http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x59596.htm
The
Decline of Science. Published Text.
Draft,
Ivor Catt. 19 August 2015
When
people cooperate for an unacknowledged purpose their association is called a
conspiracy, yet suppression of novelty by [peer] review is not a plot cooked up
between referees and the establishment. But conspiracies can arise by evolution
instead of by design, with the members falling into their roles by accident and
finding them congenial. The establishment gives referees great power over other
peoples’ lives. The referees repay the establishment by suppressing new
discoveries. It is not necessary that either side understand the arrangement. -
Dr Charles McCutchen [1]
Are
professors, editors, referees and text book writers behaving unethically?
Without barriers to communication
there can be no communication – Dr. Anatol Holt [2]
I am
not saying that the forces of decadence know that they are strangling their social
group's future - indeed the essence of their decadence is their ignorance of
what they are doing. Generally, they believe they are maintaining standards. – Ivor Catt [2]
The professor or peer
reviewer or text book writer has a duty to maintain standards. How much of his
time should he spend on this? Should he spend more time, or less time, reading
and understanding an alleged paradigm change? Would it be unethical if he did
not read beyond the title; “The End of Electric Charge and Electric Current as
we know them”? [3]. When the ruling paradigm was phlogiston, were those who
read, or published, or taught nothing about the new (bizarre) theory of
combustion by oxidation unethical?
Nothing on the scale of
the removal of phlogiston or caloric has occurred for 200 years. Therefore the
suppression of such a major proposed paradigm change, “Theory C”, may not be
unethical. We should not blame a system which fails to deal with an event which
occurs less than once in a century. Perhaps we should not blame those who,
“maintaining standards”, 200 years ago may have suppressed the new oxidation
theory, which was for them obviously absurd. Anyway, I have published that “it
is important for a professional scientist to not understand something which it
is in his interest to not understand”. That would probably have applied to
oxidation. The safest career option is to not understand heresy, or better to
not have heard of it.
What happened with AIDS
is not on the scale of paradigm change, but all the same it is very
interesting. Sir Gregory Winter, the Master of my (when undergraduate)
college, Trinity College, Cambridge, told me that it was correct to suppress
Peter Duesberg because otherwise hundreds of
thousands of lives would be lost. The opposite is Duesberg,
who says that since he is suppressed, further hundreds of thousands of lives
will be lost. [4]. He says that AIDS is not a sexually transmitted disease and
HIV does not cause AIDS. Obviously, both parties think they are acting
ethically. For seven years while Andrew Neil was Editor of the Sunday Times,
Neville Hodgkinson was medical correspondent and
science correspondent. He published numerous articles [5] and a book supporting Duesberg. In his autobiography, Neil says his greatest
achievement as editor was to publish the Hodgkinson
articles. The reaction of the editor of Nature to Hodgkinson’s
articles was to say that everyone should boycott the Sunday Times. He cited a
[6] slim
book by the NIH which he said proved Duesberg was
wrong. However, the book has no authors. The NIH refused to give me the names
of the authors. It seems the NIH could not get any of its staff to append their
names to the book, so I cannot write to them. Neville Hodgkinson
told me that when Neil left, the new editor sent two executives to him telling
him to write nothing more on AIDS. Ten years later, when I asked the new people
running the Sunday Times why their recent published articles on AIDS read as
though Hodgkinson and Duesberg
never existed, they did not reply. Neville tells me that now he cannot publish
anywhere, let alone in peer reviewed journals.
My friend [7] Dr. Harold Hillman , late of Surrey
University, believes that more or less all research and publication in his
field is fatally flawed. He cannot publish. He says that privately colleagues
tell him he is right, but they will never put anything in writing. The
university withdrew all his students, but did not fire him.
Phil Holland says that
in the saga about climate change he cannot publish, asking how we can have a
“greenhouse effect”, when the relevant “greenhouse” has no roof.
When two people flew
round the world in opposite directions and then checked their very accurate quartz ring clocks, developed by the late
Louis Essen FRS, they published in Nature
that their results proved relativity. Essen told me that Nature refused to publish him saying that his clock was not
accurate enough to give their results.
