The three major components of the Stockpile Stewardship Program (SSP) at the Department of Energy are all seriously over budget and seriously behind schedule, according to a report issued today by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS).

The paper, The Stockpile Stewardship Program: Fifteen Years On, reviews the status of the experimental devices that support the SSP, describes how each experiment is supposed to work, and identifies the problems that have been encountered. SSP was developed because of concerns that over time a nuclear weapon’s reliability could decline.

“All of the expensive SSP experiments were initiated because of the cessation of nuclear testing, with the expectation that they would be essential to maintaining the nuclear stockpile,” said Ivan Oelrich, vice president of strategic security at the Federation of American Scientists. “We understand nuclear weapons much better now than we did when we were testing. It is time to reevaluate which of these expensive experiments we still need. The DOE is even proposing to move away from stockpile stewardship to a reliable, replacement warhead, which could avoid the need for the SSP experiments altogether.”

How essential is it for these megaprojects to continue?

The SSP supports three projects: the National Ignition Facility (NIF) to use laser beams to compress a hydrogen target to densities and pressures where fusion would occur; the Dual-Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test (DARHT) Facility uses x-rays to follow the shape of sections of plutonium when they are compressed as they would be in the primary; and the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI)—renamed Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) — to build supercomputers and associated software to use the information from other experiments to model nuclear warheads and predict their behavior.

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) should have been finished four years ago and was originally budgeted at just over one billion dollars. Now its first experiments are expected to occur in 2010 to a cost of more than another billion dollars to complete – greater than the original estimates of total cost.

“Based on unclassified sources, it appears that the connection between NIF and the current SSP is at best indirect,” said Oelrich. “We believe that NIF could be ended without reducing the confidence in the existing nuclear stockpile.”

Being able to model a nuclear weapon on a computer is one of the critical substitutes for nuclear testing. Although the Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) program has already made important contributions to understanding the behavior of nuclear weapons, it too has been plagued with problems. It is not at all clear when the ASC program will be “done.” Construction on some computers was started but never completed while some computers suffered from low reliability because of their complexity. In many cases, Herculean hardware developments were not matched by development of software that could fully exploit the capabilities of these new machines. Even successes were short lived – the world’s fastest computer today will be overtaken by some rival within months.

All of the SSP experiments, but NIF in particular, are promoted as a means to attract top new scientific talent to DOE and the SSP. Universities and industry are now at the cutting edge of scientific and technical advance. Even if NIF did contribute to this goal to some degree, it is far from being the most efficient means of applying those billions of dollars. Those funds could go directly to support university research of interest to DOE or to create smaller but scientifically more interesting experiments within the labs.

“Even without NIF, the United States can maintain its existing nuclear weapons without a return to testing,” said Oelrich.

Meeting Explores How to Disarm the Terrorists

WASHINGTON DC – Shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, which cost as little as $500 and fit in a duffle bag, are of the greatest threats to military and commercial aviation. The U.S. government struggles to protect its helicopters and the $500 billion airline industry – serviced daily by 1.8 million Americans – from terrorists armed with these deadly weapons.

On 8 March 2007, members of the Organization of American States (OAS) will determine “Effective Strategies to Mitigate the Threat Posed by the use of Man-portable Air Defense Systems (MANPADS) by non-State Actors.” Although precise numbers are difficult to obtain, it is believed that 500,000 MANPADS are in existence in the world today, thousands of them illegally.

This day-long meeting, organized by the Committee on Hemispheric Security, will explore the threat posed by MANPADS. Matthew Schroeder, Manager of the Arms Sales Monitoring Project at the Federation of American Scientists, will discuss effective national strategies to mitigate the MANPADS threat with a presentation on “The MANPADS Threat – A Civil Society Perspective.”

