PIGASUS
Mascot-Symbol of AAS-HAD-Cult's
Intellectual Mobility &
Generosity
Intellectual Mobility & Generosity
The main subject here will be the well-known Neptune-Discovery Controversy
over who deserved prime credit for the planet's predictive discovery,
Cambridge's John Couch Adams or Paris Observatory's Urbain Leverrier
(did Britain planet-nap Neptune from the French?) —
a saga rife with institutional serial-deception & coverup
for the last 165 years. And counting.
(Those unfamiliar with the simultaneously glorious&infamous Neptune
history may see below for a précis of it.)
Much of what confrontationally
follows is concerned with the Neptune Scandal's most recent
and most perversely suppressive
culmination:
the AMERICAN Astronomical Society's barring panel-participation by
the AMERICAS' leading astronomical-history journal,
DIO, in the AAS' 2011/1/9
Historical Astronomy Division (HAD) session on the Neptune history.
This exclusion has been HAD-decreed in spite of the following
transparent circumstances:
[1] In 2000, AAS-HAD-session co-chief Wm.Sheehan
wrote
DIO's publisher, Dennis Rawlins, complimenting him
on solving the Neptune-Controversy mystery.
[2] Sheehan and the HAD session's other organizer, Craig Waff,
co-authored the 2004 Dec Scientific American article that openly
depended (see its crucial p.98) upon
DIO 9.1 [1999]
for the main scientific evidence behind the article's titular thesis
(also borrowed from DIO,
but more slyly) that
Leverrier was robbed of full credit for discovering Neptune.
[3] With conspicuous suddenness, writers Waff&Sheehan
joined (or re-joined) the HAD in the same year: see 2010 AAS Directory.
(How long have plans been laid that these dedicated but misused writers
will in Seattle demonstrate that
there is no limit to the dishonesty of the shunnery
that the HAD can perpetrate, without a peep of complaint from the HAD's
rabbitariate membership?) Both W&S joined
as AAS “Affiliates”, since neither is academically qualified
to be an AAS Full Member. (Unless debate-ducking becomes a new qualifier.)
Most of DIO's major figures are
Full AAS Members (Kowal, DR) or have retired as such (Standish),
or are scientifically qualified to be such (Duke, etc).
[Detailing the foregoing contrasts:
Several Neptune-expert DIO scientists have been
Full Members of the AAS for decades.
The two co-chairs of the Seattle session are last-minute
additions to the AAS (and aren't Full),
having been brought in just a year ago, suggesting that the HAD priority
is not experienced expertise but politically tractible science-writers whose
views are best protected from expert criticism — though such debate
is one of the prime reasons for having academic meetings.
DIO's people have attended numerous past academic meetings;
and all discourse was polite, so there is no basis for pretending
that there is reasonable fear of a scene. Unless from an
archon.
(Hmmm. Does racing out of a room to escape debate constitute a scene? See
DIO 8 [1998]
‡5 §J4 [p.56].)
The implicit detachment
(or inverse correlation)
of HAD-prominence from scholarly skill, reliability, or solid originality
reminds one of woeful poverty-area school districts that hand out
My-Kid-Is-A-Great-Kid-at-A.E.Newman-School to anyone regardless of grades.
Does the HAD really need delusional feel-good uplift by protection
from the downer experience of demythologizing-contradiction?
The Seattle fix is just the latest chapter in a decades-long series of
attempts to CONTAIN the Neptune-discovery history's full scandalousness
— a process attended by increasing resentment of DR's no-self-censorship
unwillingness to mute the truth
by either filtering his findings
(e.g., ScAm) or eliminating them (HAD).
Question: When the Seattle session was conceived, was it decided up-front
whether DIO's well-known central
Neptune research was going to be allowed mention?
If no, it's a shun-censorial crime; if yes, DIO
should've
been invited. (Just another measure of how bright shy-shunners are:
doesn't any archon have the prescience to see that shunnings always require
for their maintenance an eternal succession of further crimes?
(Discussed:
DIO 1.2 [1991]
§D4 [p.109].)]
[4] AAS and both session-chiefs are
aware that DIO has for decades
led the way (with considerable assistance
from the New York Times, CalTech, NOAO,
AAAS' Science, as well as Nick Kollerstrom and Adam Perkins)
in resolving this controversy's mysteries,
via key-document recovery as well as DIO's
revolutionary new mathematical, logical, and historical analyses.
An excuse that is likely to be tried to explain DIO's
exclusion (heard via panelist Rob Smith last Autumn):
we want to cover new findings
& material.
[Note added 2011/1/13. New? What is being reported on HASTRO from Seattle
(hopefully incomplete) has raised nothing that was not old-news 50y ago;
e.g., regarding the errors of the L&A orbits before and after 1846.]
Question: When choosing the Seattle HAD panel, did Waff ask if DIO has anything new to contribute to the meeting? Of course not.
But, naturally, we do —
and it's material central to the Neptune case:
[1] Precise double-on-the-nose reconstruction
of the extrapolatory math that led Brit-claimant Adams
to his fatefully erroneous final predicted longitude, 315°20'.
[This finding should be understandable even to
sub-rabbitariatedum, since the required math is grade school.
It bears directly upon the ScAm co-authors' repeated
beyond-belief-uncomprehending
and contra-own-defendant
attempt to post-discovery-elevate Hyp.1
into the Adams-prediction-that-really-counts (regression to Brit mythology),
distractively assisted by
forgery in DR's 2005 Apr
ScAm letter.]
[2] Also, DIO's people possess a photocopy of
a crucial RGO document (of which the original appears to be at least
temporarily lost), which we used in
DIO 9.1 [1999]
‡1.
As for the hey-let's-do-new-stuff ploy.
Funny, the AmerPhilSoc in 2009 used the very same dodge
to excuse not inviting any of DIO's internationally known
polar-history experts to APS' symposium celebrating
the 100th anniversary of Peary's DIO-debunked 1909 N.Pole
attainment: who-cares about the prime controversy of all polar history?