My friend the late [8] Gordon Moran and also
Michael Mallory have a very long list of key journal editors and accredited
experts who have behaved unethically when confronted by heresy; the attempt to
correct the attribution of a famous work of art to the wrong artist for more
than a century. [9] Gordon
Moran's magnificent book deals more generally with the problem of
“Silencing Scientists and Scholars .... ”.
My career
After graduating in
1959, I arrived at Ferranti Limited in Manchester and started work on the
Sirius computer, the first transistorised computer. There was very little memory (5,000 bytes)
and so very little software. [10].
Sirius sold for £25,000 when my salary for the year was £800. I did some of the
hardware design, including the addition of the “divide” instruction to the
instruction set, and upgrading memory from magnetostrictive
delay line to the new magnetic core memory, where each bit was stored in a
small magnetic doughnut.
I noticed a curious piece of hardware in the design,
and asked what it was for. There was no desire to tell me. However, I worked
out for myself that it was to deal with what I now call “The Glitch”, the way a
computer would crash from time to time and leave no clue as to why. This piece
of circuitry would reduce the frequency of these crashes to an acceptable
level. Other names for “The Glitch” are “Synchroniser” and “Arbiter”. Nobody
wanted to talk about it, and some engineers wrongly claimed the circuitry was
unnecessary. Usually getting fired after three years, I worked in the USA in Ampex, Data Products, Motorola and Sperry Semiconductor,
and then in further companies in England. My book “The Catt Concept” did not
advise on how to avoid getting fired, but rather bewailed the incessant firing
of nearly everyone, myself and those near to me, in my industry in the USA.
To avoid having to tell everyone about “The Glitch”,
I submitted an article to the relevant peer reviewed journal. Once published, I
would not have to talk about it repeatedly, but could merely hand out copies of
my article. It was published in a peer reviewed journal in 1966. [11]
The McCutchen and MacRoberts articles about censorship had not been written.
The McCutchen article; “An evolved conspiracy” [12],
was published in 1976, and the MacRoberts article,
[13] "The Scientific Referee
System" , was published in 1980.
Aged only 31, I should not have yet known there were
barriers to communication in high technology, but I did give my article a
misleading title so that my Peer Reviewers would not realise how serious the
problem, which they probably would not understand, was claimed to be. It would
become worse as computer speeds increased. All I wanted was publication, so
that I could avoid having to talk about it repeatedly. I knew that the world’s
view of the time was that computers never went wrong, but the people who
programmed them did. All problems were in the software. The hardware was
perfect. “The Glitch” undermined that fervently held belief, and so was heresy.
Probably that was the reason for my misleading title, that I realised I was
trying to preach heresy.
Nobody else succeeded in getting past peer review
for seven years until 1973, and it did not appear in any university course, and
probably still does not today, half a century later, except perhaps in
Newcastle University, England.
Professor Jerry Cox Jr., in Washington University, St.
Louis, was in charge of the building of computer systems which were attached to
patients who had had heart attacks. [14] The medicament had to be used
sparingly, because too much of it would harm the patient. Jerry’s monitoring
computer could forecast another heart attack, and only then would the treatment
be given. Jerry was concerned about “The Glitch”, because if one of his
computers crashed, a life would be at stake. Together with the late Professor
Charles Molnar, they set up a two day conference on “The Glitch” in 1972. As
the only person who had published, I was invited, and flew from England, my
fare, expensive at the time, being paid for by the Pentagon. It is discussed in
my book of 1973. [15]. At the beginning of the conference, Alan Kotok, who was designing the computer attached to the
missile launchers to go in the Trident nuclear submarine, said there was no
problem. At the end of the conference, he agreed there was a problem, and said
he would not dare to try to explain it to his boss. In spite of this
conference, little else could be published for many years. My book co-author of
later years, Malcolm Davidson [16], when receiving a rejection from a non-peer
reviewed journal, was told that they only published problems if they could also
publish the cure. “The Glitch” has no cure; it can only be ameliorated, and the
time between crashes increased, but only if the computer designer understands
the problem.
