Archived Newsletters

April 1995 Newsletter 

Volume 24, Number 2 Apr 1995

In This Issue

Letters

Articles

Review

News

Comments

Forum Election Candidates

As I told Forum chair Tony Nero at a recent meeting, y'all (Forum chair, nominating committee, et al) should be proud of choosing such good people for the Forum officers candidate slate. The candidates should ALL be elected!

Leonard X. Finegold
Physics
Drexel University
Philadelphia, PA 19104

Funding Competition Promotes Mediocrity

A recent letter (1) reiterates a sentiment many of us have: the drying up of a stream of fundamental physics discoveries despite growth of the physics community worldwide.

Among factors contributing to this "discovery-dilution phenomenon," two effects are the most important. The first is the overplaying of a business model of "competition" to a community whose prime aim is the search for truth, not competition for grants. Business mentality favors the invasion of academia by bureaucratic and corporate structures. Such structures tend to proliferate for their own sake, often at a detriment to the process of scientific innovation they are supposed to serve.

The second effect is a gross overrating of anonymous peer review (APR), especially in awarding research grants. The only valid purpose of peer review is as a safeguard against crude unprofessionalism. And it need not be anonymous to serve this end. However, APR usually claims a much greater territory and assumes various science- control roles which should not belong to it. Its anonymity gives the reviewers significant power with no responsibility in return. Of course, not all peer reviewers are evil or dishonest. Yet, despite the best individual intentions, the secretiveness of the process inevitably results in conformist pressures. Presently, the only realistic way to pursue innovative ideas in science is their careful concealment behind the mainstream facade of well-established ideas. In the words of biophysicist Richard Gordon, "we are forced to lie to obtain funds to seek truth" (2).

A recent article (3) contains several statements which try to justify poor selectivity practice on the basis of a bogus philosophy of "winners and losers." Geochemist Stan Hart is quoted as saying: "...continuing support for those not at the cutting-edge...isn't doing anybody a favor. I hate to sound elitist,...but once you've given someone a chance to succeed, we need...to weed out those who are not top-notch and tell them to...find another profession."

The problem with this is not that it is elitist, but that it is wishful thinking. There is no mysterious gauge which can determine what is "top notch" and what is not. A so- called "expert peer review" has historically a poor record of predicting the outcome. It is often said that Christopher Columbus would never have left harbor if his voyage plans had been subjected to APR. What the present funding philosophy of NSF and the Canadian NSERC fails to appreciate is that the pressure of "selectivity" coerces researchers into "safe science." The net result of the overly competitive granting system is exactly what its proponents claim to be against: mediocrity. Due to publish-or-perish hysteria (largely driven by the present APR system), much of what is actually produced in the science marketplace is well dressed trivia. Contrary to what appears "obvious," we need much less, not more, peer reviewing to stimulate paths of discovery.

The false faith that draconian competition for grants is the best way to achieve excellence was refuted by many leading world scientists. Nobel Prize physicist Heinrich Rohrer states (4): "To my knowledge significant progress has never been born of...competition. In science, being 'better' than others is of...little practical value. ...Examples of how absurd the idea of scientific competition is...are abundant."

The trouble is that competition is so vastly overplayed in the North American psyche that nothing short of a new paradigm shift can reorient the society (including science) from competition to cooperation. Let's leave competition where it properly belongs, to the Tonya Hardings and O. J. Simpsons. Most problems of the physics community should be addressed and solved at home. We should stop blaming greedy governments for underfunding and start cleaning our own house first. The first thing to do is to abolish the secretive APR system. We don't need government councils to assist us with this. We can start to do it now. For our proposals see (5). Failure to act is a recipe for further marginalization of our profession.

Alexander A. Berezin
Exec. Sec. of Canadian Assoc. for Responsible Research Funding
Department of Engineering Physics
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, L8S 4L7

References

  1. Holger Friedrich, American Journal of Physics September 1994, p. 776.
  2. Richard Gordon, Accountability in Research Vol. 2, 297, 1992.
  3. Jeffrey Mervis, Science 10 December 1993, p.1636.
  4. Heinrich Rohrer, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews Vol. 19, 193, 1994.
  5. A.Berezin, R.Gordon, G.Hunter, New Scientist 11 February 1995, p. 46.

Monitoring Nuclear Test Ban Treaties

David Hafemeister

With the end of the Cold War, the emphasis on monitoring nuclear weapons tests has shifted from the 1976 Threshold Test Ban Treaty (TTBT), which confined the US and USSR to a limit of 150 kilotons (kt), to the Comprehensive Test Ban (CTB) Treaty, which would ban all nuclear tests by the signatories. 1995 will be a watershed year to control the proliferation of nuclear weapons, as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) must be considered for renewal. The fate of the NPT is dependent on a successful CTB negotiation, because the two treaties are politically linked. This paper will cover one aspect of these broader issues by discussing the monitoring of the TTBT and CTB. It is important to study the past (TTBT) in order to learn for the future (CTB).

TTBT monitoring
TTBT monitoring (1) determined the yields relative to the 150-kt threshold primarily by measurements of teleseismic waves that traveled through Earth's interior. Because the tectonic plate below the Nevada test site (NTS) has been extended and partially melted, seismic waves from the NTS explosions are diminished more than the waves from explosions at Russia's Shagan River test site (STS) which has had no recent geological activity. Because of this difference in magnitude (the "bias"), the US explosions appear relatively smaller in yield compared to Russian explosions of the same yield. By ignoring this difference, the US charged that the Soviets were "likely" violators of the TTBT. As one way to sort out this dispute, the US measured the yield of a Soviet explosion at the STS with electronic CORRTEX equipment in 1988. The magnitude of this explosion was 6.03 (mb), with a yield of 106-118 kt from seismic data. Since a magnitude 6.03 explosion in Nevada corresponds to an explosion of 450 kt, clearly there is a great difference in the geology of the two sites. Using the CORRTEX data and other seismic data, such as the Lg surface wave, the US dropped the noncompliance charge in 1990.

The classification of the seismic data prevented a thorough discussion of the data. Parts of the US policy community purposefully ignored the geological bias determined by its seismologists in order to maintain the "likely violation" charge against the Soviets. This charge greatly retarded negotiations with the Soviets on the TTBT, the CTB and other arms control treaties. For example, in 1988 Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense Frank Gaffney stated (2) "The thinking goes like this: the more time wasted on discussion and experimentation of monitoring techniques irrelevant to the verification of an environment in which there are no legal tests, the easier it will be to stave off demands for the more constraining comprehensive test ban."

Fig. 1. Yields of post-1976 Soviet nuclear tests (3) over 90 kilotons at Shagan River Test Site. The theoretical curves are based on tests at 150 kt and uncertainty factors of 1.6 (wider curve) and 1.4.

