Talk:William L. Laurence

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Laurence correctly denied fallout at Hiroshima after Burchett quoted a lie from Dr. Harold Jacobsen that people were dying from fallout radiation which would make Hiroshima uninhabitible for 75 years and that everyone living in the city after the bomb was doomed

"Hiroshima is contaminated with radiation. It will be barren of life and nothing will grow for 75 years. Hiroshima will be barren of human and animal life for 75 years. Any scientists who go there to survey the damage will be committing suicide." - false claim made by Dr. Harold Jacobsen (a Manhattan Project health physicist who knew nothing about the fallout particle size distribution in the air burst over Hiroshima), published in the Washington Post on August 8, 1945. Both Groves and Laurence were attacking this lie that caused panic in the survivors [[1]]. Most of the casualties in both cities were due to blast and thermal radiation, with infected wounds made worse by the synergism of initial radiation exposure (which lowers the white blood cell count). There was no local fallout because the fireball did not touch the ground. The neutron induced activity in Hiroshima was (as intended) too low even at ground zero to cause radiation sickness, owing to the height of the detonation. The "black rain" in Hiroshima originated from the firestorm which began 30 minutes after the explosion, by which time the radioactive mushroom cloud had been blown many miles downwind by the wind. The actual radioactive fallout around Hiroshima was not lethal and was due not to the firestorm "black rain" or fallout but to the "cloud seeding" rainout effect from hydroscopic salt crystals in sea level coastal air being entrained unto the mushroom cloud by the afterwinds [[2]]. Groves and Laurence were quite correct to debunk the false claims about radiation that were causing panic. The recent "controversy" is contrived propaganda by people who have no idea of the situation in 1945. 82.21.58.162 (talk) 20:01, 5 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Should mention controversy

There has recently been some controversy over Laurence's role in reporting the aftermath of the atomic bombing. There is a claim that he won the Pulitzer for essentially spreading false US propaganda, for which some believe he should be stripped of the prize.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0805-20.htm

I saw this when I first made the page, and it seemed to me then that the only people who cared about this were the Goodmans, and that they had basically written up one press release that was re-printed on similar-minded sites, but that besides this there was no "controversy". If any discussion of this has taken place in a major mainstream news outlet, then I think it should be included, but otherwise I am dubious. --Fastfission 00:15, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

On a factual note: It is also worth noting that knowledge about radioactivity and the effects of the atomic bombs was almost nil at the time. When the military men dismissed the reports of radiation sickness as propaganda, they were doing so out of ignorance. There is lots of documentary evidence to suggest that not even the physicists working on the bomb project thought lingering radiation would be a major by-product, and their experience with the Trinity test had not shown anything to the contrary (there was almost no debris in the Trinity test, and so would be very little fallout). It was not until after the Nagasaki blast that Groves even assembled a team to look into these reports seriously, and not until the occupation began that they were able to confirm them with their own scientists. I think the Goodmans are essentially mistaken in their historical understanding of this, which is probably why their "call" has not been taken very seriously. The U.S. government and military was not going to report things that their scientists told them were false. If anyone is to be blamed for a "cover up" it is Robert Oppenheimer, but it is more likely that he was simply wrong about it. --Fastfission 17:54, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It has been getting some mainstream media attention more recently, such as in NPR's On The Media (http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2007/08/10/02). I came to the wiki entry specifically to get wiki's take on the topic. So at some point soon this probably merits coverage. Also the Goodmans didn't just write a press release, the wrote a book (The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media that Love Them). --Psm 23:40, 16 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It has also been mentioned in Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial by Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell. 68.229.46.160 (talk) 23:22, 28 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

the current presentation of this is rather one-sided, containing only attacks on him. (But I am not convinced by the argument that the dangers of radioactivity were unknown in 1945. I;d like some references) DGG ( talk ) 10:13, 16 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Was his Pulitzer Prize revoked?

There is no mention of what action was taken. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.229.151.139 (talk) 15:26, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]