SMEAROLOGY

The Experts Speak. The definitive compendium of authoritative misinformation by C. Cerf and V. Navasky is indeed a compendium of misinformation, but not the way this propagandistic trash collection would like to make out. Navasky is editor of The Nation, and the authors are Chairman of the Board and President of an outfit called Institute of Expertology.

The political section illustrates the general flavor. Gaffes in politics are, of course, not hard to come by since politicians rarely utter anything else; but they are selected so as to "prove" Allende's murder by the C.I.A. and other myths dear to the left-leaning heart. Yet there is not one of Andrew Young's memorable proclamations, e.g., that the Ayatollah is a real holy man, or that the Cuban troops in Angola have a stabilizing influence on Africa.

However, our interest is in science, technology, and energy, and here the general thrust is to show that scientists are untrustworthy knaves or idiots, whose findings are a matter of fashion. In part, this is done by ridiculing the errors of scientists in bygone centuries (for these birdbrains did not have the wits to consult the Library of Congress as it stands in 1984), but the real thrust of the book is shown by the following three quotations, one under Love Canal:

The other two are the ones under Radioactive waste: a desk-sized problem (there are many more pages with the same type of quotation under other aspects of nuclear energy):

In the last quotation, obviously only high-level wastes were meant, and to ridicule the statement is typical for the old trick of confusing high and low level wastes. (Among the objects that emit low-level radiation are Mr Cerf, Mr Navasky, their book, and The Nation.)

Similarly, Hooker Co. went out of their way and beyond their duty to warn the local government to whom they had sold the land above their waste disposal site that they were not to disturb it, let alone establish a housing development there (see E. Zuesse, "Love Canal: the truth seeps out," Reason, Feb. 1981).

As for Dixy Lee Ray's statement of the naked truth... Send us $2 for The Non-Problem of Nuclear Wastes.

But here the trail-blazing pioneers of smearology have found something new: smearing by a non-smear. So deep and widespread is the media-spread misinformation in areas like nuclear power that for smearing you can safely use the naked truth: no one will dare ask "And what's wrong with that?"