Turnabout

Late last month Secretary of Commerce Sinclair Weeks took a wide sweep with his new broom and dismissed Dr. Allen V.

Astin, 48, head of Commerce's highly regarded National Bureau of Standards. Weeks intimated that the bureau had been unfriendly to small business. As a specific case in point, he charged that the bureau had not been "sufficiently objective" in testing a lead-storage-battery additive called AD-X2.

AD-X2 is supposed to prolong the life of batteries. The bureau had tested it three times, ruled it worthless three times.

Bureau in Oakland, Calif, (where AD-X2 is produced) reported that tests showed that the additive would do everything its manufacturers claimed. And Weeks had a test of his own to report: "The company with which I was formerly associated [United-Carr Fastener Corp., Cambridge, Mass.] used AD-X2, and it worked."

Scientists, always at their touchiest when their motives are impugned, began to seethe. Dr. Astin, a quiet, lanky Ph.D. in physics from New York University, has been with the Bureau of Standards since 1932, was one of the principal developers of the proximity fuse in World War II. Editorialized Science, the publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science: "The independence of the scientist has been challenged ... A gross injustice has been done . . . Scientific work in the Government has been placed in jeopardy." Then the Senate Small Business Committee, headed by Minnesota's Republican Senator Ed Thye, announced that it would conduct a full-scale investigation. At the Bureau of Standards itself, 400 staffers let it be known that they were planning to resign if Dr. Astin left.

Last week, less than twelve hours before Dr. Astin's firing was to become effective, "Sinny" Weeks changed his mind, and his headlong approach to the problem in the Bureau of Standards. He had decided, he announced, that Dr. Astin should stay on for two or three months, while a committee from the National Academy of Sciences studies both the bureau and the AD-X2 case and makes a report. Added Weeks, in a hasty turnabout: "At no time has there been any intent ... to cast reflection upon the integrity of the bureau or the professional competence or integrity of Dr. Astin . . . Such differences as I have had with Dr. Astin result from a conflict with respect to administrative viewpoint and procedure ..."

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