WHAT'S NEW, Friday, 24 March 1989 Washington, DC
1.
THE CONFIDENTIALITY OF JOURNAL REFEREES IS NOW PROTECTED
by a
landmark decision involving the American Physical Society. The
defendant in a patent infringement suit, Arco Solar, Inc., sought
to compel the APS to disclose the identity of a Physical Review
Letters referee, arguing that the referee might have given the
manuscript to the inventor, rendering the patent unenforceable.
Last week, however, the United States Court of Appeals affirmed a
lower court ruling that Arco's position was merely speculative
and that the APS had persuasively established the need for
confidentiality. The case was argued for the APS by attorney
Richard A. Meserve, who is himself a PhD physicist from Stanford.
2
. CLAIMS OF "COLD FUSION" EMPHASIZE THE NEED FOR REFEREES.
The
remarkable report by the University of Utah that researchers had
achieved deuterium fusion in an electrolysis cell was initially
provided to the Financial Times of London and the Wall Street
Journal. From what little is known, the claim seems to be that
deuterium ions from heavy water diffuse into the lattice of a
palladium cathode at sufficient concentration to fuse. Palladium
is well known for its ability to take up large quantities of
hydrogen. Indeed, solid-state storage of deuterium in metals
such as titanium and scandium is standard practice in nuclear
weapons, where dihydrides and even trihydrides do not result in
fusion. Whatever the technical merits of the Utah claim,
however, serious questions of scientific accountability will
certainly be raised. The press statement is devoid of any
details that might enable other scientists to judge the strength
of the evidence. A technical report will not appear in the
scientific literature until May, according to the statement.
3. A STATEMENT BY THE NSF ON OPENNESS OF SCIENTIFIC COMMUNICATION
is under preparation by a special task force. It was undertaken
in response to the report of a National Science Board Committee
headed by Frank Rhodes (WN 9 Dec 88). The Rhodes report calls on
universities to design policies that "preserve the prime function
of the university as a creator and transmitter of knowledge...."
4. FROM WHOM ARE SECRETS BEING KEPT? DATA ON SOVIET NUCLEAR TESTS
will not be made public at the insistence of the United States.
An agreement reached at the Moscow Summit last spring called for
joint tests of the CORRTEX system for measuring yields. CORRTEX
consists of a coaxial cable buried in a parallel shaft near the
hole for the nuclear device. Since the compressibility of the
medium is drastically altered by the blast, the rate at which the
cable is crushed by the shock wave is a measure of the yield. The
technique is only applicable to relatively large yields and is
useless for detecting clandestine tests. But the US claims it is
superior to seismic verification and has insisted on it as the
basis of any new verification agreement. Critics suspect that
the tests do not support the Administration's claims for CORRTEX.
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