How objective is the lens through which we view scientific questions?

Less than perfect, according to Women�s Studies professor Bonnie Spanier, whose new book, Im/partial Science: Gender Ideology in Molecular Biology (Indiana University Press), is mentioned in the January issue of Scientific American and garnered a favorable review in a recent issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Spanier, who earned a Ph.D. in microbiology from Harvard University, has examined how social assumptions about gender differences can frame even the most basic approaches to molecular biology.

"I wrote the book to reach several different audiences. I wanted to write about a feminist critique of the content of this particular field - molecular biology - partly because molecular biology is so terribly important in our world - and I wanted to do this in a way that would reach scientists as well as feminist scholars," Spanier said. "I presented the kind of evidence and kind of arguments that should make sense to scientists, most of whom I believe are committed to accurate representations of nature."

According to the review, Spanier states her case convincingly.

"She builds her case gradually, with fascinating (but easy) examples that demonstrate the power of gender ideology in biological studies: flawed animal behavior studies, simple-minded views of sex hormones, and biased analyses of fertilization in which active Prince Charming sperm awaken passive Sleeping Beauty eggs," notes the JAMA reviewers.

As it turns out, the sperm and egg are equally active, according to Emily Martin, an anthropologist at Princeton University. The metaphors used to explain this facet of human reproduction began with stereotypes of men as aggressive and women as passive.

While feminist scholars like Martin are taking a second look at basic scientific definitions, Spanier has examined contemporary molecular biology textbooks and journal articles and found that many of the old metaphors have not changed.

"Despite the significance of proteins and other complex macromolecules," Spanier notes, "scientists were still using the language of genes being in control, at the top of the hierarchy of the cell."

Her concern is that scientific questions which do not fit this pattern are being overlooked. "By focusing on the genetic basis of cancer, for example, researchers tend to be deflected from studying other aspects, such as environmental causes," she says.

While some critics think that feminist critiques are antiscience, more and more scientists and scientist/educators are discovering the positive contributions of these feminist views to making the sciences more accurate and inclusive, Spanier said.

In fact, Spanier is a consultant in a new Association of American Colleges and Universities project funded by the National Science Foundation to include feminist perspectives in mathematics and science courses and to include more science in women's studies courses.

Greta Petry

Gerba tells the story of Sarah Kemble Knight's remarkable horseback journey from Boston to New Haven and New York and back at a time where there were few roads, let alone many bridges or ferries. There were rude escorts and inn keepers, inedible meals and fearsome river crossings to contend with. Knight was even deserted by her guide at one point.

And when she first arrived in New Haven, she discovered that her contentious Connecticut relatives wished she had not gone to all the trouble. An unexpected trip to New York was needed to expedite matters and while she was there she uncovered the shocking reason why she had not seen her husband in over a year.

Because Knight did not explain the exact nature of the business that occasioned her odyssey, the novel provides a motive as well as an explanation for the unusual decision to travel by land. Gerba has woven together passages from Knight's journal, historical records and the results of meticulous research with elements from her own imagination to recreate what was probably the first business trip of a colonial woman.

Bassett Charters c. 1120 to 1250, featured in the Jan. 24, 1996, issue of Update, was praised for Reedy�s introductory outline of the Bassett family from its modest origins in Normandy to its evolution into commanding three baronial lines, its documentation of the Bassett line, its proof the family's "political and social power was always based on royal favor," and its "high quality" of book production. The reviewer was Emma Mason of Birkbeck College in London.

"Professor Reedy is to be congratulated upon the appearance of a volume that contains so much of interest," Mason concluded.

Operation research shares a common ground with economics, and one of the most important areas in which the two fields intersect, is game theory. The work of these authors represents a landmark contribution to the theory of repeated games, which has profoundly influenced economic thinking in recent decades. The theories developed in this book place emphasis on the strategic use of information within long term relationships among competitive firms, employers and employees, a firm and its subcontractors, and basically all types of relationships among rational decision makers which involve interactions over a long period of time.

There is particular emphasis on the strategic use of information: how much to reveal and how much to conceal, when exactly to do it, whether or not to believe the revealed information, and so forth. An important conclusion is that the "solution space" of a game typically expands when it is played repeatedly: much more subtle forms of cooperation and stability arise in repeated interactions than in single-shot games.

In addition to its many and varied insights into applied problems, the theory developed in this book involves deep and subtle mathematics. The quality of exposition for such highly mathematical material, in which results turn on delicate distinctions, is exemplary. This is work of the highest intellectual caliber, whose influence has already been great and will undoubtedly continue for many years.

Rebecca Goldstein