Shameless

When a government commission finds no increase in leukemia or other cancers near nuclear plants, the antinukes scream cover-up and conspiracy. But at least they don't just ignore it with an air of "We told you so!"

Not so in fields where public memory is shorter and interest less keen.

Thus, the court kremlinologists from Princeton, Yale and Harvard told us Stalin's slaughter of millions was propaganda by the "cold warriors." Now that Soviet historians have revealed documents implying the extermination of at least 20 million in Stalin's gulags, Ivy League's amateur historians unabashedly continue to strut about as experts on Soviet affairs: they had never claimed Stalin was a consummate philanthropist.

And so it is with the ex-scientists. Rational observers correctly attributed the massive outbreak of fatal anthrax in Sverdlovsk in 1979 to a leak from the nearby biological warfare research lab of the Soviet army. But what got published about it in the US was very little (it was, after all, the year of the Grand Disaster at TMI), and even then the Soviet version of an unfortunate case of meat poisoning was mostly accepted and uncritically defended.

But some went further. Harvard professor of biology Matthew Meselson paraded three official Soviet spokesmen at the US Academy of Sciences who put over a rudely fabricated cover-up, which he endorsed by certifying that their testimony was plausible and consistent with what we know about the disease in animals and humans [AtE Jun 88]. Now we have the testimony by Soviet physicians at the hospitals to which the civilian victims were taken. The disease's strange targeting and its unusual symptoms convinced them that the carrier must have been genetically engineered, a conviction reinforced by the KGB's elimination of all documentation and records in the case, and by the instant cover-up of at least 70 fatalities among the military in the lab (see Wall St. J. 11/28/90; excerpts in Fort Freedom.]

True, the only scientist who does not make mistakes is the one who does nothing, so perhaps Meselson is merely naive or in-competent?

If so, his incompetence is strangely selective in its apologism for the totalitarians. This is the same Meselson who attempted to whitewash Yellow Rain by claiming that it was all confusion over mere bee excrement, who gave no plausible explanation what had killed hundreds of Hmongs, and who ignored the testimony by respected physicians. Nor has he seen fit to retract his endorsement of the Sverdlovsk cover-up by the three Mesel-sonoviches.

Meselson is not the only one, of course. Ehrlich, confronted with his concoction that oysters in the water discharged by a nuclear plant "glow in the dark," did not apologize or retract. He had heard it somewhere in the East, proclaimed the Stanford biology professor with scientific precision, and it may have been exaggerated, but that didn't make any difference.

None of this would have been terribly disturbing some 25 years ago: the scientific community has never been without its quacks, cranks and operators. They used to be left by the wayside and were politely avoided by all who had already been buttonholed and forced to listen while their eyes glazed over.

Meselson's cover for the totalitarians was financed by the left-ist MacArthur Foundation, which lavishes funds on other ex-scientists (such as Ehrlich) and non-scientists (such as Lovins).

And here is the real tragedy: not even the scientific estab-lishment stood aside. As late as 16 February 1990, the American Association for the Advancement of Science honored Meselson with its "Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award," for ". . . disproving the claim that the Soviets employed biological weapons in Southeast Asia." To which the official newsletter of the American Physical Society (What's New, 2/17/90) com-mented "Despite the end of the Cold War, it is particularly ap-propriate to recognize those who maintained scientific objectivity in the face of official criticism."

Some time ago, a worthy and honest scientist who subscribes to this newsletter was dismayed by my reports of Meselson's schemes. "I worked with him personally and know that he is sin-cere," he wrote.

"Of course he is," I answered. "Did you think Stalin or Hitler were pretending?"