— we'd rather have largely obscure scholars PC-jaw about
ethnic & feminist issues. Of course, the meeting's main speaker
(friend of Peary Museum curator S.Kaplan) reneged
and non-neutrally talked plenty on The Controversy anyway (2008/5/22)
as apologist for explorers who neglected to bring home proof of their claims;
and
dissent was literally shouted down — to stampeded applause —
surely the lowest spectacle in APS' long history. One hopes.
[Small World Dep't: AAS-HAD ultimo-gooroo O.Gingerich is
extremely well-connected to the APS.]
The present attempted suppression of debate is a classic case of
able and creative scholars versus establishment archons of
(how-shall-we-mercifully-put-it?) “moderate” intellectual gifts.
It is entirely in-line with the history-of-astronomy political center's
long-standing pattern of suppressing general awareness of:
[a] others' dissent; as well as
[b] its own revealing but understandably-deflating history of
screwups —
this, even as cheekily-Black-Affidaviting-outlaw-DR
openly criticizes his own mistakes
(none
debuting in world-expert-refereed DIO, incidentally),
and DIO continues to cite and appreciate
even its lowest detractors' positive contributions. (See, e.g.,
DIO 16 [2009]
p.2 n.2, and elsewhere here.)
Our Text-for-the-Day is chosen for its clarity in explanatorily telling us which of these two factions is responsible (DIO 9.1 [1999] ‡3 n.33 [p.41]) for the long contra-communication warfare described in what follows:
Another recent DIO comment:
(DIO 14 [2008] ‡3 §B6 [p.22].)a cult which systematically, pseudo-effetely labels and treats others as cranks while transforming journals & conferences into elaborate balls devoted to cranks' favorite dance — dodging dissonant evidence — needs to fill several lacks: common sense, statistical sense, Occam sense, humor sense.
And a mirror.
DIO:
The International Journal of Scientific History is
the most technically able astronomical-history journal on Earth.
It is also the only astronomical-history journal that
internet-posts all its
freely-downloadable issues immediately
(even posting free booklet-PDFs as well)
because we seek no financial profit or political advancement,
aiming strictly at truth.
Which probably explains why DIO has devoted a larger fraction
of its pages to exposing historical science hoaxes
than any other science journal.
DIO's small
but elite main board
boasts astronomers who are among the greatest in
the history of the field:
C.Kowal (Mt.Palomar, STSI, Johns Hopkins Univ
Applied Physics Lab) & E.M.Standish (CalTech-JPL).
(DIO's other boards
include the 1st winner [before joining DIO]
of the AAS' own history-of-astronomy Doggett Prize,
as well as a past President of the History of Science Society.)
DIO is also the only serious astronomical history journal
in the Americas, yet (as just noted)
the American Astronomical Society's Historical Astronomy Division has
long excluded DIO from its publications,
its invited speakers, and its prizewinners.
A brief sample of DIO's credits follows, in order
to provide an idea of the quality of the scholarship which the
prioritization-challenged
AAS-HAD is attempting to bar from a conference on a controversy
(Neptune's discovery) on which DIO and its
publisher have
long contributed more revolutionary findings than anyone on Earth,
e.g., the first revelation
by anyone that Adams was pointing to
a longitude far worse than Leverrier's prediction:
Sky&Telescope 38:180-182 (1969).
These finds include recovery (with Nick Kollerstrom's
and Adams Perkins' crucial help) of by far the most important
document of the case,
whose contents were successfully predicted
by DIO even before its physical apprehension.
DIO's Myles Standish is creator of the Neptune orbit
used by NASA to locate its target when sending spacecraft there.
DIO 15 [2008]
has the exclusive inside account of
the recovery of the earliest of all observations of Neptune
(Galileo's 1612-1613 sightings), written by the discoverer himself,
DIO's Charles Kowal.
DIO's publisher was first to publish
evidence (Royal Astr. Soc 1973)
that the main masses of the Solar System end at Neptune.
As for DIO achievements
outside the Neptune-Controversy history:
One
among the several front-page New York Times coverages
given to DIO's discoveries culminated in special co-publication
(DIO 10 [2000])
with the University of Cambridge.
DIO 3 [1993]
is the standard critical edition
of Tycho's 1004-star catalog.
DIO 1.1 [1991]
revealed the startling Greek source of
the Babylonian year, resulting in the relevant cuneiform text's
permanent display at the British Museum.
DIO's Dennis Rawlins has published
in professional journals more investigations of
historical science hoaxes than anyone.
On 2009/9/8, the New York Times Science Dep't
examined
our formerly-wild-looking proposal
(DIO 10 [2000])
that the 1st three claims to have reached the N.Pole were fake, thus
establishing the truth of the most startling revelation in polar history:
that Roald Amundsen was 1st to both North and South Poles.
The New York Times article also understandably concludes
that our opponents have been deluding themselves.
Despite (or, more accurately because of)
DIO's weightiness, the HAD and its fave
Journal for the History of Astronomy
— most succinctly designated and mission-identified
by the acronym “JHAD” — have for decades
been on an unsuccessful but dementedly persistent dirty-tricks
jihad
to run DR (and for the last 20y, DIO)
out of the field of history of astronomy.
Powerful at both JHA and HAD is fundie-Christian
Owen Gingerich, who circulates slanderous lies about DR
again and again
and again and again.
But the JHAD-Jihad has suffered humiliating, still-smarting wounds from its own uninvited, gratuitous, successive backfired attacks on & smears of DIO, as well as DIO's reactive demonstrations of our arrogant critics' actual qualifications as judges.
As noted elsewhere, the DIO-loathing AAS-HAD's idea of a “premier” journal is DIO-loathing M.Hoskin's Journal for the History of Astronomy, which DIO has so repeatedly shown to be unreliable that the ever-more-esteamed Hoskin has shot back in every way but showing DIO's unreliability because that long-sought grail just isn't there.
Despite one exploding-in-Own-Face attempt
after another (by His authors) to demean DIO,
He just hasn't the bigness
to recognize DIO's reliability, competence, & originality,
or even to appreciate a self-created Enemy's
most indubitable
achievements — since He thinks
(pathetically dreaming that His cult owns the privilege of adjudication!)
such would confer upon DR the very Respectability which His clique's
shunning and slander
have for 3 decades been trying to destroy.
