FROM THE ARCHIVES.

15 YEARS AGO November 2007

Confronted with such statistics, policy makers usually call for greater oversight--that is, finding a governmental body to watch over forensics and make sure everyone does his or her job right. In the current climate, that certainly would help. But the core problem with modern forensics isn't an absence of oversight. It's monopoly. Once evidence goes to a given lab or facility, it is unlikely to be examined by any other lab or facility. That increases the chances that a mistake will slip through undetected.

ROGER KOPPL

Breaking Up the Forensics Monopoly

20 YEARS AGO November 2002

The illusion that the English government had protected its citizens by disarming them seemed credible because few realized the country had an astonishingly low level of armed crime even before guns were restricted. A government study for the years 1890-92, for example, found only three handgun homicides, an average of one a year, in a population of 30 million. In 1904 there were only four armed robberies in London, then the largest city in the world. A hundred years and many gun laws later, the BBC reported that England's firearms restrictions 'seem to have had little impact in the criminal underworld.' Guns are virtually outlawed, and, as the old slogan predicted, only outlaws have guns. Worse, they are increasingly ready to use them.

JOYCE MALCOLM

Gun Control's Twisted Outcome

25 YEARS AGO November 1997

Such hand wringing is as unimaginative as it is unequivocal. Instead of draconian cutbacks in greenhouse-gas emissions, there may very well be fairly simple ways--even easy ones--to fix our dilemma. But the discussion of global warming never makes this clear; it seems designed to preclude any hint that we might remedy the situation except through great sacrifice, discomfort, and cost.

Indeed, it seemingly assumes a direct relationship between the level of sacrifice, discomfort, and cost demanded by any proposed solution and its scientific efficacy.

GREGORY BENFORD

Climate Controls

30 YEARS AGO November 1992

Rather, the failure is inevitable. No matter how progress is defined, it will never be sufficient, because the government's avowed goal--'a drugfree America'--is impossible to reach. The war on drugs is a civil war between Americans who consider certain substances to be inherently evil and Americans who like to use those substances. It will therefore continue, in one form or another, as long as people have chemical...