Steve Corneliussen's topics this week:
- A prominent physician's call to arms in the New York Times to stand up to and defeat the nuclear industry.
- Pervez Hoodbhoy's analysis in Pakistan's Express Tribune of the significance of Osama Bin Laden's death
- Coverage in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal of the vindication of Einstein's general relativity by NASA's Gravity Probe B
- A New York Times profile of an influential right-wing historian and proponent of intelligent design
- Opinion pieces in the Los Angeles Times and Nature that exemplify the right–left split on climate change
Helen Caldicott challenges physicists on the nuclear age
'Physicists had the knowledge to begin the nuclear age. Physicians have the knowledge, credibility and legitimacy to end it.'
So asserts physician Helen Caldicott, author of Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer, in the New York Times op-ed 'Unsafe at Any Dose.' The headline reflects Caldicott's belief that there exists no threshold below which any radiation dose can be harmless to humans. It also alludes to the title of the book that began Ralph Nader's career a half-century ago: Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile.
'There's no group better prepared than doctors to stand up to the physicists of the nuclear industry,' declares Caldicott. She continues:
Still, physicists talk convincingly about 'permissible doses' of radiation. They consistently ignore internal emitters—radioactive elements from nuclear power plants or weapons tests that are ingested or inhaled into the body, giving very high doses to small volumes of cells. They focus instead on generally less harmful external radiation from sources outside the body, whether from isotopes emitted from nuclear power plants, medical X-rays, cosmic radiation or background radiation that is naturally present in our environment.
However, doctors know that there is no such thing as a safe dose of radiation, and that radiation is cumulative. The mutations caused in cells by this radiation are generally deleterious. We all carry several hundred genes for disease: cystic fibrosis, diabetes, phenylketonuria, muscular dystrophy. There are now more than 2,600 genetic diseases on record, any one of which may be caused by a radiation-induced mutation, and many of which we're bound to see more of, because we are artificially increasing background levels of radiation.
For many years now, physicists employed by the nuclear industry have been outperforming doctors, at least in politics and the news media. Since the Manhattan Project in the 1940s, physicists have had easy access to Congress. They had harnessed the energy inside the center of the sun, and later physicists, whether lobbying for nuclear weapons or nuclear energy, had the same power. They walk into Congress and Congress virtually prostrates itself. Their technological advancements are there for all to see; the harm will become apparent only decades later.
Doctors, by contrast, have fewer dates with Congress, and much less access on nuclear issues. We don't typically go around discussing the latent period of carcinogenesis and the amazing advances made in understanding radiobiology. But as a result, we do an inadequate job of explaining the long-term dangers of radiation to policymakers and the public.
Caldicott sees 'arguments about the safety of nuclear energy compared to alternatives like coal' and 'optimistic predictions about the health of the people living near Fukushima' as 'dangerously ill informed and short-sighted.' If 'anyone knows better,' she asserts, 'it's doctors like me.'
She argues that Chernobyl's harm to present and future generations has been grossly understated and that nuclear accidents 'never cease.' It is not possible to imagine, she says, 'how many cancers and other diseases will be caused in the far future by the radioactive isotopes emitted by Chernobyl and Fukushima.'
Apparently she believes that Three Mile Island's harm has also been understated. She writes:
When patients come to us with cancer, we deem it rude to inquire if they lived downwind of Three Mile Island in the 1980s or might have eaten Hershey's chocolate made with milk from cows that grazed in irradiated pastures nearby. We tend to treat the disaster after the fact, instead of fighting to stop it from happening in the first place. Doctors need to confront the nuclear industry.
Nuclear power is neither clean, nor sustainable, nor an alternative to fossil fuels—in fact, it adds substantially to global warming. Solar, wind and geothermal energy, along with conservation, can meet our energy needs.
Two days after Caldicott's op-ed appeared, the Science Times section carried an article by the distinguished science writer William J. Broad. It, too, had a headline telegraphing its message: 'Drumbeat of Nuclear Fallout Fear Doesn't Resound With Experts.' The article doesn't entirely dismiss Caldicott's general outlook, but she isn't among the experts cited.
Pervez Hoodbhoy, Osama bin Laden, and the future
'U.S. presses Pakistan for key answers,' says the 4 May Washington Post's front-page, above-the-fold headline. The article tells of suspicions that Osama bin Laden could not have hidden 'in plain sight without some level of official Pakistani knowledge or complicity.'
Pervez Hoodbhoy—the polymath Pakistani physicist and author who has been cited frequently in this venue, most recently in a report from late March—has a lot to say about that.
His platform is the online Express Tribune, which calls itself 'the first internationally affiliated newspaper in Pakistan,' reports that it works with the International Herald Tribune—'the global edition of The New York Times'—and says that it 'caters to the modern face' of its country.