[And Hoskin's math level is high-school.
At best. This semi-numerate shunner is
the AmerAstrSoc's idea of an Editor-for-Life who merits its fawning respect
and its top historical prize, even while it —
with revealingly religiously-total rigidity —
runs away from the most competent journal in the astronomical history field.
There is no guesswork here about shunning, since
over decades it has been directly confirmed privately to DIO
by a wide variety of inside sources.
E.g., during a naïvely pacific 2005/9/16 phonecall by DR
(suggesting better communication) DR was informed directly by HAD's chief,
that JHAD archons would now (?!) not even speak to DR,
allegedly due to his
undeniably accurate and technically copper-fastened
April-Fool's-Day satirical exposure of
the scholarship of the latest among the succession of goons who had
successively launched (always in no-reply-allowed forums)
botched-science attacks upon DIO's credibility.]
While 100% of JHA's attacks on DIO have failed, DIO's (partial!) catalog of the Hoskin JHA's screwups runs to over 40 instances. (This, though DIO bothers to read but a fraction of JHA's articles.) And this is merely part of a vast reservoir of dozens upon dozens of His crowd's goofs, which are listed in bunches elsewhere here.
Naturally Hoskin finds a 40-to-zero score somewhat frustrating and unseemly-humiliating. Thus, try-anything rage — consistent with what we have long found in the larger world of big-money establishments.
Every sort of filthy tactic has been thrown at DIO: smears, threats, suppressions, lies, goons (among other excesses that may be discussed in future postings). When unprincipled volk become enraged in frustration at being bested in fair combat, is it any surprise that they resort to cheating? DIO's attitude is to accept it all as an extremum-honor: the absolutely lowest form of compliment.
Owen Gingerich, HAD's cofounder-mentor
& top fawnee,
JHA-Number-Two,
and serial DIO-smearer,
has so often promoted false scholarship that it even happened
three times in the space of barely a single year
(see [a]-[c], below), as noted at
DIO 11.1 [2002]
p.2 n.2. Not that this has caused
the slightest visible diminution in HAD reverence for OG.
(Who has made a career of influencing funding, publication, etc
— the surest determinants of the HAD's perception of
most-laudable historical truth-teller:
DIO 4.3 [1994]
‡15 §A [p.120].) Indeed, a practiced HAD
careerist and OG-robot,
David Devorkin,
publicly declares OG the ultimato of the field:
“Mr. History of Astronomy”.
[Does this worship have some relation
to Devorkin's arrogantly pushy and sly 1985 gofer attempt
(phoning up DR with high-handed arrogance) to try inventing-inverting
an AAS rule to suppress publication of a DR BullAAS paper?
DD even deluding himself into doubting aloud that DR was an AAS Full Member.
(A failed try at finding an [irrelevant] excuse for killing the paper?)
After DR explained both his status and the actual explicit AAS rule, Devorkin
agreed he'd get back to DR if there were any problem with publication.
When he didn't, DR expected all was well — but, then, just-in-case,
he phoned AAS and found that the paper was being killed without notice to DR.
After DR explained to the AAS the actual rule, as well as
the danger of what could happen if the paper's contents got plagiarized
in the interim before the next chance of publication, Devorkin was
over-ruled by the AAS. But the rule in question (that one could
publish an astronomical and an historical paper at the same AAS meeting),
which permitted the 1985 DR paper in question, was overturned
shortly afterwards. Until DR (having founded DIO)
stopped publishing via the BullAAS —
and then the rule was re-instated.]
Gingerich's Judiciousness in Action:
[a] Gingerich promoted
and preface-hyped the K.Spence two-star Great Pyramid
orientation method for the 2000/11/16 cover story
of the world's top science journal, Nature.
DIO immediately detected that it was mis-computed due to
a missing cosine-factor, in the sph trig math
underlying the paper's supposed fit of theory to data. (See
DIO 13.1 [2003]
pp.2f.) This led
(despite OG's typically nasty referee report,
baselessly accusing DIO of dishonesty)
to eventual correction, with simultaneous publication
(by DIO's DR & K.Pickering) of two better methods
for orienting the Great Pyramid: Nature 412:699 (2001/8/16).
[b] Gingerich's fantastic 2000/4/22 HASTRO smear of DIO
was copied by Sky&Telescope (2002 Feb p.40)
without checking its alleged documentary basis, leading to
S&T having to hide its supposed proof while
suppressing DIO's replies.
[c] B.Schaefer's huge failed 2001 JHA paper was never
neutrally refereed because it tried to clear Gingerich's
fave ancient astronomer, faker C.Ptolemy, from real astronomers'
4-centuries-long realization
(since Tycho 1598)
that Ptolemy stole the Ancient Star Catalog from Hipparchos.
[While
R.Newton 1977, DR 1982, G.Graßhoff 1986-1990,
DIO 4.1 [1994]
‡3 [pp.33-47] (finding the location of Hipparchos' observatories) and
DIO 12 [2002]
were developing in detail the consequences of realizing Hipparchos' (not
Ptolemy's) observership of the Ancient Star Catalog, HAD-Doggett-Prizewinners
Hoskin & Gingerich for years ran in their JHA
over 100pp of evidence-immune rear-guard action,
e.g., J.Evans' huge 1987 kitchen-sink alibi-cornucopia
(JHA 18 1987 pp.155-172 & 233-278).
And B.Schaefer's lengthy and abusive 2001 assault,
42 pages of archon-kissing apologia.
All these amusing assaults were undone by DIO
in a few lines of simple logic:
DIO 10 [2000]
n.177 [p.79];
DIO 12 [2002]
‡1 §§B1-B2 [p.4]; ‡2 [pp.30-33];
‡5 §C12 [p.61]. It is now almost universally agreed that
DIO's position was right: Ptolemy did steal most or all of
the star catalog from Hipparchos. (Only JHA-heirhead-apparent
Evans remains an evidentially averted-vision
holdout.) Of course, the star-catalog-controversy's losers
don't have what it takes to admit their defeat out in public
(especially after rep-investing decades of slandering the eventual winners
as nuts, crooks,
and fools) — instead, they would now just
rather change-the-subject. Standard HAD-circle integrity.]
