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Re: The Health Physics Profession
At the risk of overdoing this, please allow me one more comment.
When Jimmy Carter was President, he claimed to be a nuclear engineer. To
verify this, I checked his college catalog, and found that they did not have a
nuclear engineering department. To resolve this, I wrote him a letter,
saying: "Dear Mr. President: With all due respect, how can you claim to be a
nuclear engineer, if your school doesn't even have such a department?" The
response I received was, "I've done a lot of work around reactors." My
response to that was, "I guess, then, that I'm a gynecologist."
The above story isn't true, but I hope that it illustrates what I'm trying to
say. There's a big difference between being able to perform some health
physics related tasks, and being a professional health physicist. Perhaps,
not every RSO position requires a professional health physicist.
The opinions expressed are strictly mine.
Here's to a risk free world, and other fantasies.
Bill Lipton
liptonw@detroitedison.com
Your comments make some very broad generalizations......
Exactly how many unqualified HP's have you observed working currently
in the field?
You bring up the old point which was soundly beaten a couple of
months ago in which this topic was discussed. The conclusion of the
debate was that certification or lack thereof neither made a person more
competent nor less competent.
With all due respect for the Health Physics Society and the
certification process, there are many HP jobs that can be performed
superbly with a BS or MS in Health Physics and some work
experience.