With the end of the Cold War, yield data has been obtained from the former USSR. It is important to examine this data because the TTBT noncompliance issue can be used politically by those who do not favor the CTB. We have plotted in Fig. 1 the recent estimates by Ringdal, Marshall and Alewine (3) of the 38 largest post-1976 tests above 90 kt. For comparison, we have plotted the projected distribution for tests at 150 kt using an uncertainty factor of 1.6 (4) and 1.4. When one compares the data with the calculated probability for testing at 150-kt, one can only conclude that the Soviets were in compliance with the TTBT. It is possible that a very few tests could have been slightly above 150 kt, but this situation also prevailed for US testing at the NTS. The value of the mb bias between the NTS and STS was crucial to the interagency process. Using the recently published data, we obtain an average value 0.38 for the three STS regions, which further strengthens the case for compliance. This estimate does not take into account the smaller differences caused by the type of rock next to the explosion. As the former technical lead for the State Department on nuclear testing issues in 1987, I was constrained to use a lower value of the bias value, but even with this value I still concluded (as did CIA and DOE, but not the US government) that the USSR was in compliance to the TTBT. In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on 6 October 1988, OTA, LLNL and I stated that the Soviets were in compliance, but, of course, we were not allowed to use the specificity of the data that appears above.

The TTBT lessons for the CTB were that the Soviets were in compliance to the TTBT, and that a multinational compliance process using unclassified data is needed to restrain politization.

CTB monitoring
The CTB requires a different monitoring approach which requires the detection and identification of a nuclear explosion rather than the quantification of nuclear yields. Roughly speaking, a 1 kt explosion, tightly coupled (tamped) in hard rock, will have a seismic magnitude of about mb = 4. It is generally accepted that a coupled explosion of about 0.1 kiloton could be detected and identified with the two types of networks now being proposed. In 1988, the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (1) concluded: "Based on cautious assumptions for a network of 30 internal arrays [to the USSR] or about 50 three-component internal stations, it appears likely that a detection threshold of 2.5 mb (90% probability of detection at four or more stations) could be reached." Since it is more difficult to identify than detect, one should generally add about 0.5 mb units to the detection level when discussing identification.

The Emergence of Natural Gas as a Transportation Fuel

John G. Ingersoll

The US is currently importing 8 million barrels per day of crude oil and petroleum products or roughly 50% of the daily use (1). Five countries, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Canada, Mexico and Nigeria, account for 73% of the imported crude oil. The cost of the imported oil to the American economy appears to be in excess of $100 billion annually: a tangible cost on the order of $60 billion per year to purchase oil and petroleum products; and an intangible cost of at least $40 billion annually of US military expenditures around the world to secure the imported oil flow (2). Thus, the cost of oil is almost equal to the annual US trade deficit or about 1/3 of the budget deficit in recent years or a little under 2% of the GNP. Moreover, air pollution from the 190 million US vehicles is largely responsible for the fact that some 15 major metropolitan areas have several days annually that exceed the EPA ozone and carbon monoxide standards (3). Natural gas, used as a transportation fuel, has the potential to eliminate $100 billion per year of the deficit, improve air quality in all metropolitan areas, and pave the way to hydrogen, the ultimate clean transportation fuel.

Natural gas in the transportation sector
The ultimate demand for natural gas as a transportation fuel is on the order of 250 billion m3 per year for a practical 98-99% market penetration. This estimate takes into account the expected growth of the US automobile population and assumes that the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency standard will be raised voluntarily or by legislation to 40 mpg for passenger cars and 30 mpg for vans and light trucks. It should be noted that current US natural gas production is about 500 billion m3/y. Surplus gasoline from the refining of domestic crude oil production, which will be necessary for some time to provide jet fuel and other heavier hydrocarbons, may also be converted to natural gas or exported.

Proven US conventional reserves and resources as well as unconventional recoverable resources (coal-bed methane, western tight sands, eastern gas shales, geopressurized aquifers, and methane calthrates) are on the order of 50 trillion m3 for up to a ceiling production price of $0.25 per m3 (4). It is instructive to note that more than 70% of current US natural gas production is from non-petroleum wells and almost 5% of the production already represents coal-bed methane. Natural gas as a transportation fuel will be predominantly in gaseous compressed form (CNG) and occasionally in liquid form (LNG).

Engine technology, fuel storage, emissions
Natural gas vehicles (NGV) require certain technological changes, including a higher compression ratio, modification of the three way exhaust gas catalyst and fuel storage (5,6). A typical carbon composite cylinder, operating at a 200 bar pressure, has a volume of 50 liters, and a mass of 18 kg and contains 13 m3 natural gas. Stringent safety requirements are imposed on the CNG vehicular fuel cylinders, which are designed for a minimum 15 year operational life (7). The exhaust gas composition of a natural gas engine requires slight modifications of the three-way catalyst.

The most unique advantage of natural gas as a transportation fuel vis-a-vis all other fossil fuels is the potential for air pollution reduction. Table 1 summarizes present and future emissions requirements as well as current NGV performance (5,8,9). Both combustion and evaporative emissions are included. Liquid fuels have evaporative emissions on the order of 0.122 g/km, while with gaseous fuels evaporative emissions are zero. A distinct advantage of natural gas over gasoline is the slower catalyst poisoning due to the virtual absence of sulfur compounds and heavy metals in the former. Thus, natural gas vehicles can have catalysts operational in excess of 100,000 miles compared to only half as long for gasoline. In 1992, the natural gas version of the production Dodge Ram van with a 5.2-L engine became the first vehicle to meet the 1998 California ULEV (Ultra Low Emission Vehicle) standard and was later certified as meeting the 1998 California LEV (Low Emission Vehicle) standard over a 100,000 mile driving life (8). The 1994 Chrysler CNG minivan, which is also now available on the market, has been certified as an ULEV vehicle (9). It is also interesting to note that the reactivity (ozone forming ability) of the exhaust gases from a natural gas vehicle is 20% that for typical gasoline vehicles on a per mass basis (5). Formaldehyde emission from natural gas vehicles is typically under 0.2 mg/km or less than 4% of the 5 mg/km standard. Formaldehyde emission is a serious problem for methanol fueled vehicles. Finally, methane is a non-toxic substance, unlike gasoline and even more so methanol.

Table 1. Comparison of present and future automobile emission standards and current NGV emissions

Emission (g/km) C0 N0x NMV0C C02
1994 US and Calif. Standards 2.125 0.250 0.278 240*
1998 Calif. LEV Standard 2.125 0.125 0.168 210*
1998 Calif. ULEV Standard 1.062 0.062 0.168 210*
GM 2.8-L V6 Engine, CNG fuel 0.142 0.025 0.018 160+
1994 Chrysler CNG Minivan 0.250 0.025 0.013 165+

*CO2 emissions do not constitute part of any standard. Applies to gasoline, reformulated gasoline and M85 (85% methanol, 15% gasoline) fuels. Decrease in value from 1994 to 1998 is the result of increased fuel efficiency as older vehicles are being removed form the fleet.

+Reflects measured values and includes the greenhouse effect of the methane gas in the emissions.

Infrastructure development

The infrastructure for natural gas vehicle refueling is largely already in place (3). The only missing element is the very last refueling component, namely the final compression, metering and dispensing of the fuel (10). High flow rate compressors and dispensers for public CNG stations with a 5-10 minute fill time as well as low flow compressors for overnight residential CNG use are already available, albeit at a relatively high cost because of limited production. The unique advantage of natural gas as a transportation fuel, shared also with electricity, over gasoline and methanol is that it can be available at home and place of work. In the future, there will be no need for the massive centralized refueling system associated with present transportation fuels. Central public refueling stations will no longer be necessary in cities but rather along freeways to accommodate intercity driving. Instead small refueling facilities at every residential and commercial building should become the norm for more convenient and efficient refueling.

