Much research in social studies of science addresses scientists' interpretative flexibility in the construction of scientific knowledge. This flexibility is readily visible among different scientists' competing knowledge-claims as well as in their accounts across different social settings. This article illustrates this process and discusses some of its implications through a case study of descriptions of acid rain in published scientific papers and Congressional testimony. As acid rain was flexibly reconstructed in Congressional testimony, its meanings and implications for control legislation became more contested. Some descriptions of acid rain that were intended to usefully clarify the phenomenon actually contributed to an impression of scientific uncertainty, and thereby further polarized debate.

The accumulating scientific evidence — across many disciplines — regarding human evolution and the dualities and complexities of human nature indicates that the core ideological assumptions of both capitalism and socialism are simplistic and ultimately irreconcilable. A biologically grounded approach to social justice enables us to articulate a new ideological paradigm that I call “Fair Shares.” This paradigm consists of three complementary normative principles. First, goods and services should be distributed to each according to his or her basic needs. Second, surpluses beyond the provisioning of our basic needs should be distributed according to merit. And, third, each of us is obliged in return to contribute to the “collective survival enterprise” in accordance with his or her ability. Though none of these three principles is new, in combination they provide a biologically informed middle way between capitalism and socialism. Some of the many issues that are raised by this formulation are also briefly addressed.

Definitions being critical to systematic analysis, aggression is here defined as intentional injury to person or damage to property. The issue of consciousness of intent is considered. No claim is made that either conscious or unconscious aggression is necessarily wrongful, but that it is elicited with respect to the frustration of a variety of organically based physical and mental needs. Physiology has made progress toward understanding the two-way interaction between vertebrates and their environment, so that we have good hunches that aggressive behavior varies as a function of the level of several endocrines and of electrical charge in several parts of the brain. Suggestions are made for improving the utility of some basic political theory to physiological research and vice versa, so that social science can move beyond the speculations of the 18th century philosophers and can use some very relevant physiological findings.

In order to honor Tom Wiegele on the occasion of his retirement, we planned to carry in this issue a profile of his career and his contributions to our field. As the journal's founding editor and the association's founding executive director, Tom's extraordinary accomplishments deserved to be publicly applauded. We are all greatly saddened that Tom's sudden death from an aneurysm on August 9, 1991, just two days after a retirement celebration, has converted our profile into a tribute in memoriam. We share with Tom's family, his friends, his students, and his other colleagues our sorrow and our sense of loss over his premature passing.

The Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) is widely regarded as a treaty whose provisions are difficult to verify because of the paucity of measures to verify compliance within the treaty framework and the nature of the weapons themselves. Advances in biotechnology and their effect on the perceived military utility of biological weapons have focused international attention on this issue. This article examines the concepts of “adequate” and “effective” verification and argues that the treaty falls under the definition of adequate verification in the United States. For other countries, however, the lack of verification measures is of greater concern. The article describes measures that should be added to the BWC to detect violations and promote compliance with the treaty. These include improved methods of resolving allegations of noncompliance, increased reporting requirements for activities permitted under the treaty, greater openness in biological research, and inspections of laboratories and other facilities.

Leadership roles, as this study suggests, may lead to breakdowns in individuals who have performed well in more routine positions. When the demand for creativity is high, but the routes to success ambiguous and the end goals controverted, vulnerable individuals may take refuge in drink and engage in public displays which undermine their performance. Such individuals may continue to provide positive contributions to national policy formation. Their loss of control, however, even if it is only episodic, is likely to cause significant others in the environment to depreciate their entire role performance, contributing further to their loss of influence.

