Weighing the Evidence

The U.S. public was treated to another confusing round of the Great Nuclear Debate last week. Robert Pollard, a safety engineer with the Federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, resigned from his post, protesting that poorly designed safeguards at the Indian Point nuclear power plants in Buchanan, N.Y., made them "an accident waiting to happen." He was immediately challenged by Charles Luce, chairman of Consolidated Edison, which built the plants. Backed by company and some Government scientists, Luce pointed out that the plant had been operating for twelve years without harming the public. A catastrophic accident at Indian Point, he said, was as remote as the possibility of a meteor striking a large city.*

Public Verdict. Who is right in the nuclear debate? Or in the arguments over aerosol sprays and supersonic aircraft and their effects on the ozone layer? Or in the controversy surrounding food additives and cancer? Too often those who must ultimately decide these issues are likely to be swayed by rhetoric rather than by scientific fact because there is no easy way to sort out the facts in arguments between scientists. Physicist Arthur Kantrowitz, 62, thinks that he has a solution to the dilemma. Kantrowitz, head of Avco Everett Research Laboratory in Everett, Mass., and one of the key engineers in the U.S. space program, would like to use the techniques of the courtroom to establish scientific fact. His idea: a court that would hear both sides in a scientific argument and render a public verdict on where the weight of evidence lies.

The idea of an adversary fact-finding process for science is not a new one. Congress, regulatory agencies and scientific organizations such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Sciences have long made it a practice to take testimony from both sides in any scientific public policy dispute. But Kantrowitz's court would do more than hold hearings. It would conduct a trial to determine facts.

As Kantrowitz sees it, when two sides disagreed on a scientific public policy question, the opponents would be asked to appear before a specially constituted panel composed of distinguished scientists from fields other than the one under dispute. Advocates, who would also be publicly supported when necessary, would present their arguments to the panel and would actually cross-examine each other. The panelists would then examine the arguments and publish their judgment on the facts.

Kantrowitz's court would not resolve such social questions as how much risk the public is willing to accept from nuclear power plants, or how much jet aircraft noise it is willing to endure. These issues, Kantrowitz says, will always be determined on more personal or political grounds. But he believes such a court could prevent the misuse of science in deciding such issues. "Those voting on an issue will at least not be able to claim a scientific reason for their choice," he contends. "They'll have to explain it as a value judgment."

At the very least, Kantrowitz feels that formal "trials" with evidence from experiments could help refine scientists' understanding of the issues under debate. But even if the court proceedings should succeed in swinging most scientists to one side of an issue, public reaction might not necessarily follow suit. Says AAAS Science Editor Dr. Philip Abelson: "You could put a bunch of scientists in white robes and they could wrestle with an issue and make a solemn judgment of truth. And a lot of people would still think the devil is lurking out there in the Bermuda Triangle."

* Scientists have calculated that a large meteorite might hit some U.S. city only once every 160,000 years.

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