Individual Involved with Cassini Press and Science Reporting

[Mike Grissom <mikeg@SLAC.Stanford.EDU>]

Radsafers,

In the below item from Dr. Raabe, the individual Michio Kaku was
intimately involved.  Dr. Kaku was on PBS last night in the SF
area on the PBS production (funded in part by the National
Science Foundation) "Mysteries of the Universe" segment of the
Odysseys of Science 5-part series (part 2).

He was in the segment on Einstein, but was also in the segment
on nuclear.  It is interesting to note that the only nuclear
segment was the development of the bomb.  It was, in my view,
a purely negative view of that part of Science with no mitigating
statement or even significant reference to power production or
tracer technology.

There was also a segment on particle accelerators, where Kaku
again seemed to be a resource for this program.  Although
that section was much more interesting in its scope, there could
have been more time given to Weinberg or Lederman...

This was an excellent opportunity to examine the benefits of
radiation for society but which was effectively absent from the
presentation (and only superficially alluded to in part 1 which
was on medicine and biotechnology).

Still, this series is well worth the time compared to most other
media presentations on television!

Ciao,

MikeG.

>From: "Otto G. Raabe" <ograabe@ucdavis.edu>
>Subject: Re: Cassini Press Conference
>
>...
>plutonium. One of the outspoken critics of NASA is a New York
>Physics Professor, Michio Kaku, whose special area of research
>interest has been Einstein's equations. He has no background in
>toxicology, health physics, risk analysis, or any related field.
>He is telling the press that any accident involving Cassini will
>probably involve major loss of life, widespread cancer induction,
>and considerable property damage. He predicts the end of NASA and
>U.S. space research if there is an accident.
>
>...