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- <strong>Pathological Science & General Electric:Threatening the paradigm</strong>
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- Everything in biology depends on the internal order of cells, and on the interactions of each cell with its
- surroundings. All of these orderly interactions involve contacts between biological molecules and water. The
- forces regulating interactions on that scale must be understood before life can be understood, but the
- nature of the forces at these interfaces has been controversial for 100 years. In 1953, physicist Irving
- Langmuir gave a talk at the General Electric laboratory about what he called "pathological science." That
- talk is still resonating in the scientific culture, and it is used to reinforce attitudes similar to those
- held by Langmuir, i.e., the dominant scientific paradigm of the 20th century, and to justify certain
- institutions that regulate innovation. For Langmuir, there was a clearly defined "scientific method," and he
- said some people were led away from the proper method by wishful thinking to interpret ambiguous results as
- confirmations of their hypothesis. He listed 6 symptoms of pathological science: 1) An effect produced by a
- barely detectable cause, and 2) the effect is barely detectable, or many measurements are needed because of
- the very low statistical significance of the results, 3) claims of great accuracy, 4) they involve fantastic
- theories contrary to experience, 5) criticisms are met by <em>ad hoc</em> excuses, and 6) the ratio of
- supporters to critics approaches 50%, then fades toward zero. He failed to mention these features in any
- research that supported his view of things, and called an idea pathological when people continued to work on
- it despite disapproval by the recognized experts. He didn't mention the Nobel prizes that were given for the
- worm theory of cancer or for treating psychological problems with lobotomies, and he didn't mention that
- there were organized campaigns against the publication of disapproved ideas.The dominant view in biology,
- which is analogous to Langmuir's view in physics, is that all decisive cellular processes involve the direct
- mechanical contact of one molecule with another, the activation of a lock (an enzyme or receptor) by a key
- that has the right shape, or the adhesion of a molecule to another substance according to its chemical
- composition. An alternative view, now clearly supported by the evidence, is that there are forces that
- aren't merely between molecular surfaces, but rather that the local conditions at the surfaces of proteins
- and other molecules, and the properties of the solvent water, are modified by the surrounding conditions. It
- is this alternative view that is now making progress in understanding disease and health, regeneration and
- degeneration. But to judge the new work, it's important to know the nature of the opposition.Thomas Edison,
- who was adept at publicizing himself as the inventor of ideas he had bought or stolen, founded General
- Electric. Attempting to eliminate Nikola Tesla's system of alternating current, since Edison was invested in
- direct current systems, Edison's GE tried to convince the public that direct current was safer, by using
- alternating current to electrocute an elephant, and by promoting its use in the electric chair. GE
- eventually gave up the direct current technology for electrifying cities, and they refined the electric
- light bulb and were fairly successful in controlling, practically monopolizing, that market, and in
- shortening the life of incandescent bulbs. Carbon filament bulbs made around 1900 often lasted decades; I
- had one that kept working until it was broken during a move in 1960. Light bulbs made in England 65 years
- ago, and in the Soviet Union, and bulbs currently made in China, had a life expectancy five times as long as
- the bulbs made in the US since GE learned how to carefully control the rate at which the tungsten filament
- deteriorates. Irving Langmuir was their leading light bulb scientist. In his 1932 Nobel lecture, he
- tediously argued that molecules of gas can form only one layer on a surface such as a filament. About 17
- years earlier, Michael Polanyi had demonstrated that molecules can be adsorbed in multilayers, but his
- evidence was dismissed because, according to the understanding of industrial experts such as Langmuir, and
- the leading scientific authorities, Einstein, Nernst, and Haber, it was impossible. They were committed to
- an explanatory system that didn't allow events such as those Polanyi described.Although Polanyi knew that
- his adsorption isotherm was more realistic than Langmuir's (he had demonstrated many cases that Langmuir's
- didn't describe correctly), and also easier to understand, he taught Langmuir's isotherm to his students,
