ARMS-D-Request@MIT-MC.ARPA (Moderator) (11/06/85)
Arms-Discussion Digest Tuesday, November 5, 1985 10:24PM
Volume 5, Issue 13
Today's Topics:
the Wall Street Journal and Scientific American
insulting 3rd parties
defense of silos
Alternative defense possibility, one compact MX field
half hour from detection to waking the President?
Re: ALCMs and B-52s
Re: insulting 3rd parties
Re: Defending ICBMs with SDI
insulting 3rd parties
insulting 3rd parties
insulting 3rd parties
Parnas and SDI
Meselson and the Wall Street Journal
Re: Arms-Discussion Digest V5 #10
insulting 3rd parties
Doublespeak: "Peaceshield"
SDI software, version 2.1, revision B
SDI software, version 2.1, revision B
insulting 3rd parties
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon 4 Nov 85 19:51:12-PST
From: Lynn Gazis <SAPPHO@SRI-NIC.ARPA>
Subject: the Wall Street Journal and Scientific American
There is another editorial on this topic in today's Wall Street
Journal, along with quotations from several studies about yellow
rain. Their original editorial did not go uncontested; I saw one
letter shortly afterward from a scientist who supported the bee feces
theory disagreeing with them, and they respond to some criticisms
of their editorial in today's editorial.
Lynn Gazis
------------------------------
Date: 5 Nov 85 00:50 EST (Tue)
From: _Bob <Carter@RUTGERS>
Subject: insulting 3rd parties
From: Bruce Nevin <bnevin at bbncch.ARPA>
Sorry, I can't see how letting someone know that I don't like what they
are doing inhibits free discussion. . .
Okay, here's how.
There is a logic to argument, if it is not to be a waste of time.
The parties start by probing each other's position, and then, by a
kind of negotiation, move toward agreement that there is one
proposition of fact they disagree about, and upon which each can
offer evidence to support his side. After the evidence is in, if the
disputants have been careful, and have been arguing in good faith,
one will eventually have to pronounce himself to have been wrong. If
not, they will find they in fact failed to join issue properly, or
that one is just too stubborn to play fair, and the exercise has just
been flaming after all.
You and King had agreed on the matter of fact in issue
(Beesh*t/Bacterial Toxins) and were in the evidentiary stage. You
cited the Scientific American piece to him in support of your version
of the proposition. He attacked the truth of your proffered
evidence, and cited contradictory evidence of his own (the Wall
Street Journal story) in support of that attack.
At that point, you could have offered some more evidence to
contradict the Journal or to corroborate the Scientific American
piece. Or, you could have decided that your article and his article
neutralized each other, and produced evidence from some other source
directed to your principal contention (Beesh*t). Or you could have
decided that he was just being pigheaded, or that you really didn't
have the issue isolated properly, and broken it off.
Instead of doing any of these, you chose (it seemed to me, anyway)
to duck the issue King had tendered. Today's letter gives another example.
On the other hand, if I fail to do so, and speak behind closed doors (as
we in effect are here), the discussion is gossip at best, blacklisting
or worse given other political contexts. Assuredly, the constitution
does not prohibit gossip, but there are serious ethical questions about
activities on the blacklisting end of that spectrum, and probably legal
ones as well.
Now, if you meant that instead of attacking your evidence, he has
some obligation to go fight it out in the letters column of the
Scientific American first, I think you're wrong. If that were a
true rule of discourse, you'd always win, and if one side always won,
free discussion would be impossible. That is what I meant yesterday.
But maybe I mistook your message. On rereading, I think you may be
saying that it was @i(bad manners) on King's part to produce evidence
that contradicted yours.
I am merely advocating civility . . .
I was paraphrasing one of the recommendations in `Toward and Ethics and
Etiquette for Electronic Mail', Rand Corporation document R-3283-NSF/RC,
available for the price of participating in an `electronic documentation
experiment' (answering a questionnaire) from RAND_DOCS@Rand-Unix.ARPA.
(I have no connection with Rand, past or present.)
Do you really believe that political discussion should be carried
on according to some RAND apparatchik's electronic Emily Post? I
don't think so, any more than I think you were trying to discredit
King's evidence by calling him a blacklister.
No, I think you wind up arguing from authority. It's true because
the Scientific American said it was so. When King asserts the
Scientific American is more Bullsh*t than Beesh*t, then he can't be
heard to say that because RAND tells us it is improper.
