CHICAGO -- There is an "abysmal" level of scientific knowledge in Congress and at large in the political sphere of Washington, a longtime Capitol Hill staffer said Monday (see GSN, Feb. 3).
(Feb. 18) -
Scientific installations, like this one on the South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha, play a key role in detecting nuclear tests (CTBTO photo).
At best, a handful of scientists are working for congressional panels at any particular time, said Edward Levine, a congressional staff member with decades of experience who is now at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. His statement came as a warning during a panel discussion on the importance of science in arms control.
"I've named some very good people. The problem is I can name them with the fingers of my hands, I don't even need to take my shoes off to count them up. And I'm going back a few years," said Levine, speaking on the last day of the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "At any given time in the Senate, if we have five real scientists on staff, it's unusual. More likely three or four."
That is out of perhaps 2,000 congressional workers, Levine said. There are simply not enough professionals to provide the scientific information needed by lawmakers, he added.
Such knowledge is key in various sectors of arms control, Levine said. These include verification of compliance with treaties and disarmament activities, development of new approaches to international safeguards to ensure that civilian nuclear programs are not turned to military activities, and determining useful treatments for biological attacks or other unconventional weapons, among a host of other matters, he said.
The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty alone poses no fewer than 10 questions as the Obama administration considers the issue of U.S. ratification that would bring the pact closer to entry into force, according to Levine (see GSN, Jan. 26).
Science converges with nonproliferation in various fashions, panelists said.
"Scientists in government and international organizations provide input in the bureaucratic process of developing policy positions," said Pierce Corden, holder of a physics doctorate and a veteran arms control official at the U.S. and international levels. "They then contribute to the diplomatic negotiating process, translating positions into agreements.
"Once negotiated, scientists support verification and implementation through national technical means and international monitoring mechanisms," he added.
Corden described science as a method for analyzing and synthesizing information on a problem so that it can be placed in a larger construct. Science seeks to discriminate between relevant and irrelevant information, he said: "It's a process of carefully thinking about an issue."
Practitioners have expertise that has been used in both sides of the weapons equation -- physics has contributed to nuclear weapons programs and to civilian nuclear energy, chemists helped to produce the compounds used in chemical weapons and biologists have offered greater understanding and countermeasures for viruses and bacteria that could be used as terrorist weapons.
Corden offered the establishment of two arms control treaties as examples of the role played by scientists in developing international policy.
There was significant interest in the 1960s and 1970s in"geophysical weapons" that could use natural processes for hostile purposes, for example, seeding hurricane clouds in order to direct a storm toward an urban area, he said.
Policy-makers relied on expert advice as they sought to resolve technical issues for a treaty that would ban such activity, including verification, the scope of the pact -- in this case the entire environment -- and whether it should cover rainmaking, use of herbicides or mechanisms for fog dispersal. The Environmental Modification Convention entered into force in 1978.
"The whole process of arms control and implementation is inevitably a bureaucratic process. But it was very important at the time to bring to bear the science of what was known or not known about what you could do to modify the environment consciously as a weapon in order to inform the position that the United States actually took in the negotiations," Corden said.
Scientists also helped to develop Washington's position on the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and to address the scope of the pact and its verification, he said.
The solution to the second issue was the International Monitoring System, 321 stations and 16 laboratories that would use seismic sensors and other means to detect a nuclear blast. The system, now more than 80 percent complete, clearly identified North Korea's nuclear test in October 2006, as did independent research sensors, said nonproliferation analyst Raymond Jeanloz of the University of California, Berkeley.
Those sensors would not be possible without the contribution of scientific and technical expertise, Jeanloz said. The fields also contribute information technology that can be used to secure sensitive information from those who might misuse the material and analysis that can help policy-makers in making decisions on arms control.
"Science and engineering provide a fact-based approach for distinguishing policies that can or in some cases simply cannot be implemented based on present knowledge," Jeanloz said.
This information needs to be provided to lawmakers "with a minimum of equations and a maximum of clarity," Levine said. Not all would need to be fully educated -- even 20 or 25 members of the Senate could spread the word to their colleagues in that chamber, he argued.
There are a number of venues for reaching members of Congress, from hearings and briefings to more recent adaptations such as blogs, according to Levine.
Panelists appeared to differ on whether more scientists such as Energy Secretary Steven Chu are needed in policy-making roles.
"Not particularly. I think for administrative positions you want administrators. You want policy-makers," said Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund. Those officials, though, must be willing to reach out to scientists for assessments of threats and their possible solutions, he added.
Argued Levine: "I do think that there should be more scientists in policy-making positions. Not that they should dominate it, but ... there should be a salting of scientists mixing in with the rest of us. Because we don't always hear correctly when the scientists are speaking to us."
Blogs
There are a limited number of blogs that address technical issues of arms control, said speaker Jeffrey Lewis, head of the Nuclear Strategy and Nonproliferation Initiative at the New America Foundation.
Lewis said he started his blog, ArmsControlWonk.com, for three reasons.
First, he wanted a forum to correct poor reporting: "It turns out this is a full-time job." He provided a number of examples, including articles that suggested the North Korean nuclear test had produced a huge yield; it is now seen as something of a dud.
Commentaries and other more traditional publication opportunities do not lend themselves well to discussing technical issues of arms control, he said.
"It's very hard to write an op-ed about a picture of a North Korean fuel rod, even if it's really interesting to you and even if that information could be useful in the long run, that's just not going to make the Washington Post," Lewis said.
Finally, blogs can help to build communities of "like-minded" people with interest in the same issues.
It has become clear that some of the readers of the blog and participants in the back and forth dialogue in the comments section are involved officially with arms control issues, Lewis said.
"I do think there's a powerful sense of community," he said. "I think a lot of us are interested in these issues, but it's really hard to find other people who are interested in them. ... This is a relatively unique opportunity to have these arguments in a pretty nonclinical, technically oriented way."