Smuggling key factor in China's rare earth actions

Widespread smuggling of rare earth materials and rapidly increasing domestic demands are key factors in China's recent moves to drastically reduce exports of the sought after elements.In July, China, currently in control of almost the entire global rare earths market, announced a reduction of up to 72 per cent in its exports for the second half of 2010 compared to the same period last year. Despite its position as the world's major producer of rare earth elements, as the materials bleed out from the country, China has attempted to acquire other mines around the globe to maintain its control of the growing global market... read more.

UK carbon capture competition for £1 billion becomes a one horse race

On the same day UK ministers revealed a £1 billion fund for the development of carbon capture and storage (CCS), power company E.ON UK announced it is pulling out of the government's national CCS competition, leaving just one company in the race. In 2007 the government announced a competition to build one of the world's first commercial scale CCS demonstration plants in a bid to strengthen the UK's position as a world leader in cleaner fossil fuel technology. Before E.ON's departure from the race, energy firms BP and Peel Power had already pulled out of the competition in 2008 and 2009 respectively... read more.

Kroto suggests an alternative to peer review

My fellow blogger, wavefunction, in his latest post raised an important issue in science: peer-review. He quotes Sir Kroto in his interview in Nature where he suggests that a new system should be put in place instead of 'the most ludicrous ever devised' that will allow money to be awarded by local institutions not the government bodies. The money should be given in three categories:

1. Young deserved researchers
2. Researcher whose most recent report was excellent
3. Researcher who could not be funded in (2) should be allowed to raise matching funding from industries.

Although Kroto must have given a lot of thought to this before suggesting it, I can see many problems with this system:

Who decides who is a 'deserved' young researcher or who had an 'excellent' report and who did not? That would be your peers too, right? Just that they would be peers from the same local institution instead of peers from world over in your own subject area who would have been in a better position to judge your research in the first place.

How will the government decide how much money to be given to each local institution? If every institution is given equal money would that not be unfair on 'better performing' institutions?

Getting rid of proposals? I thought writing proposals was a very important time in a researcher's career not just because the proposal will give him money to continue his research but also it is that time when the researcher thinks the hardest about his work. He thinks about it not only from the perspective advancing knowledge about the subject area but also how his research plays a role in a wider picture of science and society.

The current peer-review system has problems and we acknowledge that. With all due respect to Kroto, this new system needs to be put forth in a more formal manner and needs to address the issues above for the wider scientific community to take seriously.