Other speakers include representatives from the International Civil Aviation Organization, United Kingdom Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

The meeting includes a demonstration on how MANPADS work by technical experts from the U.S. Department of Defense. The exhibit will be available for viewing before, during, and after the OAS meeting from 9:00am to 6:00pm. Experts will be available for questions and answers concerning the display, which will be located on the side of the OAS Main Headquarters Building on C Street, N.W.

The meeting will be held in the main building of the OAS on 17 Street and Constitution Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20006, in the Permanent Council Room (Simon Bolivar Room) from 9:00 am to 5:30 p.m.

Study recommends fix to digital disconnect in US education and workforce training

Features of video and computer games teach skills in demand by present-day employers

Groundbreaking recommendations calling on government, educators, and business’ to develop comprehensive strategies to use video games to strengthen U.S. education and workforce training will be released at a press briefing today, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) and Entertainment Software Association (ESA) announced.

The action plan identifies steps that the federal government, industry and education community can take to develop a comprehensive strategy to take advantage of the features of video games to address the increasing demand for high quality education and training, and commercialize educational games to help students and workers attain globally competitive skills in demand by employers.

“Many recent reports warning about declining U.S. competitiveness point to an urgent need to improve workforce skills and our system of education,” said Henry Kelly, FAS President. “Video games are engaging and can teach higher order skills, and they are especially attractive to today’s young digital natives who have grown up with digital technology. This plan outlines concrete actions we can take to put powerful tools for teaching and learning in the hands of educators and students at a time when the need for education improvement is great.”

America’s position in the world is increasingly dependent on its standing in the technological field. Summit participants agreed that features of video and computer games can make learning more effective and accessible by teaching players higher-order learning skills such as strategic thinking, interpretative analysis, problem solving, plan formulation and execution, and adaptation to rapid change – all skills very much in demand from present day employers.

“These findings communicate what we in the video game industry have known for years – that video games can make a significant contribution to educating our kids, enriching learning, and to preparing the workforce required for the high tech digital economy of today and tomorrow,” said Doug Lowenstein, president of the ESA, the trade group representing U.S. computer and video games. “Video games are more than just great entertainment, they’re having a positive impact on kids and adults alike in fields from education to health care, from the military to the workplace. We are grateful to the Federation of American Scientists for conducting this important study and look forward to working with them to implement the recommendations.”

The US spends about $700 billion on elementary through post-secondary education, and billions more on workforce training. Yet little is spent on R&D to improve the productivity and effectiveness of learning, and despite the potential of educational games, the digital technology has not been adopted by mainstream education or training industries. FAS calls for government research dollars to stimulate the experiments and developments needed to make breakthroughs in educational games and simulations, and to support meaningful evaluations of their efficacy.

The action plan is based on deliberations from the National Summit on Educational Games held on 25 October 2005 in Washington, D.C. The Summit brought together more than 100 experts to examine how to harness the power of video games for learning. Participants included executives from the video gaming industry and educational software publishers, researchers and experts on technology and pedagogy, game developers, representatives of user communities such as teachers and the U.S. military, R&D funders, and government policy makers. The Summit was sponsored by FAS, ESA, and the National Science Foundation. The report is believed to be the first time that U.S. business, education and government policy leaders have endorsed a comprehensive plan to address the future of American education and training.

New game prototype released at Games for Health conference

WASHINGTON DC – The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) will present the newest prototype of its educational game Immune Attack on Friday, 29 September 2006, at 10:00 a.m. at “The Body is a Game,”part of the Games for Health Conference at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore.

Immune Attack is a new generation video game that engages students and teaches complex biology and immunology topics in a manner different from the traditional classroom approach. The goal is to immerse the student in immunology concepts to make learning fun and exciting.

“Immunology is a complicated and difficult subject to learn, which is precisely why it makes such an interesting basis for a video game,” said Eitan Glinert, FAS Project Coordinator of Immune Attack. “The challenges in Immune Attack give those who might not otherwise be interested in biology the chance to learn in a fun, hands-on manner they won’t find in a text book.”