I don't think King is the one who is arguing unfairly here.
_B
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 85 01:14:39 PST
From: rimey@ernie.berkeley.edu (Ken Rimey)
Subject: defense of silos
> >From: Michael_Joseph_Edelman%Wayne-MTS%UMich-MTS.Mailnet@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA
>
> Robert Maas recently proposed that rather than protecting the
> entire US with an SDI-type defense, we protect only a small
> hardened MX site. I think that this was proposed as part of the
> MX "dense-pack" proposal. At any rate, it is certainly doesn't
> contravene the ABM treaty. It seemed like a very good idea ...
The ABM treaty limits you to a single 150 km radius site containing
no more than 100 interceptor missiles. This limit was established to
rule out a futile race of interceptor numbers versus attacking warheads.
The goal of complicating an attack on our ICBMs is a valid one, but it
was outweighed by other considerations a decade and a half ago. Has
anything really changed?
My answer is affirmative: Our ICBMs have become vulnerable to a Soviet
first strike. On reflection, though, I must note what a striking
breath of fresh air any mention of silo defense is in the context of
the present frightening and stupid raving about space-based total
defense. Maybe much of our interest in silo defense really stems from
wishing that everyone understood why it is not as dangerous as
space-based total defense.
An afterthought: This may be the worst possible time to consider
redeploying ground-based defenses, as such a move would look to the
Soviets like preparation for the deployment of a multi-layered
defense.
Ken Rimey
rimey@dali.berkeley.edu
------------------------------
Date: 1985 November 05 03:40:08 PST (=GMT-8hr)
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM@IMSSS.SU.EDU>
Subject:Alternative defense possibility, one compact MX field
| Date: Wed, 30 Oct 85 12:48:19 PST
| From: phil%dean@BERKELEY.EDU (Phil Lapsley)
| > Date: 1985 October 25 07:02:01 PST (=GMT-8hr)
| > From: Robert Elton Maas <REM@IMSSS.SU.EDU>
| > But like Ike or somebody said, a couple hundred H-bombs
| > should be sufficient deterrence to protect us. (and I add, providing
| > the warheads are single-per-silo/sub)
| But with deterrence, "sufficient" is in the mind of the enemy.
| That you or I think 200 H-bombs are enough does not imply that
| the Soviets believe that is enough. And should the Soviets
| decide that's not enough...
Deterrence depends on the enemy being intelligent and sane. If the
enemy is totally freaked out, mind turned off, nothing can protect us
from thermonuclear war. So our best hope is that we have sufficient
deterrence to be considered "enough" by many many intelligent minds
that have carefully considered the question. Of course if they have
30,000 warheads and we have only 200, an intelligent mind will be very
uneasy, imagining lots of scenerios whereby they use 20% of their
warheads in a pre-emptive attack and hold the rest as a deterrent to
any counterattack we may plan. What I mean above is that if we both
reduce our forces to 200, then if they cheat a little and have say 250
warheads our 200 will still be sufficient to deter them. On the other
hand if we agree to zero warheads, and they cheat by 50, we're dead.
200 warheads on each side should be enough both for ordinary "massive
harm to enemy" and as a safeguard against cheating.
| Which causes me to wonder about a different use of SDI. What do you
| think of this idea: Instead of protecting the entire U.S., we
| protect only a missile field containing, say, 100 MX missiles with
| 10 warhead MIRVs? We put these in superhardened silos, and put up a
| BMD around the perimeter.
Or 100 single-warhead son-of-MX missiles.
I think that's much more feasible than Reagan's "render H-bombs
obsolete" pipedream. But orbiting defense wouldn't work for that
because most of the orbiting objects would be in irrelevant locations
during any sudden attack. On the other hand, pop-up defense in
concentric rings around the field would work great.
| This would certainly not render nuclear weapons obsolete, or any
| other noble and far reaching goal similar to that. What it would
| do is provide the U.S. with a guarenteed second strike capability
| with ~ 1000 of our most accurate warheads. This would increase
| deterrence, much the same way that the SLBM fleet does now.
| But if the SLBM fleet becomes less of a deterrent though vulnerability,
| we will need some replacement.