- because he knew that they would be required to know it to pass their examinations. He knew he had risked his
- career by his earlier exposition of his ideas, and he was unwilling to endanger his students' careers by
- involving them in the controversy.From 1920 to 1926, before the advent in 1927 of "quantum physics" (with
- its still-argued features of delocalized electrons, molecular orbitals, resonance, non-locality,
- incommensurability, indeterminism), Polanyi had turned his attention from the physics of adsorption to
- chemical structure, and his group was the first to show that cellulose was made up of long molecules,
- polymers, rather than of just associated clusters. That idea didn't catch on, so he turned to the behavior
- of crystals and metals. He found that crystals were much weaker than they should be, according to the
- strength of the bonds between their atoms, and showed that this was because of defects, and that during
- repeated stresses, they became weaker, as energy migrated through relatively long distances in the
- substance, to concentrate the defects. The idea of lattice defects was acceptable at that time, but
- long-range mobility of bond energy was no more acceptable then than it had been when J.C. Bose described
- metal fatigue, decades earlier. Polanyi also showed that the strength and rigidity of a crystal were altered
- when the crystal was immersed in water. Again, such an influence of a surface on the over-all physical
- properties of a solid substance had no noticeable effect on the scientific culture, although his results
- were published in the major journals. To adjust one's interpretive system at that time to rationalize
- Polanyi's results would have required discarding the basic assumptions that were behind Einstein's
- explanation of the photoelectric effect, and maybe even his theory of Brownian motion. However, by 2011,
- fewer people have invested their personal development in those ideas of short-range electrical binding
- forces that prevailed early in the 20th century, and now, for example, the evidence of "delocalized holes in
- DNA" can be discussed more openly. Eventually, science textbooks may be rewritten to show a steady
- progression of understanding from Bose, though Polanyi, Perutz, Szent-Gyorgyi, Ling, and Damadian (inventor
- of the MRI, holder of the patents infringed by GE, non-winner of the Nobel prize). In 1933 J.D. Bernal had
- proposed a structural model of water that contained a considerable amount of order (Bernal and Fowler, 1933)
- but by the 1950s the idea of spontaneous ordering in water was out of style, and he worked out a more random
- structure. Max Perutz, continuing the study of hemoglobin he had begun with Bernal, became concerned with
- long range forces acting through water: "The nature of the forces which keep particles parallel and
- equidistant across such great thicknesses of water is not yet clear." Normal wet crystals of methemoglobin
- contain regular layers of water 15 Angstroms thick. He suggested that a laminated structure of the water
- could plausibly explain his measurements. Comparing the protein crystal to montmorillonite particles, which
- incorporate several layers of water, each 3 Angstroms thick, each layer of water in the protein crystal
- would be 4 Angstroms thick, since swelling proceeds in discrete steps of that thickness. 52.4% of the volume
- of Perutz's normal, stable, wet protein crystals consisted of liquid. Part of the water is a fixed
- monolayer, but the rest is apparently in the form of mobile, interactive, multilayers. By 1952, Perutz had
- decided that long range forces weren't involved in hemoglobin crystallization, but he didn't comment on the
- long range ordering of clays, tobacco mosaic viruses, and other particles and gels. In 2005, an interlaminar
- distance of 17.9 Angstroms, or six layers of water, still seems to be stable in hydrated montmorillonite
- (Odriozola & Aguilar, 2005). Clay continues to be studied in relation to nuclear waste disposal, so the
- effects of surfaces on water's properties haven't been entirely excluded from science. The interfacial water
- in clay has special catalytic properties that make it interesting to many researchers (Anderson,
- 1970)Bernal's and Perutz' conformity in the 1950s rejection of long range forces and an ordered structure of
- water represented the dominant ideas in physics and physical chemistry, but many people (with very little
- financial or institutional support) were continuing to study the structure of water, both in the bulk phase
- and near surfaces, as in cells. Philippa Wiggins, Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Carlton Hazlewood, Freeman Cope, and
- Ray Damadian were among the most active proponents of the importance of structured water in living cells.
