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Science lies nowadays in the centre of several storms. The better known is the finding of non-reproducibility of many scientific results, which stretches from the medical field (clinic and pre-clinic tests) to study on behaviour (priming research). Although the bad use of statistics is reported to be a patent cause of the reproducibility crisis, its deep reasons are to be sought elsewhere; particularly, in the passage from a regimen of little science - regulated by small communities of researchers - to the current big science - identified by a hypertrophic production of millions of research papers and by the imperative "publish or perish", in a setting dominated by market. While spirited debates (on vaccines, climate change, GMO) unfold in society, scientific articles which are bought or withdrawn are the signal of a deep crisis not only of science, but also of the expert thought. In this background, statistics is the main defendant, charged with using methods which experts themselves are not able to explain in an understandable way (p-test). Is there an escape? Yes, there is. Researchers can either court the power and defend the status quo, or contribute to a deep process of reformation, refusing both a vision of science as a religion and the idea that the problem is the poor scientific knowledge of the lay public.

Some huge information technology companies have increased investment in biomedical research: recently Google, Microsoft, and Facebook. The latter presented the ambitious Zuckerberg-Chan Initiative involving three major Californian universities: UC San Francisco, Berkeley and Stanford. These important private investments arouse reflections. First, investing in scientific research improves the corporate image of the most generous companies and it is a great marketing strategy. Second, the availability of private funds is surely useful, especially if these funds are directed to relevant projects, and produce studies conducted and disseminated in a transparent way. Third, private funding should not replace public ones, representing an integration that will not likely affect the determination of the research agenda, which should remain the prerogative of public institutions. Fourth, the researchers involved in public funded projects should benefit from the margin of freedom that private industry promises, both in the decision of research pathways and in their course. Finally, the scarcity of resources is likely to divert energy and attention of the public researchers and this aspect should be considered by decision makers when determining size and recipients of research funding.

Now that developments in communication media are turning the world into a "global village" and there are risks of global epidemics due to infectious agents spread by possible terrorist attacks, this article aims to remind us of what happened in the "New World", where in the space of a few decades the indigenous civilizations disappeared. When, following the geographical discoveries of the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, millions of people met European sailors, soldiers and traders, the outbreak of pathocenosis was destructive--the intensity of this effect was directly related to the degree of isolation of the indigenous populations colonised by the Europeans. The author of this article recalls the Woodrow Borah thesis. Borah, a former History Professor at Berkeley University, elaborated a theory according to which the microbiological unification of the world is the prime cause of the genocide of the indigenous population in America and Oceania. The author emphasises that the events following the discovery of the American continent are very similar to the plague epidemic which started in 1348 in Europe.

In the USA therapeutic suggestions for a more appropriate treatment of community acquired pneumonias, are presently under revision. In this review we underline the difficulties encountered today, at the beginning of the year 2000, in the formulation of appropriate guidelines for this disease, taxed just about constantly by a mortality rate of nearly 8%. We emphasized the problem of bacterial resistance to multiple antibiotics and the frequency of polymicrobial pulmonary infections with an obvious worsening of the prognostic outlook. Directions about choice and use of some antibiotics have been provided, citing especially the fluoroquinolones and the more recent one, the moxifloxacine. A recommendation is given as well to pharmaceutical companies for them to provide better directives about the ideal modalities of administration of new antibiotics with the double aim of helping patients and also attempt to prevent onset of bacterial resistance.

In 1987 researchers from Berkeley (CA), proposed an index (HERP) for ranking human carcinogens. The index was derived from human exposure data and rodent carcinogen potency. They concluded that the risks for the US population from man-made industrial carcinogens are trivial compared with the risks from naturally occurring carcinogens in the diet. Analysis of the assumptions and data upon which the HERPs were based revealed major limitations and we concluded that such a simplified approach is inappropriate given the underlying uncertainties. However, when we made a comparison consistently based on estimates of average daily exposure to common carcinogens, the HERP scores of man-made pollutants were comparable to those of naturally occurring carcinogens.