My Take | Whose science are we supposed to follow?

Name: Debris from China’s Long March rocket lands in Indian Ocean, drawing criticism from Nasa
Uploaded: 2021-05-10T13:00:20.000Z
Duration: 2 min 5 s
Description: Debris from China’s Long March rocket lands in Indian Ocean, drawing criticism from Nasa

Once politics intrudes, even science can be used and abused, and may not offer much in the way of intellectual charity for the general public

Reading Time:2 minutes

Why you can trust SCMP

The Long March 5B rocket lifts off from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site, in China’s Hainan province, on April 29. Photo: EPA-EFE

Alex Lo

Published: 9:00pm, 10 May 2021Updated: 9:00pm, 10 May 2021

People always say, “follow the science”. If only it were so simple. Once politics, politicians and activists intrude, it becomes “whose science to follow”? In other words, it is weaponised and becomes just another point of contention and controversy. The Covid-19 pandemic has taught us much when even health officials and the scientists themselves often send out conflicting messages.

Consider two big items in the news today. One is Japan’s plan to dump more than 1 million tonnes of contaminated water from the destroyed Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station into the ocean off its east coast. Another is the uncontrolled descent of the remnants of China’s Long March 5B rocket back to Earth. You would think scientists should have the last word on such technical matters as nuclear contamination and rocket debris. Well, hardly.

China’s Manned Space Engineering Office had all along said the free fall stage of the rocket presented minimal risks to people and property on Earth. Sure enough, most of it didn’t survive re-entry as it was made of materials designed to burn up when crashing through the Earth’s dense atmosphere. What was left splashed into the Indian Ocean. The Long March 5B had carried the main module for the construction of China’s first orbital space station.

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Debris from China’s Long March rocket lands in Indian Ocean, drawing criticism from Nasa

But before its re-entry, there was much international criticism and hand-wringing in the world media, and from the US defence secretary himself. But who’s right? Maybe it was just dumb luck that the Chinese didn’t kill anyone or bring down a building or two this time. Or maybe the Chinese rocket scientists had been right all along. Who knows for certain, do you?

Well, at least Space-Track.org, an online site much frequented by space geeks, has gained a massive following from the incident, which has been a boost to space science education.

Meanwhile, Japan has been trying to reassure its neighbours that its proposed dumping of nuclear-contaminated water poses minimal danger. The water was used to cool the nuclear plant’s melted reactors over a period following the disaster in 2011. Many Japanese and international scientists say it’s probably OK to do it as the radiation levels in the treated waste water will be very low and it will be released in small amounts over several years. One senior Japanese minister has even claimed it’s as safe as drinking water, though he has not so far offered to drink a sample as a demonstration of its safety.

Environmentalists are not convinced. The governments of neighbouring South Korea and China have been especially incensed and are threatening to turn the plan into an international diplomatic incident. Are they playing politics, just as some Chinese scientists and officials had accused the Western news media and governments of doing over the Long March 5B’s re-entry?