[d] In 2002, longtime Ptolemy-defender Gingerich
now openly admitted that Ptolemy had faked his
hilariously self-contradicting Venus data,
but argued that this was because it was impossible to find the planet's
elements without faking data.
DIO 11.3 [2002]
immediately published three simple methods for doing so honestly, one of them
(‡6 [pp.54&70-90]) an easy bit of 10th-grade-level graphics.
[e] In 2005 January, the AmerAstrSoc-HAD and its top press-trusted
contact, Gingerich, unstintingly promoted
into the world press (even Physics Today!)
— as solid, multiply-refereed
and original — a detailed analysis slated to be extensively published
in May by the JHA. But even before publication,
DIO's 2005/4/1 April-Fool's-Day-posted
satire exhibited dozens of foul-ups:
mathematical, quotational, historical —
and showed that the essential idea (using same prime data-base)
had been published in 1898 by Georg Thiel.
The HAD instantly stopped promoting the paper, but (while
DIO's demonstration [by Dennis Duke] of the case against
Hipparchos as Farnese's basis was published by JHA in 2006 Feb),
no admission of the paper's manifold errors
(proving non-existent refereeing for
JHA's then-fave serial-warrior-against-DIO)
[Brad Schaefer] has appeared anywhere but
on the DIO website,
and HAD's archons have never told the membership the truth.
After such an incident, crushingly demonstrating DIO's
scholarly and technical superiority, one may reasonably ask:
[1] Does the HAD's shunning of DIO not demonstate
an ineducability inappropriate to a trusted institution?
After a few cosmetic moves, the AAS-HAD just went right back to shunning
since the AAS let the same pols keep running the HAD.
(Bad medicine. When a dorkectomy is called for, you don't use band-aids.)
[2] Isn't this a case of the student fleeing-hating his instructor?
[3] Is this a pattern which academe considers worth promoting?
— conferring divisionship and Doggett-Awards (none ever to
the DIOtribe, of course) to vindictive perp-archons
demonstrably inferior in
judgement, math, & ethics.
[The foregoing Gingerich-promoted proposals [a]-[e] are now defunct
among serious scholars. Yet none but the Spence error
(not her theory) has been renounced in those popular journals
that are supposed to inform the public.
All are simply allowed to fade away, the cynical hope being that
public memory will be short enough that the disasters will not lower trust
in the forums that promoted them (while shunning their betters),
an approach that simply adds dishonesty to incompetence.]
Archons Jettison Fair Dealing & Turn to Suppression, Fleeing,
& Dirty Tricks:
After enough of the encounters just described above,
the HAD-JHA gang finally realized
that it cannot win a fair contest or debate, so it has
resorted (like so many other mental cases) to fantasizing-faking
its hated opponent's non-existence or irrelevance.
E.g., the HAD Newsletter has (while repeatedly
promoting the Journal for the History of Astronomy
and the Journal of Astronomical History & Heritage)
since the mid-1990s deliberately
pretended
that DIO just isn't there. If only.
[During the decade and a half of the AAS-HAD's
shunning of DIO, as it repeatedly promoted
its obsessively-beloved JHA (including its soon-after-collapsed
Farnese joke, promoted [with perps-photo]
at 2005 March AAS Newletter #124 p.18),
DIO's findings were published by Nature,
the University of Cambridge, Astronomy magazine,
Scientific American, the New York Times
(twice in the Science Dep't, twice on the front page),
the London Times, the largest newspaper in Germany (our Neptune
findings), as well as aired on all three networks' national evening news.
And DIO itself published articles by such eminent scholars
as E.M.Standish (CalTech), A.Diller (IndianaU.),
R.Headland (U.Cambridge), C.Kowal (Johns Hopkins APL),
Hugh Thurston (U.Brit.Columbia), C.Wilson (St.Johns).
As far as DIO is aware,
none of this was mentioned by publications of the AAS or its HAD.
In 2005, DR tested the shun by pacifically suggesting
to the head of the HAD the idea that DIO's prizes
(chosen by boards composed of scholars of
better sense than parallel HAD boards)
might be presented at HAD meetings —
a suggestion that was of course instantly refused since that would
require occasional admission that DIO exists.]
HAD Bravery:
As noted elsewhere,
a shunning is always in reality a running: an establishment cannot compete
with a critic, so it flees & hides. But the latest HAD example of
said pathology attains new hilarity heights and ethical depths:
its upcoming 2011/1/9 Neptune-Discovery double-anniversary in Seattle has
barred DIO's participation despite its full awareness that:
DIO has contributed more to righting that discovery's formerly
myth-eaten history (a nod here to Peter Sellers & George Sanders)
than any other source, including establishing Leverrier
(whose 1811 birth's bicentennary is an occasion for the 2011 HAD meeting)
in his rightful place atop the Neptune-Discovery history.
[DIO 2.3 [1992]
‡9 §C3 [p.124] & n.12 [p.118]; also
DIO 9.1 [1999]
p.3 & ‡1 §B6 [pp.6-7].]
More on DIO's Rôle in Revising the Neptune History:
In addition to those DIO contributions (on the Neptune case)
already cited, there are other central items
(pardon some repetition):
The legitimacy of the perturbational work of Leverrier and Adams
had been repeatedly attacked up until DR's 1970 paper in
the journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, which mathematically
established it for good, showing that Leverrier's and Adams' methods
automatically adjusted for the problems caused by their necessarily-presumed
and unluckily too-high erroneous mean distances, which were compensated-for
by too-high masses, so that the theoretical and actual perturbations
were reasonably similar, and their hits within a few degrees was no accident.
(It's well-known that within-one-degree was a bit luckier than
Leverrier should have expected. Or did, given his search limits.) See
DIO 7.1 [1997]
‡5.
Leverrier's credit as sole, genuine, but politically-robbed discoverer
(Scientific American's 2004 Dec story)
was a position taken by no other journal throughout the 20th century.
