The vermin in the coattails

A few weeks ago, the Department of Defense published an interesting booklet, Soviet Military Power. It gives some details on what the Soviets have been up to during the decade in which America diligently practiced unilateral disarmament.

Of special interest to the energy student (apart from the global push toward energy sources and arteries) is the advance of Soviet "Directed Energy" weapons. Some physical aspects of these weapons are discussed below; here we would like to make a less technical point.

The fact that the Soviets may be ready to field such weapons in a matter of a few years will come as no great surprise to those who have been reading the analyses by generals Keegan, Graham or Singlaub. But it is not likely to impress the wishful thinkers, appeasers and apostles of self-deterrence who but a few years ago wrote brilliant articles why such weapons were physically unrealizable and, above all, undesirable because they would only provoke the Soviets to a "renewed arms race." (They never explained what is "renewed" about it; the Soviets have been running the race, like the Cold War, all by themselves when they lacked a partner.)

The commentators who hailed the SALT II "strategy" of officially enacting American inferiority soon wrote more articles on why Soviet cheating on the treaty was really only a little dishonest circumvention; besides, they implied, it just isn't customary for the Soviets to keep their word, nor for the American press to make a big deal over it.

And now that tens of thousands of civilians have been killed by chemical and biological toxins of Soviet origin, administered in Afghanistan directly by the Soviets, and elsewhere by their Vietnamese surrogates or by their Cuban Hessians with the advice of the East German Afrikakorps, they write articles on why "Toxin Warfare Charges May Be Premature."

Such an item appeared, not in one of Brokaw's or Reasoner's pieces, redeemingly interrupted by silly women with bad breath, body odor and margarine-induced crowns on their heads, but in the pages of Science; and not as a scientific paper by a scientist, but by one of the Science scribblers (Nicholas Wade) in the comment pages. To the casual reader, Wade might have a point, but the casual reader does not know that such cautious aloofness is entirely alien to the Science scribblers when they report the latest rumors on radiation or parrot Komanoff's worthless figures on the economics of power plants. Much less will he suspect that they censor letters by genuine scientists on radon indoor radiation and withhold other unwelcome news. They did so again last month, censoring a public endorsement of Reagan's nuclear policy by 32 scientists, including eight Nobel Laureates. Comments on nuclear policy are reported when made by Nader or Kendall; and such censorship presumably goes by the Orwellian name of "freedom of the press."

A 1977 Harris poll on occupational prestige shows that scientists hold the highest rank in public esteem, and it is encouraging to know that their standing has not been damaged by ex-scientists like Sternglass, Ehrlich or Gofman. But it is exasperating to see ideologically biased journalists exploiting the scientific prestige of journals like Science (and Nature, and Technology Review, and others) for misleading information and outright cover-ups.

There is another point to this. Science, generously subsidized by tax-breaks and lavishly funded by heavy advertising (not to mention other income), is clamoring for more money: for more government-run science, and more subsidies for itself. Its journalists are anti-defense and anti-industry (two institutions that have produced as good science as academia, and far fewer dissertations on the Absence of Bufo vulgaris [common toad] from the Diet of the Tudors). Science, like some of the scientific establishment, exhibits one of the sure signs of having grown fat: It is opposed to the production of wealth and supportive of its redistribution.

Science has forgotten the days when there was no National Science Foundation to hand out millions to the maestros of grantsmanship; the days when scientific journals, with no page charges or advertising, were few but brilliant. There was no propaganda by unqualified scribblers; just articles by Michelson, Einstein, Planck, and Teller.