Looking at pathologies in mainstream scientific research, Physicist Irving Langmuir on
pathological science back in 1953:
- The maximum effect that is observed is produced by a causative agent of barely detectable intensity, and the magnitude of the effect is substantially independent of the intensity of the cause.
- The effect is of a magnitude that remains close to the limit of detectability; or, many measurements are necessary because of the very 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 spur of the moment.
- Ratio of supporters to critics rises up to somewhere near 50% and then falls gradually to oblivion.
He discussed several effects that seemed to exist, but that only existed in the imaginations of those who claimed to observed them. Effects like N rays.
The contrast of N rays with X rays is instructive.
X rays were discovered by Wilhelm Röntgen (Roentgen) in 1895. He was working with a common subject of research in those days, evacuated glass tubes with electric current run through them. He noticed that they could make some fluorescent material fluoresce, even with light from them blocked by black cardboard. He suspected that tube was emitting an unknown kind of radiation, and he did a lot of experiments on it. He called this radiation X rays because its nature was not very apparent, despite his experiments.
Once one knew what to look for, it was very easy to observe the effects of X rays, and some physicists claimed that they had obtained evidence of X rays before Röntgen's discovery. But they had not recognized it for what it was. Further experiments showed that X rays were a certain wavelength/frequency band of electromagnetic waves / photons.
N rays were another mysterious radiation, a radiation purportedly discovered by Prosper-René Blondlot in 1903. He worked at the University of Nancy in France, thus the name. N rays were emitted by a variety of objects, but not by wood or certain treated metals. Like X rays, N rays could be detected with fluorescent materials.
Several physicists expanded on Blondlot's work, but they were mostly French ones. British and German ones could not observe N-ray effects, and American physicist Robert W. Wood complained of "wasting a whole morning" trying to do so. A big contrast with X-ray effects, which could be observed across nationalities. The editors of
Nature magazine convinced RWW to go to Blondlot's lab to see for himself, to try to find out what Blondlot and his colleagues were doing that nobody outside of France seemed able to do. As some N-ray researchers were taking a N-ray spectrum, RWW removed a prism that was being used to separate out the N rays. The researchers continued to make N-ray measurements. As the researchers were measuring emissions from a metal file, RWW replaced it with a similar-sized wood objects. It seemed to continue to emit N rays. RWW reported on his experiments on the N-ray researchers, and that was the end of N rays.
Since measurements of N rays were always borderline ones, it was evident that they could be expected by what one expects to see, as other experiments showed. A BIG contrast from X rays, whose effects could be VERY glaring.
Irving Langmuir also discussed the Allison Effect, the Davis-Barnes effect, mitogenetic rays, ESP, and UFO's. More recently, polywater, cold fusion, and the arsenic bug may also qualify.
These are mainly pathologies about observations and experiments, but many physics crackpots are theorists with little interest in doing experiments themselves, only in analyzing others' results.
However, some of Langmuir's criteria also apply to such crackpots, like claims of extreme accuracy.
