REFLECTION

...He suggests as an alternative more vigorous lay involvement in scientific research, an involvement which would heighten citizens' ability to evaluate information presented to them as "scientific...

...If there were ever a time which seemed ripe for the development of a movement for citizen science, that time is now, when all across the country individuals and such groups as Citizens Against Nuclear Power have embarked on efforts to understand radiation and nuclear power and render credible the alternatives, including solar and wind power...

...It is always dangerous to use the courts to suppress publication of anything...

...To those who believe that non-scientists are not able to grasp what scientists are up to, he responds, "Citizens are quite capable of meeting scientists on equal terms regarding the values embodied in scientific work...

...The ad, they said in their detailed and documented complaint, "contains representations of purported facts which are unverifiable, dangerously misleading and outright false...

...Would Kimberly and countless others die before their time...

...When he was running for office...

...And while human bodies have become accustomed over the millennia to certain elements in certain amounts in certain contexts, the sudden alteration of amounts, degrees, or combinations may be more than the body can bear...

...The answer, predictably, was no...

...But the issue they raised is important: What to do about corporate pseudo-science...

...It is appropriate that the physical basis for our high-technology culture— cheap and abundant energy—should become the fulcrum for prying open the closed doors to the sanctum of science...

...President Reagan used the same line on ozone: Trees caused it, didn't they...

...Physicians have been saying for years that too much exposure to sun is linked with cancer...

...hence gutting the Clean Air Act, as he planned to do, would not hurt a thing...

...The difficulty is sizable enough to induce some analysts of modern life to question whether any semblance of democracy can survive in a high-technology age...

...REFLECTIONS Carol Polsgrove CITIZEN SCIENCE n an advertising campaign earlier this year, Commonwealth Edison—proprietor of seven nuclear power units in the Chicago area—introduced readers to Kimberly Michelle Mayberry, who lived with her mother only "a holler away" from the towers of the Three Mile Island power plant...

...Further," they continued, "the ad distorts by utilizing language which denotes a specific meaning to the technically trained, but connotes another to the general public...

...But other thinkers, scientists among them, say that need not be the case...

...What seems more likely is increasing dominance by technological elites who create and define the world for the rest of us...

...the ad writers asked...

...Examples abound...

...In a recent unpublished paper, Brian Martin, a mathematician at the Australian National University, analyzes the way scientific research is used in the service of corporate or government goals—"to justify decisions made mainly on political or economic grounds...

...In New Mexico, producer of half the nation's uranium, uranium companies are fond of telling the public that radiation is "natural"—sunlight, after all, is just full of it...

...What is natural is obviously not always harmless...

...That, to put it bluntly, is a lie, as the Chicago Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Citizens Against Nuclear Power contended in a legal petition to enjoin further publication of the ad...

...After a dexterous bit of pseudo-science, Com Ed concluded that the results of "long-term, scientifically sound studies" on the effects of low-level radiation are all the same: no excess leukemia or other cancers, no genetic damage...

...But even the most sensible citizens untrained in science may have difficulty evaluating more complex "facts" and "figures," such as those Com Ed flourished in its advertisement on Three Mile Island...

...Their request for an injunction was not granted, fortunately...

...Instead of scientific knowledge being c mysterious and alien object seen as neutra and authoritative, people would realize tha: scientific knowledge always reflects the values of the people who create and use it...

...It does not take much in the way of scientific expertise to figure that out...

...Common sense usually triumphs over such nonsense...

...Monsanto ran a major ad campaign on the theme, "Without chemicals life itself would be impossible...

...So it must be natural...