Human body tissue structures serve as the playing field in this first person strategy game where immune cells face off against bacterial and viral infections. A teenaged prodigy with a unique immunodeficiency must teach his immune system how to function properly, or die trying. Using a nanobot and aided by a helpful professor, the teenager explores biologically accurate and visually detailed settings in pursuit of this goal.

“The video game experience is a wonderful complement to the learning that happens in the classroom. The game allowed students to use sights, sounds, and touch to get better acquainted with the immune system. Students also interacted with each other, having problem-solving discussions to enhance their game-play, and ultimately learning of the subject,” said Angelique Bosse, a teacher at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, MD.

Each subsequent level of Immune Attack features a different infection with a new type of immune cell for the player to train. The player zooms among red blood cells, squeezes through blood vessel walls, and scans and interacts with various objects to train his immune system to fight off the invading pathogens.

“Clearly, computer games hold special interest to a generation who has grown up with them, and as such, they show promise as educational tools. Our educational games program is undertaking research to better understand what features of games can be used to improve learning and to develop guidelines based on that research,” said Kay Howell, Vice President of Information Technologies at FAS.

As video games have become a common part of society, FAS is looking for ways to produce complex games that provide an environment for learning about history, problem-solving, and managing systems. Games and 3-D interactive simulations will one day revolutionize education and how people learn. FAS educational games help students and workers learn globally competitive skills in demand by employers.

“Games increase motivation, but it is not entirely clear why. For example, games typically include competition – either against a human opponent or a computer-generated one. They are often story-based, feature strong characters, and typically ‘keep score.’ The research challenge is to determine how these features contribute to learning,” said Howell.

Immune Attack is an educational video game jointly developed by FAS, Brown University and the University of Southern California.

Games for Health is a project produced by The Serious Games Initiative, a Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars effort that applies cutting edge games and game technologies to a range of public and private policy, leadership, and management issues. The Initiative founded Games for Health to develop a community and best practices platform for the numerous games being built for health care applications.

WHAT Your Body is a Game

WHEN Friday, 29 September 2006 at 10:00 a.m. EDT

WHERE Games for Health, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD

Getting America Really Ready

The Federation of American Scientists launched ReallyReady.org, a comprehensive emergency preparedness website developed in nine weeks by FAS intern Emily Hesaltine. Modeled after the Department of Homeland Security’s Ready.gov, ReallyReady.org addresses the inaccuracies and incomplete information on the DHS site.

ReallyReady.org launches just after recent updates to Ready.gov that changed the site’s look and feel, but did little to improve the information contained within. The Department of Homeland Security took more than five months and millions of dollars to create a website that was redeveloped in nine weeks by a 20 year-old college sophomore for the price of a domain name.

ReallyReady.org includes clear and accurate information to help individuals, families, businesses, and individuals with disabilities prepare for and respond to a variety of threats. A thorough analysis of Ready.gov is also available on the site.

“I know it isn’t good to laugh about such a serious topic, but when I saw the graphic on Ready.gov suggesting that when a nuclear bomb goes off a hundred feet away you might want to protect yourself by walking around the corner, I just couldn’t help myself,” said Ivan Oelrich, Vice President of Strategic Security at FAS. “After three years and millions of dollars, taxpayers should expect a better website from the Department of Homeland Security.”

The appropriate reaction to a nuclear attack is to hide from the light and heat of the blast, then walk perpendicular to the wind away from the dust cloud. Accurate information like this, not available on Ready.gov, can be found on ReallyReady.org.

Modifications were also made to repetitive, lengthy, and generic Ready.gov material to make it easier to use and remember.

A section was added to help Americans with disabilities prepare for and respond to emergencies. The section, developed in collaboration with the National Organization on Disability’s Emergency Preparedness Initiative, is titled “ReallyReady Disabilities” and answers questions like how to create a support network to help you in an emergency and how to develop an evacuation plan.