The target paper of this invited forum has a vaulting ambition: to convince readers that we ought to attempt to reduce evil in our world by constructing an interdisciplinary program, which I call the Genetic Virtue Program (GVP), to enhance the biological aspects of virtue. Most of the contributors to this forum are not sympathetic to the project—to put it mildly. Yet, one of the surprising things, at least to this author, is that comparatively little is said about the paper's overall ambition. Jamie Bronstein offers the idea that better socialization may be key: “No one would argue that there have not also been great evils; but the historical record doesn't support the level of improbability for further moral improvement through socialization that Walker would like to assign.” However, nowhere do I claim that there is no prospect for further moral improvement through socialization. Indeed, in recently published work I specifically recommend that we improve socialization efforts to enhance virtue by tracking prosocialization efforts.

This article examines the development of generic cancer risk assessment guidelines, or cancer policy, from 1976-1984. Risk assessment is considered the objective determination of the degree of risk from a substance. Risk management is the subjective determination of acceptable risk. However, uncertainties in the scientific foundations of cancer policy necessitate risk assessment inference choices, for example, over appropriate dose-response extrapolation models. Those choices are only partially scientific; they are also partially political. There is, as a result, an inevitable mixture of facts and values in cancer policy. The article explores ten inference controversies and evaluates how nine cancer policy documents resolved those controversies. It then traces the course of cancer policy development, showing how the Carter and Reagan administrations produced policies with difference emphases and considers several major challenges to cancer policy. The article then provides several justifications for cancer policy in the face of those challenges. It suggests, in the conclusion, that the controversies are unlikely to be resolved by science alone and politics will continue to influence the content of cancer policies.

The future effectiveness of the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) will be dependent largely on the introduction of an effective verification system. If such a system is to be effective, it will need to be underpinned by the expertise and reagents that have already been used to produce battlefield detectors for biological warfare (BW) agents. Samples for analysis could range from those taken from a fermenter vessel to samples taken from the environment surrounding the suspect facility. The analysis of such samples could be carried out in the field or at specialist laboratories. Specialist laboratories would offer a wider range of tests and a higher degree of test sensitivity; however, the problem of sample transport to the laboratory will need to be addressed. In the longer term, improved fieldable verification equipment could be developed.

That men and women differ in their degree of access to and control of political power has long been a significant aspect of political life. Political socialization research has tended to locate the origin of these differences exclusively in the learning process—whereby boys and girls are differentially equipped with the skills and interests necessary for participation as adults (Weissberg, 1974; Dawson, Prewitt, and Dawson, 1977) or children internalize norms of appropriate gender role behavior that are then activated during thE! adult years (Sapiro, 1977; Jennings and Niemi, 1981). Gender is undoubtedly a social and personal construct, but it is also based in biological sex differences—genetic, morphological, and physiological. Biological factors are a potential area of investigation that has remained relatively unexplored, in part because many political scientists have been reluctant to borrow as liberally trorn tne life sciences as they have from their sister social sciences (Schubert, 1976). The emerging field of biopolitics might have provided a corrective to what has been called elsewhere the “oversocialized concept of man” (Wrong, 1961). However, the concern of many politically conscious individuals with the issue of sexist scholarship has rendered biological sex differences a suspect category. Arguing that scientific discourse does not take place in a political vacuum, many feminists have concluded that the introduction of biological variables can only be detrimental to women because scientific practice reflects popular prejudices.

Cooperation between politicians is often explained primarily by applying utilitarian concepts to coalition-building behavior. Usually, some direct or indirect advantage is held to be the main motive for cooperation, especially among those who are otherwise competitors. Drawing on sociobiological theory, this study presents an alternative approach in which truly altruistic motives may underlie and influence, as a biosocial substrate, even modern politics. This approach suggests that phenotypic similarities among individual politicians may play a role in the formation and stability of political alliances. To examine this hypothesis, physiognomic comparisons were made of the 65 delegates who gave speeches at the Nineteenth All-Soviet Party Congress of the Communist Party of the USSR, held in Moscow in 1988. The association between physiognomic similarity and expressions of verbal support was analyzed to test the hypothesis. Results suggest that speakers with faces more closely resembling that of the secretary-general were more likely to express verbal support for his policies than were others.