The errors of the UCS are long forgotten, but they shouldn't be - especially as Americans today again worry about the dangers of rogue missiles or terrorist attacks. Before anyone else mistakes this bunch for reliable experts, it is worth considering how their previous assertions collided with reality. Each satellite, in short, could protect against far more Soviet missiles than the UCS thought. Faced with criticism, the Union of Concerned Scientists backtracked - again and again. The magic number went from 2,400 to 800 then down to 300, The Washington Post reported in 1985.
Junk science is awfully resilient.
Prominent Democrats, including Al Gore, spoke of SDI's prohibitively high price tag. Sen. J. Bennett Johnston, Louisiana Democrat, warned his fellow senators that supporting SDI could possibly bankrupt this country. Others folks called the program unworkable. The UCS had certainly provided many specifics. One supposedly intractable problem was computer programming.