FARSHORES ARTICLE :.

ALBERT EINSTEIN: Plagiarist of the Century	Richard Moody Jr.

  Posted Mar 7.04

cont .....

What makes this so suspicious is that both the instruments and the physical conditions were not conducive to making measurements of great precision. As pointed out in a 2002 Internet article by the British Institute of Precise Physics, the cap cameras used in the expeditions were accurate to only 1/25th of a degree. This meant that just for the cap camera uncertainty alone, Eddington was reading values over 200 times too precise.

McCausland (2001) quotes the former Editor of Nature, Sir John Maddox: "They [Crommelin and Eddington] were bent on measuring the deflection of light"; "What is not so well documented is that the measurements in 1919 were not particularly accurate"; "In spite of the fact that experimental evidence for relativity seems to have been very flimsy in 1919, Einstein's enormous fame has remained intact and his theory has ever since been held to be one of the highest achievements of human thought" (emphasis added).

It is clear that from the outset Eddington was in no way interested in testing "Einstein's" theory; he was only interested in confirming it. One of the motivating factors in Eddington's decision to promote Einstein was that both men shared a similar political persuasion: pacifism. To suggest that politics played no role in Eddington's glowing support of Einstein, one need ask only one question: "Would Eddington have been so quick to support Einstein if Einstein had been a hawk?" This is no idle observation. Eddington took his role as the great peacemaker very seriously. He wanted to unite British and German scientists after World War I. What better way than to elevate the "enemy" theorist Einstein to exalted status? In his zeal to become peacemaker, Eddington lost the fundamental objectivity that is the essential demeanour of any true scientist. Eddington ceased to be a scientist and, instead, became an advocate for Einstein.

The obvious fudging of the data by Eddington and others is a blatant subversion of scientific process and may have misdirected scientific research for the better part of a century. It probably surpasses the Piltdown Man as the greatest hoax of 20th-century science. The BIPP asked, "Was this the hoax of the century?" and exclaimed, "Royal Society 1919 Eclipse Relativity Report Duped World for 80 Years!" McCausland stated that "In the author's opinion, the confident announcement of the decisive confirmation of Einstein's general theory in November 1919 was not a triumph of science, as it is often portrayed, but one of the most unfortunate incidents in the history of 20th-century science".

It cannot be emphasised enough that the Eclipse of 1919 made Einstein, Einstein. It propelled him to international fame overnight, despite the fact that the data were fabricated and there was no support for general relativity whatsoever. This perversion of history has been known about for over 80 years and is still supported by people like Stephen Hawking and David Levy.

Summary and Conclusions
The general public tends to believe that scientists are the ultimate defenders of ethics, that scientific rigour is the measure of truth. Little do people realise how science is conducted in the presence of personality.

It seems that Einstein believed he was above scientific protocol. He thought he could bend the rules to his own liking and get away with it; hang in there long enough and his enemies would die off and his followers would win the day. In science, the last follower standing wins - and gets to write history. In the case of Einstein, his blatant and repeated dalliance with plagiarism is all but forgotten and his followers have borrowed repeatedly from the discoveries of other scientists and used them to adorn Einstein's halo.

Einstein's reputation is supported by a three-legged stool. One leg is Einstein's alleged plagiarism. Was he a plagiarist? The second leg is the physics community. What did they know about Einstein and when did they know it? The third leg is the media. Are they instruments of truth or deception when it comes to Einstein? Only time will tell.

The physics community is also supported by a three-legged stool. The first leg is Einstein's physics. The second leg is cold fusion. The third leg is autodynamics. The overriding problem with a three-legged stool is that if only one leg is sawed off, the stool collapses. There are at least three very serious disciplines where it is predictable that physics may collapse.

Science is a multi-legged stool. One leg is physics; a second leg is the earth sciences; a third, biology; and a fourth, chemistry (e.g., cold fusion). What will happen if, for the sake of argument, physics collapses? Will science fall?

©2004 Richard Moody Jr.