Economics
The economics of natural gas as a transportation fuel become viable in the short (10 year) run, because of available tax incentives already in effect both at the federal and several state levels. The 1992 National Energy Policy Act allows a tax deduction of $2,000 to $50,000 per vehicle, depending on vehicle weight, and up to $100,000 per refueling facility. As of the end of 1994, 38 states offered some form of conversion incentive, including tax credits. Natural gas utilities are offering cash rebates for vehicle acquisitions. Finally, the home CNG refueling unit has a present price of about $3,000 that may be reduced to $1,500 with increased demand, a $750 installation cost, and a $150 maintenance cost every 2,000 hours of operation (11). Thus, the added cost of home refueling to the base fuel price delivered at home amounts to a total of $0.33 ($0.27 long term) per gge. The typical price of natural gas delivered to residential and small commercial customers is currently $0.16 per m3 or $0.51 per gge ($013 per liter). The convenience of home refueling far outweighs in the minds of most people the four cents per gallon equivalent price differential between home and public station natural gas fuel price.

Strategies to facilitate introduction of the new fuel
The slow penetration of natural gas vehicles into the market (some 30,000 in the US) is not the result of technological limitations and is not due to unfavorable economics. Rather, it stems from the lack of concerted effort among the government, automotive manufacturers, and gas suppliers. Both the Clean Air Act Amendment of 1990 promoting the use of cleaner fuels in air quality non-attainment areas of the country and the Energy Policy Act do not treat preferentially any alternative fuel, even though they will ultimately affect more than 10 million vehicles owned by the federal, state and local governments, public utilities, and private fleets.

On the positive side, however, useful operational experience is being collected by various agencies across the country that is used to demonstrate the clear superiority of natural gas over other alternative fuels as well as gasoline. Thus methanol, heavily promoted in the past by the Department of Energy and the California Energy Commission, among others, has not lived up to expectations. In 1994, for example, the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority announced plans to abandon methanol buses, because they need engine overhaul twice as frequently as diesel buses, and to acquire instead several hundred CNG buses.

The active involvement of government at all levels, but most importantly at the local level, will pave the way for the mass introduction of natural gas vehicles as it will remove the uncertainty prevailing today. It should be noted that in 1993 the revenue-hungry federal government took a giant step backward in its clean air and energy security policies by instituting the first natural gas fuel tax. The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, signed into law by President Clinton in August 1993, imposes a tax of 5.9 cents per gge.

Automotive manufacturers and natural gas suppliers are displaying lack of leadership as well. The former are reluctant to market a large number of NGVs because of concern about limited sales due to the lack of the infrastructure. The latter are reluctant to build a large infrastructure because there are not enough NGVs on the road to justify the investment. Oil companies, which have been sideline observers, can and must have a role in this transition. Crude oil and petroleum products will not disappear from the market even after natural gas becomes the dominant transportation fuel. As mentioned earlier, natural gas liquids can be converted to a natural gas composition fuel along with other limited demand petroleum products.

It is worth noting that there must exist a critical number of NGVs on the road and a critical number of home refueling appliances around the country before the expansion and substitution becomes self-sustaining. This critical number may be on the order of a few percent of the respective ultimate numbers for each one. Thus, the critical number of natural gas vehicles and home fueling stations may be on the order of several million.

The emergence of natural gas as the motor fuel of choice will signal the shift toward production of dedicated, fully optimized NGVs only as well as the availability of home refueling equipment as a new standard household appliance. Previous experience regarding technology substitution shows that the transition from one fuel to another can take place in two to three decades following a logistic type of penetration (12). Thus, practically all US vehicles can be running on natural gas as early as 2020 and no later than 2030. Switching from gasoline and diesel fuel to natural gas constitutes, therefore, a feasible solution to the elimination of the foreign oil dependency, the reduction of the deficit by at least $100 billion per year (1990 dollars), and a cleaner environment within the lifetime of more than three-quarters of all the Americans living today.

  1. Annual Energy Review 1992, DOE/EIA-0384(92), US Dept of Energy, Washington DC (1993).
  2. A. B. Lovins and H. Lovins, New York Times, 3 December 1990.
  3. Statistical Abstract of the United States 1992, US Department of Commerce, Washington DC (1993).
  4. G. J. MacDonald, Ann. Rev. Energy Vol. 15, pp. 53-83 (1990).
  5. R. M. Siewert, P. J. Mitchell, P. A. Mulawa, SAE Technical Paper Series 932744 (Society of Automotive Engineers, Warrendale, PA, 1993).
  6. L. O'Connor, Mechanical Engineering Vol. 115, No. 10, pp. 52-56 (1993).
  7. Federal Register Vol. 59, No. 79, pp. 19648-19660, 25 April 1994, US Dept of Transportation.
  8. R. O. Geiss, W. M. Burkmyre, J. W. Lanigan, SAE Technical Paper Series 921551 (Society of Automotive Engineers, Warrendale, PA, 1992).
  9. K. G. Darrow, Gas Research Institute Report GRI-93/0472 (1994).
  10. Directory of Natural Gas Vehicle Refueling Stations (American Gas Association, Arlington, VA, 1994).
  11. The national conference on weights and measures voted in July 1994 to standardize the unit of "gasoline gallon equivalent" (gge) for natural gas. As a marketing tool the "gge" has significant advantages. A direct consumer price comparison of natural gas to gasoline and diesel fuels becomes possible.
  12. Convenient On-Site Natural Gas Refueling (Fuel Maker Corporation, Salt Lake City, UT, 1993).
  13. T. H. Lee, H. R. Linden, D. A. Dreyfus, T. Vasko (eds.), The Methane Age (Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, MA, 1988).

Ethical Issues in Physics: Workshop Proceedings

On July 17-18, 1993 an interdisciplinary group of physicists, sociologists, and philosophers met to discuss a variety of ethical issues physicists face and whether these issues can and should be addressed in physics curricula. Six presentations were accompanied by lively discussion, all of this now being documented in the Proceedings of the Workshop.

David Resnik's paper on the philosophical foundations of scientific ethics opens the Proceedings. He argues that there are two universal ethical principles of scientific research: honesty and carefulness. Practitioners who sacrifice these principles are no longer performing scientific research. In addition, there are four other ethical principles which apply to academic scientific research in western society: intellectual freedom, openness, giving proper credit, and public responsibility (reporting publicly on research which may have a significant social impact). From these principles, numerous subsidiary principles may be derived. Often a scientist is faced with a situation in which ethical principles conflict, for example the above principles may conflict with the scientist's role as a citizen, a parent, an employee, etc. The resolution of these conflicts would be easier if a scientist has had some introduction to scientific ethics in a classroom setting.

Marshall Thomsen describes his experiences teaching about ethical issues in physics at Eastern Michigan University. Issues addressed include those internal to the physics community (e.g. research ethics) as well as those involving physicists' interaction with the rest of society (e.g. the physicists' role as science advisor). Experiences with adding ethics-based material to an existing course as well as with teaching a stand-alone course are described. Currently, there does not appear to be a text or other course material which addresses the needs of the physics community. It is argued that producing a series of course modules on a variety of ethical issues faced by physicists would have the advantage of allowing an instructor to incorporate a little material into an existing course or put together an entire course out of several modules. While there has been some movement towards requiring an ethics component in some physics programs, physicists with concerns in this area will need to generate more interest if such training is to become prevalent.