“The Department of Homeland Security has declared September National Preparedness Month. It would be shameful if they could not get Ready.gov into shape before then,” said Michael Stebbins, Director of Biology Policy at FAS. “It took an intern two months to make ReallyReady.org, DHS should be able to make a useful site in less than a month.”

For accurate information about emergency preparedness and to see what is wrong with Ready.gov, visit ReallyReady.org at www.reallyready.org.

Timothy E. Wirth, president of the United Nations Foundation and Better World Fund, will focus on the two challenges threatening the future of U.S. energy policy on Friday, April 8, at the 2005 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers (AAG).
According to Wirth, energy is the linchpin of America’s economic future. The energy debate must resolve U.S. reliance on oil from the Persian Gulf and issues arising from global climate change.

Set for 5 – 9 April in Denver, Colorado, the AAG Annual Meeting offers a technical program for scientists, educators and policymakers. The meeting will draw some 5,000 geographers and related scientists from around the world.

“The Bush administration and its republican allies in Congress have sought to pass measures that would allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and amend the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, and Clean Water Act,” said John A. Wertman, director of Public Policy at AAG. “Until this year, these efforts had been rebuffed by Senate moderates, but in recent weeks the Senate passed a budget measure that would allow the ANWR drilling for the first time. This extremely close vote could foretell significant movement on energy policy in the coming months.”

Energy legislation has been a major focus in Washington during the last few years. The challenges facing U.S. energy policy can be turned into opportunities for economic growth and job creation if America leads the way on technological innovation.

REPORTER NOTE: Specific details from scientific presentations and lectures scheduled to take place at the AAG Annual Meeting will remain strictly embargoed, meaning they cannot be published, broadcast, posted online or otherwise made public until the event.

This news release contains only general, publicly available information about this year’s program, and is therefore appropriate for immediate release.

For program information, please visit the meeting page.

REGISTRATION INFORMATION: To register for the AAG Annual Meeting Newsroom, please email your name, media affiliation, address, email address and phone number to aagmeeting@maacomm.com. Or visit the AAG Newsroom Headquarters onsite, located on the Plaza/Concourse Level of the Adam’s Mark Hotel.

The Association of American Geographers (AAG) is a scientific and educational society founded in 1904. For 100 years the AAG has contributed to the advancement of geography. Its members from 62 countries share interests in the theory, methods, and practice of geography, which they cultivate through the AAG’s Annual Meeting, two scholarly journals (Annals of the Association of American Geographers and The Professional Geographer), and the monthly AAG Newsletter. Since its founding, the AAG’s dedicated people, strong intellectual base, and vision have helped to serve the professional needs of geographers and to advance geography. For the latest news, log on the association website at www.aag.org.

New Partnerships Are Needed in Search for AIDS Vaccine, Experts Say

Confronted by new spending constraints, new collaborations involving government, industry and academia are needed to make the best use of available resources in the search for an AIDS vaccine, experts said this week at the AAAS Annual Meeting.

After years of substantial increases, the budget at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is expected to increase by less than 2 percent in the 2006 budget proposed this month by the White House. Funding for HIV/AIDS vaccine research and development may fare somewhat better, said Anthony S. Fauci M.D., director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Speaking to reporters at a AAAS news briefing Monday in Washington, D.C., the AIDS experts said they face continuing challenges in the production of clinical grade vaccines, expansion of clinical trials in wealthy and developing countries and strengthening public-private collaborations. Collaboration between the private and public sectors to meet the scientific challenges of developing a safe and effective AIDS vaccine is crucial to controlling the spread of the HIV virus globally, they said.

“The movement towards a viable AIDS vaccine needs to be a truly global effort. This isn’t a sprint, but a marathon,” said Seth Berkley, president and founder of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative.

“We are being appropriately told that we need to examine our entire research portfolio and also to look at cooperation and collaboration with industry in a way that can get the most bang for the buck,” added Fauci, who is one of the world’s leading authorities on HIV/AIDS.

