Embracing junk science http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=nd06krauss
Review of Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific Underworld, by Sharon Weinberger. Nation Books, 276 pages, 2006, $26.
By Lawrence M. Krauss November/December 2006 pp. 51-53 (vol. 62, no. 06) © 2006 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
The story of hafnium has all the makings of a good joke were it not for the historical context in which the events played out. Sharon Weinberger's Imaginary Weapons is an in-depth exploration of how various U.S. government agencies were convinced, based on a combination of discredited theoretical results and a dubious experiment involving a dental X-ray machine, to spend millions of dollars to support work on this "nuclear hand grenade." Much of the action took place against the backdrop of the Iraq War, which tragically appears to have some common features with the story of hafnium weapons, namely government self-deception and a willingness to believe in nonexistent threats. http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=nd06krauss