Comment of the Week

A while ago when Frank asked me if I would help him run his current instantiation of the LTRS blog, I initially said "Hell No!" When he asked again later I basically repeated the previous answer. But then I began to think about it, and I realized that I was still interested in the changes that were going on at LANL, even though I no longer work there. After all, I grew up in Los Alamos and worked at the lab for 20 years.

So I finally agreed to do this Comment of the Week feature. I saw reviewing the hundreds of comments posted here each week as an opportunity to track the impact of all the changes being imposed at LANL. It's a bit of a masochistic process, given the frequent illiterate, virulent, and sometimes just plain mean-spirited "contributions", but reading them all does provide a general insight into what the environment is like at LANL these days.

This week's COW highlights one of the more significant changes at LANL that I've observed since NNSA and LANS took over: a much diminished level of respect that is constantly being demonstrated by DOE, the NNSA, and LANL management towards lab employees. Our COW below is the last in a series of comments on the For the Love of Sex and Money post, in which drug testing at LANL is being discussed. I believe the point is well made that NNSA and LANS appear to have gone out of their way to implement a drug testing program that was designed to humiliate, as well as screen for drugs.

"Are you saying scientists don't use drugs? Does having a PhD make you immune from making a bad decision? Please enlighten me. "


1. Are you saying scientists don't use drugs?
There is nothing in 11/7/09 3:01 PM that would state this, either explicitly or implicitly. Please reread it again.

If you'd like to ask a relevant question, it perhaps should be: Which of the recent highly publicized safety or security incidents were caused by scientists using drugs? Answer: None.

Next reasonable question would've been: If a scientist or engineer is using and it interferes with his or her job performance, what do we do? Answer: Test whenever you have probable cause.

Finally, another good question to ask is this: What's the downside of instituting random, blanket pee tests for everybody? The answer: It makes already unhappy people feel abused and humiliated and gives all the more reasons for the best of them to leave.

Calling people in the middle of their workday and demanding that they drop everything and rush to the peemobil to urinate in a cup on queue (remember, without any probable cause whatsoever) is degrading and demeaning. It makes you feel like a piece of meat, a sheep, and certainly not an respected individual in a respectable organization. I personally know two people for whom the pee tests were the last straw before leaving the lab.

No other scientific institution in the country treats its scientists worse than LANL at this moment. If most of the A and B people leave the lab, the long-term damage to the national security will far outweigh whatever you may hope to achieve with your pee tests.

2. Does having a PhD make you immune from making a bad decision?
No, it does not. Proof by explicit counterexample: Mike Anastasio and Terry Wallace both have PhDs. Yet, both are responsible for countless bad decisions.

3. Please enlighten me.
This appears to be a tall order.