Word: astin
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Astin, 48, head of Commerce's highly regarded National Bureau of Standards. Weeks intimated that the bureau had been unfriendly to small business. As a specific case in point, he charged that the bureau had not been "sufficiently objective" in testing a lead-storage-battery additive called...
Scientists, always at their touchiest when their motives are impugned, began to seethe. Dr. Astin, a quiet, lanky Ph.D. in physics from New York University, has been with the Bureau of Standards since 1932, was one of the principal developers of the proximity fuse in World War II. Editorialized Science, the publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science: "The independence of the scientist has been challenged ... A gross injustice has been done . . . Scientific work in the Government has been placed in jeopardy." Then the Senate Small Business Committee, headed by Minnesota's Republican Senator Ed Thye...
Last week, less than twelve hours before Dr. Astin's firing was to become effective, "Sinny" Weeks changed his mind, and his headlong approach to the problem in the Bureau of Standards. He had decided, he announced, that Dr. Astin should stay on for two or three months, while a committee from the National Academy of Sciences studies both the bureau and the AD-X2 case and makes a report. Added Weeks, in a hasty turnabout: "At no time has there been any intent ... to cast reflection upon the integrity of the bureau or the professional competence or integrity...
Faced with this open admission of political influence, protests from many of the nation's leading scientific organizations, and the sympathy resignations of 400 bureau scientists, Weeks reinstated Astin...
While Weeks must take the blame for this fiasco, the 24 Senators who influenced his decision should not escape unrevealed. It is common practice for congressmen to ask an executive body to review a decision. In this way, many unfair judgments are reversed. But in Astin's case, the 24 letters exerted such pressure that they outweighed scientific tests...