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• Saturday, December 2, 2006 06:29 PM

  Salon should veiw this as an opportunity to improve

  This is the sort of flub that occurs when a non-science reporter reports on a highly technical topic. A number of the assertions made by John Large in the course of Alex Koppelman's interview defy the common sense of any person with a hard science background.

  Two items that jumped off the page at me:

  • Contrary to Large's claims, polonium 210 is widely available. It is a commonly used gamma source found in many kinds of labs all over the world. Polonium is also used in a number of industrial applications. If the non-static brush guys can order this in quantity, so can anyone else.
  • Although, as Large asserts, polonium metal is insoluble in water (and, therefore, would be retained in the gut), many simple compounds of polonium are highly water soluble. My guess is that the polonium used to kill Litvinenko was in the form of a polonium halide salt, which would dissolve in water readily. No nanotechnology required.

  Salon does a fine job of vetting most of the reportage that it publishes; however, the appearance of this article on the Salon web site betrays a profound lack of technical and scientific editorial oversight. For the good of the publication and its readership, Salon should:

  • Put a science reporter on this story, and deliver the facts.
  • Institute new procedures for vetting scientific and technical material in advance of publication.
  • Publish a piece on how this happened, and what Salon is doing to ensure that it will not happen again

  Greg

  —gederer Read gederer's other letters
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