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Dec15, 2015
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Professor Mahta Moghaddam, Editor,
Dear Madam,
I write regarding two matters; (1) Slurs upon Ivor Catt in an IEEE article,
Pieraccini M., Selleri
S., ‘Catt’s Anomaly’, IEEE Antennas and Propagation
Magazine, Vol. 54, No. 6, December 2012
(2) Your failure to acknowledge receipt of my article
on the violation of classical electromagnetic theory in the above IEEE article.
Case 1
It has come to my attention that you have charged Mr. Ivor Catt with writing an article that smacks of racism or
nationalism or such and so you will not consider it for publication in IEEE
Antennas and Propagation. Accusations of racism or related is an oft
resorted to epithet by critics in order to attempt discredit of a scientific
argument by instead false accusation against the character of the messenger. 1 . [Catt calls Pepper a
“Southerner”, because he says the charge comes from the south, but Pepper lives
in the west. He calls the Italians “Westerners” because they say the charge
comes from the west, but the Italians live in the south. Strange “racism”!]
I
suppose anybody who has read Mein Kampf is a Nazi,
anyone who has read Marx a Communist, and anyone who has read the Bible a
Christian. Similarly, by referring to the two Italians as Italians I suppose
that makes Mr. Catt an anti-Italian. On the other hand it might just as well
make Mr. Catt an Italiophile, since referring to the
two Italians as Italians is ambivalent. The whole of Section 1 of their IEEE
article is nothing but a slur upon Catt’s character. In fact, only Section 2 of
the three Sections of text addresses the Catt Question, but still not without
irrelevant remarks about Catt. Consider now some of the remarks made by the
Italians.
In Section 1 they say:
“amateurs and
bizarre men away from academia”
“Ivor Catt is
probably one of these [2], an engineer and amateur scientist.”
‘Since 1982 [3], Catt has claimed to have found a
fatal flaw in electromagnetism, which he named, with a sense of drama, “The
Catt’s Anomaly”’
“Indeed, this is the aim of Catt: to crash the
theory of electro magnetism [5, 6]. Actually, he has compared
himself to Dingle rather than Einstein”
In Section 2 they say:
“Catt tried to develop his own electromagnetic
theory”
“The academic word did not take Catt seriously much”
In Section 3 they say:
“Catt has claimed that no academic representative
has ever replied in a satisfactory, written, public, manner to his raising this
question. In his own book [4], he cites several personal communications”
“However, Catt declares he is unsatisfied by the
answers. He purports to develop a new electromagnetic theory”
“in our opinion,
Catt probably misinterprets the concepts of charge and field.”
There are many other remarks directed at Catt
throughout the article by the Italians.
You also object to Catt’s terms ‘westerner’ and
‘southerner’. Academic scientists don’t like anything that is remotely humourous about them. But they like to make what they think
are humourous remarks about people who disagree with
them; just as the Italians have done. I don’t think ‘westerner’ and
‘southerner’ are inaccurate or inappropriate terms for proponents of 'electric
currents' in those respective directions.
Case 2
I sent you a short and simple article that explains
the violations of classical electromagnetic theory committed in the paper by Pieraccini and Selleri, for
consideration for publication in your magazine, IEEE Antennas and
Propagation Magazine. You failed to even acknowledge it. This article was
sent to the IOP journal Physics Education, where Messrs. Pieraccini and Selleri published
a follow up to their IEEE article (Pieraccini M. and Selleri S., An apparent paradox: Catt’s anomaly, Physics
Education, 2013, v. 48 (6), 718–722). It was very quickly rejected on quite
unscientific grounds. I take it by your silence on my article that you do not
intend to even consider it for publication (I sent it to you in accordance with
the advice on your Journal’s webpage).
I am quite new to the discussions and articles on The
Catt Question. Studying the two articles by Pieraccini
and Selleri I was astonished that they were even
published, owing to their violations of classical electromagnetic theory, the
very theory they employ to address what they call ‘Catt’s Anomaly’. I can only
speculate as to why these articles were published. [The IEEE Associate Editor
who handled its publication, Professor Guiseppe
Pelosi, is a colleague of P&S in Florence University, and elsewhere is a
co-author with P&S. He would have considered peer review unnecessary. – I
Catt] How they got past ‘peer
review’ must have been by two miracles, or perhaps by something rather
insidious. I suspect the latter, because miracles are very rare whereas
insidiousness in bounty.
Owing to the misconduct of the editors of Physics
Education and your failure to even acknowledge my article, I sought
publication in a physics journal. It is now published, and is free
online:
Crothers, S. J., On An
Apparent Resolution of The Catt Question, Progress in
Physics, v.12, Issue 1, pp. 68-69, 2016,
http://ptep-online.com/index_files/2016/PP-44-13.PDF
The conduct of the editors of Physics
Education and of IEEE Antennas and Propagation in
this matter is a disgrace; probably worse.
Yours faithfully,
Stephen J. Crothers