POLITICIANS and scientists are a bit like oil and water. If you shake them
hard enough, they鈥檒l get together for a while, but basically they don鈥檛 mix.
This was recently illustrated by the debate over an elusive medical problem
known as Gulf War syndrome. Approximately 700 000 US troops served in operations
Desert Storm and Desert Shield against Iraq. Approximately 7 per cent became
sick after they came home. Some symptoms were mild鈥攏othing worse than a
bad head cold. Others were debilitating, including memory loss and severe muscle
pain. Legislators, egged on by veterans鈥� groups, demanded research into the
problem.
So expert panels met, reviewed all available evidence, and declared they
could find no specific cause for the mixed bag of symptoms. There were several
candidates鈥攕ome thought it might be pesticides, others suggested
unrecorded leaks of nerve gas鈥攂ut none qualified as the proverbial gun. At
the same time, since no one, least of all scientists, likes to make absolute
pronouncements, the panels hedged. More research is needed, they said, before
we鈥檒l know all we need to know about Gulf War syndrome.
Politicians, however, don鈥檛 need the same level of proof. Gulf War syndrome
is a real disease, they insisted, and they clamoured for disability payments for
Gulf veterans who exhibited so much as a runny nose. Failure to do this, the
politicians claimed, would be a betrayal of those loyal Americans who put their
lives on the line for their country. And besides, the politicians said, look at
recent revelations that thousands of troops may have been exposed to chemical
weapons when an arms bunker was blown up after the war.
Advertisement
New expert panels will be evaluating this latest claim, but it doesn鈥檛 matter
what they conclude. The political reality is that facts may change, but opinions
stay the same.
ALL federal agencies like good publicity: favourable press coverage tends to
make legislators loosen up the purse strings at budget time.
Some agencies are better placed to attract it than others. NASA has the best
track record鈥� except when something explodes, and then there鈥檚 a lot of
finger pointing. Next is probably the National Institutes of Health, as
everybody likes to hear about cures for diseases, or should we say 鈥減ossible
肠耻谤别蝉鈥�.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, known to its friends
as NOAA, would like good publicity as much as the next agency. But for the most
part, if it wasn鈥檛 for bad news like hurricanes or tsunamis, NOAA would
have no luck at all in getting into the newspapers or on TV. Buried inside the
Department of Commerce by a bureaucratic accident, NOAA can do little to promote
its occasionally estimable scientific efforts.
Sometimes, however, the media gods smile, and the sun shines even on lowly
NOAA. Earlier this month, the agency held a press conference describing studies
of the Loihi volcano twenty miles south of Hawaii. One wall of this underwater
volcano had collapsed. No one was hurt, no tsunamis were generated, and while
the Loihi will eventually spit up enough material to create a new Hawaiian
island, that won鈥檛 happen for at least 50 000 years. That didn鈥檛 stop The
Washington Post from running a front-page story on NOAA鈥檚 expedition, or
The New York Times from putting it on the front page of its influential
鈥淪cience Times鈥�. You can鈥檛 buy publicity like that. For NOAA, it鈥檚 almost a
dream come true. Too bad budget talks are months off.
HERE鈥橲 a recipe for lots of wasted time and money. Take an aviation disaster,
namely the explosion of TWA Flight 800 on 17 July, which was probably caused by
a bomb. Add a White House commission on aviation security. Then stir in some
scientists from the nuclear weapons laboratories, in search of a new mission.
The result was a recommendation, soon to be codified into government policy:
鈥淯sing models developed by the Sandia National Laboratory, periodic
vulnerability assessments of the nation鈥檚 commercial airports should be
肠辞苍诲耻肠迟别诲.鈥�
A quick inquiry revealed that the Sandia National Laboratory developed these
computerised 鈥渕odels鈥� to analyse security weaknesses at the nuclear weapons
facilities, where the goal is to keep most people out. Of course, the goal of
most airports is to bring the maximum number of people in. That in itself
doesn鈥檛 prove the models are useless, but there is another odd fact. The folk at
Sandia have already tried once to apply their beloved models to a commercial
airport. They installed a lot of inconvenient and expensive equipment (revolving
doors that let people only move one way, for instance) that the airport ripped
out as soon as Sandia鈥檚 experts had left.
The whole exercise cost more than $10 million. Now, just for fun,
let鈥檚 look at the sum the commission chaired by Vice-President Al Gore suggests
setting aside for doing this at all 450 commercial airports in the US.
$5.5 million. Hmmmm.