I agree, plausable and maybe workable. Can we work up a
counterproposal to Reagan's pipedream?
| Some technical questions spring to mind, however: Is it any
| easier from a BMD point of view to defend a small area? It
| would seem to be so, but that would also imply that a more
| concentrated attack would be made on that small area. Therefore
| the density of incoming missiles / unit volume increases, and
| target selection would be made correspondingly more difficult.
With concentric rings the logic of multiple stages (tiers) of defense
would possibly work, and with pop-up systems partly automated but
ground-based and hence both having access to large computers and being
human-modifiable even during periods of intense EMP and plasma noise
that black out radio communication, the software task might be
feasible too. (And if a given station needs its software rebooted,
there's a human to decide to do it and to avoid getting into a
boot-boot-boot-boot loop that might happen with space-based
self-diagnosing software.)
------------------------------
Date: 1985 November 05 03:55:07 PST (=GMT-8hr)
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM@IMSSS.SU.EDU>
Subject:half hour from detection to waking the President?
| In response to the article asking about the level of false alerts
| at NORAD:
| Indications that a missile attack is underway are checked
| at three basic levels, each of which have a name, but these
| escape me at present:
| 1) Initially, the incoming signals are reviewed by the
| staff at NORAD, without any higher level involvement.
| This happens about 1000 times a year (yes, about 3 times
| a day, on the average) and most false alarms are checked
| here.
| 2) If level (1) cannot resolve the issue in time (10 minutes
| or so)
What about a submarine off the East Coast within 8 minutes flight time
from Washington DC?
| (i.e., the incoming whateveritis still looks like
| a missile and has no other explanation), a higher level
| conference is convened to consider the matter further.
| ...
| 3) If the previous levels fail to check the problem, the
| whateveritis is still on its way, the president is
| notified and he must make the appropriate decision. This
| has never happened. Yet.
But he's already dead from that SLBM. I hope there's some speedier
notification of the President in the case of East-Coast SLBM attack??
| It should be noted that this entire process, from initial
| detection to the president being forced to make a decision,
| would take less than half an hour.
I understand even a polar ICBM takes only 20 minutes from first
detection to impact, although total flight from launch is longer. Half
an hour sounds too long to wait unless our detection has improved to
where we have 40 minutes of warning instead of only 20. Does some
expert have the current detection-to-impact figures for polar ICBMs
and for SLBMs launched from various locations to various targets?
------------------------------
Date: 5 Nov 85 07:55:09 EST (Tuesday)
From: MJackson.Wbst@Xerox.ARPA
Subject: Re: ALCMs and B-52s
In V5 #12 Michael Joseph Edelman refers to the newly-deployed
airlaunched cruise missiles as being of lower accuracy than the US Titan
missile. From the context the implication is that the comparison is
with Titans launched from airborne platforms (as suggested by Henry
Spencer). This raises two questions:
1) My impression was that because of terrain-following radar the
cruise was of amazing accuracy. Not true, or is the Titan even
"better" for some reason?
2) Presumably because of this vaunted accuracy, the cruise has been
attacked by some groups as a "first-strike" weapon. This has
never made much sense to me, as it would appear that the long
flight time to most Soviet military targets, even from launch
points near the border, would enable verification of the attack
and launch-on-warning retaliation. True or false?
Mark
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 85 7:30:14 EST
From: Bruce Nevin <bnevin@bbncch.ARPA>
Subject: Re: insulting 3rd parties
Bob,
I mean you no harm, but your own false premisses do violence to your
logic.
At first I thought your contrafactual tale about an ongoing argument
between me and Dick King was just an illustrative example as you made
some didactic point about the nature of argument. As I finish and
reread your message, I am astonished to find that you apparently believe
that I introduced the Scientific American article as counterevidence to
Dick's position discrediting the beesh*t explanation of yellow rain.
my message about including SA in any discussion denigrating them was my
first posting to this list in several months. It contributed nothing to
the substance of the discussion about yellow rain, it addressed only the
process of that discussion. As such, it could be read as an expansion
on the comment by David Rogers (Arms-D 5.9), though in fact I had not
read that comment when I sent mine. His words:
The statement "I don't want to see SA quoted in a arms control
context" is unjustifiable (and intellectually unprofessional) in any
case. In fairness to the authors of independently generated articles,
you should judge each article on its own merit (unless you really feel
that the entire journal is biased, not just in the selection of topics,
but in editing out results that don't conform to its own beliefs).
