The Soil Science Society of America's lobbying and policy efforts at the Science Policy Office, Washington, D.C., are important to NSCSS. In many ways, NSCSS was founded to give a voice to consulting soil scientists, and accordingly, advance the soil science profession in so doing. With our close relationship with SSSA, The Science Policy Office puts our best foot forward in advancing science policy.

The mission of the House Soils Caucus is to heighten the awareness of, and appreciation for, the importance and role of soils and soil science among policymakers and the public to promote proper soil management and conservation to ensure the continued production of high-quality and abundant food, feed, and fiber while protecting and enhancing the environment and natural resource base across the nation.

The world needs more science bloggers. There are a lot of science bloggers in NC. Soil science bloggers are few. There is a concentration of soil scientists in and very close to North Carolina. Soil scientists should go to the 2007 Science Blogging Conference Sat, Jan 20, 2007, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Chapel Hill, NC.

Renewed soil science licensing efforts are underway in Washington State. Supporting them is a new website. Titled Soil Science Licensing, the site is available to become a clearinghouse for all soil science licensing efforts. It links to the best available information, including the list of soil science licensing boards maintained by the Soil WikiProject.

Ever wonder how long it takes to form a paleargid in Wyoming? Ask your soil genesis and morphology questions here and get an answer.

Tell someone you are a soil scientist and it invariably requires an explanation of what you do. It's interesting that few of us do the same things and the telling of it reveals much about the person as well as the community they serve. For that reason I like to collect other folks' descriptions of their work. Certainly the telling of Barry Dutton's life work stands among my favorites because he built his business from scratch in a particularly cost-conscious region. He did it largely without the benefit of the 2 main drivers of regional soil consulting booms: booming suburban sprawl and booming energy prices driving increased well drilling and surface mining for coal and oil shale. I've heard several iterations of Barry's telling over the years and look forward to future installments.

Despite a lack of evidence that peer review works, most scientists (by nature a skeptical lot) appear to believe in peer review. It's something that's held "absolutely sacred" in a field where people rarely accept anything with "blind faith," says Richard Smith, former editor of the BMJ and now CEO of UnitedHealth Europe and board member of PLoS. "It's very unscientific, really." What's wrong with the current system? What could make it better? Does it even work at all? Indeed, an abundance of data from a range of journals suggests peer review does little to improve papers. In one 1998 experiment designed to test what peer review uncovers, researchers intentionally introduced eight errors into a research paper. More than 200 reviewers identified an average of only two errors.

Supporters of open access to scientific research are pressuring the federal government to make open access mandatory, now that data suggest that the National Institutes of Health�s policy merely requesting open access to research it has financed within a year of publication is a failure