Ullica Segerstrale examines Millikan's oil-drop experiment on several levels, describing the discrepancies between his published results and his laboratory notebooks. Specifically, Millikan took data on more oil-drops than he actually reported, even though his paper state that all oil-drops were included in his data analysis. Segerstrale also discusses the treatment of the Millikan story by various authors, and raises concern about the dangers of basing an ethical analysis on brief "canned" versions of a complex situation. Lastly, Segerstrale addresses the ethical implications of Millikan's data analysis, the extent to which such procedures are accepted in the scientific community, and their impact upon the scientific community. She asks, "Is the ethical accountability now increasingly required from science in principle attainable in a system which is so constructed that one gets rewarded for being a quick-and-dirty first rather than a conscientious second?"

J. P. Sheerin discusses conflicts that arise in government sponsorship of large-scale or industrial research. In particular, given that there are several government-run national labs competing for some of the same funds industry does, conflicts arise. National labs may have the inside track in lobbying for funding, being better able to use the system for their own ends. The difficulty of creating an unbiased peer review process is discussed with reference to large scale projects. With such projects it becomes difficult to find a knowledgeable expert who will not be directly impacted one way or another by the funding decision on a given project. The fact that some information in a project may be classified for national security reasons, opens the door to further abuse in the peer review process: Controlling information flow can determine the outcome of the review process. These points are illustrated with a case history of KMS Fusion, Inc., once active in fusion research but which has since lost its funding.

Ruth Howes talks about conflicts arising from physicists working in the classified community. In particular, the principle of openness which seems to be so necessary in the academic community, to progress in science and to judge the quality of science, must be sacrificed in the classified community. This has an impact not only upon the ability of the physicist to perform research but also upon the way research results and related advice are conveyed to higher levels of government. The process is described by which a technical paper produced by a physicist working in the federal government gets modified, reduced, and combined with other such papers resulting ultimately in a policy directive to be signed by the President. Many relevant issue are illustrated in the history of the conflict between Edward Teller and Roy Woodruff in the x-ray laser component of the Strategic Defense Initiative as documented by William J. Broad in Teller's War.

Francis Slakey concludes with an examination into physicists' responsibilities when attempting to secure federal research funding. There is increased pressure from Congress to see a demonstrable return for research money. At the same time there is increased competition for federal dollar, with scientists competing directly with diverse agencies such as Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development. It is argued that scientists have an obligation to ensure federal research dollars are used to support research which addresses the goals for science generally agreed to by society. However, scientists need to be actively involved in helping society formulate a realistic set of goals.

A limited number of copies of these Proceedings are available at no charge, by writing directly to the editor, Marshall Thomsen, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, Michigan 48197 (e-mail: PHY_THOMSEN @em;uvax.emich.edu). The workshop and its Proceedings have been supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. SBR-9223819. Statements in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Marshall Thomsen

Women in Science 1994

A special issue of Science, 11 March 1994

Every Spring Science publishes a section on "Women in Science;" this year the topic is "Comparisons Across Cultures." This short review is written to encourage you to look at the "Women in Science" issue, and to describe some of its salient points.

Let us take a first-principles view of the assumptions that justify devoting so many pages to "Women in Science," and explain them to a putative visiting Martian. The Martian finds only a few understandable species on Earth, such as the sea-horse, where the male cares for the young, and finds it curious that the human sex that produces offspring is also the one that gives so much time and effort to them. Our Martian initially finds an idea like "equality" somewhat abstruse, but understands that symmetry and the ergodic hypothesis provide a rationale for equality. The Martian warms up to the idea that physicists want to improve physics, and that physics ability seems distributed uniformly among humans, so that physics will be improved by an increase in the pool of people who might do physics.

To get the flavor of the Science issue, it is best to browse through it personally. One should not miss the advertisements placed near the articles. For some unaccountable reason, these latter seem to have many more pictures of women than do advertisements elsewhere in the issue. About 83% of the articles in "Comparisons" are by women. They start on p. 1467 with an overview "Surprises across the cultural divide." The first point is that there is so little experimental data about women and science worldwide; the best collection is by a physicist, no less, albeit a male one. A dramatic histogram, with countries ranked in order on the y-axis, and percentage of women faculty on the x-axis, shows that some of the least-industrialized countries have the largest percentages of women faculty. The three countries in North America are in the nine with the lowest percentage of women faculty.

Four articles are European: "The back-breaking work of scientist homemakers" from Germany, "Warm climate..." from Italy, "Leveling the playing field" from Sweden, and "A Stage Set by History" from Turkey. "Overcoming diffidence..." is from India, and "Fighting the Patriarchy ..." is from the Philippines. In the histogram referred to above, the Philippines is one of the three countries with the highest percentage of women faculty. In one of Turkey's best universities, a third of the physicists and mathematicians are women. However, only a small fraction of people attend a university--1% of women, and 2% of men. I was somewhat hurt by the idea that in India and Turkey science is a second- best choice by students, and that the best go into engineering. There are indications that girls do better in science in single-sex schools, where there is no attribution of certain subjects being undesirable because they are "masculine" or "feminine." As a sample of n = 1, I who went to a single-sex school can confirm that subjects were viewed fairly equally.

That social class is such an important determinant in the representation of women in science would be of no surprise to that Victorian gentleman K. Marx. It was no surprise to this reviewer, for the United States. Decades ago indications were that many US women scientists were upper class, and foreign born.

It is difficult to extract underlying principles from the incomplete data. One wonders if a nation's number of woman scientists increases with inequality of wealth distribution. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to see which other groups (e.g. rural) are not fairly represented in physics, and also to consider if groups should be represented in science (or Congress?) proportionally to their number in the population at large.

What is to be done? In brief, hope and act. Two "Policy Forums" are written in a perforce more deliberative style: "Status and prospects of women in science in Europe" lists possible initiatives and detailed objective recommendations. Our own APS sponsors direct "Interventions to increase the participation of women in physics," describing a team of women physicists who make site visits to physics departments; I like this. Naturally, at present only confident departments initiate such visits. A letter (p. 1357) encourages women in biomedicine; it is signed by some sixty women from first rate institutions. For the latest word, Wiphys (Women in physics, of the APS Committee on the Status of Women) is an excellent electronic bulletin board carrying lively and sensible discussions by diverse writers from undergraduates to established people (1).

Acknowledgment: I am grateful to people who critiqued this review (BC, ID, GF, MJ, MS, ST), and especially thank those male colleagues whom I'd asked lest I be too hard on them.

1. To subscribe, just electronically mail the message "subscribe wiphys your name" to this address: listserv@nysernet.org.

L. Finegold
Department of Physics
Drexel University
Philadelphia, PA 19104

Nuclear Reactions: Science and Trans-science

Alvin M. Weinberg

American Institute of Physics (1992)
This is a collection of 22 essays written from 1966 to 1991. Weinberg groups them under five topics: science and trans-science; scientific administration; strategic defense; time, energy and resources; and nuclear energy. He starts each section with a brief preface indicating how his views have changed or remained the same since each essay was written. I will focus on the first and last of these topics.

Weinberg defines a "trans-scientific" (the term does not appear in dictionaries) question as one that appears to be an ordinary scientific question, but in fact cannot be answered by current scientific techniques. Weinberg gives two examples: What is the probability of harmful effects from exposure to only 0.1 rem (or 1 rem) of nuclear radiation? And what is the probability of catastrophic failure of a specified type of nuclear power plant? Other trans-scientific questions involve predictions of human behavior; and axiology (discussed below). Since the remarkable behavior of the operators at Chernobyl was the main cause of that catastrophe, three different trans-scientific questions must be answered so we can make rational decisions on nuclear energy.