According to Fauci, agencies and private companies are working together to avoid unnecessary overlap and duplicative efforts to ensure the most efficient and cost effective research and development of the vaccine.

Observations from human and animal studies suggest that a useful HIV vaccine is possible. Numerous vaccine strategies are in various stages of preclinical development designed to optimize cell-mediated immunity—which would not prevent HIV infection, but would deter the progression of the disease.

Cellular immunity, or cell-mediated immunity, is an immune response (chiefly against viral or fungal invasions or transplanted tissue) that involves T lymphocyte cells eliminating HIV-infected cells. An individual would have to be contract the HIV virus first in order for the vaccine to destroy the infected cells.

Berkley believes that the race to develop an effective vaccine has reached a fork in the road. If researchers are successful with the path of cell-mediated immunity, then there are currently several vaccine candidates already in development. However, if an effective treatment requires the induction of neutralizing antibodies, then creating a successful vaccine will be a longer process.

Cell-mediated immunity is important to prevent the progression of a virus, but antibodies are tailor-made to block the virus from ever infecting the cell,” said Fauci. “I doubt very seriously whether we’ll have a successful vaccine candidate that will prevent infection until we’re able to induce neutralizing antibodies along with cellular immune responses.”

Berkley agreed. “The vaccine will probably require neutralizing antibodies to protect against infection,” he said. “Ideally, we want a vaccine that incorporates both.”

The research and development of an AIDS vaccine remains a top priority for the NIH. Fauci said that last year $600-700 million was invested on AIDS vaccine research worldwide—of which the vast majority of the resources were paid by the United States ($520 million from the NIH and $62 million from the U.S. Department of Defense).

According to the Joint United Nations Programme on AIDS (UNAIDS) approximately 39 million people are living with HIV, and an estimated 4.9 million people were newly infected with HIV in 2004 alone.

The ideal HIV vaccine would be inexpensive, easy to store and administer and would elicit strong, appropriate immune responses with long-lasting protection against HIV infection by exposure to infected blood and by sexual contact. The vaccine would also protect against exposure to many different strains of HIV.

— Monica Amarelo

Pathologists Say TV Forensics Creates Unrealistic Expectations

To watch the popular television show “CSI,” you’d think forensic science was nearly infallible. A forensic pathologist extracts blood from a shirt, tests the DNA and matches the evidence to a suspect tracked with information provided by a hi-speed computer identity search—all in a “CSI” minute.

But for working pathologists, that’s a significant problem. At the AAAS Annual Meeting Sunday in Washington D.C., some said they’re seeing crime victims and jurors who have TV-fueled misconceptions of what evidence needs to be tested and how real-life investigations ought to be conducted.

“Common misperceptions include the idea that scientific testing is infallible and fast, and that the results alone can solve crimes,” said Max M. Houck, director of the Forensic Science Initiative of the West Virginia University. “Prosecutors tend to fear the ‘CSI Effect’ on juries because the public has unrealistic expectations of what evidence needs to be tested.”

Forensic, or physical, evidence usually includes DNA, fingerprints, matching bullets to a murder weapon, imprints of a suspect’s shoes or any other samples that can tie a suspect to a crime scene.

Forensic science describes the science of associating people, places, and things involved in criminal activities; these scientific disciplines assist in investigating and adjudicating criminal and civil cases. The term describes scientists whose work answers questions for the courts through reports and testimony.

But forensic testing is expensive and not always cost-effective. Crime labs are backlogged—especially with requests for DNA analyses—which means it could take days, if not weeks, for pathologists to sift through the evidence.

Patricia McFeeley, a forensic pathologist at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, explained that the survivors are often dissatisfied with the investigation into the death of a loved one, demanding more forensic evidence.

“The perception is that the medical examiner isn’t doing all the things they see on TV. They expect toxicology results to be instantaneous, instead of taking months, which is the reality,” McFeeley said. “They want everything to be tested at a crime scene when it is not warranted by the facts or by the fiscal realities of the lab.”

