Scientists are used to debating with one another about the finer points of new research. But increasingly, they find themselves battling their televisions and computer screens, which transmit ever-more-heated rhetoric from politicians, pundits, and other public figures who misinterpret, misrepresent, and malign scientific results.

Science has been the absolute bedrock of technological and economic progress in the United States.

Shortly after taking office in 1993, President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore called for a shift in American technology policy toward an expansion of public investments in partnerships with private industry.

Technological innovation is the successful implementation (in commerce or management) of a technical idea new to the institution creating it.

While political and cultural factors are important as explanations for differences in national technology policy and industrial practices, emergent trends in science, engineering and management are leading to new paradigms for high-technology innovation in both Japan and the United States.

We must understand that the fact of error, demonstrated in subsequent work, does not suggest that ethical lapses are responsible. It is more likely that the source of error is, as the advertisement says, a reflection of the fact that "its dangerous to trifle with Mother Nature".

The progress of science still depends on "a few people of vision".