DIO also organized (and transmitted to NOAO)
1999's joint New York Times-AAAS-DIO appeal
that resulted in NOAO's massive integrity-protection-photocopying
of the secret Royal Greenwich Observatory Neptune File
(ere returning it to the Brit-folks who'd hidden it for 150y)
— key to the entire notorious Neptune priority dispute.
The Royal Astronomical Society-funded photographic gleanings from
that file now reside
exclusively on the DIO website.
As already noted, the earliest of all observations of Neptune was 1st
revealed by one of DIO's most eminent board-members, Kowal,
who was also legendary top Solar-System-object discoverer of his era.
What is AAS-HAD so afraid of? — that it would try
barring the world's top Neptune-discovery expertise from participating in
a Neptune-discovery conference that is bound to discuss
DIO's internationally recognized contributions to the case?!
Likely factors in the AAS-HAD decision to risk a charge of
craven willingness to attack DR in any way but face-to-face:
[a] DIO has not shied away from revealing
the institutional chicanery that has characterized the Neptune scandal
from 1845 to the present. Institutions loathe-fear
scholars who will not help
soft-pedal that aspect,
and the historians on the invited panel
can presumably be counted upon to cooperate in said respect.
[b] The two astronomical-math non-specialists
— C.Waff & W.Sheehan —
who are running the session and
(mostly Waff) have selected the 2011 panel —
know perfectly well that DIO's discoveries are central,
as already noted above:
[1] Sheehan has written
that DIO 9.1
[1999] ‡1 solved the Neptune case.
[If he still thinks so, why would he bar DIO from
his chosen panel? If not, then why would he not invite DIO
to defend itself against his hypothetical new findings?]
[2] The pair comprises
the non-mathematical co-authors of the 2004 December
Scientific American article which explicitly depended heavily
upon the evidence produced by DIO's publisher, D.Rawlins.
But they and some among their panel disagree (or are looking to disagree)
with DR about several central points;
and they find comfort in the hope that their shaky contentions can be
protected from cross-examination,
by HAD's shunning of DIO.
[This simply repeats the protection already granted Waff&Sheehan
by Scientific American's
willing appropriation of
the DIO-pioneered thesis
that Britain stole Neptune from Leverrier, a grab also buttressed by
censorship of DR's 2004 letter to
ScAm, in order to (again) hide this grab of
DIO's thesis,
as well as to eliminate
the same letter's pointing out the 2004 article's
various astronomical fumblings and incomprehensions, plus
deliberate fudging of
DR's text (in the post-fleece fragment of the original letter), to fake
the relevance of its author's reply to a point central to Adams' claim.
(A final protective ploy: Waff ended up ducking his own Seattle session
on the excuse that work intruded. Challis dodged the 1846 Sept BAAS meeting
on the same ground. Does anyone believe either tale?)]
Under such elaborate protection, it is obviously intended that
the two co-authors' errors, psycho-projections, and technical short-comings
never have to experience face-to-face cross-examination
from the party whom the HAD rulership loathes more than anyone —
but who unfortunately also knows the full Neptune case better than anyone.
Items:
In leading scientific & science-history forums, DR has investigated
the Neptune affair — mathematically, historically, and sociologically
(a combination not found in any of the HAD 2011 participants)
— for over 45 years,
a span comparable to the combined Neptune-Affair involvement
of the entire 2011 HAD panel.
[A legitimate academic outfit would wish to give its members access
to the results of this expert research (unique in its depth —
for this case, for now). Instead, the audience's access & understanding
of DR's findings are only tolerable if appropriately Nihil-Obstat
filter-censored — à la Scientific American), HAD,
or any other truth-fearing church.
According to recent AAS Directories, none of the scholars chosen
to discuss the Neptune Controversy
(which exempts genuine astronomers M.Brown & G.Laughlin)
is an AAS Full Member, a status that requires either a PhD or
its equivalent in publication in physics and-or astronomy.
(I.e., the HAD is choosing speakers not primarily for expertise
but for willingness to go along with muffling the longest continuous scandal
in the history of modern astronomy.)
By contrast, DIO's Kowal & DR are Full Members,
as was Standish before recent retirement.
DIO's Standish and DR have published papers
on the mathematical theory and practice of gravitation
and orbital perturbations (the math central to the Neptune case)
in the world's top professional astronomical journals.
(DR: Nature, Astronomical Journal,
Mon.Not. Roy Astr Soc,
Geophys J Roy Astr Soc.)
How many persons on the 2011 “AAS” panel have done so?]
The level of integrity required to try misleading the public and the press
— by trying to put over on them a blatantly fixed meeting —
is actually nothing new.
The HAD-beloved&bemedalled
M.Hoskin, astronomically-challenged Editor-for-Life
of the reliably partyline
but unreliably refereed
Journal for the History of Astronomy, has
unilaterally insisted for 28 years on severing communication with
DIO's publisher — a decree which has resulted in scaring
the field's numerically-dominant rabbitariate into following suit.
[The JHA has not met years of
requests to document
its cult-myth that DR's shun-justifying insult ever happened.
DIO has of course reacted to such anti-academic-ideaflow
criminality with appropriate (which sometimes means
cartoon-level) reverence,
as part of repeated educational demonstrations (see, e.g.,
DIO 16 [2009]
‡1 §A & n.7 [pp.3-5], on JHA heirhead-apparent
J.Evans' math, neutrality, & integrity)
that much of the shunners' output suggests that they are hardly
qualified to judge which scholars should be exiled
— and which journals citationally-starved —
even if one were ethically benighted enough to assent to
or approve of such dictatorially murderous practice.]
No careerist who wishes to advance up the HAD ladder
will dare make a positive comment on DIO in
the JHA or at an HAD meeting
or publication.
Since a journal's significance is often superficially measured
by number of citations, the cited shunning is a punitive threat
to kill DIO by
artificially faking its worthlessness.
[A pawn of HAD-gooroo O.Gingerich explicitly thus
smeared
DIO in an unprecedentedly naked 2002 false attack, loyally
taken (what-me-worry?-unchecked)
right off a Gingerich posting.]