I feel that we should be able to determine the harmful effects of small amounts of nuclear radiation by standard scientific procedures: observation and experiment, and the use of Occam's razor. The razor is needed to interpolate between zero effect for no radiation and a measurable effect for a relatively large exposure. In the absence of clear evidence to the contrary, Occam tells us to use the simplest interpretation, i.e. linear interpolation.

In my opinion we should attempt to solve separate smaller questions: e.g. what is the effect on the thyroid of a specified amount of I-131? How does this effect depend on age? On previous diet (low or high in ordinary non-radioactive iodine)? We're concerned with controversies where "experts" disagree by two or three orders of magnitude. Did Chernobyl cause less than 100 deaths? Or more than 10,000? We must answer these questions!

"Axiology" is the theory of value; and this unfamiliar word is in dictionaries. Axiology is usually applied to questions of ethics or aesthetics. Weinberg in his first book, Reflections on Big Science (MIT Press, 1967), was a pioneer in applying axiology to decision-making in "Big Science." Of course since values are involved, so are subjective judgments. Still, we can follow Weinberg in trying to agree on criteria to use in evaluating the scientific value of a superconducting supercollider, a space station, or a human genome project. The criteria could then be applied to provide a more or less rational discourse on the value of the SSC, etc. Despite Weinberg's pioneering and subsequent efforts, we are still along way from rational discourse on axiology. Of course the discourse becomes still less rational when Congress makes political decisions; but we can pray for dispassionate discussion among scientists.

Nuclear energy is a main theme of Weinberg's book. How can we live with nuclear power plants? How can we live without them? Do we need breeders? Weinberg argues that we have plenty of all the resources needed for our industrial civilization, with one exception: energy. His choice to push nuclear energy (rather than fossil fuels, or renewable sources) involves trans-scientific questions. The choice also involves public perception, and related political decisions. Weinberg's book makes a major contribution to this debate.

A collection of many essays has much repetition. Nevertheless I found the essays stimulating and provocative. The references following each essay are very helpful.

A minor criticism of Weinberg's (and most other) discussions of energy: the author uses many different units, so the reader who wants to follow the quantitative argument has to find conversion factors, and spend time and energy using them. I think it's highly desirable to use only two units, at most. I favor giving power in the familiar unit of kW per capita, and energy in exojoules (10^18 J).

Joe Levinger
Physics Department
RPI
Troy, New York 12180

A Mind Always in Motion: The Autobiography of Emilio Segre

Emilio Segre

University of California Press, 1993

The evening of one's life is a period for reminiscing. Some thoughtful people do so in writing. At the very least, such writing could be of interest to the immediate family. And when one's life has crisscrossed the paths of famous people, the narration becomes interesting to a larger public.

This is the case with the book under review: Emilio Segre's autobiography. As a youth, he was present at the famous Como conference of 1927, and here he saw a galaxy of physicists which included Planck, Rutherford, Bohr, Millikan, Pauli, Fermi, and Heisenberg. This inspired him to take up physics rather than engineering as his field of study. And at the university he had the good fortune of being tutored by Fermi. His love of physics became very intense.

Enrico Fermi's first graduate student, E.O. Lawrence's assistant at the cyclotron, Robert Oppenheimer's colleague at the Manhattan Project, co-recipient of the Nobel Prize with Owen Chamberlain: such were Segre's associations. Many more names of distinction are strewn throughout its pages.

The book begins with Segre's boyhood days, just prior to the outbreak of the First World War, in Tivoli when he used to read with great concentration popular, but difficult, science articles, and also grow vegetables and play in a tree house with the gardener's son. While remembering those distant scenes Segre summarizes and explains in a short and simple sentence some of the negative changes that have been occurring in during our century: "Today the landscape has been devastated. The destruction is appalling: carelessness, speculative greed, and plain incompetence have destroyed most of the beauty of the place."

The events-filled story culminates in a recall of his trip to the Canyon de Chelly in Arizona with his wife Rose on his seventy-seventh birthday, revealing his love of nature and his admiration for the wonders of the world. In this Segre was certainly not atypical, but many non-physicists tend to picture us as cold and logical beings with little sensitivity for the aesthetic and awe-inspiring dimensions of the world of plants and creatures. At the end of the book, his wife gives a brief account of his last years.

In the course of his rich and productive career, Segre ran into a great many people. He talked to the painter Salvatore Dali about the latter's painting of the anti-protonic woman, with its sexist undertone. He visited Nigeria on the occasion of its independence and explained to the Iba why the earth is believed to be round and not flat. But most of all, he closely collaborated with a great many contemporary physicists. The book is filled with fascinating episodes and reflections involving eminent names.

But the references are by no means greatly respectful or humbly laudatory. Indeed, it turns out that although America opened its doors to Segre when he was persecuted in his native Italy, he had unpleasant interactions with, and formed unfavorable impressions of, a good many American physicists. This again is not an entirely unusual phenomenon. Many immigrant scholars and scientists, while benefiting from the favorable infrastructure provided by America, have been generous and enthusiastic in their negative comments on what is wrong and deplorable here. Segre, too, is free and unflinching in his caustic comments on quite a few American scientists.

It is no secret that experts have only the lowliest opinions of some of their colleagues and competitors. Indeed, this is almost a necessary condition for being an expert in any field The mutually deprecating views of physicists are usually aired in private conversations and correspondences while eloquent praises are bestowed in public writings and utterances. It is not often that we get to read unsavory appraisals of famous scientists by their colleagues in print. This book provides a rich opportunity for that. We learn from its pages that Latimer "was well known for his xenophobia," Lawrence was "no more than a mediocre scientist," Fermi "doubted Lawrence knew or understood much physics," Seaborg was "not an exceptional scientist, (but) had unbridled ambitions and was determined to go ahead by any means," Oppenheimer's "celebrated general culture was not superior to that expected in a boy who had attended a good European high school."

The book also reveals Emilio Segre as a man of keen intelligence and insight who probed with ingenuity into the physical world, and experienced with sensitivity the beauty of flowers. He was also a loving husband and caring father.

V.V. Raman
Department of Physics
Rochester Institute of Technology

We Need Papers from the Invited Sessions, for Publication!

Papers based on the Forum on Physics and Society (FPS) sponsored or co-sponsored sessions at APS meetings form the backbone of Physics & Society. Many Forum members have remarked on the usefulness of these articles. While invited session audiences might number as many as a few hundred, this newsletter is mailed to nearly 5000 socially aware physicists. Furthermore, publication in Physics & Society provides a permanent record. Thus, if the effort that speakers make to attend and give their talks is worthwhile in the first place, then the smaller effort required to send some version of their remarks to Physics & Society should also be worthwhile. Articles may range from a synopsis of a few hundred words, to a more complete article of up to 3000 words (including references and space for figures). It is especially useful for Physics & Society to be able print all of the talks from a particular symposium, because this provides a range of perspectives.

FPS program chairs, invited session organizers, and individual speakers, should make every effort to see that articles related to all talks are sent to Physics & Society for publication. Although speakers can send their articles (email, disk, or hard copy) directly to the editor, it would be better if the session organizer or program chair gathered all the articles from a single session and sent them together.

