INDUSTRIAL
and
ENGINEERING
AEC
Declassification and the ROBABLY no other commission agency the P Government in the long history of this country has had so many prayers offered for its success by many of
or
so
people as has the Atomic Energy Commission. No one would accuse The Nau York Times of an overstatement when, in an editorial commenting on the assumption of atomic energy control by civilians, it remarked that the commission has as important a job as has been entrusted to any group of men in our history. The commission has inherited grave responsibilitiesit also has acquired a number of headaches. When we are inclined to criticize, and may our criticism always he constructive, let us remember both the responsibilities and the headaches that were passed on to the commission on the final day of 1946. It has been asked to pioneer in uncharted fields. The existence of the commission will have a momentous effect internationally-at least until such time as an all-inclusive world atomic energy agency is created. The commission must consider 6rst things first. Unquestionably it is aware of criticism concerning the slowness in declassifying certain scientific infprmation and data on nucleonics accumulated in the war years and since V-J Day. Much of this criticism comes from scientists who participated directly in the Manhattan Project. Part of the criticism that has been voiced concerning the slowness of declassification may he unwarranted, while some may be entirely justified. We must remember that even if security were not the factor that it very dehitely is in the field of nucleonics, the huge amount of material accumulated would alone make the task of dissemination a most difficult assignment. , Our experienceswith the military and civilian authorities responsible for releasing such information have, in the main, been qnite satisfactory. We know at first hand about many of the very elaborate plans for detailed publication now being carried out. We think we know, certainly we should know, some of the mechanical and editorial problems inherent in the declassification and publication of scientific material on a scale greater than anything previously visualized in scientific circles. We are experiencing at h t hand some of these difficulties in making ready for publication in the March issue Of INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY the
x
Fluorine Symposium presented at the September meeting of the SOCIETY in Chicago last year. Scientific workers in other countries are offering for publication manuscripts on a variety of subjects in the nucleonics field. These workers are under no obligation to withhold their manuscripts until American scientists are permitted to disclose and record work performed under secrecy orders during the past several years. As a consequence, American scientists are in a most disadvantageous position as regards possible priority of scientific publication. To the scientist this is important -more important than monetary reward. Many of the scientists who pioneered the work on nucleonics are extremely young. To them especially the matter of publication is of the utmost importance. Most have no backlog of publications in other fields and feel that others who were not under extreme secrecy regulations during the war years in many ways are receiving preferential treatment. Such thoughts, whether justified or not, do not make for good morale. The make-up of the new Atomic Energy Commission and the General Advisory Committee, appointed on December 12 to assist the commission, is a guarantee that the publication problem will be approached in a highly sympathetic manner. The members of both bodies are fully aware of the legitimate aspirations of the scientists who made the atom bomb possible and who now are understandably impatient with regulations that hamper the fastest development of peacetime applications of nuclear energy. These, and indeed all scientists, properly believe that scientific advances are achieved most readily and with greatest rapidity when no artificial harriers are erected to prevent the widest possible dissemination of scientific data. The problem has many sides. Let us look at it calmly and objectively. Above all, let us as scientists try to see that credit is given where it rightly belongs. The lot of editors of scientific journals will not he an enviable one for the next few years. We, like the Atomic Energy Commission, will face some headaches in our attempts to reach just decisions on priority of publication. Assistance in making these decisions will be appreciated. In the final analysis, however, the illassure corinnate honesty of the scientists involved w rect decisions in the overwhelming majority of cases. 119