GIVEN THE LACK OF BASIS FOR SCHOLARLY REPLY to our researches,
shunning and smearing are the JHAD's only way of
countering our (at-first) heterodox findings and telling
us to cease demonstrating DIOdeath-desiring
archons' own technical & ethical shortcomings,
a response which (ironically) was originally triggered — entirely
defensively — by the haughty criminality
of the shunning itself, that evergreen establishment tactic which
arrogantly leaves its target no choices but
exit, submission, or resistance.
[DIO has naturally chosen the last, but merely
by non-violent resistance:
just showing
the shunners' incapacity for even telling good scholarship from bad.]
Thus, shunning is extortion
— which in the present case parallels
that which has coincidentally
been used on Wikipedia against DIO persons.
[Elsewhere here find a brief survey
of repulsive Wikipedia vandal-harassment of DR,
and links to several pages
with greater detail, plus analyses of establishments'
inevitable internet-era dependence upon censors & vandals.
Note that no-one
defending DIO has vandalized any Wikipedia page.]
Fat Institutions' Fatwas:
Preventing such academic crimes from being aired at the 2011 meeting
is just one more bet-doubling suppression
in a history filled with them.
[We
have become used to seeing Islamists organizing to kill people for
insulting-our-religion: e.g., the fatwa against S.Rushdie,
and murderous attacks upon even
cartoonists — i.e.,
a myth (Allah) takes precedence over freedom of speech.
Likewise, Hoskin's Selfworship-concocted myth
of DR-insult-of-His-Lordship blots out
the hist.astron community's concern over not only free-speech but its own
intellectual balance — plus the trifling issue of whether valuable
scholarship should be treated as non-existent simply to feed JHAD megalomania.
How has religious thin-skinnedness
(DIO 1.2 [1991]
§B2 [pp.97-98];
DIO 2.1 [1992]
‡2 §A5 [p.13]) come to
control communication and lead to the shameful spectacle of
the attempted murder of a journal,
in the supposedly scientific community?]
The discovery of the planet Neptune is the most sacred legend in the grand history of the ethereal field of celestial mechanics: Urbain Leverrier's bold 1846 prediction, from gravitational theory, of the place of an unknown giant planet — accurate within 1 degree.
Yet that glorious triumph was sullied almost immediately through a deceitful claim-grab by major scientific institutions, a scheme which succeeded for over a century (via secretion — later actual theft — of documents) to rob credit from the actual discoverer, Leverrier.
Fortunately, the Neptune history was de-mythologized by laborious astronomical scholarship 1966-1999.
But, sadly, astronomical amateurs who wish to please influential institutions (ever reflexively scandal-averse) and-or hope to peddle plausible if far-fetched popular books, are already at work to re-mythologize the Neptune-discovery history. (See potential re-myth samples elsewhere here.) And if this requires contradicting the plainest possible evidence (including the principals' own testimony) and fleeing expert cross-examination by (unapologetically) hiding behind recent document-alteration and a laughably rigged shun-controlled Anniversary Conference — well, the mythtics seem equal to their dodgeball mission.
The 1846 Neptune-Discovery Miracle:
After publishing a rough preliminary circular-orbit prediction on 1846/6/1,
the courageous and brilliant Paris Observatory mathematician-astronomer
Urbain Leverrier announced to the French Academy on 1846/8/31
that according to his refined semi-inverse perturbational calculations
(based upon anomalies in Uranus' motion),
a hitherto-unknown giant planet was to be found near
(plus-or-minus a few degrees) 327° heliocentric longitude,
in eastern Capricorn. On 1846/9/18, he sent
his predicted position to the Berlin Observatory astronomer Johannes Galle,
the letter arriving 1846/9/23. That very evening, Galle (& H.d'Arrest)
— assisted by a then-uniquely-reliable Berlin Starchart,
not yet mailed out to any other observatory —
discovered Neptune less than 1 degree from the predicted longitude.
But within 24 hours of the 1846/9/30 arrival in Britain of Galle's news, a clique of Cambridge astronomers had the brass to try grabbing a share of priority by claiming that its brilliant if super-cautious Cantab mathematician, John Couch Adams, had discovered Neptune back in 1845 but neglected to publish his work, merely sending some of it to Astronomer Royal Geo.Airy privately while seeking Airy's advice (not publication yet) on developing it to completion.
The apparent agreement between Leverrier's and Adams' preliminary work was thus a Cambridge secret. (Deliberately kept from the world's leading celestial mechanist, P.Hansen, who was staying for 3 weeks at Airy's home during 1846 Summer, and who [when walking with Airy] accidentally met Adams on 1846/7/2 — without a word ever being said of Adams' work.) This advantage was duly exploited when Cambridge Observatory chief (and very close Adams friend, as 1st revealed by the researches of Nick Kollerstronm: DIO 9.1 [1999] ‡1 n.67 [p.17]) James Challis launched an equally secret vast failed sky-search (designed by Airy) for months during the Summer of 1846, guided by an ephemeris calculated by Adams in mid-1846 which — due to unavailability of most of it until 1966 — was (before DIO) universally presumed to be based on the alleged 1845 elliptical orbit upon which Adams' invalid priority-claim entirely rests. However, DR showed (e.g., DIO 9.1 [1999] ‡1 n.49 Table 1 [pp.13&14]) that this Adams 1846 Summer ephemeris was instead based upon a circular orbit — and one which was virtually identical to that already published by Leverrier on 1846/6/1. (This orbital circularity was the prime piece of technical evidence cited against Adams' claim in Scientific American's 2004 Dec article: p.98, credited to DIO & its publisher, D.Rawlins.)
Incredibly, Britain's outrageous claimjump ACTUALLY WORKED for
over 100y. Until DIO exposed the truth behind the Brit claim,
accounts routinely referred to the “Adams-Leverrier” discovery
of Neptune — even though it should always have been obvious that
Adams' lack of the slightest rôle in Berlin's capture of Neptune
gutted any claim of priority. (This, without even going behind the scenes
to find out exactly how Britain pulled off its Neptune grab.)
