Re: Drugstore or pharmacy?

On Wed, 20 Aug 2008 09:53:01 +0100, Chuck Riggs
<chriggs@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:00:57 -0700, Hatunen <hatunen@xxxxxxx> wrote:

On Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:28:09 +0100, Chuck Riggs
<chriggs@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Mon, 18 Aug 2008 19:33:37 +0000 (UTC), wollman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(Garrett Wollman) wrote:

In article <6gsjsiFgoj4uU1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
LFS <laura@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

While working on my PhD I came across a book of essays in which the
editors had asked the authors of prize-winning papers to describe how
they undertook the research. The authors were remarkably open and
discussed all the blind alleys they went down and the work-arounds they
ended up using. It was very encouraging for a new researcher to discover
that research doesn't happen in the way that published papers make it
appear.

There's a term for this particular sort of publication bias, which I
have fogotten. In general, negative results don't get published, to
the great dismay of historians of science.

That's true, although one important exception that comes to mind was
the famous experiment that sought to prove the existence of the ether,
but failed, thus leading to Einstein's work on relativity:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson-Morley_experiment

Einstein claimed to have not heard of the Michelson-Morley
experiment.

Do you have any evidence to back up that statement?

Some of the articles seem to require a login, although I came
across it in a biography of Einstein. But see
http://www.upscale.utoronto.ca/GeneralInterest/Harrison/SpecRel/SpecRel.html#Explains
where it says,

"Notice that the statement also explains the null result of the
Michelson-Morley experiment. However, although the evidence is
not certain it seems quite likely that in 1905 Einstein was
unaware of the experiment (cf. Gerald Holton, "Einstein,
Michelson and the 'Crucial' Experiment," which has appeared in
Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought, pg. 261. and also in Isis
60, 1969, pg. 133.)."

Or http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-2536601741.html

"Whether Einstein had the Michelson-Morley experiment in mind
when he formulated his special theory of relativity, whether he
had once heard of it but had forgotten, or whether he was
completely unaware of it is still keenly debated by historians of
science."

We can never know for a certainty whether Einstein knew of the
Michelson-Morley results, but the deveopment of the Special
Theory of Relativity did not require the results and the paper
proposing it, On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, never
mentions Michelson.

--
************* DAVE HATUNEN (hatunen@xxxxxxx) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Why isnt the mathematician Henri Poincare acknowledged as the true discoverer of special relativ
    ... >>> obviously not the same concept as in Einsteins relativity. ... By thus inversing the logic you disagree with Einstein and Poincare: ... > separate the wheat from the chaff in several papers and put it together. ...
    (sci.physics.research)
  • Re: What lead Einstein to the theory of special relativity
    ... I guess he had no way of testing or observing that time slows down the ... Einstein had studied Maxwell's equations in part from Lorentz's papers ... The new theory based on Poincare's principle of relativity had just ...
    (sci.physics.relativity)
  • Re: A true sequence of events?
    ... > About 1905 or 1906 Albert Einstein proposes C is a constant for all observers. ... > (Papers on relativity). ... easily reachable by applying special relativity to Planck's ...
    (sci.physics)
  • Re: Poincare and Einstein on Relativity
    ... The dispute on the history of relativity is well-known, ... That none historian (including pro-Einstein) has showed how Einstein ... And there s nothing in history that demonstrates that Einstein ... giving credits in their papers and next lying about that. ...
    (sci.physics.relativity)
  • Re: Michelson-Morley (Re: Breeding orcs and other baddies)
    ... The Nobel e-museum should have the right information. ... Michelson got the 1907 Physics Nobel: ... range of applications of Michelson's work, but not the Michelson-Morley ... The history of the theoretical work preceding Einstein can be ...
    (rec.arts.books.tolkien)