Re: "Anti-Nukes"

["ruth_weiner" <ruth_weiner@email.msn.com>]

1.  We haven't "lost a whole generation."  There are quite a number of young
nuclear scientists and nuclear science students.  Science may not have the
panache it once had for the public, but, as I recall, we "science nerds"
were always in the minority numerically in high school and college, and not
a very big minority at that.

2.  "Believe in one's cause" or "believing what one preaches" is an easy
cop-out.  Another way of saying this is that if it is comforting to be
irrational, many people will be.  Moreover, belief doesn't change reality: a
trivial example is that vaccination also protects people who don't believe
it protects them.  All the belief in the world is not going to make 10
mrem/year a significant radiation dose.  If one is a good scientist, one
questions one's convictions regularly, if not constantly.  A rational
thinker will recognize the value of data, experiment, testing hypotheses,
etc.  "trust" has nothing to do with it.  And, for good measure, I don't
trust most of the DOE and nuclear-energy bashers (I dare not say
"anti-nukes" after Pam's broadside).  When I was Congressional Science
Fellow, I learned to neither believe nor trust most of what the
environmental lobbyists and anti-nuclear lobbyists said, and I learned this
the hard way.

3.  I compare the questions Norm asks with the questions my students ask
(and many of the students I had over the years would characterize themselves
as being opposed to using atomic energy to generate nuclear power).
However, they asked real questions and they were able to distinguish when
they got an answer (or, most often, when they had themselves figured out an
answer).  No one ever, as I recall, asked about natural v. anthropogenic
radionuclides  -- it just never came up, and we talked plenty about
strontium 90, bone seekers, etc.

4.  Disagreement is not intolerance, not is pointing out an incorrect
statement. I too think the "Tooth fairy project" is stupid, and there's been
plenty of stuff on this listserve to back up that opinion.  If saying that
makes me intolerant, why then I am intolerant, I guess.

and yes, I judge science fairs.

Thanks for your patience.

Ruth Weiner
ruth_weiner@msn.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Sandy Perle <sandyfl@earthlink.net>
To: Multiple recipients of list <radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu>
Date: Sunday, August 13, 2000 5:51 PM
Subject: Re: "Anti-Nukes"


>Eduardo,
>
>Thanks for jumping from the "lurkers" to the "posters" column. You
>ask many good questions. There are the obvious answers.
>
>(1) The first question you ask has to do with expanding our
>message, even to the groups such as TFP. Let me say that
>whatever dialogue that you see here on Radsafe, is being watched
>by these various groups. I know sine I have had correspondence
>from many of them.
>




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