RevisionAndReviews_for future re-editing_08012014

Science and Openness:
Fact and Fiction

Richard Preston is one of the world’s best popular
science journalists.
When he wrote books about astronomy [First Light]
and medical
microbiology [The Hot Zone] he found the scientists
involved in
these fields open-minded and keen to share their
work – as well as
themselves as human beings – with the wider world.
What emerges
from these books, which mix ‘human interest’ and
‘hard science’, is a
picture of real science as done by real human beings
– who, for example,
chat about the sports programmes they watched last
night on
t.v. in between doing highly technical observations
of the most distantly
visible galactic structures.
When Richard Preston turned his attention to
biological weapons
research, he entered a closed, secretive, reality-
denying world, where
the people involved were not prepared to talk
openly, nor to disclose
their findings to a wider public under their own
names, nor to reveal
the human realities of their work. So he wrote a
book of fiction [The
Cobra Event], using the same reporting techniques as
for his previous
books, but in which human identities were disguised
and blurred
by fictionalisation. He claims of this book: ‘the
historical background
is real, the government structures are real, and the
science is real or
based on what is possible’. In other words: he does
his best to tell it
as it is - or might be - in circumstances that make
truth-telling difficult.
[Rumour – and perhaps the odd reliable intelligence
source! –
suggests that Bill Clinton read The Cobra Event as a
antidote to the
bio-weapons intelligence reports he was being fed by
the defence
establishment while American president.]
At its best, science investigates reality by the
open consideration of
ideas and checkable physical evidence. Ideas and
evidence are put
into the public realm and [literally and
metaphorically] knocked about
in open debate. Those ideas and evidence that stand
up to the hard
knocks of public scrutiny generally pass for
something approaching
the truth – until better ideas or other evidence are
found. Science at
its best is hence democratic and progressive. It is
also commonplace
[since it deals with a common reality we all share]
and humbling
[since it reveals extraordinary wide-ranging notions
that put us
in our place in the wider scheme of things].
The best scientists have normal human prides and
other flaws, but
they also have a kind of humility – they acknowledge
their uncertainties,
and understand that while they work with nature they
do not
really control it. They also tend to be open about
their work. The
worst scientists lack humility and can come to
believe they alone
have unique intelligence, and that they can control
nature. They often
claim ‘certainties’ that they do not have. They tend
to be secretive.
And the work they produce tends to result in
distortion of the
truth [because it is not properly scrutinised in
open forums that can
bring out errors]. The truth becomes even more
distorted when secretive
scientific research is incorporated into the
command-and-control
power ‘games’ of the ‘power elite’ – political,
military and/or corporate.
As Richard Preston puts it: ‘Open, peer-reviewed
biological
research can reap great benefits. … What is
dangerous is human
intent.’
All of which is a preamble of sorts to an opening
consideration of the
death in suspicious circumstances, on Thursday, July
17, of Dr David
Kelly - a previously mostly anonymous man who,
apparently, was
one of Britain’s leading experts on biological
weapons, employed by
the British ministry of ‘defence’, and who had been
involved in weapons
inspection work in Iraq.
Dr Kelly’s family have said this weekend that ‘all
those involved should
reflect long and hard’ on his death – and who could
disagree with
them on that?
As it has been reported in the mainstream media, the
‘case’ of Dr
Kelly’s death is quite ‘open-and-shut’: a quiet and
decent academic
scientist, unused to publicity, cracked under
pressure after becom-
ing caught up in a vicious public row between
government and media
over claims of ‘spin-doctoring’ of intelligence
reports [apparently including
work done by Dr Kelly himself] and while in a
distressed
state, he committed suicide – painkillers-and-
wrist-slashing being his
chosen method, according to suggestions in police
statements.
Conspiracy theorists – rushing to conclusions in
their own ways –
are suggesting more sinister alternative
possibilities. The truth is
that at present the circumstances leading up to Dr
Kelly’s death are
generally uncertain, but his death was troubling and
mysterious –
something, indeed, for ‘all those involved to
reflect long and hard’
about.
According to the normal conventions of British law,
the cause of a
suspicious death is something for an inquest jury of
randomly selected
British citizens to reach a verdict about. In other
words, judgement
on Dr Kelly’s death should not be left to a single
judge, however
independent, appointed to lead a judicial inquiry by
a Prime Minister
whose own involvement in the course of events
leading to Dr Kelly’s
death is open to question. The basic questions for
that public inquest
jury to consider are, effectively, those that apply
to every doubtful
death: did he ‘fall’? or was he ‘pushed’?
Meanwhile, there are many legitimate questions the
wider British public
has a right to ask and to get answers to, including:
· what exactly was Dr Kelly doing in his years as a
British taxfunded
biological weapons researcher?
· why were his evaluations of the present state of
bio-weapon
research and development in Iraq [which can hardly
be regarded
as British state secrets, and which were crucial
issues
in the government’s ‘justifications’ for going to
war] not
released more openly for others to evaluate?
· in short, what did he really know?

Historical Post-Scripts

From Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory,
Chapter VI.
[Embedded quotes are from Robert Graves, Goodbye To
All That]:
“The attack is to be preceded by a forty-minute
discharge of gas from
cylinders in the trenches. For security reasons the
gas is euphemized
as ‘the accessory’. When it is discovered that the
manage-
ment of the gas is in the hands of a gas company
officered by chemistry
dons from London University, morale hits a comic
rock-bottom.
‘Of course they’ll bungle it,’ says Thomas. ‘How
could they do anything
else?’ Not only is the gas bungled: everything goes
wrong. The
storeman stumbles and spills all the rum in the
trench just before the
company goes over; the new type of grenade won’t
work in the dampness;
the colonel departs for the rear with a slight cut
on his hand; a
crucial German machine gun is left undestroyed; the
German artillery
has the whole exercise taped. The gas is supposed to
be blown
across by favourable winds. When the great moment
proves entirely
calm, the gas company sends back a message ‘Dead
calm. Impossible
discharge accessory’, only to be ordered by the
staff, who like
characters in farce are entirely obsessed,
mechanical, and unbending:
‘Accessory to be discharged at all costs.’ The gas,
finally discharged
after the discovery that most of the wrenches for
releasing it
won’t fit, drifts out and then settles back into the
British trenches.
Men are going over and rapidly coming back, and we
hear comically
contradictory crowed/crowd noises: ‘Come on!’ ‘Get back,
you bastards!’
‘Gas turning on us!’ ‘Keep your heads, you men!’
‘Back like hell,
boys!’ ‘Whose orders?’ ‘What’s happening?’ ‘Gas!’
‘Back!’ ‘Come
on!’ ‘Gas!’ ‘Back!’ A ‘bloody balls-up’ is what the
troops called it.
Historians call it the Battle of Loos.”

From Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach:
“… we are here as on a darkling plain
swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight
where ignorant armies clash by night.”
[Philip Talbot, 20/07/03]