User talk:AlfonsoLuhan

Thanks, Dankarl (talk) 03:45, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding the Project Chariot article and the source The genocide machine in Canada  by Davis, Robert; Shor, Ira; Zannis, Mark (1973): 

This may be a duplicate message. Forgive me, I am totally unfamiliar with Wikipedia processes for editing and communication. After my deletion of the Davis et al claims was restored, I ordered the book via inter-library loan and read the scant 8 pages and the few endnotes devoted to Chariot. I have it before me as I write. The work is neither scholarly nor journalistically professional, in my opinion. It contains errors. But mainly the authors present extravagant claims that simply are not documented; the damning rhetoric amounts to conjecture and leaps of faith.

Page 143 - The authors place the Chariot blast site on "the northeast coast of Alaska." Of course it was to be on the northWEST coast. - They place Point Hope on the Bering Sea. It is on the Chukchi Sea. - The area is said to be "virtually ice-locked the year round." Actually, the ice is gone for about a quarter of the year. Longer, these days. Small errors, perhaps, but indicative of the authors' care with facts.

In the very first sentence, the authors claim to know that the entire Chariot program was "an adventure in public relations," aimed at correcting the bomb's "bad image." It is a serious allegation, and it is offered without any evidentiary support. (I think there is plenty of evidence that public relations was one of the AEC'S objectives with Chariot, but these authors present none.)

Page 144 The claim is made that, "apart from a few businessmen, people were not very aware of what the project entailed." The faculty of the University of Alaska and Alaska’s conservationists were far more aware of Chariot than the business community.

Page 145 The authors write: "When the commission found that business wouldn't buy the project, it decided to turn the bomb into a scientific experiment of cold-blooded, detached cruelty." The claim is as inflammatory as it is unsupported. Apparently it is conjecture.

The authors argue that the "true nature of this experiment" was to "put the people in deliberate and carefully calculated jeopardy." For evidence, the authors quote the AEC's own final report on the environmental studies, published years after Chariot was abandoned. If the AEC was so attuned to public relations (which they were), why would they clumsily incriminate themselves in their own publication? In any case, I see nothing incriminating in the passage quoted as support; it outlines the environmental studies, which appropriately included studies of man's activities, e.g., Foote and Saario's work (both were fierce Chariot critics, both highly concerned with the Native people's welfare).

Page 146 "The evidence shows that the AEC was trying to measure the size of bomb necessary to render a population dependent." There is no footnote at the end of that extraordinary sentence. No evidence is offered.

The plan, according to the authors, was mainly "(1) the disruption of the normal hunting and foraging patterns [of the Native people]; (2) The radioactive contamination of the local food chain rendering it dangerous..." Source? None. The authors' conjecture derives from that fact that the site selected by AEC for the detonation was near traditional food sources for the Native people, mainly caribou. Yet the people’s degree of dependence on this area for food was only determined by Foote's work AFTER the AEC had already indicated its preference for the Ogotoruk Creek site, and had begun surveys there.

Page 147 "The evidence seems to indicate that the research goal was to determine the most disruptive time [to fire the shot]." This conjecture flows from the fact that the AEC preferred a spring detonation. It is true that the people depended on caribou from this area at this time (per Foote's work). But correlation does not prove causation. There are other reasons that might (and I think did) influence AEC in favoring a spring detonation: increased daylight for post-shot diagnostics, moderate temps for field work, the presence of snow and sea ice to hold fallout such that some of it might degrade before mixing further with terrestrial and marine systems.

Page 148 - The authors refer to Don Foote as "Donald," which was not his name. His father was Spanish, and "Don" alluded to the Spanish title. - Alaska is contrasted with "the Continental US." Which continent do the authors think Alaska belongs to?

"...the Environmental Studies Program was designed precisely to measure the disruptive effects of a nuclear explosion on the food chain." Again, no footnote here, no supporting evidence.

Page 149 "None of the official reports of the AEC lists this radiation [via lichen to caribou to man] phenomenon as a deterrent to Project Chariot." I don't have the 1966 volume in front of me now, but I believe Pruitt's report did. He certainly did write up and submit this very concern (it may have been edited out of the final, I can't remember), but he was fired from the University of Alaska for raising this exact concern.

Page 150 "The AEC devised the blast with cold calculation to release just the proper dose of radiation." As evidence, a paragraph is quoted wherein the AEC states that it would make sense to measure body burdens of local people both before and after any detonation. I think it is fair to argue that this amounts to experimentation on human beings, which would be wrong and illegal without their informed consent. But even if the authors were to design an experiment they felt would deliver zero harm to subjects, they should include a control group base line and post-event measurements to prove or disprove their expectation. In any case, I see nothing here suggesting AEC calculated "just the proper dose of radiation" to deliver to the people.

Page 151 "While some call such programs 'ecocide,' we believe that a more appropriate term is 'environmental genocide.'"

The authors may "believe" their claims, which they launch like salvos from a dreadnaught, but they don’t amount to much more than smoke and flash. In my view, this book is not a credible source on Project Chariot and should not be used as a source here. Its short Chariot chapter is an example of advocacy journalism at its most disappointing, where rhetorical flourish and indignation, however justified, stands in for actual investigative work.

Thanks for the thorough post. My question at this point is how many of these statements are sourced from the Atlantic article (possibly without detailed citationn). Do you have it or can you get access? Dankarl (talk) 16:47, 20 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding posting replies, Usually a long reply relevant to the subject matter of the article need only be posted to the article talk page. A short note on other posters' talk pages is helpful, especially when discussion is spread out over weeks or months is helpful and courteous.

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Thank you. TylerBurden (talk) 13:00, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]