- Walter Drost-Hansen showed that water near surfaces (vicinal water) is several percent less dense, and has a
- greater heat capacity, than bulk water, and that bulk water undergoes transitions at certain temperatures
- that alter its effects on enzyme reactions.The question regarding the nature of the forces at surfaces or
- interfaces affects how we think about everything, from life to nuclear energy. The political and economic
- implications of "non-local energy" (which is most obvious at surfaces) have at times led to organized
- campaigns to discourage research in those areas. When Alexandre Rothen found (beginning in 1946) that
- enzymes and antibodies had non-local effects, several prestigious publications claimed to show how he must
- have been mistaken<strong>: </strong>The<strong> </strong>films<strong> </strong>he used must have been
- porous, despite his demonstrations of their continuity. The methods he developed at Rockefeller Institute
- quickly became standard for accurately measuring very thin films. In the early 1970s, a GE employee, Ivar
- Giaever, visited Rothen's lab to learn his methods. Shortly after his visit, he demonstrated his "new
- method" to the press. I saw an article about it in Science News, and wrote them a short letter, pointing out
- that the method had been developed and used by Rothen much earlier<strong>;</strong> they printed my note,
- which could be seen as a criticism of the author of the news article. About a week later, I got a letter
- from Rothen, thanking me for writing to the magazine; he said they had refused to publish his own letter
- explaining the situation, including his interactions with Giaever during the visit. I assume that the
- magazine felt some kind of pressure to protect Giaever and GE from an authoritative accusation of scientific
- dishonesty.In 1968 when I began studying biology at the University of Oregon, the professor of microscopy,
- Andrew Bajer, posted a display of dozens of micrographs, with explanatory captions, along the halls near the
- entrance of one of the science buildings. The one that interested me most showed orderly rows of regularly
- formed objects on a smooth surface. The caption described it as clusters of sodium atoms, deposited from
- vapor, on a film of a polymer (formvar, I think), under which was a quartz crystal. The caption noted that
- the sodium atoms had condensed in a pattern representing the crystal structure of the underlying quartz.
- Although Rothen's work involved proteins deposited from solution, rather than sodium atoms deposited from
- vapor, Bajer's image illustrated visually the projection of the forces of crystal structure through an
- amorphous film. This seemed to be a graphic representation of Polanyi's adsorption potential, a force acting
- on atoms in the space near a surface, as opposed to Langmuir's local atomic force that didn't reach beyond
- the first layer of atoms. The long range order in this case arranged atoms geometrically, while Rothen's
- preparations showed a "projected" specificity, but of a more complex sort. Just a few months later, someone
- who knew of Stephen Carter's demonstration that fibroblasts will migrate on a glass slide coated with a gold
- film, toward areas of greater thickness of the metal, did a similar experiment, but with a formvar film
- between the gold and the cells. The cells still migrated up the gradient, toward the area of thicker gold
- under the film. The reaction to that publication was the same as the reaction to Rothen's work 20 years
- before, the formvar films contained holes, and the cells were reaching through the film to touch the metal
- surface, sort of like kids peeking around a blindfold when they aren't supposed to be watching. I didn't
- understand how the holes would explain anything, even if there were holes and if the cells had put out many
- long filopodia to reach through the film, but in fact making a formvar film is a very standardized
- technique. They can be made "holey," or like a very open net, or they can be made solid, just by choosing
- the concentration of the polymer used. The difference is very clear, under an electron microscope, but the
- professors needed an excuse for dismissing something they didn't want to understand. Further work was
- discouraged by their ridicule.In Russia, GE had very little influence on the acceptability of ideas in
- science, and Boris Deryagin continued (from the 1930s until 1990) to study the properties of water near
- surfaces. In 1987 his group demonstrated that cells can clear particles from a space around themselves,
- extending more than a cell's diameter away. This distance is similar to the cell free zone in flowing blood
- adjacent to the walls of arterioles, which is probably the result of multiple interacting forces. At
- present, processes such as cell adhesion of leukocytes and stem cells (and tumor cells) to the blood vessel
