PHOTO: APIC/GETTY IMAGES

NEWS

NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Firing of Los Alamos researcher draws criticism Officials claim paper contained classified information humanitarian, and environmental reasons. Doyle’s arguments are squarely in the political scientist at Los Alamos Namainstream of nuclear security debates, tional Laboratory has been fired afsays George Perkovich, an arms control ter authoring a scholarly article that specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for questions the dogma of nuclear deterInternational Peace in Washington, D.C. rence. Congressional staff had raised “The only thing unusual about [the article] concerns that the article contained was that it came from somebody at a weapclassified information, and lab officials subons lab,” which typically touts the merits sequently decided that it did. Although the of nuclear deterrence, he says. Nor does it reasons James Doyle’s 17-year career at the represent a change of heart for Doyle, who Department of Energy (DOE) weapons lab until his dismissal was one of the few politiin New Mexico ended last week may never cal scientists at a 10,000-person laboratory be clear, many nuclear dedicated to maintainsecurity experts are ing the U.S. stockpile. “I sharply criticizing the probably decided that lab’s actions. nuclear weapons didn’t “It sends a chilling make sense by the age message not just to emof 21,” says Doyle, 55. ployees, but also those Despite that belief, beyond the lab, that Doyle had become their ability to work on steeped in nuclear istopics subject to classues. Working in the sification could be remid-1990s for SAIC, a stricted if they become major defense contractoo critical of policies tor, he helped draft a that the lab holds dear,” U.S. government plan says Frank von Hippel, to track and safeguard a physicist at Princeton nuclear material in the University. “It’s a very former Soviet Union. disturbing situation,” He then earned his adds Daryl Kimball, Ph.D. from the Uniexecutive director of versity of Virginia and Scholar’s paper questioned value of nuclear the Arms Control Assocame to Los Alamos weapons for deterrence. ciation in Washington, as a postdoc in 1997. D.C. “DOE leadership Within a year, he was needs to reverse this decision.” hired to work on nonproliferation. The affair, first reported by the Center Over the past decade, Doyle has published for Public Integrity, an investigative news numerous papers, opinion pieces, and a service in Washington, D.C., began after textbook, as well as spoken at conferences, Doyle’s article “Why Eliminate Nuclear without causing a stir. His Survival article, Weapons?” appeared in the Februaryhowever, caught the eye of a staffer on the March 2013 issue of Survival: Global Armed Services Committee of the U.S. House Politics and Strategy, published by the of Representatives. The staffer was concerned London-based International Institute for that it contained classified information and Strategic Studies. The article, which Doyle asked lab officials if it had been cleared for wrote on his own time and which includes publication, according to a committee aide. a disclaimer clarifying that he was speakSoon after that inquiry, lab managers ing for himself, opens with President asked Doyle for copies of his other artiBarack Obama’s 2009 call for “a world cles; he gave them about 20 publications. without nuclear weapons.” It goes on to Shortly after that, security officials told him argue that nuclear deterrence is not effecthat the Survival article contains classified tive and that nuclear weapons should be material, eventually searching his home eliminated for a host of political, military, computer for copies. Doyle says he thought By Jeffrey Mervis

A

SCIENCE sciencemag.org

15 AUGUST 2014 • VOL 345 ISSUE 6198

Published by AAAS

7 19

Downloaded from www.sciencemag.org on November 16, 2015

drugs haven’t been tried against Ebola, but there is reason to think they can save lives, Fedson says. Fedson says he has written to WHO Assistant Director-General Marie-Paule Kieny about the idea; she replied with a detailed letter about the agency’s reservations, he says. Determined to get the matter on the international agenda, he and Opal circulated the draft of an op-ed for The New York Times to some 80 prominent scientists on 8 August. The letter created a “firestorm” over the weekend, says Geisbert, who didn’t sign it because there is no evidence in nonhuman primates that the strategy would work. “I completely understand that people mean well, and we all want to do something,” Geisbert says. “But I have seen so many things that inhibit Ebola in cell culture and didn’t work in rodents, or that worked in rodents but didn’t protect monkeys. … We shouldn’t just grab anything on the back burner that’s FDA-approved.” Ineffective drugs could spoil the prospects for more promising candidates, he worries, and compounds that change the immune response could actually make Ebola infection worse. Fedson counters that virologists like Geisbert have yet to catch on to the idea of treating the immune response. “All they can think about is hammering the virus,” he says. As Science went to press, it was unclear whether the letter would be published. Among the almost 30 supporters are prominent researchers such as Hans-Dieter Klenk, who studies filoviruses such as Ebola at the University of Marburg in Germany. But another Ebola researcher at Marburg, Stephan Becker, says he opposes the plan for reasons similar to Geisbert’s. Several other ideas have been floated, and Fish realizes that she’s not the only one trying to get WHO’s attention. “I imagine people are probably falling out of the trees with all kinds of garlic therapies and who knows what,” she says. Indeed, whether WHO has time and resources to look at all the ideas is unclear. At an 8 August press conference, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said that her organization is “extremely stretched,” as is Doctors Without Borders. Meanwhile, the outbreak shows no signs of abating. On Tuesday, WHO reported 1848 cases so far and 1013 deaths; the real numbers almost certainly exceed official tallies because many patients don’t seek medical help. Also on 8 August, WHO declared the situation a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, an official designation that allows it to recommend travel restrictions but also serves as a global plea for resources and money. “This is an urgent call for international solidarity,” Chan said. ■

