BIAS BATTLE

In the spring of 1974, the AEC issued a series of license conditions requiring certain special nuclear material licensees to adjust material accounting data for any measurement bias which exceeds 10% of its standard deviation. At the outset, this requirement appeared to be relatively unobtrusive in light of other license conditions because many people have the intuitive feel that a bias is some measure of the difference between a standard value and a measurement associated with the standard, and because measurement equipment standard deviations are relatively easy to calculate.