Obama's science picks point to new approach

Anyone looking for some insight into the new scientific direction being taken by the incoming Obama administration need look no further than the heavyweight researchers selected to advise the new president. Harvard physicist John Holdren, genetics researcher Eric Lander and Nobel Prize-winning cancer research Harold Varmus have been named co-chairmen of the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology.

Lander helped lead the effort to first sequence the human genome and is a biology professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as Harvard Medical School. And Lander and Varmus both have advocated for more federal money to back research efforts.

Today Varmus--a Nobel Prize winner for his work on cancer--is better known for his support of the open access movement to published research and has called on the country to recruit scientists to help out in developing nations. As the head of the NIH under Clinton, Varmus pushed to relax rules on conflict of interest--a move that some say set the stage for a string of embarrassing revelations about drug company payments to federal researchers.

- read the report from Scientific American

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