Houck agreed. “People see science as a juggernaut of infallible evidence because of the increased popularity of television shows like ‘CSI’,” he said. “Television shows teach the public about forensic procedure and tests, but not when to apply them.”

Forensics laboratories are feeling the pressure. Labs are overburdened and analysts struggle to meet the challenge, often expected to do much more than they are capable of doing. Additional funding is absolutely necessary to increase the efficiency of labs and to handle the growing amount of requests coming in, according to Houck.

“In this country,” he said, “more money is spent on holistic medicine than on forensic science research.”

Jane Servais, a search and rescue K-9 handler for the mid-Atlantic region, and her Australian shepherd Glory understand realistic expectations.

“The use of cadaver search dogs in crime scenes has drastically increased. The level of training has also stepped up in order to pinpoint tiny amounts of human decomposition,” said Servais.

Servais and Glory have responded to more than 300 search missions involving lost persons, victims of foul play, and victims of drowning—including a 12-day detail to the Pentagon in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 terror attack.

— Monica Amarelo

Saliva tests detect disease, cavities and drug use

Researchers at the 2005 AAAS Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C, said today that a saliva-based diagnostic is evolving to test for bacteria, viruses, illegal drug use, steroids, antibodies, DNA and RNA, potentially reducing the need for blood and urine testing.

“Saliva is a reflection of our body, our circulation and our blood,” Dr. David Wong of the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Jonsson Cancer Center, told reporters at a AAAS news briefing.

Saliva testing can be effective because it contains many of the same proteins that blood and urine do, the researchers said. New research shows these molecules can reveal the presence of diseases like cancer, and can be used to predict the number of cavities in a person’s teeth.

While some saliva tests are already in use for alcohol and HIV tests, new technology has overcome barriers to build a new generation of precise portable saliva-testing devices that reconfigure tests normally done with blood and urine.

Dr. David Wong of the University of California-Los Angeles Jonsson Cancer Center and School of Dentistry is leading an effort to decipher the set of proteins, or “proteome,” present in saliva.

“If we could index all the proteins in saliva into a catalog for healthy people, then we could compare it with the salivary proteome of the diabetic population, for example,” Wong said.

He estimated that it will take about two years to complete the saliva roadmap and then researchers can begin to look for signatures to detect diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and other diseases.

“There are a dozen companies that make the oral fluid test for HIV worldwide, but only one has been approved in the U.S.,” said Daniel Malamud, a professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the School of Dental Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

Malamud revealed a prototype oral swab kit that detects HIV and Bacillus cereus, a bacterium closely related to B. anthracis. He believes the device will lead to a palm-sized kit which could detect exposure to a variety of substances, from narcotics to steroids to common bacteria and viruses. The miniaturized lab will permit saliva screening on the go.

“Scientists have already developed a means of analyzing oral fluid samples for blood alcohol, HIV antibodies and steroid hormones using a swab test,” said Malamud. “The next step is to develop a method to detect and identify DNA, bacteria or viruses.”

Malamud stressed the importance of technology that can be used right in the doctor’s office. For example, doctors often put children with respiratory infections on antibiotics until they get their test results. If a diagnosis from a saliva test were available right away, it could prevent unnecessary use of antibiotics, which can lead to bacterial resistance.

Paul Denny, a researcher from the University of Southern California and Proactive Oral Solutions, dreams of generating a battery of wellness tests to monitor “when the body is doing things right, and not just when things go wrong.”

Oral fluid testing also can determine how vulnerable the patient is to cavities. Denny’s research found a relationship between saliva proteins and caries, or tooth decay, which suggests this simple saliva test can predict whether children will develop cavities, how many cavities they will develop and even which teeth are most vulnerable.

