Talk:JASON (advisory group)

book review
See page 21 of the Sunday, April 16, 2006 NYT Book Review "Rent-a-Genius" , where John Horgan provides missing information, e.g., Mildred Goldberger named JASON.204.210.35.48 14:49, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
 * http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/16/books/review/16horgan.html reg. req. GangofOne 21:50, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

who were the three?
"DARPA's decision came after Jason's refusal to allow DARPA to select three new Jason members, two of whom were Silicon Valley execs without PhDs and thus "unqualified" by the standards of eminent academics." Who were these 3, and were 2 SV execs? Does Ann Finkbeiner know? GangofOne 23:43, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Actually, she doesn't know. Nobody wanted to embarrass these guys by naming them. Apparently the "Silicon Valley exec" part is true, and apparently the third was an engineer whose credentials didn't rise to stellar. But I know that only from the Jasons, not from these people themselves. ~Ann Finkbeiner

JASON/Jason
Is it JASONs? Jasons?

The article switches taxonomy throughout.

Just about everybody uses JASONs, including the Jasons themselves. But the name is not an acronym, those letters stand for nothing. It's just the name, the Greek hero, Jason. So I personally don't capitalize. ~Ann Finkbeiner


 * Both seem to be used by sources even if arguably JASON is a bit silly. Does JASON/Jason have an official website or some such or any indication of their preference? In any case, I definitely think we need to standardise. The article is confusing as is switching between JASON and Jason. It sometimes sounds like it's talking about someone called Jason e.g. "In 2002, Democratic Congressman Rush Holt of New Jersey sent letters to key members of the House of Representatives to protest DARPA's decision to fire Jason." (this probably should be reworded whatever the case since I'm not quite sure what it means to fire JASON. This isn't mentioned elsewhere Nil Einne 13:33, 8 October 2007 (UTC)


 * continues to vandalize within minutes of changes occurring. Has been doing so for the past couple of days.

Article should revert to version of July 2
The recent series of vandalisms and fixes in this article have left it with both errors and unnecessary deletions. Can the article be reverted to the version of July 2? 151.196.116.140 15:43, 1 August 2007 (UTC)Ann Finkbeiner

In other words, I don't know how to revert the article to the last unvandalized version. Can a Wiki administrator help?

The Long Term Impact of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide on Climate (1979) JSR-78-07
This isn't on the FAS page listed. Can anyone provide a link to the text ? Rod57 (talk) 16:44, 9 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Nope. But I found MacDonald '82, who says "Preliminary reports, which received limiated distribution, were issued in April 1979 (jsr-78-07) and in June 1980 (jsr-79-04). So I think The 79 report is "really" MacDonald 82 William M. Connolley (talk) 21:57, 29 September 2008 (UTC)


 * From the late '70's until the mid-80's, Jason did a number of climate reports, mostly on carbon dioxide's role in warming, on the effects of acid rain, and on computer models of climate. Then they quit working on climate for several years because they (and the climate scientists) felt they were re-inventing what climate scientists were already doing.  The citation for JSR 78-07 is at   Someone with time and patience could look around the .gov and .mil sites for the full text.  It was unclassified.  AKath (talk) 17:44, 30 September 2008 (UTC) Ann Finkbeiner


 * And on second thought, I'll bet Dr. Connolley is right, that JSR 78-07 and JSR 79-04 are versions of the same thing, and that MacDonald published it (them) in '82. We'd have to get the actual reports to find out, wouldn't we. Oh, and yes, Dr. Connolley, that list of reports is just a selection. AKath (talk) 18:02, 30 September 2008 (UTC) Ann


 * Link added. http://fas.org/irp/agency/dod/jason/co2.pdf --The Cunctator (talk) 20:08, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
 * There is some more info in this recent article by TNYT. prokaryotes (talk) 03:00, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

Membership list
Public revelation of membership in a group like this is likely to subject people to politically-motivated attacks and harassment. Thus, it comes under WP:BLP -- unsourced information about living persons, particularly stuff likely to subject them to harassment or to invade their privacy, must be removed. Even if it can be sourced, I don't see that it's particularly tasteful or relevant, except where a person's membership makes the news for some reason. Ray Talk 20:15, 1 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree with removal given lack of sourcing, but I disagree with most of the rest. These are mostly high profile individuals many (most? all?) of whom are notable in their own regard.  Their notability helps contextualize the significance of JASON, and participation in JASON is an informative piece of their personal biographies.  If the membership were well sourced I would support inclusion.  Dragons flight (talk) 20:40, 1 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, I don't insist on it. I only boldly removed b/c it was unsourced. In general, I think that some physicists are major public figures, and their membership in JASON, if sourced, would be tasteful. However, others on the list are basically good scientists who keep a low profile. For those who are not public figures, we should have a higher degree of respect for their privacy. Maybe I've read too much about online harassment and blacklisting, but I don't like the idea of assembling lists of members of particular groups. While JASON's work is public, their membership is fairly low profile. Ray  Talk 20:47, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

