SftP members are sensitive about interpretations that the calmer relationship with AAAS indicates a new moderation in SftP's view of the American scientific establishment. Beckwith says that it is really the AAAS that has changed. Many social issues that could not be discussed in previous years were even raised by the AAAS this time, he says.

Longtime SftP member Michael Teel, formerly an instructor in a course called "Science and Society" at U-Mass at Amherst and presently a labor organizer there, also insists that it is the AAAS that has changed. There is a new consciousness beginning to take root, he says, the result of Vietnam, Watergate, and the persistent efforts of groups like the SftP.

While it doesn't prove that a genuine mass movement has begun, a story Teel tells about his participation in the recent Boston meeting does seem to support the idea that scientists and others are beginning to take the analyses of SftP and similar groups more seriously:

"I was attending a talk given by the chief administrator of International Rice Research Institute in the Phillipines. The discussion concerned the new second-generation technology of the green revolution.

"I had heard previously a high official in related agricultural research state privately his impression that Lawrence Rockefeller was an enthusiastic backer of the green revolution primarily because it serves American interests by 'cooling down' discontent in Third World countries. So during the talk I asked the administrator why he thought Rockefeller was so interested in the green revolution. He paused for a moment, finally answering that Lawrence was a 'great man'--whereupon everyone laughed.

"Later he started to mention how there was resistance by local authorities in some areas to implementation of the new technology, which is good because it uses less chemical fertilizers and more labor intensive techniques. I asked how it was going in the liberated areas--Vietnam. Cambodia--and he said that actually it was going well, but, that people were being required to give up their freedom in exchange. Again the meeting broke up in laughter.

"When the talk ended some of the people who had attended gathered in the back and for a while we discussed some of the issues that had been raised. I ended up selling five copies of Science Walks on Two Legs."