Re: Reaching APASE and people like them

["Bjorn Cedervall" <bcradsafers@hotmail.com>]

>What were the qualification s of her teachers? In my decades of >teaching I 
>saw, believe me, lots of crummy students and  fair amount of >crummy 
>science teaching.

I got my university training in math, physics and chemistry and other 
subjects at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. It was four 
years of compact studies - you can't study more chemistry in Sweden unless 
you go for a PhD. Now, one of my classmates, who passed the same tests as I 
did, Walter J. Moore's physical chemistry, the Alonso Finn's series in 
physics (or equivalent) and other good books, appeared around 1986-87 in 
some newspapers as "mothers against nuclear". The texts were suggestive like 
"radioactivity day and night, radioactivity to air and water, radioactivity 
to future generations,...".

By a rare chance I saw three copies of one of these articles in three 
totally different local newspapers - and went to the main library to look at 
the issue further. I found the same article published in 18 different 
newspapers throughout Sweden (and I was successful in responding in all 18 
of them - telling about the publishing approach - pretending to be "a poor 
vulnerable mother not understanding anything" (rather than explaining Bq 
etc) - after that I never saw her name in this business again). But I ask - 
how on earth can a person write such garbage when she has a background which 
includes three courses of high level calculus & differential eqs., lots of 
physics etc? So the bottom line is that good professors & books etc is no 
guarantee... not even passing tests...

My personal reflections,

Bjorn Cedervall    bcradsafers@hotmail.com


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