Foreword | September 01, 1988

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It is a curious fact that in an age so dominated by the products of science and technology, there is a relatively low level of interest in the subject.  As recently as twenty years ago, science-writing staffs hardly existed among newspapers.  Even the largest newspapers have taken on science staffs only within the last few years.  Before 1984, there were only nineteen newspapers in the country that had weekly science sections, mostly dedicated to health and medicine although that number increased to sixty-six within two years.  The controversies over AIDS and the increased public interest in preventive health contributed to this expansion, making health overwhelmingly the area of highest growth.  Serious coverage of the non-health sciences remains at surprisingly low levels.  Relatively few nonmetropolitan newspapers have science staffs; therefore, what few stories they run are off the wire.  This makes for great blank spaces in the country, where local scientific and tecnological issues are virtually ignored by the press.