A question DIO posted 2007/9/20:
if Adams is held to be discoverer of Neptune,
on what date did make this discovery?
He had no part in guiding Galle — and didn't even know on what
exact date he'd handed his (mythically-immortal &
allegedly-priority-justifying) “1845 Oct” solution
to Airy — obviously because he was on that day seeking expert guidance
not lodging a prediction since was nowhere near
the completion of his cautious investigation.
The Brit tale has been that young, shy Adams in 1845 Oct delivered
a predicted elliptical orbit (for Uranus' perturber)
to an unappreciative ogre, Astronomer Royal Geo.Airy.
This orbit is usually called “Hypothesis 1” (Hyp.1),
and is the sole foundation of long-dominant claims of Adams' priority.
But DIO discovered:
[a] The date on the alleged document bearing Hyp.1 was added later
in Airy's (not Adams') hand — and lacked day of the month, since
it was not at the time seen by Adams
as the official lodging of a grand discovery
but was just one of many understandably cautious steps
by astronomical neophyte Adams — this one obviously being his attempt to
get perturbation-math-experienced Airy's critical input.
(DIO 9.1 [1999]
‡1 §D3 [p.12].)
[b] The extensive mss of the Hyp.1 calculations are the only ones among
Adams' successive major solutions which lack a date anywhere on the pages.
[The to-a-specialist most likely explanation
for this PECULIAR circumstance is provided
elsewhere here
— and readers will notice that it (like various other evidences:
DIO 9.1 [1999]
‡1 §D4 [p.12], &
DIO 2.3 [1992]
‡9 §G1 [p.134]) is consistent with the
Adams-“1845”-priority-claim's foundation-rock “Hyp.1”
(in the polished form
published at the end of 1846) having been actually calculated in mid-1846,
carried out simultaneoulsly-parallel with Hyp.2,
whose completion is dated 1846/8/18
(DIO 2.3 [1992]
‡9 n.30 [p.123]).)
[c] Part of the groundwork for the 1845 “Oct” Hyp.1 solution
was dated in manuscript to 1845/12/24.
(DIO 2.3 [1992]
‡9 §H3 [p.137].)
[d] As already noted, Adams had so little confidence in the alleged 1845
elliptical Hyp.1 as late as mid-1846 (which would make sense
if he was still checking and correcting
his 1845 Sept solution into the “1845 Oct” version of Hyp.1
that was ultimately presented publicly on 1846/11/13),
that he used a circular orbit for the 1846 ephemeris
he computed for the secret Cambridge Observatory search.
These items typify science's wisdom in not accepting
priority-claims based upon selective use of unpublished work.
[Speculation: Did Airy (and-or Challis) advise Adams that
the slightest admission of mid-1846 touching-up of his 1845 Sept work
would cost him his priority claim?]
The British Secrecy-Act:
If we count the items that were kept secret (from all but
a small circle of Cantabs), the sheer volume is impressive.
[1] Adams' calculations.
[2] The Cambridge telescopic sky-search.
[3] Adams' ephemeris for that search.
[4] The RGO board's 1846/7/29 meeting agreeing to the search was
kept secret among several persons, including Airy, Challis, J.Herschel.
The meeting's minutes
do not even mention the secret plan (later testified to by Airy in detail:
DIO 2.3 [1992]
‡9 §B1 [p.118]).
[5]&Airy;nbsp's 1845/9/22 private early learning (at the French Institute)
of Leverrier's project was never mentioned in his public report of
the race to find Neptune
(DIO 9.1 [1999]
‡1 §H4 [p.18]).
[6] That's a race which only
the Brits even knew was a race, thanks to secracy.
(Which may have engendered an over-confidence that ironically lost the race.)
[7] After 1st seeing Leverrier's rough 1st published orbit
(longitude 325°) Airy wrote on 1846/6/25 to a fellow Cantab (W.Whewell)
of the near-agreement of Adams' and Leverrier's preliminary work,
Airy's 1846/6/26 letter to Leverrier never mentioned Adams.
[8] Leading celestial mechanist P.Hansen (Germany) stayed
in Airy's home for weeks during this period and was told nothing.
[9] He & Airy met Adams on 1846/7/2 by chance when out walking,
but Hansen was still told nought — this, though Adams' math work
on the Neptune chase was explicitly (by name) using Hansen's methods
(DIO 2.3 [1992]
‡9 §B6 [p.121]).
[10] There is not the slightest pre-discovery mention of the Neptune
search in any continuously-paginated document
(e.g., RGO minutes).
Airy's diary and J.Herschel's NEVER EVEN MENTION THE NEPTUNE PROJECT
until after Galle's new reached England.
(Challis and Adams left no 1845-1846 diary material on the subject.)
J.Herschel, Challis, and Adams attended or later claimed
they planned to attend the 1846/9/10 BAAS meeting, yet
(though J.Herschel spoke of Neptune's advent, now known due to Leverrier)
nothing was said there of the Brit outdoor (Challis) or indoor (Adams) search.
Is it even deniable that all parties knew they were doing something
so sneaky (so contrary to the ethical canons of science)
that they feared committing to paper an account of their behavior?
— so long as they weren't
sure of what story events would ultimately constrain them to tell.
The 1846 Deceits Require Ongoing Maintenance:
The RGO Neptune file stayed sealed for over 150y.
At least four Astronomers Royal (Airy, Christie, Spencer-Jones, Woolley)
hid, censored, or altered specific documents in it:
Airy deleted key words from a letter published in 1846:
DIO 2.3 [1992]
‡9 §B2 [p.119], as 1st detected
by honest Cambridge Observatory astronomer David Dewhirst
(DIO 4.2 [1994]
‡10 §D3 [p.94]) and exposed in his 1966/12/21 letter to DR.
Wm.Christie in 1893 recommended censorship of some Leverrier letters
to Britain, as well as of the still-top-secret
dynamitiest document
of the Neptune scandal (hidden for over a century,
like so many other key Neptune documents):
Airy's 1846/12/8 letter to Adam Sedgwick, which
DIO correctly divined the contents & import of
(DIO 2.3 [1992]
‡9 §A6 [p.117], especially n.12 [p.118];
DIO 7.1 [1997]
‡5 §§A3&A5 [p.25]),
years before it was de-secreted in 1999.
