The Future of Science.

For science to have a future, a certain multi-level ethical infrastructure is necessary. At the lowest level, this involves the whole community. In 1993 Michael Pepper was selected by the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, my college, and instructed to write to me an answer to "The Catt Question" , an elementary question about the fundamentals of electromagnetic theory. He wrote this . Since then he has been incommunicado.

Sir Michael Pepper was later “knighted for services to physics”, and became editor of the top Royal Society journal .

Nobel Prize winner Brian Josephson , also a Fellow of Trinity, was marginalised when he tried to bring the paranormal into science. He complained in “New Scientist” about being censored. Now working on the fringe of the science community, he wrote 100 emails about “The Catt Question”. His answer, the same as

Dr. Neil McEwan's , to this elementary question was diametrically opposed to Pepper’s. Following my suggestion that he talk to Pepper, he reported to me by email that Pepper had changed his mind about the view he gave to me in his 1993 letter, and now agreed with Josephson.

Now we examine the attitude of the man in the street, my neighbour three or four (or ten) doors away. He believes that having been “knighted for services to physics”, Pepper has no duty whatsoever to serve physics in future. His duty is limited to bathing in the glory. Thus, having allegedly said to Josephson that what he wrote in 1993 is wrong, he has no duty to write to Catt.

The next stage in the infrastructure which has caused the end of science is the media. I am convinced that no member of the media – Editor of New Scientist, Science Editor of The Daily Telegraph, TV journalist, will touch this subject. Even without getting a hint of "Catt the Nutter" , he will know that the above is nonsense, nothing to do with him. This in spite of my belief that the above is newsworthy and would increase circulation or viewing figures.

I believe that, further, no media man will touch another newsworthy item. This is that no professor or text book writer in the world will put a comment in writing on Wakefield , published experimental results which seem to undermine the classical electromagnetic theory they teach.

The decline of science is not due to decadence or laziness in professors or text book writers, which could only exacerbate a fundamental problem . They can behave this way because they know they have the public’s and the media’s full support in so behaving.

Ivor Catt 29 January 2014