- wall and movement through the blood vessel into the tissues (diapedesis) is explained in terms of adhesion
- molecules, disregarding the plausible effects of long range attractive or repulsive forces. Clumping or
- sludging of red blood cells occurs when the organism is failing to adapt to stress, and could be reasonably
- explained by a failure of protective repulsive fields. These fields are developed and maintained by
- metabolism, primarily oxidative energy metabolism, and are modified by endogenous regulatory substances and
- external conditions, including electromagnetic and electrical fields. 100 years ago, Albert Einstein was a
- major influence in popularizing the "only local" dogma of atomic interactions. (His work led directly to
- "quantum physics," but he never accepted its irrational implications.<strong><sup>(1)</sup></strong> I don't
- think he ever considered that the assumptions in his [atomic-quantized] theory of the photoelectric effect
- were the problem.) One charged atom is completely neutralized by its association with an oppositely charged
- atom, and the force is described by the inverse square law, that the force decreases with the square of the
- distance between point charges, meaning that the force is very strong at very small distances. However, a
- physical<strong><em>surface</em></strong>, a plane where one substance ends and another begins, follows
- different rules. Different substances have different electron affinities, creating a phase boundary
- potential, a charged layer at the interface. (Electrical double layers at interfaces are important in
- semiconductors and electrodes, but biologists have carefully avoided discussing them, except in the very
- narrow context of electrodes.) The electrically active surface of a substance, even though it's made of
- atoms and electrons, projects its electrical field in proportion to its area. This principle is as old as
- Coulomb's law, but the habit of thinking of electrical charge on the atomic scale seems to make people
- forget it. It's exactly the sort of space-filling field that Polanyi's adsorption isotherm describes. It's
- also involved in crystal strength and elasticity as studied by Polanyi, in piezoelectricity, and in
- generation of semiconduction in amorphous materials, as used in Stan Ovshinsky's processes.Long range
- structural and electronic interactions produce "antenna" effects, which are sensitive to very weak fields,
- whether they originate inside or outside of the organism. Magnetobiology is often treated as a
- pseudo-science or pathological science, because "real science" considers heating and chemical bond reactions
- to be the only possible effects of low energy fields or radiation. Solco Tromp, beginning in the 1930s,
- showed that cells behave like liquid crystals, and that liquid crystals can respond to very low electrical
- and magnetic fields.If the adsorption potential structures the water in its region of space, this
- interfacial water is now a new <em>phase</em>, with different physical properties, including new catalytic
- properties, such as those recognized by the clay investigators (which increased its ability to dissolve the
- clay minerals).Several versions of Langmuir's Pathological Science talk have been published, some of them
- adding new examples, including "polywater." Langmuir died in 1957, and the first example of polywater was
- observed by N.N. Fedyakin was observed in 1961. When finely drawn quartz or Pyrex glass capillary tubes
- (with inside diameter of up to a tenth of a millimeter) are suspended in a container with the air pressure
- reduced, above a container of distilled water, so that they are exposed to pure water vapor at room
- temperature, after a period of an hour or more (sometimes days or weeks were required) a small drop of
- liquid condenses inside some (a small percentage) of the capillary tubes. Above some of the original drops,
- a second drop sometimes appeared, that would enlarge as the first drop shrank. This separation of water into
- two fractions was itself anomalous, and the upper drop was found to be denser than normal water. Many people
- began studying its properties. Fedyakin found that its thermal expansion was greater, and its vapor pressure
- lower, than ordinary water. Others found that it had a higher refractive index, viscosity, and surface
- tension, as well as greater density, than ordinary water. Birefringence (the splitting of a beam of light
- into two rays when it passes through an ordered material) was observed in the anomalous water, and this
- usually indicates the presence of a polymer (Fedyakin, et al., 1965; Willis et al., 1969; Lippincott, et
- al., 1969) or crystallinity. The water associated with clay is also birefringent (Derjaguin and
- Greene-Kelly, 1964), and its properties are different when the clay absorbs it from the vapor phase or from