I also agree with removal of the membership list. It could not be reliably sourced because the membership is not public. Those Jasons who personally are public would make for a shortish and incomplete list; I suppose such an incomplete list would serve to illustrate Jason's significance, and would therefore be a compromise in this discussion. But the list as it stood was, to my knowledge, wrong and (without calling everybody up and asking) unverifiable. AKath (talk) 14:39, 2 April 2009


 * I completely disagree with removal of this list. This is a group whose sole support comes from government agencies.  They are doing our work.  We pay them.  Furthermore, those who have been identified, have made public declarations of their status.  Otherwise, no one would know.  Ann's book, for example, is full of interviews done with complete understanding that the information would be made available, and numerous other Jasons were also interviewed by Finn Aaserud in the mid 1980s.  When this information is available, it is wholly appropriate that it be made available here.  Now I'll ask if the person who removed that list went through each of those links to check if the web pages on each of those people sourced the information that they were connected to Jason?  I certainly know that when I added Henry Kendall, I went to his page and added a reference to Ann's book.  I believe the list should be returned.DiagonalArg (talk) 05:30, 5 April 2009 (UTC)


 * The sourcing for the list would need to be with the list itself and not just on other wikipages. As I said above, I generally support having a list of members if it can be documented reliably.  Dragons flight (talk) 05:37, 5 April 2009 (UTC)


 * So how to source the list then? obviously, people who talked to Finn Aaserud and to me and agreed to make their names public; people whose biographies or autobiographies say they're Jasons; people whose personal websites say they're Jasons. Then what happens when some IP address adds a name but not a source?  I don't know enough about Wikipedia to know what to do then. AKath (talk) 16:00, 7 April 2009 (UTC)AKath
 * We slap down and remove anything that can't be sourced. So if somebody adds a name, we do a quick search or two to see if we can confirm using reliable sources, and if we can't, we remove it right away. In the context of privacy, I'm going to suggest we should only list people who have made public revelations of their status -- not people whose names have been dug up from FOIA requests, etc. Ray  Talk 16:41, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I've started to compile a properly-sourced list, which you can see at User:Tillman/JASON founders, members, past and present. I think this will pass muster for WP:BLP concerns, but I thought I should present a draft before spending more time on it. Please have a look, and see what you think. Please feel free to tinker with the draft as well. Thanks, Pete Tillman (talk) 05:04, 6 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I've created Category:Members of JASON for this purpose. --The Cunctator (talk) 20:09, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
 * "several senior physics professors, notably Mal Ruderman and Henry Foley, were members of JASON,", at Columbia U. from interview with Happer http://www.thebestschools.org/special/karoly-happer-dialogue-global-warming/william-happer-interview/ GangofOne (talk) 21:35, 15 May 2017 (UTC) also " my JASON colleague and friend, Claire Max, then at the Livermore National Laboratory." same interview GangofOne (talk) 21:38, 15 May 2017 (UTC)


 * no red team, parochial, its impact is not mentionedJuror1 (talk) 15:47, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Article may need updating
If (as I suspect) this is the group's current website; http://jasonscholars.com/ then they are (currently) known by another name (JasonScholars) and weren't established in 1960, but in 1953 as surmised by William Cooper here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahCtYD3w-xQ and confirmed by the above (their?) website. Anyways, seeing as I am n00b, I'm not comfortable updating the page myself, nor am I qualified to move it (if that needs to happen). Now I'll try signing my user name; Thomash —Preceding unsigned comment added by Thomash (talk • contribs) 12:41, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

The Jasons don't have a website. The group has attracted a number of conspiracy theorists, and at some point in the theory, Jason Scholars came into being. As far as I know, Jason Scholars is not real. AKath (talk) 14:07, 13 May 2010 (UTC)Ann

what does JASON stand for?
From the article: The name "JASON" is sometimes explained as an acronym, standing either for "July August September October November", the months in which the group would typically meet; or, tongue in cheek, for "Junior Achiever, Somewhat Older Now". However, neither explanation is correct; in fact, the name is not an acronym at all. It is a reference to Jason, a character from Greek mythology. The wife of one of the founders (Mildred Goldberger) thought the name given by the defense department, Project Sunrise, was unimaginative and suggested the group be named for a hero and his search. --The Cunctator (talk) 23:10, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

