WHAT'S NEW Friday, 27 Jun 03

WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 27 Jun 03   Washington, DC

1. HYDROGEN SCAM?  NUCLEAR POWER, WE'RE TOLD, IS A HYDROGEN WELL. 
Many readers of What's New took umbrage with last week's diatribe
called "The Hydrogen Scam."  They point out that hydrogen can be
produced in ways that do not produce greenhouse gases.  Sure, but
will it be?  95% of the hydrogen currently produced in the United
States comes from steam methane reforming (WN 30 Jan 03), which 
belches CO2 and does nothing to promote energy independence.  Is
a hydrogen economy an idea whose time has come?  Maybe, but we
need a more open congressional discussion of the administration
plan, and less docile coverage by the media.

2. DIETARY SUPPLEMENTS: PENTAGON PLANNERS MAY NEED GINKO BILOBA.
The New York Times on Monday described the shoddy research done
in support of scientific claims made by supplement makers.  Under
the 1994 Dietary Supplement and Health Education Act, supplement
makers aren't required to prove that their product is either safe
or effective, so they don't really need to do any research.  But
if they make scientific claims for their product, and they all
do, they may have to back it up in court.  They won't be able to:
recently, NIH has begun to subject one magic herb after another
to randomized double-blind testing, which one after another have
failed miserably(WN 23 Aug 02).  Yet, also on Monday, the
Washington Post ran a totally credulous story on a project of the
Pentagon's Combat Feeding Program to put herbal substances into
lozenges and transdermal patches, to get the healthful properties
of the natural remedies flowing in the bloodstream as quickly as
possible.
                    
3. PUBLIC ACCESS TO SCIENCE: WITH LIBERTY AND RESEARCH FOR ALL.
On Wednesday, Rep. Martin O. Sabo (D-MN) released a draft of the
Public Access to Science Act, which will eliminate copyright
protection for publications stemming from federally funded
research.  The laudable goal of this measure is to make research
easily accessible via the internet.  Sabo's move appears to
further the goals of the Public Library of Science (PLoS),
chaired by Harold Varmus, a group that wants to see scientific
publishing move away from the subscription-based economics, which
they claim limit the availability of the research.  PLoS will
release its first "open-access" journal, PLoS Biology, in
October, and plans to release PLoS Medicine next year.

4. POWER LINES AND CANCER: DEAD HORSE IN HAMPTONS FLOGGED AGAIN.
Long Island turns out to be just like the rest of world: power
lines don't cause cancer there, either.  That is the not entirely
unexpected result of a large study, to be published next Tuesday. 
The study began in 1996 and studied the exposure of over 1000
women to magnetic fields; no correlation with breast cancer
showed up.  Does this result reassure the local activists?  Not
in the least.  "I don't think anyone should be satisfied," the
president of a local activist group told the Associated Press. 
"I think we need to push on."

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND and THE AMERICAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY.  
Opinions are the author's and are not necessarily shared by the
University or the American Physical Society, but they should be.
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