Email Address Needed!

If you have an email address, please check the APS Membership Directory to see that it is listed, and listed correctly. If not, send your correct email address to: membership@aps.org. This will be helpful to you and to the FPS, as the FPS makes increasing use of email.

Physics & Society On The World-Wide Web

The FPS home page is under construction. By the end of April, it will be connected to the APS home page, which can be reached at http://aps.org. The FPS home page will have a link to the newsletter. You can look at all issues of Physics & Society back to January, 1993 (including figures!). New issues will be put on the page within a couple of months of publication (we hope).

Four Forums Coordinate Their Efforts

The four Forums, on Physics and Society, Education, History of Physics, and International Physics, have been increasingly coordinating their activities. According to FPS Chair Tony Nero, who has been a prime mover in this effort, "In general, we are striving for increasing cooperation among the Forums to better fulfill their function of promoting interactions among the APS membership on important topics for the Society."

As part of this coordination, Physics & Society presents below the invited sessions of all four forums at the April APS meeting. We do this in order to highlight the scope and interactions among the four programs, and to show that they constitute a substantial meeting program in themselves on the broader issues of interest to physicists, beyond their specific disciplinary interests.

According to Nero, "We wish to make particular mention of three symposia consisting of short panels and open forums [for audience discussion] on broad topics of interest to the physics community, arranged as an expression of the Forums' interest in promoting discourse on especially far-reaching issues. One of these was arranged for the March meeting (Jobs and Education) and two are arranged for April (What Is the Value of Science, and Site Visits to Physics Departments to Improve the Climate for Women).

Furthermore, arrangements are being made to use the discussion in these sessions to initiate continuing discourse via internet conferences. Announcements have been published in APS News and via email to members of all four forums. Subscription to any of the three is accomplished by sending an email message to majordomo @ physics.wm.edu whose body reads "subscribe jobs-ed", "subscribe val-sci", or "subscribe clim-fys", respectively.

Physics & Society welcomes comments on these sessions and on these new directions for FPS. As always, we hope to be able to publish articles based on each of these sessions.

Forum Sessions at the April 18-21 Meeting In Washington, DC

We list here all of the invited sessions of all four forums. Abbreviations: FPS, FED, FHP, FIP are the Forums on Physics and Society, Education, History of Physics, and International Physics. AAPT is the American Association for Physics Teaching.

Centenial of the Discovery of X-Rays (FHP), Tuesday 08:00: Spencer Weart "Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen," Albert Wattenberg "Physical experiments with x-rays; 1895-1913," Kahum Kipnis "Early theories of x-rays," John S. Laughlin "The development of x-rays for diagnosis and treatment."

Freedom of Scientists Worldwide (FIP, FPS), Tuesday 11:00: Andrew Sessler,, "Physicists and the eternal struggle for human rights," Morton Sklar "Freedom to pursue science research worldwide," Wang JunTao "Academic freedom in China," Morton Halperin "Can there be free scientific exchange between US and Cuba?," Jonathan Knight "Rights of tenured professors."

Developing Employment Opportunities for Physicists in Non- Traditional Careers (FPS), Tuesday 11:00: Kimberly Titus "Opportunities for physicists in the multi-billion dollar international textile industry," Eddy van de Wetering "A high energy physicist in high finance," Harry Hummel "Opportunities for physicists in managementconsulting," Edwin Goldin "Developing strategies and networks leading to alternate careers for Ph.D. physicists."

Radioactivity and Health: The Cold War Legacy (FPS, FHP), Tuesday 14:30: Mark Goodman "Human radiation experiments: the secret history," Marvin Goldman "The legacy of Russian nuclear production," Barton Hacker, "Setting radiation protection standards: science, politics, and public attitudes in historical perspective."

Physics Without Borders (FIP), Tuesday 14:30: Steven Chu "Recent advances in laser trapping and cooling of atoms and biological molecules," Leroy L. Chang "Quantum structures: perspective and prospect," Pauchy Hwang "Nuclear physics aspects in the parton model of Feynman."

What Is the Value of Science? (FPS, AAPT), Tuesday 16:30: This session is designed to encourage audience input. It focuses on challenges to the value of science in general and physics in particular that have emerged from such diverse sources as the New York Times op-ed pages, reports of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on HUD, Veterans Affairs, and Independent Agencies, and even the Smithsonian exhibit on "Science in American Life." The session will be initiated by brief talks by John Moore, addressing the economic value of science, Paul Gross, author of "Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science," and David Lindley, senior editor of Science and author of "The End of Physics." Following the presentations, the floor will be opened for comments, questions, and responses involving the audience or panel, with discussants limited to 3 minutes each. This session is planned also for internet continuation (see instructions in the preceding news article).

Computation and Visualization in Physics Education (FED), Wednesday, April 09:00: Ed Kashy "CAPA: a tool for students and teachers," Jack Wilson "CUPLE physics studio: an alternative to large lectures," Magdy Iskander "Interactive multimedia modules for physics education," Ruth Chabay "Force, field, and flux: visualizing abstract concepts in introductory E&M," Rod Cole "Linking visualization, concepts, and mathematics in physics."

Physics, the Media, and the General Public (FED), Wednesday 13:00: Donald Goldsmith "Who cares? Presenting science to the public," Ira Flatow "Mission impossible: physics on the evening news," Paul Raebun, Bailey Barash.

Report on the IUPP Course Trials (FED, AAPT), Thursday 0 8:00 AM: Rosanne Di Stefano "The IUPP evaluation--what did we learn and how did we learn it?," Donald Holcomb "What else did we learn about teaching introductory physics?"

Nuclear Proliferation and the Case of North Korea (FPS), Thursday 11:00: Peter Zimmerman "Putting the Picture Together: Analyzing the North Korean Program from unclassified sources," Robert Gallucci "The US-North Korean framework agreement," Warren Stearns, Leonard S. Spector "The Non-Proliferation regime after the North Korean case."

A Look at the National Science Standards: Different Perspectives of a Common Focus (FED, AAPT), Thursday 14:30: The National Academy of Sciences recently released for public review the draft of the National Science Standards. This document represents more than two years of intensive work by working groups composed of a cross-section of the science community. While the document has undergone intensive review by selected members of the scientific community, this was the first opportunity for comment by the general public. This panel will provide the perspectives of selected members of the Chairs Advisory Committee, who will discuss how they see the Standards impacting their respective scientific disciplines. The panel will consist of James Stith of Ohio State University, Jim Rutherford of the AAAS and Project 2061, a speaker from the NSTA Scope Sequence and Coordination Project, and Angelo Collins of the NRC Standards Project.

Site Visits to Physics Departments to Improve the Climate for Women: A Panel and Open Forum Discussion (FPS, FED), Thursday 16:30: This is another panel/open forum arranged to promote interaction and feedback. The session focuses on a 3-year program by 15 reasearch physics departments to invite teams of physicists to visit and explore their climate for women. Mildred Dresselhaus will review the history of the visitation program and present some results of a national survey of physics students concerning the student environment. Judy Franz will summarize the problems raised by students and suggest some solutions. Bunny Clark will discuss the climate for women faculty and the changes the visits have effected. These talks will initiate a broad open-forum discussion by audience and panel members of women in physics departments, and even of implications for all students and faculty. Discussants will be limited to 3 minutes each. This session is planned also for internet continuation (see instructions in the preceding news article).

