HE CALLS it a "wary partnership," the often uneasy relationship between science writers and the medical researchers whose work they report, and Victor Edward Cohn, the dean of American science writers, thinks that both partners can always do better.
Cohn's newspaper reporting began with the splitting of the atom and is as recent as his current column, "The Patient's Advocate," in which he tries to make sense of the maze of today's medical marketplace. He has been a critic of the AMA and medicine, but the criticism has been fair and reasoned.
Along the way, he raised the level of his craft a notch or two and contributed immeasurably to "bringing the complex mysteries of science and medicine to the public in simple, understandable, and exciting terms." The latter description, in fact, is included in a citation from Georgetown University, whose officials awarded Cohn an honorary doctor-of-science degree in 1986.