NEWS | I N D E P T H

With reporting by David Malakof. 720

EARTH SCIENCE

A boom in boomless seismology Densely packed sensors eavesdrop on Earth’s hum By Eric Hand

L

ast week, geoscientists in Washington state finished the largest ever seismological survey of Mount St. Helens, burying 2500 seismometers on its flanks to listen for reverberations as 23 blasts sent seismic waves deep under the volcano. But tucked within the megasurvey was a second one—denser, quieter, and, in its long-term implications for the field of seismology, potentially more important. Brandon Schmandt, a seismologist at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, and a small crew had boot-stomped into the ground 920 other recorders, called ZLands—state-of-the-art instruments that can record continuously for 2 weeks. As a result, Schmandt’s array caught not only the 23 blasts, but also ambient noise: an incessant murmuring that can “passively” image the subsurface as if Earth itself were the sound source—no explosions needed. Schmandt’s Mount St. Helens experiment is just one of several dense, passive array surveys that have been conducted this summer. Cheap, long-lasting sensors play a role in the boom in boomless seismology, as does regulatory reality: Passive arrays are relatively easy to set up. Alan Levander, a principal investigator of the main Mount

St. Helens survey, spent a year getting permits for the explosive shots—from nine counties, four timber companies, the state of Washington, and the U.S. Forest Service. Schmandt’s array was put together on the fly in a few months for less than $100,000. “You can put out a lot more instruments and put in a lot less effort,” says Levander, a seismologist at Rice University in Houston, Texas, of Schmandt’s array. The result, enthusiasts predict, will be unprecedented imaging of Earth’s crust. Academic geologists, who have long envied the detailed survey data of their industrial peers, will be able to see magma chambers and pipes underneath volcanos, map the geometry of faults, and pinpoint earthquake ruptures as never before. “There is about to be a major turning point in earthquake and volcano seismology,” says Florent Brenguier, a seismologist at the Institute of Earth Sciences in Grenoble, France, who last month completed a 300-seismometer passive survey of the active volcano on the island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean. Earth’s ambient noise arises largely when ocean waves and wind sweep the planet’s surface like brushes on an enormous cymbal. For more than a decade, geoscientists have used its lower frequencies to answer questions about the mantlesciencemag.org SCIENCE

15 AUGUST 2014 • VOL 345 ISSUE 6198

Published by AAAS

PHOTO: STEVE HANSEN

he had followed the proper rules for prior review and that he had received approval from a classification analyst before submitting the article. But Daniel Gerth, the lab’s chief classification officer, ultimately decided to classify the article. For Doyle, that reversal began a 17-month ordeal. Lab officials revoked his top-level security clearance, and he says he became persona non grata within his division. His formal complaints of retaliation and loss of academic freedom were rejected, and he says that on 8 July, lab officials told him he was being laid off because of budget cuts. In a statement, the Los Alamos lab said officials “do not publicly discuss” personnel matters. But in a 7 August e-mail to lab staff obtained by Science, Doyle’s boss denies that Doyle was fired as a result of the article. “I would like to assure you that this is not the case,” wrote division leader Michael Baker. He urged lab employees to continue publishing “thoughtful, articulate and technically sound work in the public domain, to the extent we can do so within laboratory policy.” In a Catch-22, neither lab officials nor Doyle will discuss the paper, which is still on Survival’s website, because it is now classified. Reviews by lab officials backed the classification decision. But one concluded that the lab’s classification rules were “vague and confusing,” lacked “consistency and transparency,” and noted that reviewing officials had disagreed on whether Doyle disclosed secrets. Outside experts—including several who have handled similar classified material— say they see nothing problematic in Doyle’s paper. But they speculate that two sections might have caught the attention of classification officers. One lists Israel as possessing nuclear weapons, which the United States has never officially confirmed. The other discusses documents related to a Cold War misunderstanding that some historians believe could have led to nuclear war. Former Los Alamos Director Siegfried Hecker thinks that lab officials overreacted. “Is it typical to fire someone who has made a classification mistake?” he says. “The answer is no.” Hecker and others worry that the lab may be turning its back on contributions from political scientists like Doyle, who can bring a different perspective to the lab’s work. “I think his writing about these issues is beneficial to both the laboratory and the country,” says Hecker, a professor of engineering and management sciences at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. “But the question is whether Los Alamos, in today’s world, still values their input.” ■