The race to publish first has always been there, and is generally thought to help accelerate scientific progress.

Competition is nothing new in science, but

it is becoming more intense

The electronic age has lent such contests a new sense of urgency

"There's a trend towards increasing paranoia," agrees Tyler Jacks, a cancer researcher

top journals fuel competition by milking the research community for novel results - and, according to some biologists, are sometimes prepared to let standards drop in order to publish a particularly hot finding.

"It is absolutely routine to be squeezed for information at a meeting by someone, only to find out that they are working on the same thing without revealing it," says Karel Svoboda, a neuroscientist