sorincosofret
Registered Senior Member
About the wonderful science and less wonderful scientists
This text was sent for publication in Guardian newspaper. Let’s hope it will be accepted!
I have been reading with interest latest news about 2011 chemistry Nobel Prize and his unpleasant experiences with what we call mainstream science. Of course, someone might think that this is an isolated case and not representative of what is happening in science.
But, even in this case, something is fundamentally wrong in our approach. Referring to the 2011 case, it is not possible in our days to mock a researcher or to sack him just because he found something that does not fit to the usual pattern. It is not possible that one of the most representative scientists of the last century (two Nobel prizes) and perhaps of all time - Linus Pauling – affirmed about this topic that ,,Danny Shechtman says nonsense. There is no such thing such as quasi-crystals are only quasi-scientists". It is not possible then for more than a decade during the rest of Pauling’s live and based on his top ranked position in the research, he leads a supported campaign against this researcher and his ideas.
But what intrigues most is the recent statement of Bassam Shakhashiri, current president of the American Chemical Society, who in a BBC interview said that "This is how we make progress in science.” Rather then apologizing for what happened, instead of ensuring the public that such case will not happen in the future, the statement of Mr. Shakhashiri shocks and even calls to justify such practices to continue. That is, someone who reveals something important, outside of common pattern, have to be harassed and fired as a professional and eventually be awarded later. Perhaps in this case it would be more convenient to reintroduce the inquisition burning procedure and after that for those who were right we have to call them saints.
I my humble opinion, I suppose that is a moral duty of a representative institutions of world chemistry to seek public apology for the events happened.
Unfortunately, if someone browses the history of science would notice this kind of events have been happening so often that Planck affirmed long time ago:
,,An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents; very rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out and that the growing generation is familiarized with the idea from the beginning.”
I have made this introduction to discuss a present hypothetical case, but a future real one:
What would happen if all our modern science is misinterpreted?
What would happen if the foundations of quantum theory, the special relativity, classical electromagnetism, thermodynamics, etc.. would be so loose that they could be demolished with simple experiments carried out in the kitchen and the most of them cost not more than 10 euros?
What would happen if all modern science would be only a replay of epicycles theory and practical the work of millions of researchers is only the addition of new epicycles, more or less complicated, to a basic model which is wrong in its essence?
The answer to these questions would be more than obvious: All people who represent mainstream science at that time, would band together and with any means would do everything possible to silence the recalcitrant. No matter the least that he can be right and these things can be very easily checked! For these gray eminences of modern science it is a true doctrine to prevent the spread of other ideas that do not fit in their mental baggage.
This is a case with a new theory of science developed during latest 20 years.
It is worth to remind the position of a scientist’s team asked to perform some simple low cost (up to 100 euro!) discriminatory experiments. Here are the original email of Mr. J. Richardson and answer from experimental team.
Dr. Cosofret
After conferring with our Science Advisor and other OSA Editors, they
believe that the best people to contact would be Masud Mansuripur for
the first two topics (angular momentum and electromagnetic pressure),
and Russ Chipman for the (experimental) polarization issue. I hope
this is helpful ......
Joseph Richardson
Optical Society of America, Peer Review Manager
Dear Dr. Cosofret:
I totally disagree with your proposals. As far as I know there is no difference between visible light and microwaves with regard to momentum, angular momentum, or polarization. Your ideas have no basis in electromagnetic theory and I will not support the conduct of any experiments to confirm or refute these predictions. .......
Masud Mansuripur
Professor and Chair of Optical Data Storage College of Optical
Sciences The University of Arizona Tucson, AZ 85721
As anyone may notice that actual science has become the property of some "intelligent personalities" and they decide what experiment is to be undertaken and what is politically correct in science. Of course, these gray eminencies of actual science have no sense of history. Without their agreement, the page related to polarization experiment has been reading in 2011 by more then 1500 times and another page related to ionization potential and absurdity of quantum idea has been reading by more the 2500 times this year.
http://www.elkadot.com/en/corpuscul...ght and electromagnetic wave polarization.htm
http://www.elkadot.com/en/atomic/Ionization_energy_variation.htm
http://www.elkadot.com/en/chemistry/Ionization energy and work function.htm
Few scientific papers published in high IF factor peer review journals, can attend such number of readers in a comparable time interval and day by day the number of readers is increasing.
The short history of this theory is presented now online, in Romanian at
http://www.elkadot.com/ro/comentarii/Comentariu_Nobel_2011.htm
Sincerely,
Dr. chim. Sorin Cosofret
This text was sent for publication in Guardian newspaper. Let’s hope it will be accepted!