I a face-off, I trust WSJ no more than SA, and without more information,
giving either the benefit of the doubt is just picking sides. This is
too important an issue to judge simply on whether I like SA or WSJ
better.
I agree with that. I believe my earlier message agreed with that, while
making more explicit what we mean by `unprofessional.' I believe that
ethics and mutual civility are part of being `professional'.
If you still believe that what I advocate would suppress free expression,
please explain how.
Slurs about `some RAND apparatchik's electronic Emily Post' don't cut
it. Ad hominem (or reverse ad vericundiam) arguments like this one have
been known to be invalid since Aristotle. They can sometimes make good
rhetoric, but they also can backfire, for example if you have not in
fact read the document in question.
Bruce Nevin
bn@bbncch.arpa
BBN Communications
33 Moulton Street
Cambridge, MA 02238
(617) 497-3992
------------------------------
Date: 5 Nov 85 09:09:09 EST (Tuesday)
From: MJackson.Wbst@Xerox.ARPA
Subject: Re: Defending ICBMs with SDI
In V5 #12 Michael Joseph Edelman supports Robert Maas' earlier
suggestion that an ABM system might be most useful, from a "protection
of deterrent" viewpoint, defending a small hardened site with multiple
launchers.
This certainly is the most plausible argument for ABM deployment I have
seen. However, it appears that much of the current push for SDI is
irrelevant to such a task, since one would hardly choose to defend such
a site by intercepting incoming ICBMs during the boost phase! (In fact,
in order to comply with the "one site" terms of the ABM treaty one would
be pretty much restricted to ground-based and pop-up point defense.)
Further, if one were contemplating such a scheme it is not at all clear
that an ABM system would be either necessary or cost-effective: even
the "deep deterrent" in which buried ICBMs burrow out for delayed
retaliation would seem a superior alternative.
All of this presumes, of course, that the current deterrent is
inadequate, a proposition I doubt.
By the way, I believe I heard this morning that Reagan told the Soviets
(through his interview with Tass) that SDI would not be deployed until
agreement had been reached on elimination of offensive missiles. In the
NASA jargon, which ant is steering this log?
Mark
(Apologies to Michael Edelman for not mailing to him directly. I tried
three different mailers and they all refused to accept
Michael_Joseph_Edelman%Wayne-MTS%UMich-MTS.Mailnet@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA
as a valid address.)
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 85 09:24:55 EST
From: Herb Lin <LIN@MIT-MC.ARPA>
Subject: insulting 3rd parties
I find this discussion about Scientific American quite astonishing.
Surely Carter can't be serious about "not citing Scientific American
in an arms control context". People cite anything they please to
support their arguments. Surely Nevin can't be serious about always
allowing rebuttals from affected parties before we can discuss what
they say. We can talk about any subject we want, including what some
individual has or has not said, and why he may or may not have said
it.
It seems to me that Arms-D is essentially organized debate (or a bull
session, if you prefer) about topics of interest to us; why should we
stop including material for whatever reason (short of things that
would get us in some kind of legal trouble)??
If someone is concerned about possible legal questions, please forward
them to me.
What's the big deal?
Herb
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 85 9:49:28 EST
From: Bruce Nevin <bnevin@bbncch.ARPA>
Subject: insulting 3rd parties
I agree it is pretty astounding. What it is turning out to be about
is people responding to what other people have not said.
I said it is not good practice to talk about people behind their backs.
This is not legislation about `always allowing rebuttals' and is
certainly open to debate. I welcome the debate, because behind my
suggestion is the intended implication that we should think about the
privileges and responsibilities of access to a network forum like this
one, and anticipate the potential social and political influence that it
has. I suggest now that if we don't think these issues through on a
relatively innocuous topic like beesh*t and bullsh*t and yellow-rain
journalism, they (the issues) will turn around and bite us one day,
and sooner than we think.
So far as I am aware, there are no legal issues involved. If SA
complains about slander it must complain to WSJ, not to Dick King for
quoting WSJ. This is a distinct issue from the question about the
appropriateness of Dick's request that participants in this forum never
cite SA on this forum (a friendly amendment to the actual request, which
took a stronger form).
