Friday, 28 August 98 Washington, DC

1. SCIENCE EDUCATION: CALIFORNIA STANDARDS NEED MAJOR REVISION.
The American Physical Society, in concert with other scientific societies, is proposing substantial changes to recently drafted California Science Content Standards. The proposal calls for the appointment of a "Scientists' Standards Panel" that would include among others, Bruce Alberts, President of the National Academy, Donald Kennedy, former president of Stanford and APS president Andrew Sessler to oversee the revision process. The draft, which was intended to set high standards for the state and serve as a model for the rest of the country, evolved instead into a list of facts to be absorbed rather than concepts to be understood. A compromise between the two points of view seemed to be in the works, but the balance was tipped when venerable Nobel laureate Glenn Seaborg was picked to chair the committee that set the guidelines. The press played the issue as a no-brainer last winter: California had fallen behind in science education, and a group of Nobel scientists, including Seaborg, was offering to create new science content standards -- for free. There were, in fact, Nobel laureates on both sides of the issue.

2. OBITUARY: FREDERICK REINES, DISCOVERER OF THE NEUTRINO.
Reines, 80, died Wednesday after a long battle with Parkinson's disease. He was already ill in 1995 when he shared the Nobel Prize with Martin Perl, correcting a long oversight. Reines' discovery of the neutrino with Clyde Cowan in 1956, at the Savannah River facility, provided the direction for the standard model. He described the search for the neutrino as "listening for a gnat's whisper in a hurricane." "He heard," the Los Angeles Times said today, "and altered the view of the universe."

3. WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION: U.S. ACCUSED OF CAVING IN.
Scott Ritter, the longest serving American weapons inspector in Iraq, resigned this week to protest the U.S. failure to press ahead with inspections that were "on the doorstep" of uncovering Iraq's secret weapons programs. The U.S. has pressured the inspection team to refrain from surprise inspections. The charge comes at a time when the ability of U.S. intelligence to identify threats is being questioned. First it was the nuclear tests in India (WN 15 May 98), then the Rumsfeld report (WN 17 Jul 98) and now the apparent retreat from the absolute CIA assurances that the plant destroyed in Sudan was producing chemical warfare agents. The CIA claims are reminiscent of the insistence that the Soviets were using biological weapons in Southeast Asia. In spite of CIA assurances, yellow rain was in fact bee feces (WN 16 Feb 90). The Joint Chiefs of Staff, meanwhile, rejected the conclusion of the Rumsfeld report that rogue nations could develop ballistic missile technologies undetected by American intelligence. They noted that rogue nations already pose a threat of weapons of mass destruction delivered by "terrorist-style delivery means."



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.