GEC did the “fly by wire” electronics for Concorde,
the first aircraft which did not have cables going from the pilot to the wing
and tail control surfaces, which were replaced by wires carrying electric
signals. [17]. The controls were analog,
and GEC were successful. So when developing a short take-off and landing (STOL)
freight aircraft, Boeing gave the task of designing electronic controls to GEC.
But the new “fly by wire” was to be digital, and so susceptible to “The
Glitch”. The reason for STOL was that in Vietnam it was necessary when taking
off from the airfield to reach height as quickly as possible to get away from
the locals to whom the Americans were bringing freedom and democracy. If the
plane was to get up and away as quickly as possible, it would be flown close to
stalling speed, and a pilot would not have quick enough responses. However, if
a computer, faster than a human, flew the plane, the computer might fail at the
crucial moment of take-off. So the plane would have three computers controlling
three independent sets of control surfaces. The problem was,
if one computer wanted a little more lift and another wanted a little less
lift, they might fight. This would be resolved by the computers talking to each
other, but remaining independent. Unfortunately, two computers talking to each
other brought in “The Glitch”. I found out about this project, and became very
interested. This was because since failures due to “The Glitch” are only
occasional, it was possible that none of these freighters would crash. In that
event, the same system would be used later in passenger aircraft, with the loss
of hundreds of lives. To find out more, I got GEC Rochester to employ me as a
contract engineer. I went to interview the designer of that part of the system,
whose name turned out to be Mr. Death. He did not seem to know about “The
Glitch”, and neither did the boss of computer hardware design, whose name I
think was Pearce. To deal with the unnecessary trouble I seemed to be creating,
Mr. Pearce falsely reported that I had been seen coming out of a restricted
area at midnight. I was fired.
I went home, and ethical considerations meant I had
to do something about it. I wrote to higher and higher people in the GEC
organisation. At a very high level, I got a letter assuring me that his GEC
experts said there was no problem. I wrote back saying I was his expert, to which I received no reply. I left it at that.
I later heard by word of mouth that the project was abandoned because of
problems over the computers talking to each other.
My success in publishing a revolutionary 20 page article
[in the IEEE] in 1967 and two later very short articles [18] in the 1980s
weakens, but does not undermine McCutchen’s thesis,
or my thesis, that the professionalization of science means that major advances
– suggestion of paradigm change or even lesser (for instance “The Glitch”) –
can no longer be published in peer reviewed journals because of the damage it
would cause to careers, prestige and salaries. This is particularly true of the
need for a sudden updating of electromagnetic theory in the 1960s, to deal with
the new digital computer electronics. In the half century that followed,
university courses and text books clung to the earlier sinusoidal theory of
radio, which includes radar, and ignored the insights gained from the new
digital electronics, the pulses in computers. None of the content of our 1979
book “Digital Hardware Design”, published by Macmillan, [16] or any of my other
books, has been touched on in any university course or text book during the
next half century. Professors and text book writers are ignorant of the
insights gained in researching high speed digital systems. [20].
Apart from my 1967 article and the short 1980s
articles, all my work has been rejected for publication by peer reviewed
journals worldwide for 50 years. This includes my biggest achievement, “Theory
C”, which I discovered in 1976. [20] “Theory
C asserts that if a battery is connected via two wires to a lamp, there is no
electric current in the wires.” Today, more or less no relevant
professor or text book writer knows of the existence of “Theory C”, or he must
not admit to having heard of it. As a scientific advance, the significance of
“Theory C” is similar to the removal of phlogiston or caloric from science 200
years ago. [21]. The appearance of “Theory C” above
the horizon would do massive damage to careers and reputations. It is a
development from Heaviside’s work of a century ago. Heaviside’s work, although
published, has disappeared from the record. His biggest contributions, the
concept of “Energy Current”, and his [22] "We reverse this .... ....
" , are unknown today. [23]. He has not been mentioned in any text
book on electromagnetism for nearly a century. Working on sending Morse pulses
undersea from Newcastle to Denmark, Heaviside developed the theoretical
framework needed for pulses in digital (computer) electronics. Heaviside’s
1890s work disappeared in favour of Marconi’s more glamorous wireless radio,
which appeared a few years later.
