrew if you are really interested – to someone
else. After 11 years, terminal memo phobia has set in. The time has come
to return to writing for an audience of more than a half dozen members of
management.

Growth brings its drawbacks: there are now twice as many people producing
the magazine to worry about, and they are lured increasingly often to join
the newspaper science boom; and the growing complexity of producing a colour
magazine with computerisation (what fool said that word processors are labour
saving?) makes ever larger demands on time. Fortunately, New Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ is
produced by an excellent team of editors and writers. It will continue to
thrive, perhaps even more vigorously. In the meantime, does anyone want
to buy a slightly soiled article?