From: len@schur.math.nwu.edu (Len Evens)
Subject: Re: NYT article on Japanese breeder
Organization: Dept of Math, Northwestern Univ
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 14:07:04 GMT

In article <JMC.92Dec21174028@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:
>It is interesting that Len Evens didn't read the article on the Japanese
>breeder program the same way I did.  He says:
>
>     I think the article reports objectively on difficulties the
>     Japanese have been having with their breeder reactor
>     program.  However, you shouldn't accept anyone's claims in
>     this newsgroup since you can read the article yourself.
>
>Does he think "Nuclear Fiasco" is an appropriate title?
>
Having read the article which describes many serious problems the
program has had and how things haven't at all gone according to the
Japanese plan for the project, I do think the title is appropriate.
However, neither I nor David Sanger, the author of the article, is
omniscient.   It is certainly possible for reasonable people to differ
about the likelihood of ultimate success of the program.  I don't think
reasonable people would conclude that the program has no serious problems.

>Does he think the author hopes the project will succeed or hopes that
>it will fail, or neither?
>

I don't know what the author hopes.  There were enough objective facts
reported in the article for me to understand the issues raised.   On
rereading the article, I can see how people sensitive to criciticism of
nuclear energy might consider it biased, but I don't think most people
would read it that way.   The main focus of the article was criticism
speciifically of the Japanese breeder reactor program.  According to the
article, the Japanese bet on this as the best way to advance energy
independence, but subsequent events seem to have shown this was a mistake.
The article does not discuss the pros and cons of nuclear power in general
but rather the Japanese experience with one specific technology, breeder
reactors.  Also, the article said that this was an example of how
Japanese management of industrial policy does not always work.   It
particularly raised this point in connection with the fact that the
incoming Clinton administration is more sympathetic to industrial
policy than the Reagan-Bush adminstrations of the past ten years.

In the last paragraph, the author suggest that the Japanese, taking the
long view, may very well prove correct, despite present difficulties.
To quote:

"In the end, Japan will probably scale back the plans drastically,
but if experience is any guide, it will not let breeder reactor
technology---or any any other strategically vital industry---die
completely.  It will just wait for another change of economic fortunes
or political realities.  Until then, the question is how high a price
Japan is willing to pay---financially and politically---for an idea
that has never quite gone as planned."

>What about the inclusion on the same page of a box about the Minimata
>disaster?  The latter has nothing to do with nuclear energy.
>

This inclusion is on the second of two pages at the end of the article.
Hence, we can conclude it was not meant to be given undue prominence.
The headline is `The Harsh Memories of Minamata", and it is a profile
of Aileen Mioko Smith who is an opponent of the breeder reactor
program.  I think its main point was that typically activist citizen
movements have relatively little success in Japan, but this may now
be changing.   The connection with mercury poisoning is that Aileen
Smith, with her hsuband Eugene Smith, was involved in dramatizing the
effects of industrial polution in Miyamata.   Thus, this inclusion is
not totally unrelated to the article on the breeder reactor program.
However, I can see that a reasonable person might detect some editorial
bias in including this particular profile at this point.   However,
any newspaper (or scientific article for that matter) will exhibit
bias by what facts it chooses to include or exclude.  It is of course
impossible to say everything about any matter, and usually newspapers
make no attempt to do so.  

>Maybe all the propaganda in the article passed Len Evens by, and he
>only saw the facts about the difficulties.  That would be interesting.
>It would suggest that slanting an article is not a very successful
>propaganda device.
>--
>John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
>*
>He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
>

I think John McCarthy missed one main point of the article, which was
that the Japanese don't always get things right.   If anything, the
main bias I detected in the article was an enjoyment of the fact that
the Japanese were having problems.  This bias was much less extreme
than what one typically sees in American media when reporting on
Japan.   In any event, it was not really hidden to the careful reader.
The article was in the business section in the Sunday edition.  Such
articles are often in the form of analysis of important economic
issues, and as such are not straight news articles.  They include
a certain amount of opinion, and people who read the Times generally
understant that.


I hope this discussion won't degenerate further into acrimony about
what specific sentences in this article mean.  I found the article
quite useful since it discussed a range of issues about the program
which go way beyond the question of whether Greenpeace is obeying
the rules of the sea.   Most of the media, as usual, have concentrated
on the dramatic issue of a confrontation at see.  I suggest that
anyone interested in finding what it is all about will probably
learn something by reading this article.  I don't think you will
have to worry about being lead by the nose by sinister editors at
the N. Y. Times who are trying to fill you with propaganda.  My 
experience with the Times is that it assumes its readers know how
to read and won't necessarily agree with what it says.  


Leonard Evens      len@math.nwu.edu      708-491-5537
Dept. of Mathematics, Northwestern Univ., Evanston, IL 60208