FUSION AND THE PRESS

Most media have now lost interest in cold fusion or are glad the "threat" of abundant energy has passed. There were few surprises. Time and Newsweek were, as always, a pure waste of time; the Economist, as always, was long on cuteness and short on informa-tion; the New York Times, perhaps predictably, brought a report of the Santa Fe meeting under the headline "At Conference on Cold Fusion, The Verdict Is Negative" (May 30) in their usual policy of "All the news printed to fit."

The two surprises were Science News and Science. The first is supposedly written by professional science writers, but their reports were generally no better than those of unqualified reporters in the daily press. (The article reporting the confirmation of the F&P effect and the lithium dependence was titled "Big chill for cold fusion as energy source.") As for Science, I had expected to jump on the Science scribblers' usual slant. Yet I must admit that Robert Poole made a very good job of his reports; presumably Eliot Marshal and co-propagandists scribbled their propaganda in fields considered ideologically more impor-tant.

A real disappointment, not altogether unexpected, was Insight. It is affiliated with the Washington Times, America's only major daily to break out of the media monopoly; its establishment some years ago was an event of major significance. My opinion is shared by the radical Left, which misses no opportunity to rant against the "Moonie rag." (Would they dare to call the NY Times a "Hymie rag"? Or the Deseret News and Christian Science Monitor "rags of religious cults"?) Alas, the science stories in both the Washington Times and Insight are often indistinguishable from the propaganda in "liberal" papers. In this case their article brought the usual false charges against fission and counted fusion as more or less finished. Their most often quoted source was none other than John Holdren, identified as "a plasma physicist," not as Paul Ehrlich's protege and co-author, nor as pseudo-scientific ideologist who has been propagandizing every subject from population control to soft energy and Nuclear Winter. Not enough of broadcasting his peacenik propaganda from Moscow TV, and having it reprinted in Soviet Life, he now finds an added outlet in Insight. The Wash. Times's science editors have also long appeared unwilling to get their information outside the biased referrals from SIPI and other leftist parrots. (They have been doing better in the health/chemical field.) If any readers have access to Arnaud de Borchgrave, please show him this item and suggest that he offer most of his well-mean-ing, but unenterprising science editors to the Washington Post, if not the Nation and Mother Jones.