National Affairs: Back on the Team

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In the first get-going months of the Eisenhower Administration. Commerce Secretary Sinclair Weeks resoundingly stubbed his toe by firing Dr. Allen V. Astin, 49, head of the National Bureau of Standards, in a row over Bureau tests of the battery additive AD-X2 (TIME, April 27). In the ensuing hullabaloo of scientific outrage and threatened resignations, Weeks reconsidered, decided to keep Astin for a few months, ostensibly while he looked for a permanent replacement.

Last week "Sinny" Weeks pulled back all the way, announced that Astin would be retained as "a key official ... a member of my team." But hereafter, said Weeks, Astin's men would confine their work to "the technical area," leave to Weeks the decisions on what commercial products should be tested and whether unfavorable findings should be publicized.

In the same week the Post Office Department, noting "substantial" disagreement as to the battery-rejuvenation merits of AD-X2, withdrew a fraud order against it. Crowed Jess M. Ritchie, dauntless co-inventor and promoter of AD-X2: "We're ready to pour it into every battery in the country."