Re: Re[2]: Averill's Editorial

[Keith Welch <welch@CEBAF.GOV>]

At 10:32 AM 7/31/96 -0500, you wrote:
  
>This is political activism, not science.  It is my opinion that the health
>physics profession and the HPS should remain a professional, scientific
>society and not an activist group.  If organized health physics pursues this
>activist campaign without the support (and lead) of the radiobiology
>community, we risk our collective reputation.  Of course individuals have
>the same rights as any other citizen to help shape public policy.  But a
>word of caution may be in order:  If scientific judgement is affected by
>economic and regulatory concerns, we may share the fate of tobacco company
>toxicologists.
>
>This is probably unnecessary, but let me make it perfectly clear.  I am not
>suggesting that Glen Vickers, David Gooden, or any other person is being
>disingenuous.  Reasonable people have reached a scientific conclusion that
>the current model is flawed.  But many comments on radsafe say, essentially,
>"We're wasting money and the only way to fix it is to change the science."
>IMHO this is thin ice.
>
>Regards,
>Dave Scherer
>scherer@uiuc.edu


IMHO, the point is how the results of the science are communicated, not
changing the science.  I agree that the science should be as robust as
possible, but we are too afraid to communicate the results of the science to
the 'public' in a way that compromises the tiniest bit of technical
accuracy.  Yes, maybe the analogy in the original article left a little to
be disired, but we live in an age of sound bytes.  We can argue the details
amongst ourselves, but the communication to the public (sometimes
necessarilly political) needs to be short, sweet, and simple - or it will be
corrupted (as the LN-T model has).  Many folks have recently noted how LN-T
has been twisted into something it should not have been.  Whether we throw
this model away or not, we'll have to replace it with SOMETHING. How we
communicate our model to the world so that it is wisely implemented is the
important thing - not whether or not the model is completely irrefutable.
As usual all the above is MHO and is worth what you paid for it.
Keith Welch
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility
Newport News VA
welch@cebaf.gov