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Why the group was formed
I changed the wording slightly in the introduction. I think the old wording ("the group was first created as a way to get a younger generation of scientists involved in advising the government") gives the wrong impression. It wasn't focused on the age of scientists; it was focused on getting the best of the current generation involved in defense problems, and was motivated by the Sputnik launch. Support for this comes from Ann Finkbeiner's book. To be more specific, the book quotes John Weeler (who was involved in the creation of JASON) as saying "It's hard to reconstruct now the sense of doom when we were on the ground and Sputnik was up in the sky" (page 25), and goes on to say "And we thought the thing to do was to get a way for new people to get involved in defense problems" (page 26). Regarding which scientists to select, the book says: "York said they just picked the best scientists" (page 28). I think that's the key: they focused on picking good scientists rather than young scientists. In fact, the book says that the scientists were "still not all that young: they were, on average, in their early forties" (page 29). So the purpose wasn't to select young scientists; the purpose was to select the best of the current generation of scientists who were still in the prime of their career. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.80.55.88 (talk) 18:09, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

In popular culture
I don't know if this rises to the level of entry, but other Wikipedia sites have sections on the subjects in popular culture. The Jasons are a key feature in James Rollins's novel The Last Oracle. Kdammers (talk) 18:29, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

"JASON also produced early work on the science of global warming and acid rain"
The source given makes no connection between JASON and those things. It says MacDonald was part of JASON, and it says MacDonald worked on that, but not that he worked on that within JASON. Given that there are three prominent climate change deniers in the list of chairs, Nierenberg, Happer and Koonin, the sentence seems dubious to me, but what do I know? --Hob Gadling (talk) 19:26, 13 October 2022 (UTC)


 * The Jason members Nierenberg, Happer, and Koonin indeed were chairs of Jason and were skeptical of the science of climate change but Jason's chairs do not decide which studies Jasons do.
 * From my comment above under "The Long Term Impact. . .": "From the late '70's until the mid-80's, Jason did a number of climate reports, mostly on carbon dioxide's role in warming, on the effects of acid rain, and on computer models of climate. Then they quit working on climate for several years because they (and the climate scientists) felt they were re-inventing what climate scientists were already doing."
 * On global warming: 9/78, SRI-JSR-77-45, Features of Energy-Budget Climate Models: An Example of Weather Driven Climate Stability, Abarbanel for DoE.  4/79, JSR-78-07, "The Long-Term Impact of Carbon Dioxide Climate"  MacDonald, H. Abarbanel, P. Carruthers, J Chamberlain, H. Foley, W. Munk, W. Nierenberg, O. Rothaus, M. Ruderman, J. Vesecky, and F. Zachariasen, for DoE.   6/80, JSR-79-04, "The Long-Term Impacts of Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Levels" MacDonald, H. Abarbanel, J. Chamberlain, F. Dyson, H. Foley, N. Fortson, W. Happer, W. Munk,W. Nierenberg, O. Rothaus, M. Ruderman, S. Treiman, J. Vesecky, and F.Zachariasen), for DoE.
 * On acid rain, from Gordon MacDonald's CV:  "The Physics and Chemistry of Acid Precipitation" (U) (with J. Chamberlain, H. Foley, D. Hammer, O. Rothaus, and M. Ruderman), JSR-81-25, November 1981 (UNCLASSIFIED). "Overview of the Physical Chemical Processes in the Formation of Acid Precipitation" (U) (with J. Chamberlain and M. Ruderman), JSR-82-301A, March 1983 (UNCLASSIFIED).  "Acid Deposition" (U) (with J. Chamberlain, H. Foley, S. Matarazza, O. Rothaus, and M. Ruderman), JSR-83-301, July 1985 (UNCLASSIFIED).
 * Jason went back to doing climate reports later in the 1980s; their sponsor at DoE asked them more specific questions that they had the background to answer. Gordon MacDonald was, according to Jasons I talked to, helped instigate Jason's climate change reports but claims that he was the prime mover behind Jason's switch to climate reports from less-innocent Vietnam-related reports are probably over-enthusiastic. AKath (talk) 16:01, 4 May 2024 (UTC)