At the end of 2000, science was swollen with the self-importance of a century that ended with the remarkable mapping of the chemical codes that make up human DNA. Old scourges such as cancer suddenly seemed conquerable.
By contrast, 2003 is likely to be remembered as the year when science came back to earth.
To be sure, last year saw plenty of good research and discovery. Look no further than a paper published today in the British journal Nature. It offers tantalizing evidence that a human skull and jawbones recently found in China -- the oldest well-preserved primate fossil ever discovered -- may mean that remote human ancestors originated not in Africa but in Asia.
However, the year was inarguably framed more by setbacks than achievements. The disappointments were symbolized by the explosion of the space shuttle Columbia in February and by the swooning of a reproduction of the Wright brothers' first airplane into a mud puddle in December. Americans may have set foot on the moon more than three decades earlier, but they had not yet mastered safe and cost-effective ways of leaving Earth.
Most of the year's discoveries were not mind-bending new revelations but rather modest, incremental bits of progress.
For instance, the second most important discovery listed for the year by Science magazine was the announcement by scientists in Melbourne, Australia, that a particular genetic variation can increase people's risk of depression under certain types of stress. It became clear in 2003 that merely possessing a map of the chemical sequences in human DNA was not magically empowering. Without knowledge of how those genes interact with their environments, scientists are left struggling for their bearings, much like an ancient mariner with a treasure map of an island in a sea that had not yet been discovered.
As Science magazine Editor Donald Kennedy recently admitted, 2003 was also "a vintage year for scientific fluffs." He added, "We shared in one: Some vials containing the drug Ecstasy got switched with vials containing methamphetamine, and we wound up publishing a paper we wish we hadn't" on the supposed effects of Ecstasy.
A series by Times reporter David Willman forced at least some legislators to confront the depressing fact that U.S. scientific research was plagued by problems deeper than the screw-ups of a single lab technician. Willman showed how the National Institutes of Health had become an arm of commerce, a place where objective science was being trampled by a stampede to cut lucrative deals with drug companies.
