RE: journalists' ethics

["Potter, Charles" <capotte@sandia.gov>]

I was here (Albuquerque) during the initial publication of the articles.  In
addition to Dr. Kathryn, others who are no longer among us to defend
themselves, Wright Langham for instance, were abused by this "journalist."
Around this time, Keith Schaiger gave a seminar at Sandia discussing how
informed consent has changed over time, and that the "victims" of the
"plutonium experiments" were treated properly for the time.  It's amazing
how much support in the press you can get by judging past acts with 1990s
morality.

Maybe I'll write something denouncing the Roman Empire for abusing people
:-)

Gus

You step in the stream,
but the water has moved on.
The page is not here.
-- A computer error message in Haiku form

C. A. Gus Potter
Sandia National Laboratories
Albuquerque, New Mexico
(505) 844-2750
capotte@sandia.gov 

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Stabin [mailto:stabin@npd.ufpe.br]
Sent: January 06, 2000 4:24 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: journalists' ethics


Ron K wrote:

> Apparently journalists and scientists
> have very different ethical and legal standards applicable to them.

If "extremely toxic journalists" (remember, we are to use this as a single
word now) have ethical standards, I am not able to perceive them.  Is the
bottom line only "absence of malice"?  It seems to be considerably lower
than that at times (how low can YOU go?).  Quite seriously, is anyone aware
of an actual code of ethics that even theoretically apply to journalistic
behavior, similar for example to the CHP code?  It would be interesting to
quote chapter and verse at times in these situations of intentional
misquoting, creating of a public nuisance, etc.

Oak Ridge Associated Universities participated in whole body irradiations of
terminal cancer patients some years back.  During the Clinton-O' Leary
openness initiatives, Leslie Stahl and colleagues of 60 minutes did just a
lovely job crucifying a physician from Oak Ridge, one of the kindest, most
honest and hardworking physicians I have ever met, painting her as akin to a
Nazi war criminal, nuking helpless children in an attempt to help NASA get
experimental data to see how much radiation astronauts could tolerate.  This
is perhaps the farthest thing from the truth that I could imagine - the
thing is I don't think they believed it, either, it just made good TV so
they ran it.



Michael Stabin, PhD, CHP
Departamento de Energia Nuclear/UFPE
Av. Prof. Luiz Freire, 1000 - Cidade Universitaria
CEP 50740 - 540
Recife - PE
Brazil
Phone 55-81-271-8251 or 8252 or 8253
Fax  55-81-271-8250
E-mail stabin@npd.ufpe.br

"Quantum Mechanics: The dreams stuff is made of"
- Steven Wright


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