A few years back, I fretted in print that, given the mounting proprietary claims in some scientific fields, we risked entering a new kind of Dark Ages, replete with warring fiefdoms tightly guarding their knowledge. Okay, I admit the metaphor was a bit heavy handed. But with the "new economy" so obsessed with intellectual property, I could see just how frequently secrecy was replacing the collegial, open exchange of scientific information.

At the time, many mainstream pundits scoffed at my gloomy assessment. BusinessWeek wittily dubbed the idea "patent nonsense." (Boy, that stung!) Well, I'm sticking to my guns, especially after seeing the results of a survey of geneticists published earlier this year in the Journal of the American Medical Association (available for a fee at www.jama.ama-assn.org). I don't know what the BusinessWeek folks would say, but to my eye, the problem of secrecy looks worse than ever.