Friday, 23 September 1988

1. THE NATIONAL SCIENCE BOARD IS UNDER-STRENGTH
and likely to remain that way until after the inauguration. The NSB, which oversees the National Science Foundation, is composed of 24 members, appointed by the President for staggered 6-year terms. Eight terms expired in May, as they do every two years. Baker, Hosler and Schmitt were re-nominated, while Nierenberg and Rasmussen have been neither re-nominated nor replaced. Three new members were nominated: Daniel Drucker, Arden Bement and Allan Bromley. Of the six, only two, Baker and Drucker, have been confirmed by the Senate, which is traditionally reluctant to consider presidential appointments in the waning weeks of an administration.

2. ROBERT O. HUNTER, JR. WAS CONFIRMED AS DIRECTOR OF ENERGY RESEARCH at DOE,
however, with only four months to go. He was first nominated to replace Al Trivelpiece in June of 1987 (WN 26 Jun 87), but the 100th Congress took no action and he was re-nominated by Reagan this May (WN 3 Jun 88). Hunter was previously president of Western Research, a San Diego defense contractor doing "black research," and served on the White House Science Council from 82 to 84. Hunter has a PhD from the University of California, Irvine. Why, you may ask, would anyone wait more than a year for a job with apparently so little future?

3. "THE NATIONAL COMMISSION ON HUMAN RESOURCES ACT,"
introduced by Senator Claiborne Pell (D-RI) is intended to facilitate the attainment of "full potential in body, mind and spirit," so that we might "live in harmony within a transformed family, community, nation and universe." The commission would have a "scientific advisory panel to assist the evaluation of technologies and procedures...to develop fuller human potential" and would include 2 people with experience in "extraordinary human performance research." We are not talking about the Olympics. Pell's aide, Scott Jones, a retired Army officer, spends full-time promoting research into ESP, channeling, etc. Pell himself met with Erich Bloch some time ago to urge changes in the NSF's review of psi proposals. The complaint was that such proposals were being sent to physicists for review rather than to other psi researchers. In a related effort, the Parapsychological Association, led by D. I. Radin, has recently attacked a National Academy of Sciences' study, "Enhancing Human Performance," conducted at the request of the Army Research Council (WN 3 Dec 87). Radin complains that the report issued last December would "influence people who would be interested in funding psi research." In fact, the Academy report seems to suffer from an excess of caution. After concluding that it could find "... no justification from research conducted over 130 years for the existence [of psi phenomenon]," the report goes on to recommend that the Army continue to "monitor" psi research. Something may happen yet!



Bob Park can be reached via email at whatsnew@bobpark.org
THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
Opinions are the author's and are not necessarily shared by the University, but they should be.