I have been reading with interest latest news about 2011 chemistry Nobel Prize and his unpleasant experiences with what we call mainstream science. Of course, someone might think that this is an isolated case and not representative of what is happening in science.
But, even in this case, something is fundamentally wrong in our approach. Referring to the 2011 case, it is not possible in our days to mock a researcher or to sack him just because he found something that does not fit to the usual pattern. It is not possible that one of the most representative scientists of the last century (two Nobel prizes) and perhaps of all time - Linus Pauling – affirmed about this topic that ,,Danny Shechtman says nonsense. There is no such thing such as quasi-crystals are only quasi-scientists". It is not possible then for more than a decade during the rest of Pauling’s live and based on his top ranked position in the research, he leads a supported campaign against this researcher and his ideas.
But what intrigues most is the recent statement of Bassam Shakhashiri, current president of the American Chemical Society, who in a BBC interview said that "This is how we make progress in science.” Rather then apologizing for what happened, instead of ensuring the public that such case will not happen in the future, the statement of Mr. Shakhashiri shocks and even calls to justify such practices to continue. That is, someone who reveals something important, outside of common pattern, have to be harassed and fired as a professional and eventually be awarded later. Perhaps in this case it would be more convenient to reintroduce the inquisition burning procedure and after that for those who were right we have to call them saints.
I my humble opinion, I suppose that is a moral duty of a representative institutions of world chemistry to seek public apology for the events happened.
Unfortunately, if someone browses the history of science would notice this kind of events have been happening so often that Planck affirmed long time ago:
,,An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents; very rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out and that the growing generation is familiarized with the idea from the beginning.”
I have made this introduction to discuss a present hypothetical case, but a future real one:
What would happen if all our modern science is misinterpreted?
What would happen if the foundations of quantum theory, the special relativity, classical electromagnetism, thermodynamics, etc.. would be so loose that they could be demolished with simple experiments carried out in the kitchen and the most of them cost not more than 10 euros?
What would happen if all modern science would be only a replay of epicycles theory and practical the work of millions of researchers is only the addition of new epicycles, more or less complicated, to a basic model which is wrong in its essence?
The answer to these questions would be more than obvious: All people who represent mainstream science at that time, would band together and with any means would do everything possible to silence the recalcitrant. No matter the least that he can be right and these things can be very easily checked! For these gray eminences of modern science it is a true doctrine to prevent the spread of other ideas that do not fit in their mental baggage.
This is a case with a new theory of science developed during latest 20 years.
It is worth to remind the position of a scientist’s team asked to perform some simple low cost (up to 100 euro!) discriminatory experiments. Here are the original email of Mr. J. Richardson and answer from experimental team.
Dr. Cosofret
After conferring with our Science Advisor and other OSA Editors, they
believe that the best people to contact would be Masud Mansuripur for
the first two topics (angular momentum and electromagnetic pressure),
and Russ Chipman for the (experimental) polarization issue. I hope
this is helpful ......
Joseph Richardson
Optical Society of America, Peer Review Manager
Dear Dr. Cosofret:
I totally disagree with your proposals. As far as I know there is no difference between visible light and microwaves with regard to momentum, angular momentum, or polarization. Your ideas have no basis in electromagnetic theory and I will not support the conduct of any experiments to confirm or refute these predictions. .......
Masud Mansuripur
Professor and Chair of Optical Data Storage College of Optical
Sciences The University of Arizona Tucson, AZ 85721
As anyone may notice that actual science has become the property of some "intelligent personalities" and they decide what experiment is to be undertaken and what is politically correct in science. Of course, these gray eminencies of actual science have no sense of history. Without their agreement, the page related to polarization experiment has been reading in 2011 by more then 1500 times and another page related to ionization potential and absurdity of quantum idea has been reading by more the 2500 times this year.
http://www.elkadot.com/en/corpuscul...ght and electromagnetic wave polarization.htm
http://www.elkadot.com/en/atomic/Ionization_energy_variation.htm
http://www.elkadot.com/en/chemistry/Ionization energy and work function.htm
Few scientific papers published in high IF factor peer review journals, can attend such number of readers in a comparable time interval and day by day the number of readers is increasing.
The short history of this theory is presented now online, in Romanian at
http://www.elkadot.com/ro/comentarii/Comentariu_Nobel_2011.htm
Sincerely,
Dr. chim. Sorin Cosofret