Bruce Nevin
bn@bbncch.arpa
BBN Communications
33 Moulton Street
Cambridge, MA 02238
(617) 497-3992
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 85 09:40:36 pst
From: king@kestrel (Dick King)
Subject: insulting 3rd parties
Date: Fri, 1 Nov 85 10:12:52 EST
From: Bruce Nevin <bnevin@bbncch.ARPA>
It isn't good practice to criticize or insult 3rd parties without giving
them a chance to respond. ...
I think this principle of electronic mail ethics applies to your
comments on this list about Scientific American.
Now if your posting reported correspondence with the editors of SA in
which you pointed out why they should not have run the article, and in
which they responded `yes, we knew that, but we ran it anyway because it
sells magazines', or the equivalent--that we could take seriously.
It is true that I did no such thing THIS TIME.
If you will recall a previous posting, where I felt that they were
claiming that the SDI (commonly derisively called "Star Wars") was
physically impossible, I commented that one part of their claim, that
a ground-based laser with orbiting mirrors was unworkable because a
power supply that would produce a gigawatt for fifteen minutes was
infeasable, could be refuted by a collection of a million automobile
batteries (or a hundred thousand batteries of the type that Con Edison
Electric of New York maintains to run their Energy Control Center
during a blackout).
I sent them a letter with this comment -- NO RESPONSE.
I may have written (to ARMS-D) in haste. The structure of my attitude
is "SA claims that SDI is impossible because technical problems A, B,
C, and D can't be solved; I claim that problem A can be solved by a
direct extension of a technique that has been in use for tens of years
and is considered reliable enough to be used by power companies, and I
don't know enough about B, C and D to judge. A letter about A was
ignored."
I didn't bother writing a letter to anybody about the bees**t article.
I have better things to do with my time than to write letters that I
expect would be ignored.
It should be remembered that a gasmask of Russian make was picked up
in one of the Afgan war zones, contaminated by "bees**t". No mention
in the article. I suppose there are those that claim that the mask
was a complete fabrication by the US Government, but a reasonable
treatment of the bees**t hypothesis ought to have mentioned it.
A promulgator of a scientific hypothesis mentions contradictory
evidence. A proper referee at least challanges an author concerning
such evidence if he knows about it. No group of reasonably well-read
people can possibly fail to have heard of the gasmask. On this
evidence I claim SA WAS NOT DOING ITS JOB AS A REFEREE.
A more likely SA response in such correspondence would be `we found out
too late to change that issue, we plan a retraction'. The article
appeared the same month as the WSJ article. Given publication schedules
of magazines (something the WSJ reporter and editors surely know are
different from their own!), Meselson may have informed them too late to
withdraw or change the article.
Were this the case, and the editors of SA failed to use some of its
discretionary space budget to print at least a cautionary note, they
should be taken to task in public--not criticized behind their backs in
a discussion forum like this, that most of the public does not even
imagine exists.
The alledged bias of SA in terms of public policy matters has been
discussed in such public and semipublic media as the New York Times
Book Review and Technology Review. (Sorry, no citations.)
One could add a requirement that SA print a retraction of the erroneous
article. Does Nature do this? No, it is up to the authors or other
scientists to publish contradictory findings, and they are not even
obliged to do so in the same journal! Anyway, the place SA has suitable
for publishing retractions is the Letters column, and there is no letter
there from Meselson in the October or November issue. Now, if he sent
one but SA omitted publishing it, that would be a real issue. You could
write (US mail!) and ask him if you really want to make a case.
Optimistically, the fault may rest with Meselson for not notifying the
editors of the new results in time for them to remake the magazine; less
optimistically, for not notifying them at all. Or is the claim that the
editors should have known about the later results independently? Where
and when were these results published, that the editors should have
known about them before SA's publication `drop-dead date'?
I have not yet seen the WSJ article (the BBN library throws newspapers
out after 2 weeks, and not all public libraries keep back issues on
microfilm). I would be curious how it came about that a Harvard
biochemist came to issue his retraction of a scientific hypothesis (one
that has important political implications!) in a WSJ interview. I would
also like to see what sins of omission the editors of WSJ charged the
editors of SA with. Is Meselson claiming they made cuts he did not want
them to make or did not authorize, or is he covering his gluteus
maximus? Seems to me it is up to SA to protest the WSJ article, not
Meselson, since he comes out smelling like a rose.
I assume the facts in the WSJ article are accurate, given their track
record for factual accuracy whatever their bias in selection of facts to
report and in expressions of opinion about those facts--and given the
much faster turnaround time that a newspaper has for reportage, as
compared with a magazine. If it is not accurate, then BOTH Meselson and
SA are entitled to public protest.