The imperative that no relevant professor must admit
to having heard of “Theory C” was foreshadowed in 1949 by George Orwell.
Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity. - G. Orwell, 1984, pub. Chancellor, 1984 edn., p225
George Orwell said he was discussing the
totalitarian state of Russia. Here, we discuss totalitarian science. It is
important for a professor to not understand something which it is in his
interest to not understand. This applied to “The Glitch”, and now applies to
“Theory C”. With the ban on publication, system designers cannot be taught how
to ameliorate the problem of “The Glitch”, and reduce the frequency of the
computer crashes. Although probably
still not in any text book except Carver Mead, or any university course except
perhaps in Newcastle, “The Glitch” has belatedly become kosher (part of “Modern
Physics”), or safe, because of the book by the late Professor David J. Kinniment published in 2011 [24], whose book has extensive
coverage of me. Kinniment said Tom Kilburn, [25], in
1968 head of the development of MU5, the £600,000 government funded Manchester
University computer development, did not believe there was a problem over “The
Glitch”. He told his engineers to deal with it, but they (and later he) failed
to do so.
For ten years from 1978, every monthly issue of the
non-peer reviewed journal “Wireless World”, circulation 60,000, had articles by
me or letters discussing my work. However, professional scientists cannot admit
to reading non-peer reviewed journals. By 1982, I had come to accept that none
of my work would be validated by successfully passing peer review, and so would
be ignored. I decided to ask a simple, fundamental question, which I called
[26] "The Catt
Question" , about their
theory, [27] "Classical
Electromagnetism". No accredited expert in the world would comment on
my question. However, ten years later, going higher up in the bureaucracies
that employed them, I then caused four accredited experts, selected by their
employers, to be instructed to write to me. My self-published book [28] "The Catt Anomaly"
gives their contradictory replies, [29] , [30], and
discusses their refusal to discuss their disagreement with each other or with
us for the next 20 years. Thus, the confusion as to what their theory actually is, remains. Text
books and universities continue to teach an internally contradictory theory.
Does the man in the street believe that their behaviour, which continues today,
is ethical? Remarkably, I find that he does. The man in the street thinks that
someone like Sir Michael Pepper, having been “knighted for services to physics”
has no further responsibility to help physics towards the truth, for instance
by telling me he has changed his view on “The Catt Question”. This general
attitude in society rings the death knell for science.
The first peer reviewed article on Catt’s work for
thirty years, called “Catt’s Anomaly”, appeared 2012, calling me “an engineer
and amateur scientist”. [31]. It is muddled, and confuses my question about
classical theory with my own theories. I only recently discovered the article,
and the editor says I will be allowed to reply. [ But
see http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x59b1.htm
]
Articles
on "The Catt Question"
References.
For
hyperlinks. http://www.ivorcatt.com/jie.htm http://www.ivorcatt.com/jie.htm
2 http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/ipub002a.htm
http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/ipub002a.htm
3 http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x111.htm http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x111.htm
4 http://www.duesberg.com/ http://www.duesberg.com/
5 http://www.duesberg.com/media/nhbfailure.html http://www.duesberg.com/media/nhbfailure.html
6 slim
book http://www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/hivaids/understanding/howhivcausesaids/pages/relationshiphivaids.aspx
http://www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/hivaids/understanding/howhivcausesaids/pages/relationshiphivaids.aspx
7 Dr. Harold Hillman http://harold-hillman.com/ http://harold-hillman.com/
8 Gordon Moran and also
Michael Mallory http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/96ce/6_MalloryMoran.pdf
http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/96ce/6_MalloryMoran.pdf
9 Gordon
Moran's magnificent book https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=LwlCqYk3aLUC&pg=PP9&lr=&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=LwlCqYk3aLUC&pg=PP9&lr=&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false
10 http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Ferranti/Ferranti.Sirius.1961.102646236.pdf
http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Ferranti/Ferranti.Sirius.1961.102646236.pdf
11 http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/97sglit5.htm http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/97sglit5.htm
12 http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x56k.htm
http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x56k.htm
13 "The Scientific Referee
System" http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x145.pdf http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x145.pdf
14 http://cse.wustl.edu/PEOPLE/Pages/cox.aspx http://cse.wustl.edu/PEOPLE/Pages/cox.aspx
15 http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x1bn.pdf http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x1bn.pdf
16 http://www.ivorcatt.org/digital-hardware-design.htm
http://www.ivorcatt.org/digital-hardware-design.htm
17 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde
18 http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x22k1.pdf http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x22k1.pdf
19
http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x256.pdf http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x256.pdf
20 http://www.ivorcatt.com/2_4.htm http://www.ivorcatt.com/2_4.htm
21 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlogiston_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caloric_theory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlogiston_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caloric_theory
22 "We reverse this .... ....