Hoodbhoy's 4 May article 'The curious case of Osama bin Laden' declares that today, 'Pakistan's embarrassment is deep,' given that its military and civilian leaders had often 'emphatically stated that bin Laden was not in Pakistan,' only to have it turn out that he was 'comfortably smack inside the modern, peaceful, and extraordinarily secure city of Abbottabad.'
Hoodbhoy points out that even 'the famous and ferocious General Hamid Gul (retired)—a bin Laden sympathiser who advocates war with America—cannot buy into the claim that the military was unaware of bin Laden's whereabouts.' Hoodbhoy quotes the general's view that 'bin Laden being in Abbottabad unknown to authorities 'is a bit amazing.' '
Hoodbhoy charges that his government was playing a 'cat and mouse game.' He continues:
Bin Laden was the 'Golden Goose' that the army had kept under its watch but which, to its chagrin, has now been stolen from under its nose. Until then, the thinking had been to trade in the Goose at the right time for the right price, either in the form of dollars or political concessions. While bin Laden in virtual captivity had little operational value for al Qaeda, he still had enormous iconic value for the Americans. It was therefore expected that kudos would come just as in the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Kuwaiti-born senior al Qaeda leader who was arrested in Rawalpindi, or Mullah Baradar, the Taliban leader arrested from Karachi.
Events, however, have turned a potential asset into a serious liability. Osama's killing is now a bone stuck in the throat of Pakistan's establishment that can neither be swallowed nor spat out. To appear joyful would infuriate the Islamists who are already fighting the state. On the other hand, to deprecate the killing would suggest that Pakistan had knowingly hosted the king of terrorists.
Now, with bin Laden gone, the military has two remaining major strategic assets: America's weakness in Afghanistan and Pakistan's nuclear weapons. But moving these chess pieces around will not assure the peace and prosperity that we so desperately need. They will not solve our electricity or water crises, move us out of dire economic straits, or protect us from suicide bombers.
Hoodbhoy closes by calling for bin Laden's death to be 'regarded as a transformational moment by Pakistan and its military,' for Pakistan to stop playing cat-and-mouse games, and for repudiation of the 'policy of verbally condemning jihadism—and actually fighting it in some places—but secretly supporting it in other places.' He declares that until 'the establishment firmly resolves that it shall not support armed and violent non-state actors of any persuasion . . . Pakistan will remain in interminable conflict both with itself and with the world.'
Wall Street Journal, New York Times cover Gravity Probe B
On Sunday, 1 May, Physical Review Letters accepted the paper 'Gravity Probe B: Final results of a space experiment to test general relativity' by C. W. F. Everitt et al. It may be another reminder of the decline of science coverage at the Washington Post that of the three major East Coast national newspapers, only the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times covered this experiment's completion. (The Post did cover the enabling satellite launch in 2004, a much earlier time in the newspaper industry's rocky internet era.)
The NASA online bulletin 'NASA's Gravity Probe B Confirms Two Einstein Space-Time Theories' summarizes the technical news:
NASA's Gravity Probe B (GP-B) mission has confirmed two key predictions derived from Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, which the spacecraft was designed to test. The experiment, launched in 2004, used four ultra-precise gyroscopes to measure the hypothesized geodetic effect, the warping of space and time around a gravitational body, and frame-dragging, the amount a spinning object pulls space and time with it as it rotates. GP-B determined both effects with unprecedented precision by pointing at a single star, IM Pegasi, while in a polar orbit around Earth.
Experienced science writers produced the news articles, neither of which made its paper's front page: Robert Lee Hotz at the WSJ and Dennis Overbye at the Times. Besides reporting the science, both described the half-century techno-drama involved. Hotz's piece appeared under the headline 'Good Thinking, Einstein: Researchers Spent $750 million—and 52 Years—Affirming the Theory of Relativity.' Overbye's piece appeared under the headline '52 Years and $750 Million Prove Einstein Was Right.'
A passage from Overbye summarizes the extraordinarily long history of the experiment:
For Dr. Everitt, who joined the Gravity Probe experiment in 1962 as a young postdoctoral fellow and has worked on nothing else since, the announcement . . . capped a career-long journey.
The experiment was conceived in 1959, but the technology to make these esoteric measurements did not yet exist, which is why the experiment took so long and cost so much. The gyroscopes, for example, were made of superconducting niobium spheres, the roundest balls ever manufactured, which then had to be flown in a lead bag to isolate them from any other influences in the universe, save the subversive curvature of space-time itself.
Shortly before the probe's launching, [Everitt] said the project had been canceled at least seven times, 'depending on what you mean by canceled.' It was finally sent into orbit in 2004 and operated for some 17 months, but not all went well.