Forums Awards Session (FPS, FIP), Thursday 08:00: Roald Z. Sagdeev "1995 Szilard Award Lecture: Szilard and Russia," Evgany P. Velikhov "1995 Szilard Award Lecture: Cold war technologies--try to use them or forget them?" John P. Holdren receives the 1995 Forum Award but is unable to attend this meeting, Gary Taubes "1994 Forum Award Lecture: Delusion is the better part of grandeur--lessons learned from cold fusion," G. Violini "1994 Wheatley Prize Lecture."

Connecting Graduate Education to Teaching Needs (AAPT, FED), Friday 11:00: Rexford E. Adelberger "Searching for a new colleague at a small liberal arts college," Curtis J. Hieggelke "What it takes to teach at a community college," Kenneth Heller and Patricia Heller "Preparing graduate students to teach: an apprentice model," Peter S. Shaffer "Preparing graduate students to teach: a tutorial model."

Other sessions on topics related to forum interests: Memorial Session for Eugene Wigner, Tuesday 08:00 The Physics GRE: Past, Present, Future, Wednesday 09:00 A Memorial Session for Julian Schwinger, Thursday 11:00

APS Council Meeting

As Councilor for the Forum on Physics and Society (FPS) I attended the fall meeting of the APS Council on 6 November 1994, in Minneapolis. Here are some meeting highlights:

Funding of Forums. One agenda item of great concern to the FPS and other APS forums is a proposal to change the basis of our funding. APS is understandably interested in limiting its contributions to the forums as they grow in number and in membership. At the same time, the forums are all having trouble making ends meet. In response to letters from our chair, Tony Nero, and other forum chairs, treasurer Harry Lustig did not bring to vote his proposed revisions of the formula for funding forums. Instead he proposed the creation of a task force to examine the financing of forums and the relation of forums to corresponding APS committees. Council approved the creation of this task force.

The General Meeting. As part of the effort to strengthen the April general meeting, the 1996 meeting will be held outside the DC area for the first time. The chosen city is Indianapolis. Atlanta will host the centennial meeting in 1999.

Conference on Graduate Education. APS, with AAPT, will sponsor a conference on RPhysics Graduate Education for Diverse Career OptionsS at the American Center for Physics in College Park, Maryland, May 5-7. The conference is being held in conjunction with a regular meeting of department chairs.

Electronic Publishing. APS wants to improve its electronic communication with its membership. So does FPS. Be sure to send your e-mail address to APS!

Forum on Industrial Physics. The Council voted for the creation of a new Forum on Industrial and Applied Physics.

POPA presentation. The Panel on Public Affairs brought several proposals:

  1. Council approved a letter for APS President Richter to send to the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. APS is concerned about the institutionU's current exhibit, "Science in American Life," which reportedly is unbalanced, dwelling almost exclusively on the negative impacts of science. The exhibit is only one manifestation of the negative image of science among many social scientists today.
  2. Council approved guidelines on how and when an APS subunit can issue a public statement.
  3. Council approved a statement affirming the potential role that might be played by national labs in solving national problems.
  4. Council suggested that POPA rework a statement concerning the health effects of electromagnetic radiation.

Visit to China by APS Leadership. APS President Burton Richter, Vice President Kumar Patel, and APS Director of International Affairs Irving Lerch, traveled to China in October 1994. They arrived at a Memorandum of Understanding signed by representatives of the Chinese Physical Society and endorsed by representatives of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the State Education Committee of the PeopleUs Republic of China. The MOU was endorsed by Council. Its provisions enhance telecommunications access, establish a joint commission to improve collaborative programs and activities, increase Chinese access to APS journals, and state the principle that scientific merit is the only acceptable criterion for publishing in the scientific literature. Unilaterally the APS issues a statement to express its concern for the rights of physicists.

Graduate Student Packet. APS and AIP have put together a nice booklet that is being mailed to all APS student members. It gives employment statistics, advice from the AIP Career Planning and Placement Service, and reprints vignettes from APS News and Physics Today about physicists in non-traditional occupations.

APS President's Letter Regarding the OTA

The Honorable Ron Packard, Chairman
House Appropriations Legislative Branch Subcommittee
United States House of Representatives
H-218 Capitol Building
Washington, DC 20515-6015

Dear Mr. Chairman:

I am writing on behalf of the Executive Board of the American Physical Society, whose membership includes 42,000 physicists in industry, academia and national laboratories, to emphasize the importance to Congress of access to independent, high quality scientific and technical analysis. For more than twenty years, the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) has provided such analysis and policy options to the Congress. Thus I urge Congress to retain OTA and to maximize OTA's effectiveness in providing Members of Congress with objective, non-partisan reports.

As America looks to the 21st century, science and technology will play an increasing role in public policy issues. It is crucial for Members of Congress to have accurate, independent, and timely assessments of the complex and often specialized matters that will vitally affect the lives of Americans. Congress created OTA in 1972 to meet such a need. The National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering supported the formation of OTA at that time and have recently reaffirmed their support.

Oversight by the joint, bipartisan Technology Assessment Board provides the greatest assurance that OTA's studies maintain objectivity. This oversight and OTA's use of non- partisan, expert advisory boards drawn from industry and academia have been central to the success of its activities.

While OTA's central purpose is to advise Congress, its reports have also served to advance public understanding of a broad range of technical issues, a role that will only be enhanced by the electronic information revolution. High quality assessments of scientific and technical issues will be of ever increasing importance to Congress and the public at large in the rapidly changing world of the 21st century.

Sincerely,

C. Kumar N. Patel
President, The American Physical Society

The Office of Technology Assessment: An Endangered Species Worth Saving

[This article is reprinted, with permission, from IEEE Spectrum, February 1995.]

In the stampede on Capitol Hill to streamline and downsize government, a rare and beautiful small flower is about to be trampled by thundering hooves. Most of the Congressional herd have nothing against flowers, but many members are new and have had little occasion to study Congressional botany. Others are so preoccupied with the dust, excitement, and difficulty of keeping their footing that they have little time to think about small flowers.

For those unfamiliar with the US Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, or OTA, my comparing it to a precious flower may seem silly hyperbole. But in government, a carefully balanced analysis of complex technical issues is far too rare, and OTA stands as a unique bipartisan source of balanced technical advice for the committees of both the House and the Senate. Indeed, OTA offers a model that has been studied and emulated by national legislatures and parliaments around the world.

Despite these successes, OTA is in trouble. In order to trim a modest $20 million from the $2 billion budget of the legislative branch, there has been serious talk about eliminating OTA. And even if the agency is left in place, it could be crippled by a massive reduction of its budget to half or even less. Since most of the budget is used to pay the salaries of 200 staffers, lower funds could translate into the firing of key people.

Doing technology assessment in the politically charged climate of Capitol Hill is no easy task. You cannot research partisan conclusions and expect to survive. At the same time, you need to produce analysis that helps members make decisions. After some initial fumbling and a few years of groping for the right style, OTA hit its stride about 15 years ago and has been performing superbly ever since.