- liquid water.Hysteresis is a lag in the behavior of a system, resulting when the internal state of the
- system is altered by an action, so that it responds differently to a repetition of that action; it's the
- memory of a system that exists only when the system has internal structure. For example, a gas has
- relatively little hysteresis. Perfect elasticity is one extreme of an ordered solid, but most solids have
- some hysteresis, in which the deformed material fails to spring back immediately. Hysteresis of adsorption
- can be seen at the edges of a drop of water on a tilted surface, with a steeper contact angle on the newer
- contact at the lower edge, showing a reluctance of the water to wet a new surface, a lower contact angle
- where the drop is pulling away from the upper surface, a reluctance to break the contact. The same is seen
- at the edges of an evaporating-shrinking drop, or a growing drop. Everyone perceives this memory function of
- water.Boris Deryagin studied both the elasticity and the hysteresis of water near surfaces, and both
- approaches showed that it contained internal structure. Many dogmatic professors denied that water could
- show elasticity or "memory," because of their interpretive system/mental rigidity. When Fedyakin got the
- help of Deryagin's lab in analyzing the anomalous material, many different methods of purifying the glass
- and the water and the vessel were tried, and its properties were analyzed in many different ways. When
- Deryagin first described the material at a conference in Europe, there was great interest, and eventually
- hundreds of people began investigating it. A British laboratory was the first to get a sample of Deryagin's
- material in 1966, and their tests confirmed Deryagin's. The US Bureau of Standards, having the best
- analytical instruments in the world (including a microscope spectrometer), studied it carefully. They
- (Lippincott, Stromberg, Grant, & Cessac, 1969) found that its bonds were stronger than those in ordinary
- water, and they compared its absorption spectrum (by computer) with those of 100,000 known substances, and
- found that it corresponded with nothing previously known. It didn't have the absorption band of normal
- water. When it evaporated, it left no visible residue, and it turned into ordinary water when heated. They
- concluded that the physical structure that would best fit its absorption spectrum was a polymerized form of
- water, so they called it "polywater." Later, Lippincott and others (Page, et al., 1970; Petsko, 1970) did
- proton magnetic resonance analyses that showed a difference of polywater from normal water in the hydrogen
- bonding, a "deshielding" of the protons, meaning that the electrons were arranged differently in the
- molecules.In 1969 there were many threats to the dominant paradigm, and many people were demanding a change
- in the government's funding priorities. The public excitement about polywater following the many
- confirmations of its existence was disturbing to the defenders of the paradigm. Philip Abelson, the chief
- editor of Science magazine, used the magazine to further his political beliefs. Denis Rousseau, a young
- researcher at Bell Labs (who now writes about pathological science), published a series of articles in
- Science describing his tests of polywater. He played tennis until his tee-shirt was soaked with sweat, then
- extracted and concentrated the sweat into a small gummy pellet. He reported that the infrared spectrum of
- the sweat concentrate (largely sodium lactate) was very similar to that of polywater. One of the techniques
- he used to identify impurities (electron spectroscopy) requires a high vacuum, so there couldn't be any
- normal water present. The water associated with ionic impurities is driven off at low temperatures compared
- to the temperature needed to decompose the anomalous water.Although Rousseau's "explanation" was ludicrous,
- it was just the thing the professors needed to prevent further challenges to their paradigm. Although
- Deryagin published more evidence of the purity of the anomalous water in 1972, by 1973 the mass media,
- including Science magazine, were saying that polywater didn't exist, and that Deryagin had admitted that he
- was mistaken. But polywater was Lippincott's term, and what Deryagin said was that silica was the only
- impurity that could be identified in the anomalous material. There are many antecedents to anomalous water
- in the literature. In the 1920s, W.A. Patrick of Johns Hopkins and J. L. Shereshefsky at Howard university
- investigated the properties of water in fine capillary tubes and found that the vapor pressure wasn't the
- same as that of normal water. (This is what would have been expected, if Polanyi's adsorption isotherm had
- been accepted.) The density of water in clay has been found to be slightly less than normal. This water