" http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x3117.htm http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x3117.htm
23 http://www.ivorcatt.org/digihwdesignp65.htm
http://www.ivorcatt.org/digihwdesignp65.htm
24
http://www.async.org.uk/David.Kinniment/DJKinniment-He-Who-Hesitates-is-Lost.pdf
http://www.async.org.uk/David.Kinniment/DJKinniment-He-Who-Hesitates-is-Lost.pdf
25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Kilburn
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Kilburn
26
"The Catt Question" http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/cattq.htm http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/cattq.htm
27 "Classical
Electromagnetism" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_electromagnetism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_electromagnetism
28 "The Catt Anomaly" http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/28anom.htm http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/28anom.htm
29 http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/2812.htm
http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/2812.htm
30 http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/2813.htm http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/2813.htm
31 http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x54c.pdf http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x54c.pdf
I
made a crucial error in the article, which will delay serious consideration of
my work for a further ten years. I messed up the key statement, the definition
of "Theory C". Theory C does not discuss electric current/charge,
which I accept may not be questioned. Properly, Theory C merely says;
"If
a battery is connected to a lamp by two wires and the lamp lights, electric
current is not involved." It does not say there is no electric current. I
blame this error on my very reasonable (on my record) belief that my article
would not be published. For fifty years, virtually all my attempts to publish
in peer reviewed journals have been rejected.
When
your car delivers you (the energy) from your home to your workplace, it may or
may not be necessary to have people walking along on the pavements (sidewalks)
on each side of the road to guide your car. The key point is that your car
travels in the road, not on the pavement. Similarly, the energy to light the
lamp travels in the dielectric between the wires, not in the wires. This is
Heaviside's "We reverse this .... "; the
field causes the electric current, not the electric current causing the field.
Theory N. Battery –› electric current
–› field –› lamp
Theory H. Battery –› field –› lamp. (Also Battery –› field –› current.)
Theory C. Battery –› field –› lamp
Heaviside failed to notice that under
his “We reverse this .... “, The electric current was not involved in helping
the battery to light the lamp.
Ridiculing Catt and "The Catt Question", the
Italians say; ".... in his opinion, electric charge doesn't exist!" http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x54c.pdf . So the Catt gaffe, of apparently
questioning electric current/charge, means we can ignore him for another
decade. In "The Catt Question", which they misname "Catt's
Anomaly", Catt only asks a question asking for clarification of classical
theory, and makes no assertion that there is anything wrong with classical
theory.
Ivor Catt. 4 February 2016.
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Gordon died before carrying out the task of editor. 2014
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Ivor,
Thanks for the email.
Sorry to hear that you and Liba will have to
skip Tuscany this time around. Lucia and I hope you can make another trip
here in the future. It would be good to see you again.
Meanwhile, just a few
days ago I was asked to be guest editor for an issue of Journal of Information Ethics, with a
potential publication for the September 2015 issue. I don't know if it will
work out at this point, but might be worth a try. The ideal would be to have
articles from several different authors from various academic fields. The
general overall theme would be resistance to the correction of error, and
could include discussions of censorship, suppression, scholarly and
scientific communication, history of science, paradigms, peer review,
secrecy, rhetoric vs reality, and so forth. I think
an article from you could be a sort of showcase for the discussion of this
general theme. If you are interested, your article would be between
around 10 to 25 pages. It would be due sometime before a year from now.
If you know of other
scholars who you think would be able to make good insights with an article of
their own, please let me know. In any case, I think it will be a chance for you
to get your situation known to a wider audience. Best regards, Gordon