“Everyday there is a new mystery that is unraveled, giving us a better idea of how to refine tolerances so we have a long, healthy lifestyle,” said Denny. “With children, it becomes a prescription for prevention. Test results will forecast the caries history of baby teeth in children. The test will predict what the future oral health care needs of that child may be.”

The saliva test’s ability to pinpoint the vulnerability of specific teeth can reduce the cost and increase the effectiveness of a prevention plan. This test has important public health implications in areas where families cannot afford routine dental exams.

“This is an exciting time for molecular diagnostics,” said Wong. “Saliva tests can provide early detection of oral cancer. Early detection of other diseases is another question, but results are promising and we are hopeful that is the next step.”

There is a national agenda by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research[link: http://www.nidcr.nih.gov] to bring saliva diagnostics to fruition. There are 10 groups funded by the institute to bring saliva diagnostics into the forefront.

Saliva testing is already being used in the workplace, for drug testing, said Edward Cone, president and CEO of ConeChem Research LLC.

“Urine testing is the standard of industry,” Cone said. “Oral fluid testing is as accurate as the urine test, and is easily accessible, not embarrassing for the employee and non-invasive.”

Cone explained that saliva testing for drug abuse is a growing trend in the workplace. According to Cone, the United States Department of Health and Human Services is currently developing guidelines for introducing oral fluid testing as a component of government screening.

The Whitman Walker Clinic in Washington, D.C., uses strictly oral testing for HIV. The oral fluid test is also being used in veterinary fields to check doping of animals, like horses. And after the Exxon Valdez oil freighter accident that caused an ecological disaster on the Alaskan coastline, salivary tests have become routine for tug boat captains.

— Monica Amarelo

AAAS Lectures Explore Science and Religion in Science Fiction

Capt. Jean-Luc Picard stood beside a window on the Starship Enterprise and watched a spaceship approach his vessel from the side. There was trouble—perhaps an intergalactic battle. Lasers fired and, outside, the foreign ship exploded in pyrotechnics with a deafening boom.

Lawrence M. Krauss, an acclaimed physicist and chairman of the department of physics at Case Western Reserve University, paused the video clip taken from an episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and asked: “What’s wrong with this picture?”

Absolutely everything, he told the audience at a recent AAAS lecture. Light and sound don’t travel through space at the same speed. The explosion and the roar of the detonation wouldn’t occur simultaneously as it does in the movies and on television. “But,” Krauss said, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry “knew that without sound, he would never get syndication.”

It was telling point during a pair of provocative talks on 2 December that explored the overlap and conflicts between science, religion and science fiction. In the second lecture, paleoanthropologist and novelist Mary Doria Russell contemplated how the earth’s religions might be affected by the discovery of life on another planet. [Because Russell was ill, her lecture was read by Connie Bertka, director of AAAS's Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Religion, whose program organized the event.]

Science fiction can help people to see beyond conventional wisdom and explore the possibilities of the universe, the lecturers suggested, while religion can help people explore the meaning of the universe and the source of its creation. But, Krauss said, both fields can also have the effect of blurring the definition of science or undermining it.

Krauss is the Ambrose Swasey Professor of Physics, Professor of Astronomy and chair of the Physics Department at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He is an internationally known theoretical physicist with wide research interests, including the interface between elementary particle physics and cosmology, where his studies include the early universe, the nature of dark matter and general relativity. He is the author of six popular books, including the national bestseller, “The Physics of Star Trek,” and his most recent book “Atom: An Odyssey from the Big Bang to Life on Earth…and Beyond.” He has won several major science awards, including the AAAS Award for the Public Understanding of Science and Technology in 2000.

Science fiction concepts like warp drive, time travel and worm holes sound far-fetched, to put it mildly, but they have some scientific underpinning and, arguably, are not necessarily impossible. But extra-sensory perception, UFOs that defy the laws of physics and telekinesis—using mind power to move inanimate objects—all appear to violate key experimental facts about the universe, and thus have no scientific basis, Krauss said.

