Excessive emphasis on fashionable problems

Politicized issues and media processes have led to the emergence of new problems, especially in domains relating health and the environment. Such "problems of the month" attract attention on a short-term basis and provoke political responses by groups concerned to appear relevant to current issues. They also stimulate research requests which are honoured by funding agencies equally desirous of appearing responsive to issues defined as important by this process. Such attention obscures the need for a more systematic and integrated understanding of networks of interacting problems and of more fundamental problems, of possibly a less attractive nature in media and political terms.