Examples of deception in the history of science (1)

Examples of deception in the history of science (1) * Note: This series is from the book (Traitors of Truth: Cheating and Deception in the Halls of Science) for more please see the book. “We have learned all these facts about the natural world through experimental science, triumphing over darkness and ignorance; in order to classify stars and to estimate their sizes, composition, distances, and speed; and in order to classify living races and reveal their genetic relationships...These great achievements of experimental science have been made by men ... who have few things in common: they have been honest and have already observed those observations, and have published the results of their work in such a way as to allow others to reproduce the experience or observations.” This is how the Berkeley Physics Series, an influential text used throughout the United States to impress students with the content and tradition of modern physics, states. However, as with non-scientific belief systems, the strongly emphasized elements are often the least realistically reliable. Claudius Ptolemy, best known as the "greatest astronomer of antiquity", did not observe most of his life at night from the Egyptian coast, but during the day from the large library in Alexandria, where he took over the works of a Greek astronomer and named them after him. Galileo Galilei, often hailed as the founder of the modern scientific method because of his insistence that experience, not Aristotle’s work, should be the judge of truth. However, colleagues of the Italian physicist during the 17th century had difficulty reproducing his results, doubting that he was conducting certain experiments. Isaac Newton, the brilliant young man who formulated the laws of gravity, relied on an indecently cautious factor to make the predictive power of his work seem much greater than it was. John Dalton, the great chemist of the 19th century who discovered the laws of chemical composition and proved the existence of different types of atoms, published elegant results that no chemist nowadays has been able to repeat. Gregor Mendel, the Austrian monk who founded genetics, has published papers on his work on peas that contain statistics that are too good to be true. - American physicist Robert Millikan won the Nobel Prize for measuring the electric charge of the electron. But Millikan twisted his work too much to make his experimental results look more convincing than they actually were. Empirical science is based on a paradox, which aims to make objectively verifiable reality the standard of truth. But it is not boring facts that give science its intellectual pleasure, but ideas and theories that give meaning to facts. Fact-finding, in fact, is not as fruitful as developing a theory or law that explains facts, and that is where the temptation lies. In interpreting nature’s unbridled substance and trying to get there first, the world can sometimes be drawn to address facts quickly and loosely to make the theory seem more convincing than it really is. With rare exceptions, there are no rewards for being second. Unprecedented discovery is the fruit of bitterness. In a conflict of conflicting claims and competing theories, the world often takes effective measures to ensure that its ideas are noticed, and that a new discovery is recognized in its name. The desire for praise and peer respect is a powerful motivation for almost all scientists. From the earliest days of science, the thirst for recognition has been accompanied by the temptation to “improve” the truth a little, or even to invent whole data, so that theory prevails. Claudius Ptolemy, who lived during the 2nd century AD in Alexandria, Egypt, was one of the most influential scientists in history. His synthesis of early astronomical ideas led to the creation of a system for predicting the positions of planets. Ptolemy's ideas shaped mankind's conception of the structure of the universe for nearly 1500 years, much longer than the period when the ideas of Newton or Einstein prevailed. The Ptolemaic system prevailed undisputed during the Dark Ages, from the early years of the Roman Empire until the late Renaissance. In the 19th century, when astronomers revisited Ptolemy’s original data, they began to notice some strange navigation. Back-calculations from the current planet site showed many of Ptolemy’s observations wrong. The errors were gross even by the standards of ancient astronomy. Dennis Rawlins, an astronomer at the University of California, San Diego, believes from the internal evidence that Ptolemy did not make those observations himself as he claimed, but rather transmitted them entirely from a previous work of astronomy. The island of Rhodes, where Hipparchus made his observations, is at the level of five degrees north of Alexandria. Of course there is a five-pointed strip of southern stars that can be seen from Alexandria and not from Rhodes. Not one of the 1025 stars listed in Ptolemy's catalogue comes from the five-pointed strip. Ptolemy is also accused of a more recent scientific crime, namely that he derived the data he cited to support his theory from the theory itself rather than from nature. He was most important to Robert Newton, a member of the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University. In his book The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy, he collected dozens of cases where the results quoted by Ptolemy were almost identical to what the Alexandrian sage wanted to prove and significantly different from what he should have observed. A striking example is Ptolemy's claim that he observed an autumnal equinox at 2 a.m. on September 25, 136, emphasizing his measurement of the phenomenon "with a great deal of caution." However, according to Newton, the back calculation by modern tables showed that the observer from Alexandria should have seen the equinox at 9:54 a.m. on September 24, that is, before A day and more. Ptolemy was trying, by determining the date of the equinox, to show the accuracy of the measurement of the length of the year as determined by Hipparchus. Hipparchus also measured an autumn equinox 278 years ago, on September 27, 146 BC. Newton showed that if the estimate of Hipparchus (which is considered distinct but not quite correct) were to be added to the equinox of Hipparchus, the result would not be within minutes of time. Ptolemy’s defenders, such as historian Owen Gingerich, claim that contemporary scholars are unfair in applying contemporary standards of scientific procedure to Ptolemy. But even Gingerich, who calls Ptolemy “the greatest astronomer of antiquity,” admits that the Almagest contains “some remarkably dubious numbers,”4 but insists that Ptolemy chose only to publish data that supported his theories no matter what. The advantage that is supposed to distinguish science from other types of knowledge is its reliance on empirical evidence, that is, on testing ideas against facts in nature. But Ptolemy is not the only one who has ignored the duties of an observer. 1. C. Kittel, W. D. Knight, M. A. Ruderman, The Berkeley Physics Course, Vol. 1, Mechanics (McGraw-Hill, New York, 1965). This passage, together with an interesting analysis of the scientific textbook writers' use of history, is quoted in an article by Stephen G. Brush, "Should the History of Science Be Rated X?" Science, 183, 1164-1172, 1974. 2. Dennis Rawlins, "The Unexpurgated Almajest: The Secret Life of the Greatest Astronomer of Antiquity," Journal for the History of Astronomy, in press. 3. Robert R. Newton, The Crime of Claudius Ptolemy (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1977). For a summary of the argument see Nicholas Wade, "Scandal in the Heavens: Renowned Astronomer Accused of Fraud," Science, 198, 707-709, 1977. 4. Owen Gingerich, "On Ptolemy As the Greatest Astronomer of Antiquity," Science, 193, 476-477, 1976, and "Was Ptolemy a Fraud?" preprint No. 751, Center for Astrophysics, Harvard College Observatory, Cambridge, 1977. See also a news article summarizing an attempt to absolve Ptolemy, Scientific American, 3, 90-93, 1979. William Broad - Neoclass Wade — Source: Brahin Center website - Published 2018-05-02 (archived at the Internet Archive) https://braheen.com/articles/science-scientism/أمثلة-الخداع-في-تاريخ-العلم-1