turning comma separated string from multiple choices into flags

Thank you. The misspelling of Harvard wasn't intended. The data are
spelled consistently.
  

OK. One other potential problem: If the strings are substrings of
eachother (as in "Science" and "Statistical Science") then you may need
more care.

And I misremembered: It is probably better to use regexpr(....) != -1
than grep(....) for this purpose because the latter returns indices
rather than a value for each element.

O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             ?ster Farimagsgade 5, Entr.B
  c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     PO Box 2099, 1014 Cph. K
 (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen   Denmark      Ph:  (+45) 35327918
~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk)              FAX: (+45) 35327907