- bound to clay requires a high temperature to eliminate, similar to the decomposition temperature of
- polywater. The catalytic properties of interfacial water in clay are recognized, causing it to solublize
- components of the clay. So it's hard to imagine that there wouldn't be some silica in the material formed in
- quartz or glass capillary tubes.<strong>The only thing pathological about the polywater episode was the
- extreme effort that was made to stigmatize a whole category of research, to restore faith in the old
- doctrine that insisted there are no long range ordering processes anywhere in the universe.</strong> The
- successful campaign against polywater strengthened the mainstream denial of the evidence of ordering in
- interfacial and intracellular water, kept the doctrine of the lipid bilayer cell membrane alive, and up
- until the present has prevented the proper use of MRI scans in medical diagnosis.In 1946, while the
- government was studying the way nuclear fallout was influenced by the weather, a group at GE, led by
- Langmuir, began experimenting with weather control by means of "cloud seeding." Langmuir observed that the
- energy in a cloud system was greater than that in an atomic bomb, and that by seeding clouds in Europe,
- disastrous weather effects could be created in the Soviet Union. The GE group convinced the Pentagon to
- become involved in weather control. (The physicist Ross Gunn was transferred directly from work on the
- atomic bomb to direct the cloud seeding project.) In one of Langmuir's seeding experiments, he claimed that
- he had changed the direction of a hurricane moving toward the U.S. When a young researcher pointed out that
- the weather service had predicted exactly that change of direction, based on the temperatures of ocean
- currents, Langmuir became angry, and told the man that he wasn't going to explain it to him, because he was
- too stupid to understand. Langmuir's attitude toward science was exactly what GE wanted; his career and
- reputation were part of the corporation's public relations and business plan. Science was whatever GE
- thought was good for their business. That science was pathological, sometimes by Langmuir's own defining
- features, most of the time by the effects it has had on society. The Manhattan Project was central to GE's
- business plan, and when the bomb project was completed GE and the Atomic Energy Commission found that the
- same subsidies could be used to develop nuclear generators of electricity. Following Edison's pioneering
- work with x-rays, x-ray imaging machines had become very profitable for GE. It was important to assure the
- public that medical, industrial, and military radiation was well understood, well controlled, safe, and
- essential for the general welfare. In their view, if every woman could have access to GE's x-ray mammograms,
- for example, almost all breast cancers could be cured. The radiation exposure from living near a GE nuclear
- power generator is infinitesimal compared to living in Denver or flying in an airplane. (There is some
- discussion of these issues in my January, 2011 newsletter, "Radiation and growth.") Public relations
- involves everything from "basic research" to television advertising.If nuclear energy is as safe as the
- industry and governments say it is, the reactors should be located in the centers of large cities, because
- transmitting electric power long distances is presently wasting 50% of the power (Hirose Takashi, The
- Nuclear Disaster that could destroy Japan...and the world, 2011). Admiral Rickover, influential advocate of
- nuclear power, said "...every time you produce radiation, [a] horrible force [is unleashed,] and I think
- there the human race is going to wreck itself. [We must] outlaw nuclear reactors" (January, 1982
- congressional testimony) Helen Caldicott says Fukushima is many times worse than Chernobyl. The radioactive
- cesium in German mushrooms and truffles hasn't decreased 25 years after Chernobyl, and the German government
- is spending increasing amounts to compensate hunters for the wild boars (who eat truffles) that must be
- disposed of as radioactive waste.<strong><sup>(2)</sup></strong>General Electric sent its condolences to the
- people of Japan, and said the reactors of that design had functioned well for 40 years; they didn't mention
- that Unit I at Fukushima had been scheduled to be shut down on March 26, 2011, the end of its 40 year life
- expectancy. In late March, as the accident continued, Tepco applied for a permit to build two new reactors
- at the Fukushima site. In the US, the government continues its loan guarantee policy to subsidize new
- reactor construction. After many years of working with his metalized slides, Alexandre Rothen found that
- their activity, the strength of their long-range influence, varied with a 24 hour cycle, and that their
