Sir — In his Words essay “Owen’s Parthianshot” (Nature 412, 123; 2001), KevinPadian discusses a letter from RichardOwen to Spencer Walpole, a politicallyimportant member of the BritishMuseum’s Board of Trustees, shortly afterCharles Darwin’s death in 1882. Owen hadbeen asked whether Darwin’s scientificaccomplishments merited a statue in thenew museum. Owen, noting that thedecision should be left to the museum’sadministrators, compared Darwin’ssingular contributions to biology to thoseof Copernicus to astronomy. He predictedthat Darwin, like Copernicus, would have successors who would complete afuller understanding of the concepts hehad initiated.

Padian claims that in this post-mortem analysis and comparison, Owenwas aiming “a Parthian shot at his rival inthe guise of a tribute — a masterful anddelicate duplicity”. Duplicity? Hardly. Itwas an analogy Owen frequently used.The letter reproduced in full in Padian’s

essay was in fact the last, as far as weknow, in a series of four similar lettersthat began in 1877. In each of these, Owen uses the same analogy to restatefiguratively the basic objections he hadexpressed when Darwin’s Origin of Species was first published in 1859: thatalthough natural selection is a validmechanism to explain species diversifi-cation through time, it did not answer the more basic question of the origin ofthe inheritable individual differencessubsequently “naturally selected” forsurvival in a surrounding and changingenvironment.

Without an answer to the problem ofinherited variations, Owen believed thatthe origins of species were not fullyunderstood. Darwin himself confessed:“Our ignorance of the laws of variation isprofound.” With his copernican analogy,Owen was expressing his confidence that in the coming years, as with theheliocentric theory, Darwin’s theory ofevolution would find its own Galileos,

Keplers and, finally, its Newton. The twentieth century belonged to the

geneticists, who shifted the field from thespecies level to that of the individual.Ironically, the 1908 meeting inCambridge to celebrate darwinismprovided a platform for the practititonersof the newly named science of genetics,led by William Bateson — those “snarling dogs”, complained one loyaldarwinian — “to lower Darwin andelevate themselves”.

This meeting marked the beginning of the dominance of genetics, with itsmutations and its mathematics, leadingtowards the productive evolutionarysyntheses 30 years later.

Among that vast body of creativeworkers Darwin’s work had spawned therewere, and are, as Owen’s analogy predicted,his Keplers, Galileos and perhaps aNewton. Jacob W. Gruber Department of Anthropology, Temple University,Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122, USA

correspondence

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Owen was right, as Darwin’s work continuesTribute to Darwin was not a veiled attack but a genuine expression of hope for the future.

SPOrt to fill a gap on cosmic mapsSir — Your well-written and pertinentNews Feature (Nature 411, 880–881; 2001)“Raking through the embers” omits tomention the Sky Polarization Observatory(SPOrt), which is a space mission currentlyunder development that is precisely aimedat a sky-polarization survey.

The programme was proposed to theEuropean Space Agency and was selected in 1997, and is now fully funded by theItalian Space Agency (see http://sport.tesre.bo.cnr.it). SPOrt will be on board the International Space Station for at least 18 months from 2005. It is designed to directly measure Stokes’ Q and Uparameters at the microkelvin level,providing an accurate measurement of the polarization of the cosmic microwavebackground (CMB) on a large angular scale(¤77) from four independent channels inthe frequency range 22–90 GHz. More than80% of the sky will be scanned under themost favourable conditions for testing re-ionization models.

Complementary to the MAP andPlanck projects discussed in your feature,which will map the CMB anisotropy withunprecedented accuracy, SPOrt shouldalso provide the much-desired galacticforeground polarization maps so farunobserved at frequencies above a few

gigahertz, and study the correlationbetween the available COBE and MAPtemperature maps and polarizationpatterns over large sky regions.Stefano CortiglioniPrincipal investigator, SPOrt project, Istituto di Tecnologie e Studio delle RadiazioniExtraterrestri, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche,Via P. Gobetti 101, 40129 Bologna, Italy

Singapore considersinstitute’s future Sir — Your News Feature “Building abiopolis” (Nature 412, 370–371; 2001)quotes Philip Yeo, chairman of theSingapore National Science andTechology Board, as saying that theInstitute of Molecular Agrobiology (IMA) has been “a criminal waste oftaxpayers’ money”.

While respecting Yeo’s personal view onresource allocation, the Ministry of Tradeand Industry, which oversees the board,does not agree with his view. The IMA has done good work and has receivedinternational recognition.

Singapore has decided to make thebiomedical sciences the focus of its life-science research efforts. TheMinisterial Committee on the Life Sciences is now conducting a review ofhow the IMA should be repositioned with

this in mind, and will make a decision laterthis year, after consulting its internationaladvisers.Khaw Boon Wan Ministry of Trade and Industry, 1000 High Street,09-01 The Treasury, 179434 Singapore

Peers under reviewSir — Your News Feature “Peers underpressure” (Nature 413, 102–104; 2001)makes me glad that I work in “geology …[where] complaints are few and farbetween”. I sign all of my reviews, positiveand negative, and people still talk to me.

Some of the cited examples of foul play by reviewers have obviously hadmajor implications for tenure, patentrights and so on. No wonder, then, thatsome are tempted to seek a legal solutionto some of the injustices that the peer-review system has enabled the lessscrupulous to perform.

Problems could doubtless arise in theprocess of separating genuine complaintsfrom the paranoid or vindictive, and theaccused might launch countersuits andwrits. But a few successful prosecutionsmight well encourage wrongdoers toconsider changing their ways.Stephen K. DonovanDepartment of Palaeontology, NationaalNatuurhistorisch Museum/Naturalis, Postbus9517, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands

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