Theory of Relativity and Pathological Science

Theory of Relativity and Pathological ScienceIn skirt of 1918 Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington and his assistant E. Cottingham, went to the island of Principe collide with the West Coast of Africawith a second political party stationed in Sobral, Brazilto prepare for an experiment that would observe a come in overshadow of the cheerfulness, and provide conclusive proof of brainpowers possibility of relativity.1 On 29 May 1919 they photographed a solar eclipse providing the background for Eddingtons claims of proving Einsteins theory. The results of the experiment caused an international sensation, with Eddington being ascribe as the man who finally verified Einsteins new theory. Recently, the experiment and its results subscribe been the subject of debate. Eddingtons methods and the nature of the experiment train cast doubt over its validity. Considered within Irving Langmuirs nonion of diseased scientific discipline, this paper argues that Eddingtons finishonical experime nt displays galore(postnominal) symptoms associated with diseased science, showing the danger of performing scientific experiments with predictions already in hand, and that have been derived from theory alone.Regarding the theory of relativity, it was agreed that according to both Newton and Einsteins theories, a strong gravitational compass should have an nitty-gritty on decipherable rays. If Einsteins theory were correct, sporty feeler from the stars should be observably more bent during a solar eclipse as they pass through the suns gravitational field than in Newtons theory. Einstein believed that a stars light would be shifted twice as much. The expected displacements were 0.87 second of an curve in Newtons theory versus 1.74 seconds of arc for Einsteins.2 Since the suns gravitational effect is much heavy(p)er on light than that of the earth, a solar eclipse was the totally way of experimentally confirmatory Einsteins predictions. On the day of the experiment several conundrums existed. Skies were mysterious when the pictures were taken, and m whatever problems were associated with the equipment. However, Eddington was able to obtain some useable data and presented the results at a special joint meeting of the Royal Astronomical nightclub and the Royal Society of London on 6 November 1919.3 The results from Sobral provided measurements from seven stars that gave a deflection of 1.98 0.16 arc seconds, with results from Principe recorded at 1.61 0.40 arc seconds.4 As puppet Coles states, Both were within the ii standard errors of the Einstein value of 1.74 and more than two standard errors away from either zero or the Newtonian value of 0.87. Einstein had hit the jackpot.5On December 18, 1953, Dr. Irving LangmuirNobel laureate in chemistry in 1932gave a lecture at the Knolls Research research lab where he addressed, the science of things that arent so, giving examples of a problem he called pathological science.6 Langmuir identified six s ymptoms of pathological scienceThe maximum effect that is observed is produced by a causative doer of barely detectable enduringness, and the magnitude of the effect is substantially separate of the intensity of the cause.The effect is of a magnitude that remains close to the limit of detectability or, many measures are necessary because of the truly low statistical significance of the results.Claims of great accuracy.Fantastic theories contrary to experience.Criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses thought up on the spikelet of the moment.Ratio of supporters to critics rises up to somewhere tight 50% and then falls gradually to oblivion.7While a case could be made that each one of these symptoms can be found in Eddingtons experiments, this paper will focus on two of them in particular reduce two and number five.Experiments that fall into symptom number two have the cat valium characteristic that they are very near the threshold of visibility of the eyes. The solar eclipse and th e evidence it produced falls outright into this category. Collins and Pinch state, It is as though a star whose light grazed the edge of the sun would appear to be displaced by a distance equivalent to the width of a penny viewed from a international mile away.8 Problems arising from this symptom are that data is easily rejected. According to Langmuir, If things were doubtful at all, scientists discard them or not discard them depending on whether or not they fit the theory.9 This is exactly what Eddington did with his results from Principe. He used simply two photographic plates out of a total of 26 produced. From the plates, 18 were of very poor quality. These were completely ignored in his presentation and irrelevant to the experiment. His apology for this is upholdd to the next symptom of pathological science. The fifth symptom maintains that any criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses thought up at the spur of the moment. When confronted about the unused plates, Eddington just ified ignoring the results by claiming they suffered from systematic error. However he was unable to produce any convincing evidence to show that this was the case. When he chose which observations to keep and which to throw away, Eddington had Einsteins prediction very much in mind.10The general lessons to be learned from Eddingtons work relate to the difficulties encountered when performing an experiment to verify a prediction based off theory. In Eddingtons interpretation of the observations, he seemed to confirm not only Einsteins prediction about the actual displacement, but in any case his method of deriving the prediction from his theorysomething that no experiment can do.11 Eddington claimed to confirm Einstein because he had used Einsteins derivations in interpreting what his observations really were, with the further paradox that Einsteins derivations only became accepted because Eddingtons observations appeared to confirm themObservation and prediction were linked in a c ircle of mutual confirmation rather than being independent of each other as we would expect according to the conventional mood of an experimental test.12Henry H. Bauer argues that pathological science is not scientific misconduct, and not done intentionally.13 Eddington was not purposely misguiding the scientific community. He was victim to common problems confronted by all scientists, especially physicists. As Trevor and Pinch note,We have no reason to think that relativity is anything but the accuracybut it is a truth which came into being as a result of decisions about how we should lie in our scientific lives, and how we should license our scientific observations it was a truth brought about by agreement to agree about new things. It was not a truth forced on us by the inexorable logic of a set of crucial experiments.14BibliographyBauer, Henry H. Pathological Science is not scientific Misconduct, (nor is it pathological), Hyle world(prenominal) Journal for the History of Chem istry, 8(1), 2002, pp.5-22.Coles, Peter. Einstein and the Total Eclipse. London picture Books, 1999.Collins, Harry and Pinch, Trevor. The Golem what everyone should subsist about science. Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 1993.Langmuir, Iriving. Pathological Science. Trans R.N. Hall. Colloquium at the Knolls Research Laboratory, December 18, 1953.1Footnotes1 Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch, The Golem what everyone should know about science (Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 1993), p.44.2 Peter Coles, Einstein and the Total Eclipse (London prototype Books, 1999), p.52.3 Coles, p.52.4 Coles, p.52.5 ib.6 Irving Langmuir, Pathological Science, trans. R.N. Hall, Colloquium at the Knolls Research Laboratory, December 18, 1953, plane section 3.7 Ibid.8 Collins and Pinch, The Golem, p.44.9 Langmuir, Pathological Science, section 3.10 Collins and Pinch, p.45.11 Ibid.12 Ibid.13 Henry H. Bauer, Pathological Science is not Scientific Misconduct, (nor is it pathological), HyleInterna tional Journal for the History of Chemistry, 8(1), 2002, p.5.14 Collins and Pinch, p.54.