- activity could also be destroyed or restored by putting them in a magnetic field, parallel or perpendicular
- to the surface. Around the same time, a Russian biochemist, Simon Shnoll, noticed that there were cyclic
- changes in well defined enzymic reactions. Like Rothen, Shnoll did experiments that showed that the earth's
- motion (relative to the stars) affected measurements in the laboratory, even measurements of alpha particles
- produced by nuclear fission. Organized matter, whether it's cellular or in the crystalline solid state, is
- susceptible to surrounding conditions.In 1971 or '72 I learned of H.C. Dudley's idea of a "neutrino sea,"
- that he suggested might be equivalent to the "luminiferous ether" that had previously been used to explain
- light and electromagnetism. I wrote to him, asking if he thought neutrinos could be involved in biological
- ordering processes by resonating with matter under some circumstances. He had been developing a theory, in
- which atomic nuclei might interact with a neutrino "ether," in ways that could affect the decay rate of the
- unstable isotopes, and so it didn't seem unreasonable to him that biological structures might also interact
- with neutrinos. In October, 1972, he published a purely theoretical article in which he explained that
- nuclear reactors might under some conditions become dangerously unstable. I had earlier seen a newspaper
- article about an experiment by a physicist, J.L. Anderson, in which radioactive carbon-14 didn't follow the
- normal rules of random decay, when the isotope was incorporated into an oil, which was spread in a monolayer
- on a metal surface. By chance, Anderson's experimental article was published simultaneously with Dudley's
- theoretical article, though neither one knew of the other's work. Nearly all physicists said his results
- weren't possible, because the small forces involved in adsorbing an oil to a metal surface were
- infinitesimal compared to the force needed to cause nuclear reactions. Over the next few years, Dudley and
- others did some experiments that appeared to confirm Anderson's results, showing that the rate of nuclear
- reactions can be modified by mild changes in the physical state of the unstable elements.Anderson's and
- Dudley's work didn't get much attention from the public, so there was no need for the defenders of the
- dominant paradigm to attack it. There was no financial support for continuing their research.Behind the
- industries' assurances that "low level" radiation is safe, whether it's ionizing radiation, microwave or
- broadcast frequency electromagnetic radiation, is their reductionist approach to physics, chemistry, and
- biology. Those doctrines no longer have the prestige that they once did, but their pathological,
- authoritarian "science" culture is being sustained by the influence of corporations on mass culture.With the
- institutions of research and education controlled by pharmaceutical, military and industrial interests for
- their own benefit, fundamental progress in knowledge is a threat to the system. NOTES1. From Einstein's 1926
- letter to Max Born: "Quantum mechanics is very worthy of regard. But an inner voice tells me that this is
- not yet the right track. The theory yields much, but it hardly brings us closer to the Old One's secrets. I,
- in any case, am convinced the He does not play dice." Quoted in P. Busch and G. Jaeger, "Unsharp quantum
- reality," 4 May 2010.2. None of the major institutions in the US are providing basic information about
- protection from Fukushima's radioactive fallout. Eating foods produced before the arrival of the radioactive
- rain, feeding old foods to chickens and milk animals, and keeping your metabolic rate high, are the main
- defenses. Eventually, fertilizing crops with mined minerals, and enriching the atmosphere with carbon from
- coal will dilute the radioactive isotopes from the nuclear accidents.<h3>REFERENCES</h3>DM Anderson, <strong
- >Role of interfacial water and water in thin films in the origin of life,</strong>
- <a rel="nofollow" href="http://history.nasa.gov/CP-2156/ch1.4.htm" target="_blank"
- >http://history.nasa.gov/CP-2156/ch1.4.htm</a>DM Anderson and AR Tice, 1970, <strong>Low-temperature phases
- of interfacial water in clay-water systems,
- </strong>Crrel Research Reports, Army Dept, US, Res Rpt 290. "The low temperature exotherms do not depend
- critically upon water content, but clearly they are related to clay mineral and exchangeable cation type.
- The evolution of heat in this temperature range probably corresponds to a phase change in the interfacial
- water.")J. Physical Cehmistry 76(4), 1976, <strong>"Non-Poisson distributions observed during counting of
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- </p>
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