Changing the rules?

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Abstract
Science writers have for some years been moving away from their historically awestruck ‘ain't‐science‐grand’ reporting of research developments. Instead, they are more often inspecting science with a critical eye, particularly policy matters. While they are at it, they are filling an information gap, performing a job that the scientific press cannot—or will not—do. The result, however, is that disputes which might in the past have been kept in the scientific family are now broadcast much more widely. The larger world has begun to learn that the rules of science are being revised in ways that some find unsettling, and that science is at something of a loss about what to do. > The larger world has begun to learn that the rules of science are being revised in ways that some find unsettling, and that science is at something of a loss about what to do The latest episode in the discord between science and commerce spilled into public view in the Los Angeles Times in early December, 2000. The case in point is the decision by the journal Science to allow special—unprecedented, some charge—rules governing the data underlying a paper that it wanted very much: Celera Genomics's account of its once‐derided but highly successful shotgun sequencing of the human genome. The agreement between the company and the journal will let Celera keep the sequence data on the company's own computers, rather than deposit it in one of the public databanks as is usual. In practice, this has been GenBank at the National Institutes of Health, the European Bioinformatics Institute in Hinxton, UK and the DNA Data Bank of Japan, designated as official and cost‐free repositories at a 1995 meeting where the NIH and the Wellcome Trust drafted principles for the Human Genome Project. The three databanks have melded so seamlessly …

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