The Big Secret in the Academy Is That Most Research Is Secret

December 5, 2023

The dangerous rift between open and classified research. #

By Kate Brown

In 1987, a year after the Chernobyl accident, the US Health Physics Society met in Columbia, Maryland. Health physicists are scientists who are responsible for radiological protection at nuclear power plants, nuclear weapons plants, and hospitals. They are called on in cases of nuclear accidents. The conference’s keynote speaker came from the Department of Energy (DOE); the title of his talk drew on a sports analogy: “Radiation: The Offense and the Defense.” Switching metaphors to geopolitics, the speaker announced to the hall of nuclear professionals that his talk amounted to “the party line.” The biggest threat to nuclear industries, he told the gathered professionals, was not more disasters like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island but lawsuits. After the address, lawyers from the Department of Justice (DOJ) met in break-out groups with the health physicists to prepare them to serve as “expert witnesses” against claimants suing the US government for alleged health problems due to exposure from radio­activity issued in the production and testing of nuclear weapons during the Cold War. That’s right: the DOE and the DOJ were preparing private citizens to defend the US government and its corporate contractors as they ostensi­bly served as “objective” scientific experts in US courts.