The request was that no one on this list ever cite an article from SA in
an arms-control context. I don't think this request should be taken
seriously. I hope you agree that that was an ill-considered flame.
If you have a case against Scientific American, you need to make it in
more detail. And include them in the discussion!
I believe I stated that {\em I} would take no such citation seriously.
I may have said something like "I don't want to read ..."
I tried to include them (SA) in the discussion last time I felt
something similar had happened. It didn't "take".
Bruce Nevin
bn@bbncch.arpa
BBN Communications
33 Moulton Street
Cambridge, MA 02238
(617) 497-3992
-dick
PS: I apologize if I ruffled any feathers.
Yesterday (11/4) WSJ's lead article concerned this topic. I am no
less busy than the rest of you and haven't had a chance to read it
yet, but I want to alert you all before the trail gets cold.
------------------------------
Date: Tue 5 Nov 85 13:08:33-EST
From: The Terminal of Art Werschulz <WERSCHULZ@CS.COLUMBIA.EDU>
Subject: Parnas and SDI
See the most recent issue of the American Scientist for Parnas's remarks
on the infeasability of SDI from the view of a software engineer.
Art Werschulz
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 85 13:35:42 EST
From: Herb Lin <LIN@MIT-MC.ARPA>
Subject: Meselson and the Wall Street Journal
I spoke to Meselson today for about a half hour about the WSJ article.
He notes that a rebuttal letter from him to them was published on
10/02/85; people who cite articles should also cite rebuttal letters.
I have not seen the letter, but can report on what Meselson said to
me. On the issue of tricom.. toxins (I can't spell it), there are
three possibilities; the toxins are introduced by man, occur in
nature, or are falsely observed by the analysis that has been done.
Meselson believes that the natural hypothesis is not believable now.
The WSJ article reported this as implying that he supports the
man-caused introduction of toxins into the environment. He does not;
rather, he believe that there has been contamination in the samples,
causing the U of Minn researcher (mirocha) to get false readings. He
comes to this conclusion on the basis of the fact that there is zero
evidence that any toxins have been introduced by man. Specifically,
the transmitting agent cannot be a gas or an aerosol (the laws of
physics prevent that in the context provided) and so it must be a
droplet (also consistent with refugee reports). But EVERY sample that
has been analyzed has been bee feces. NO sample has been tested (with
the exception of Mirocha's) that has ANY toxic agent in it.
CS (A super-tear gas) has been found. But that stuff is riot control
material, not CBW.
Moral: Don't believe WSJ editorials!! (My two cents worth to the debate)
------------------------------
Date: 5 Nov 85 16:57:39 EST
From: JoSH <JoSH@RED.RUTGERS.EDU>
Subject: Re: Arms-Discussion Digest V5 #10
From: Bruce Nevin <bnevin@bbncch.ARPA>
It isn't good practice to criticize or insult 3rd parties without giving
them a chance to respond. ...
If one is putting someone on trial, this is a perfectly reasonable
guideline. However, in the case of Scientific American, what we
are doing is merely deciding whether the stuff they print is
useful to us in our discussion. I assume that there is little
chance that the number of SA subscriptions will change because
of discussions here; but even if it did, a customer has no
obligation whatever to consult a seller before taking his
business elsewhere.
[SA] should be taken to task in public--not criticized behind their backs
in a discussion forum like this, that most of the public does not even
imagine exists.
Wrong. You are trying to claim that no one can be criticized in an
unpublicized forum like this, because it would be "unfair". Which
would make the forum useless.
Optimistically, the fault may rest with Meselson for not notifying the
editors of the new results in time for them to remake the magazine; less
optimistically, for not notifying them at all.
There's plenty of blame to go around. I personally claim that the editors
look for articles like Meselson's, ie, articles with specific kinds of
political conclusions. And *because SA has been consistently printing
that kind of article for years*, authors know that they will find a
ready market in SA for that kind of political cant, no matter how slipshod
the science.
Scientific American presents an interesting dichotomy: the bulk of
the articles are still interesting, varied, and sound. But there is
a distinct substream of political articles, "research" done to support
positions, and of course the science in these articles is trash.
*Usually*, there is one such article per month, and it is the first
one.
