The Decline of Science

30 October 2015

Dear Massimiliano Pieracchini,

I note that you did not reply to my email in the past.

I have been researching, lecturing on and studying the Politics of Knowledge for decades, even before I was convinced, fifty years ago, that Peer Review would block all my future work.

 

You showed insight into the Scientific Referee System http://ivorcatt.co.uk/x1bf.pdf in your novel. L’Anomalia, a small part of which I translated and understood with difficulty;

From the book "L'Anomalia" by Pieraccini, a best seller.

http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x5a31.htm ; "No one with a modicum of common sense would risk career and reputation for scientific study anomaly Catt" I think Max, "and even if we devoted the same time, certainly would not say around."

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You could make a major contribution to the complex structure I am developing to explain what is happening, leading to my article entitled "The Decline of Science" which has been published in the Journal of Information Ethics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Information_Ethics , and should have reached me this month, October. It begins as follows;

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Journal of Information Ethics

The Decline of Science

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] [ http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x111.htm http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x121.htm ]

 

 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 .... ....

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Peer Review has blocked publication on “The Catt Question” for 30 years. You then broke through with two articles;

IEEE Article on "Catt's Anomaly"

Physics Education article

Your retitling “The Catt Question” into “Catt’s anomaly” and “An apparent paradox: Catt’s anomaly” indicates political sophistication on your part. Would the articles have come through peer review had they not rubbished Catt?

Would the Question; “What is the role of the Holy Ghost?” be heresy? Thinking of “Modern Physics” as Religion rather than Science, is even the Questioning of dogma (Classical electromagnetism) heresy? I think today’s Science Establishment is so paranoid that for them it is heresy. A Question is heresy! Then why did you get past Peer Review?

I wonder if these issues are discussed in your novel, which I cannot read. I wonder whether your getting past Peer Review with “The Catt Question” was based on your political sophistication, or accident.

 

Examples of my work are here;

http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x0605.htm  http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/Y65BRILL.htm

http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/3600.htm

http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/y7aiee.htm http://www.electromagnetism.demon.co.uk/5b1.htm

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Lynch

 

http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/8a6.htm

http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x0804.htm

http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x1cp.pdf     http://www.ivorcatt.com/459.htm

 

The key book on this subject is by the late Gordon Moran, in whose house I stayed near Florence. “Silencing Scholars …. …. “ https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=LwlCqYk3aLUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22gordon+moran%22+%2B+%22silencing+scientists%22&source=bl&ots=BlpjRdRtgo&sig=zln05F0wF-7j68t2lXsBy4D-BBM&hl=en&ei=NDNuTb_YCcW7hAflmYAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result#v=onepage&q=%22gordon%20moran%22%20%2B%20%22silencing%20scientists%22&f=false

 

 

.I would love to have you contribute to my work.

Ivor Catt

121 Westfields,

St. Albans AL3 4JR,

England.

+44 (0) 1727 864257