American Physical Society Statement
So Bill Priedhorsky a retied scientists from LANL is giving a LANL talk on the APS American Physical Society statement on missile defense systems. Bill was on that board that gave the report in early 2022. I find it a tad odd he is going to be giving a talk on this since there is considerable controversy on this and in fact the original report got pulled form the APS site due to errors.
https://www.aps.org/policy/analysis/missile-respons.cfm
In February 2022, POPA published a report detailing the technical challenges of defending the United States against intercontinental ballistic missiles launched from North Korea. The report was reviewed by nine independent experts and approved for publication by the APS Council.
"Subsequent to publication, technical errors were identified in one section of the report, on the topic of boost-phase intercept systems. After confirming that there were two errors, APS promptly removed the report from its website and notified key Congressional and Executive Branch staff of the errors. The study committee is currently revising the report. APS has secured an additional expert reviewer who will assess the accuracy of the revised report before it is republished, subject to approval of the Council.
is that guy on this? Fetter a sociologist or something, some union of concerned science types, who one the face of it I do not trust. I do not see how any of these people are "experts" in missile defense.
I simply find it hard to take this panel seriously, and it looks like it has a clear political agenda. By the way I am not the only person who though that the panel was strange. Several high energy theory people faculty I know though it was very odd that James Wells was the co-chair as his expertise seems utterly outside of this field. Bill P sorta makes more sense than some of the others but again this seems pretty outside of what he does. I think APS should stay out of politics and stick with just stick with science.
I simply find it hard to take this panel seriously, and it looks like it has a clear political agenda. By the way I am not the only person who though that the panel was strange. Several high energy theory people faculty I know though it was very odd that James Wells was the co-chair as his expertise seems utterly outside of this field. Bill P sorta makes more sense than some of the others but again this seems pretty outside of what he does. I think APS should stay out of politics and stick with just stick with science.
Comments
I am curious if the APS will soon have a new report or this will just be a recap of the old report with the updates or corrections.
7/23/2023 11:16 AM
Bill did not mention it and no one brought it up. He just said the report is not out. I find very odd that he would give a public talk on report that was retracted and the new report has not been published yet. I find it even odder that he did not address this, he could have just said these are the parts we know for sure, here are things that we do not know and so on, here. The standard approach is if there is some controversy you address it, or say something, people get that actually science can be complex but I guess in this case the science is settled. If was really just a small subsection that was issue why did APS remove the whole report and not just the one section and say they will have a update on the section latter. Also why is it talking so long to update unless there is some serious issues with the report.
Just to be clear I think the gist of what the report is are saying sounds correct. The problem is they did not have real experts on this the panel so I just have to take their word that everything they are saying is correct.
The other issue is suppose they find some other issues with report and it never gets put out or the final report is actually saying something different than what Bill presented.
In any event I doubt any one really cares enough to look into any of it. No one seems be aware it was retracted or anyone reads NYT articles. So it is all good. No harm no foul.
Physics Body Concedes Mistakes in Study of Missile Defense
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/19/science/missile-defense-north-korea.html
I am pretty sure that this missile defense plan being proposed is not actually about stopping North Korean missiles being sent to the US but missiles form some other...ahem nearby countries to NK. I am not sure if the report took this into account or if they really understood what this is really about.