I would be curious how it came about that a Harvard
biochemist came to issue his retraction of a scientific hypothesis (one
that has important political implications!) in a WSJ interview.
Here's my theory: Meselson did his research with the original intent
of discrediting the State Department's claims. He went to SEAsia,
looked for alternative explanations, and found them. He published,
not in a spirit of scientific inquiry, but of persuasion. We know
that he excised in his reports any evidence or suggestion that
his research was inconclusive, though it abounded. However,
he would not go so far as to lie outright to the WSJ reporter,
so his subterfuge was discovered.
The request was that no one on this list ever cite an article from SA in
an arms-control context. I don't think this request should be taken
seriously.
I, for one, second the request, and believe it should be taken very
seriously. SA has a long history of abuse of its pretensions to
scientific objectivity in just this area. You are as likely to
find truth in the National Inquirer.
--JoSH
------------------------------
Date: 5 Nov 85 17:09 EST (Tue)
From: _Bob <Carter@RUTGERS>
Subject: insulting 3rd parties
From: Bruce Nevin <bnevin at bbncch.ARPA>
you apparently believe
that I introduced the Scientific American article as counterevidence to
Dick's position discrediting the beesh*t explanation of yellow rain.
You've got me dead to rights. I don't have convenient access to the
archives and memory played me false. I attributed to you a position
in an argument you had never been party to. Note, however, that I am
not alone.
From: Herb Lin <Lin@MIT-MC>
I find this discussion about Scientific American quite astonishing.
Surely Carter can't be serious about "not citing Scientific American
in an arms control context".
Now, I never said that. Indeed, Lin goes on to state my position.
People cite anything they please to
support their arguments. Surely Nevin can't be serious about always
allowing rebuttals from affected parties before we can discuss what
they say. We can talk about any subject we want, including what some
individual has or has not said, and why he may or may not have said
it.
Perhaps I haven't got your contention in focus yet. Are you saying what
Lin said you did? Or are you saying the quite different thing that
you now quote Rogers for?
my message about including SA in any discussion denigrating them . . .
contributed nothing to
the substance of the discussion about yellow rain, it addressed only the
process of that discussion. As such, it could be read as an expansion
on the comment by David Rogers . . . His words:
The statement "I don't want to see SA quoted in a arms control
context" is unjustifiable (and intellectually unprofessional) in any
case. In fairness to the authors of independently generated articles,
you should judge each article on its own merit (unless you really feel
that the entire journal is biased, not just in the selection of topics,
but in editing out results that don't conform to its own beliefs).
I a face-off, I trust WSJ no more than SA, and without more
information,
I agree with that. I believe my earlier message agreed with that, while
making more explicit what we mean by `unprofessional.' I believe that
ethics and mutual civility are part of being `professional'.
I take Rogers to say that one should be precise; one should tell
whether it is the article that is in doubt or the whole journal; if
the journal, one should specify whether it is tendentious in
assignment only, or in editing as well.
If this is what you are saying, I agree with the position, although
I'm unhappy with terms in which it is put. I suppose that precision
in argument is "professional" in some vague sense, but it is another
thing to call its absence "unprofessional" in the same vaporous way.
It is fair to call Rogers, and those who associate themselves with
his view to adhere to it. What profession are you talking about?
What rule of conduct of that profession has been transgressed? What
is the content of the rule? Why do you clothe the common-sense
requirement of precision in the pompous garment of professional
ethics?
But, I suspect you go beyond Rogers, and take the position that I
thought you did, and which Lin has now attributed to you. What I've
heard so far is that electronic mail is *really* important; that
users should adhere to ethics and etiquette; that some RANDite wrote
a paper about the etiquette of electronic mail; that therefore we are
professionally obliged somehow to fight matters through with the
Scientific American before are allowed to say here that that magazine
errs.
If the RAND paper really does purport to deal with the proper terms
for political discourse, then the rule you cite it for really is
suppressive of free expression, in the way I've twice tried to
explain. If it doesn't, then it is just silly to cite it.
If this conversation were taking place on the telephone, would you
find some similar "professional" norm in the "ethics" of telephony?
Would it matter if someone at Bell had written a paper about
telephone etiquette? Would it matter if I hadn't read it?
By the way, I agree with you that it is proper and fruitful to
discuss the discussion process. And I don't find anything you say
"astonishing."