Hotz lists the project's problems: 'During decades of trial and error, the Stanford University scientists overcame engineering glitches, launch delays, budget fights, solar flares, faulty data and seven federal investigations.' He continues:
NASA threatened to cancel the project so many times that researchers could complete their work only through a $500,000 contribution from the founder of Capital One Financial Corp., Richard Fairbank—a son of one of the physicists who conceived the experiment . . .—and help from the Saudi royal family.
Both articles quote Everitt's summary statement: 'We have managed to test two of the most profound effects of general relativity and do so in a new way. We completed this landmark test of Einstein's universe, and Einstein survives.'
David Barton, US history, intelligent design
The 'position of intelligent design,' asserted David Barton, who was profiled above the fold on the 5 May New York Times front page, 'is now embraced by an increasing number of contemporary distinguished scientists.'
Maybe surprisingly, the Times's profile never actually engages or even mentions intelligent design, creationism or evolution. But it could. That intelligent-design assertion comes instead from his 2008 historical essay 'The Founding Fathers on Creation and Evolution.'
The Times's online headline telegraphs the profile's history focus: 'Using History to Mold Ideas on the Right.' The profile begins as follows:
ALEDO, Tex.—In an unmarked office building in this ranching town, among thousands of Revolution-era documents and two muskets with bayonets, David Barton might seem like a quirky history buff. But the true ambition of this slender man in cowboy boots is to use America's past to remake its future, and he has the ear of several would-be presidents.
Mr. Barton is a self-taught historian who is described by several conservative presidential aspirants as a valued adviser and a source of historical and biblical justification for their policies. He is so popular that evangelical pastors travel across states to hear his rapid-fire presentations on how the United States was founded as a Christian nation and is on the road to ruin, thanks to secularists and the Supreme Court, or on the lost political power of the clergy.
Through two decades of prolific, if disputed, research and some 400 speeches a year on what he calls the forgotten Christian roots of America, Mr. Barton, 57, a former school principal and an ordained minister, has steadily built a reputation as a guiding spirit of the religious right. Keeping an exhaustive schedule, he is also immersed in the nuts and bolts of politics and maintains a network of 700 anti-abortion state legislators.
Many historians call his research flawed, but Mr. Barton's influence appears to be greater than ever. Liberal organizations are raising the alarm over what they say are Mr. Barton's dangerous distortions, including his claim that the nation's founders never intended a high wall between church and state.
The profile also reports that
- The possible Republican presidential candidates who seek Barton's advice include Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, and Rep. Michele Bachmann.
- Many 'professional historians dismiss Mr. Barton, whose academic degree is in Christian education from Oral Roberts University, as a biased amateur who cherry-picks quotes from history and the Bible.'
- Among his critics is Derek H. Davis, director of church–state studies at the Baptist Baylor University in Waco, Texas, who says, 'The problem with David Barton is that there's a lot of truth in what he says' but 'the end product is a lot of distortions, half-truths and twisted history.'
- Barton served for nearly a decade as vice chairman of the Texas Republican Party.
- During his teaching years, Barton's subjects were math and science.
Snapshot: right–left climate-science dynamics
The Los Angeles Times biography page for Jonah Goldberg, a National Review contributing editor, calls him 'one of the most prominent young conservative journalists on the scene today,' with a syndicated newspaper column offering 'a fresh perspective to the typical right-left debate.'
Goldberg's most recent column and an editorial in the current issue of Nature, when seen side by side, typify the right–left divide about human-caused climate disruption.
For its own rendition of Goldberg's column, the Los Angeles Times chose the headline 'Cooling on global warming.' The piece begins by asserting that 'the fight against climate change has fizzled' and that 'climate change is dead as a major political issue for the foreseeable future.' With some gloating, Goldberg observes: 'Recent polling shows that Americans care about the economy more—a lot more—than global warming. Skepticism about the existence of a problem or its scope has been rising in the US and Europe. When a Pew poll in January asked voters what their biggest priorities were, climate changed ranked second to last.'
Meanwhile, in an editorial headlined 'Storm warning,' Nature's editors argue that 'political hostility over global-warming policy in the United States is causing collateral damage.' They worry that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will be thwarted by 'partisan battles' in its project to create a new National Climate Service. They continue:
The idea is simple and worthwhile. NOAA wants to collect various climate research and reporting activities under a single umbrella, which it says will make the government machine operate more efficiently and improve the quality of data released to the public—everything from the results of satellite monitoring and climate models to regional forecasts of drought and floods. Months before the spate of storms in April hammered midwestern and southern states, for example, NOAA warned of a higher likelihood of flooding and extreme weather associated with a La Niña circulation in the Pacific Ocean.
The editors lament that 'somehow this has become a partisan issue—227 Republicans voted to approve [an] amendment to bar spending on the climate service during the appropriations debate back in February. It seems that many are determined to conflate the word 'climate' with the contentious debate over global-warming policy.'
Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature and Science, and occasionally other publications. His reports to AIP are collected each Friday for 'Science and the Media.' He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA's history program, and is a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.