An OTA report seldom settles a matter; how best to make complex value and policy choices is not a technical question. But OTA frequently manages to frame the problem and spell out the options in a coherent and balanced fashion that supports the subsequent debate. Often these reports work rather like stipulations in a lawsuit. They lay out a basic factual framework that all the parties in the debate agree to share as a starting point. Indeed, it is not uncommon for partisans on opposite sides of an issue to refer to the same OTA report. On complex technical policy issues, nontechnical and semi-technical members and their staffs need such support to identify what the key issues are, so that the political debate may be confined to what is scientifically accurate and technically feasible.

Why is there talk of eliminating or dramatically cutting the agency if its has been so successful? The most important reason involves what social scientists call a "tragedy of the commons." Most members of Congress who know about OTA agree that it does first-rate work. But, faced with a choice between cutting their own staff, and the staff of committees on which they serve, or cutting general support agencies that help all of Congress, most members will look out for themselves. If the resulting congressional decisions are a little less reasoned, or a little less technically realistic, that's tough.

OTA is also at risk because it works mainly for committees, not individual members. Since most committee chairmanships in Congress have just turned over, many new chairmen with little experience of OTA do not yet understand how important and useful it can be. Also, some members of Congress might find it politically advantageous to be able to say they had killed off a whole agency. As one of the smallest agencies around, OTA is particularly vulnerable.

Moreover, despite the fact that OTA has been carefully bipartisan in its activities, some partisan considerations still exist. Ted Kennedy played an important role in getting OTA established. And even though Republicans like Ted Stevens, William Roth, Amory Houghton, and Orrin Hatch also strongly supported the agency, its identification with the liberal Kennedy in today's conservative climate offers a powerful, if erroneous, political target.

It also does not help that OTA's former, and most successful, director, Jack Gibbons, has gone on to a highly visible position as science advisor in the Clinton White House and that he took several OTA staffers with him when he moved.

Finally, a handful of senators and congressmen, interested in getting the Strategic Defense Initiative program restarted, may remember that OTA was one of the first organizations to raise technical concerns about that project. The fact that those concerns proved justified may not loom large in their current thinking.

Threatening OTA's budget is not just a Republican game. Under a Democrat- controlled Congress, the agency has been level funded in real terms for much of the past decade. In the first few years that this occurred, the agency reduced the impact through such improvements in efficiency as the introduction of modern desktop publishing. But then the budget squeeze really began to hurt. OTA studies that once devoted as much as half their budgets to field work and contracts for small supporting analyses by expert consultants now must devote as much as 80 percent to simply paying staff salaries. In short, problems in keeping OTA alive and well are not new, but only recently has the agency been put on the endangered list. Unless a big effort is mounted to educate new members that careful analyses are essential to making informed decisions about technical matters, OTA could be seriously damaged or destroyed.

Perhaps the best way to understand how OTA works is to follow the life cycle of a study. The agency is overseen by a bipartisan joint committee of the two houses of Congress. Called the Technology Assessment Board, the committee must approve all studies, and can also initiate them. More commonly though, requests come from the chairmen of other committees who pose such questions as, "What should we do about the future of US space launch capabilities?" or "What are the policy implications of the electronic superhighway?" These questions led to several useful OTA reports.

These requests rarely show up out of the blue. Senior OTA staffers and senior staff of congressional committees confer on a regular basis, discuss evolving congressional concerns, and explore what areas are most in need of analyses to support further decision- making. Often, several related requests will be woven together into a single study.

In contrast to studies conducted by the National Academy of Sciences complex, OTA studies are done by small teams drawn from a full-time professional staff of about 140. Over half these people hold Ph.D.s in a variety of fields, including science engineering, and various areas of social science.

In addition to its core staff, every OTA study has an outside committee of advisors who meet several times during the course of the study. Advisors are drawn widely form the many groups that have knowledge or interests related to the topic at hand. The staff's job is to listen carefully to all the different perspectives and insights the committee brings, and then to weave them into the final report in a balanced way.

While this may sound like a recipe for vanilla-flavored pabulum, in fact it usually yields a spicy, interestingly textured product. OTA reports are lively, comprehensive, and attractively packed. Full reports may range up to a couple hundred pages, but are always accompanied by both a condensed version and a one-page summary.

The reports place great emphasis on accurately simplifying and communicating the key ideas on complex technical topics in words that the semi-technical and non-technical members and their staffs can understand. They are also widely used in the executive branch, in think tanks, and in universities all over the world. OTA uses various methods to balance its treatments while retaining substance. One of the most effective involves the use of "if, then" clauses: "If Congress wishes to achieve such and such, then it should do so and so."

Engineers are often the most vociferous critics of congressional actions that are at odds with sound science and good technical practice. As such, we have a special obligation to work to preserve a strong and viable OTA. Whatever our individual political persuasions may be, we all believe that the Congress must be well informed when it takes actions that involve technology. A healthy OTA offers one of the best assurances that this will happen. Individually, and as a community, engineers must make it clear to Congress that OTA is one endangered species that should be preserved and nurtured.

M. Granger Morgan
Head of the Dept of Engineering and Public Policy and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA

The Nation Needs the OTA

Under the depressing headline "Technology Assessment Faces Ax," Science (9 December 1994, p. 1636) states that "Congress's Office of Technology Assessment may be an early victim of the new Republican majority's efforts to cut spending and shrink government. Last week, Republican senators endorsed a recommendation that OTA be abolished, a move that would save $22 million a year. The proposal, which took OTA officials by surprise, was drafted by a task force led by Senators Pete Domenici (R-NM) and Connie Mack (R-FL). ...Although a final decision may not come for months, the threat to OTA is serious, say political observers." Furthermore, "OTA's prospects may be even worse in the House, where Speaker Newt Gingrich favors steep cuts in the overall operating budget of Congress."

Abolishing or severely curtailing the OTA would be an economic, social, and scientific disaster. Although the agency is funded at a modest $22 million, the OTA's hard-headed advice helps Congress to save the nation billions of dollars every year. The OTA is exactly what the nation needs to help find our way in an age of rapid social change driven primarily by science and technology. The nation needs more OTA's, not less.

And, because the nation needs the OTA, science needs it. As Barbara Mikulski, George Brown and other astute observers of the politics of science have pointed out, science is in trouble today partly because it hasn't paid enough attention to its social responsibilities. To a certain extent, such painful experiences as the downfall of the Superconducting Super Collider stem from the narrow focus of scientists on their individual research to the exclusion of broader social and educational concerns. Science needs the OTA because the OTA acts so very directly to fulfill this obligation that science has to society. In fact, science needs more OTA's even more than the nation needs them.

In 1991, the Forum on Physics and Society gave its Szilard Award to physicist John Gibbons, who was OTA director at that time and for 13 years before becoming science adviser to President Clinton. According to the citation, the award was given to Gibbons "for leading and greatly strengthening the OTA, an institution that has produced balanced, thoughtful, and influential assessments of public policy issues dealing with science and technology."

Another physicist, APS Fellow Lewis Branscomb, a member of OTA's scientific advisory panel, states in the Science article, "Now that [the OTA] is threatened, I hope the scientific community can get people stirred up to support it."

Our Forum needs to get stirred up about this. Both the above article by M. Granger Morgan, and the letter from APS President C. Kumar N. Patel, spell out some of the reasons for retaining the OTA.

It would be a tragedy for our nation, as well as an insult to the scientific community, to lose the very organization that represents perhaps our most successful effort to apply the knowledge and methods of science to America's most important issues. And we, as scientists, will be neglecting our social responsibility to the nation and to the world if we let it happen.

Art Hobson

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