_B
------------------------------
Date: 5 Nov 1985 17:09:52-EST
From: faron!sidney@mitre-bedford.ARPA
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 85 09:27:26 est
From: Sidney Markowitz <faron!sidney>
Subject: Doublespeak: "Peaceshield"
Someone told me about this tv ad, and then the following message
describing it came over the net. My personal reaction is disgust --
how could I ever trust the credibility of people who distort the
issues to this degree to win over a naive populace? Anyway, meet the
new, improved SDI, not Star Wars, but Peaceshield:
[forwarded message from usenet net.politics, net.kids follows:]
From: douglas@bcsaic.UUCP (douglas schuler)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.kids
Subject: SDI for and by Kids!
Date: 30 Oct 85 15:49:22 GMT
NEW TV COMMERCIALS BY HIGH FRONTIER USE KIDS TO PLUG STAR WARS
Trying to counter the brief appearance of television commercials
opposing the SDI by the Union of Concerned Scientists, Danny Graham's
pro-SDI coalition, called The Coalition for the Strategic Defense
Initiative (includes the Moral Majority, Phyllis Schlafly, the Liberty
Lobby, Young Americans for Freedom, etc.) has produced a television
commercial that plugs the SDI. The commercial is scheduled to be seen
in twenty major media markets nationwide between October 28 and the
summit on November 19.
The commercial shows a child's crayon drawing of a house, car, trees
and stick figures over which a crayon shield is drawn. Appearing
suddenly are incoming Soviet missiles, which are destroyed by the
shield. The shield then turns into a rainbow. The frowning stick
figures in the picture start to smile.
The voice over is a little girl's voice that says, "I asked my daddy
what this Star Wars stuff is all about. He said that right now we
can't protect ourselves from nuclear weapons, and that's why the
president wants to build a peace shield. It would stop missiles in
outer space so they couldn't hit our house. Then nobody could win a
war...and if nobody could win a war, there's no reason to start one.
My daddy's smart. Support the peace shield."
--
** MY VIEWS MAY NOT BE IDENTICAL TO THOSE OF THE BOEING CORPORATION **
Doug Schuler
UUCP: {allegra,ihnp4,decvax}uw-beaver!uw-june!bcsaic!douglas
ARPA: uw-june!bcsaic!douglas@washington.arpa
[end of forwarded message]
------------------------------
Date: 5 Nov 1985 17:09:56-EST
From: faron!sidney@mitre-bedford.ARPA
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 85 09:30:17 est
From: Sidney Markowitz <faron!sidney>
Subject: SDI software, version 2.1, revision B
After the SDI debate at MIT last month, someone at my office brought
up a point that I have not heard addressed anywhere: The hardware
(weapons, sensors, platforms, satellites, whatever) is going to be put
in place over a period of many years, the system becoming
progressively operational. Presumably the software is going to have to
be complete from the beginning and adaptable to the 20 or however many
years of changing deployment, or else the question arises -- How are
we going to install Release 2 of the software? And if there is a way,
how do we keep the Soviets from installing release 3?
Sidney Markowitz <sidney@mitre-bedford.arpa>
------------------------------
Date: 5 Nov 1985 17:10:01-EST
From: faron!sidney@mitre-bedford.ARPA
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 85 09:32:33 est
From: Sidney Markowitz <faron!sidney>
Subject: SDI software, version 2.1, revision B
After the SDI debate at MIT last month, someone at my office brought
up a point that I have not heard addressed anywhere: The hardware
(weapons, sensors, platforms, satellites, whatever) is going to be put
in place over a period of many years, the system becoming
progressively operational. Presumably the software is going to have to
be complete from the beginning and adaptable to the 20 or however many
years of changing deployment, or else the question arises -- How are
we going to install Release 2 of the software? And if there is a way,
how do we keep the Soviets from installing release 3?
Sidney Markowitz <sidney@mitre-bedford.arpa>
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 85 22:22:35 EST
From: Herb Lin <LIN@MIT-MC.ARPA>
Subject: insulting 3rd parties
I find this discussion about Scientific American quite astonishing.
Surely Carter can't be serious about "not citing Scientific American
in an arms control context".
Now, I never said that. Indeed, Lin goes on to state my position.
People cite anything they please to
support their arguments.
Ooops. My memory betrayed me. *Someone* said it; my comments are
directed toward that person.
------------------------------
End of Arms-Discussion Digest
*****************************