The far-fetched and the nonsensical come together in shows like “The X-Files,” which projects both a firm belief in the paranormal and a thorough mistrust of science. That might be entertainment, he said, but when there’s pervasive public confusion about scientific facts and the role of science, then scientists ought to be worried.

For example, the 2001 National Science Foundation Survey on Science Literacy, 53 percent of American adults were unaware that the last dinosaur died before the first human arose; only 50 percent of adults knew that the Earth orbits the sun and takes a year to do it. And a CBS/New York Times poll last month found that 55 percent of Americans believe that God created humans in their current form, an apparent rejection of the science of evolution.

The ethos of science is based on honesty, open-mindedness, creativity, equality and full-disclosure, Krauss said. And, he added, “scientists need to understand the limits of science and the value of worthwhile scholarship in other fields.”

But at the same time, there “are theologies that are just wrong,” he argued. “And many are mutually inconsistent….The fact that theology is wrong does not mean that God doesn’t exist. Believing in God and evolution is not mutually exclusive.”

Krauss added that scientists should not be worried about offending religious sensibilities when those sensibilities are based on claims about the universe that are manifestly wrong. Moreover, he said that while there was no connection between science and religion, he claimed there is a natural tension between them because, as physicist and Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg has said, science doesn’t make it impossible to believe in God, but it makes it possible to not believe in God.

Finally, he argued that programs supporting research in areas such as “fine tuning,” with an aim to building a connection between science and religion, are ultimately disingenuous because they are designed to suggest that there is some divine purpose to our existence, which grossly distorts what the science actually implies.

Mary Doria Russell first was attracted to anthropology as a high school student in the 1960s. After a successful career in academe and as a technical writer, she was inspired by commemorations of the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ voyage to North America to write a short story about the discovery of life on another planet. But her ideas bloomed into an acclaimed pair of novels, “The Sparrow” (1996) and “Children of God” (1998), in which Russell employed the well-worn “first contact” genre of science fiction to explore deep spiritual, theological and human questions.

The central questions: What happens to our notions of God when life is discovered on another planet? And what happens to the beings on that planet when we discover them?

Russell was reared as a Roman Catholic; as an adult, she converted to Judaism. While religions ranging from Mormon to Buddhism would not be threatened by ET, she wrote in her lecture, some Christian churches might experience a profound theological vulnerability.

“The discovery of just a single bacterium somewhere beyond Earth will be as revolutionary as finding out that the Earth wasn’t even the center of the solar system, let alone the center of God’s universe,” she wrote. “For Christians in particular, finding extraterrestrial life will demand as much rethinking of religion as the Age of Discovery, when Europeans found out there were whole continents not mentioned in the Bible.”

The key conflict for some Christians would come with their belief that Jesus Christ is the only human incarnation of God. Russell cited prize-winning physicist Paul Davies, author of “The Mind of God,” who says that that Christian theologians fall into two camps. “Some posit multiple incarnations and even multiple crucifixions,” she explained, “or as a prominent Anglican minister put it, ‘God taking on little green flesh to save little green men.’”

But in the view of many Catholics and other Christians, she said, “the idea of multiple incarnations can only be heresy. Jesus is God’s only begotten son—period. No little green Jesuses can fit into this world view.”

Russell’s own belief allows for broader and more flexible possibilities. “As an anthropologist, I would say that the idea of God gives human beings gives us a way of imagining things that we cannot observe with our senses or deduce with our logic,” she wrote. “The idea of God gives us a way to think about things that are too large, too complex, too beautiful, too horrifying to be encompassed by a single human mind or a single human soul.

“In my experience, there is majesty to be found in the beauties and ethics of religion, in the symphonies of Beethoven, and in scientific formulations of Darwin and Einstein. To choose one kind of majesty, forsaking all others, is to impoverish yourself voluntarily.”

[Read a full transcript of a AAAS interview with Mary Doria Russell here.

— Monica Amarelo