In more recent times: Spencer-Jones prevented Cantab (Adams-flack) Wm.Smart
from seeing the full file. And when DR asked Astron Royal R.Woolley
for access to the Neptune File of the Royal Greenwich Observatory, Woolley's
closest confidante (and debtor) and sometime Chief Assistant ran off with
said file for over 30y.
The toppe politician hiding the file was outted in only one publication:
DIO 4.2 [1994]
‡10 [pp.92-102], in an article which included extensive correspondence
between RGO & DR (whose attempts to gain access to the file
were being put-off by various dodges), as well as DIO's
two (unanswered) 1993 letters to the former Chief Ass't.
[Further on the deviousness of the former Chief Ass't:
DIO 7.1 [1997]
‡5 §A7 [pp.25-26].]
In 1998, the former RGO Chief Ass't died in Chile at NOAO's Cerro Tololo Observatory — and the entire Neptune File was found in his home by NOAO's Nick Suntzeff — thereby vindicating DIO's 1994&1997 fingering of him. To protect the integrity of the file, DIO swiftly organized a written plea to NOAO (a request backed by CalTech, New York Times, AAAS' Science) to have the entire file photocopied before its return to England, where it had so long been sealed and bowdlerized. Copies of its 500 plus pages were made by NOAO's Elaine MacAuliffe, who also faxed DR photocopies of key matter. Sets of these copies were sent to DIO (a copy each to DR and CalTech's Standish) and to NOAO's Tucson archive.
When DR's copy arrived, he went straight to the 1846/12/8 Airy-Sedgwick letter, which DIO 2.3 [1992] ‡9 n.12 [p.118] had predicted had been so long hidden because Airy had attacked Adams, undercutting the Brit claim by revealing that slow publication was Adams' own doing, not Airy's. The letter's two pages did not confirm DIO's theory.
But then DR noticed that the two pages' grammar did not
segue correctly. He phoned Standish at CalTech,
who agreed that we had received only the outer two pages of a longer letter
— the only known missing letter-section (page two of three,
we later learned) in the entire 500-plus-page file.
DR was off for vacation, but from Denmark he phoned Nick Kollerstrom,
who descended upon the RGO Neptune file when it arrived at Cambridge,
where he and RGO archivist Adam Perkins photocopied p.2 of the letter —
the long-hidden page where Airy flays Adams in strong sardonic terms, a page
which is now on display
in Kollerstrom's RoyAstrSoc-funded selection
of the most important documents in the file, an invaluable resource
(much owed to Kollerstrom's verve, timing, and dedication),
which is now on
the DIO website.
Once the full 1846/12/8 letter was available,
Airy's biting sarcasm therein vindicated
DIO's 1992 & 1997 assessment of
the likely content of this central letter of the case —
which showed that the key to the whole affair was Adams' lack of
confidence in his early work. Thus, the long-mysterious non-publication
that cost Adams the planet was at last no longer a mystery —
and obviously never had been one to justly-seething Geo.Airy, who improperly
became (with Challis) the fall-guy in the hitherto-long-familiar
long-persistent, but now-obsolete Brit-mythology of poor-ignored-child-Adams.
DIO 9.1 [1999]
‡1 [pp.3-25] was mailed out soon after,
and the heart of the Neptune affair was solved.
Spite Makes Right?:
This denouement evidently does not sit well with Waff. Back in the 1990s,
when Waff gave a talk on the Neptune affair, DR spoke up from the floor
in some disagreement. Afterwards, Waff approached DR
and made it clear that he was not pleased with the uppitiness.
But Waff shouldn't take prime blame for excluding DIO from the 2011 event: after all, even if he hadn't, the HAD would do it for him. However, he appears to think that his political favor at HAD and the admirable extent of his years of researches into the Neptune affair give him (i.e., the HAD) the right to seize the Last Word on the Neptune case. He doesn't seem to take in that (though his valuable mss finds can throw light on periphery) the essential solution of the Neptune history was already published in 1992-1999 by a journal “who has carried it off before you” (Biot to Adams, 1847: DIO 2.3 [1992] ‡9 §I11 [p.141]). Question which DIO would not raise, had Waff's panel-exclusion not put it out there: Is Waff belatedly trying to be Adams, to DIO's Leverrier?
We note that the 2004 Dec Scientific American article
co-authored by Waff insisted (and
persistently) upon obscuring the fact
that DIO was the sole 20th century journal to contend
(doing so quite unambiguously) that
England stole Neptune. (I.e., DIO had ScAm's
Pilfered-Planet story years before ScAm.)
Following the 2004 Dec ScAm article's appearance, DR's several polite attempts to induce ScAm to set this and other matters straight simply led to yet another science-institution coverup — adding to a history that really didn't need any more such chapters, having already (at then-159y and counting) long since exceeded the all-time temporal record in that department. A brief survey of the coverup-of-coverup-of-etc (by ScAm and its vandal friends on Wikipedia) of these matters is provided elsewhere here.
Subtractive Re-Mything of the Neptune Affair —
RGO's Methuselah & Other Fun:
[A] By contending (see, e.g., ScAm 2004 Dec)
that nobody knows why the key RGO Neptune File disappeared for years,
the 2011 conference's principals are apparently prepared —
in order to keep faking the ethical virginity of institutional astronomy
— effectively to argue
(probably without a word of audible skepticism even from the floor,
if the point is raised in Seattle) that:
after DR asked Astronomer Royal Woolley to see the file (1967-1969:
DIO 4.2 [1994]
‡10 §§E-G [pp.96-99]), Woolley had no idea
(even though his own archivist did:
DIO 4.2 [1994]
‡10 §B6 [p.93]) that his close colleague
— and sometime Chief-Ass't —
would secret it for years.
(Just as the AAS may try claiming post-2011/1/9 it has no idea that
the HAD was shunning anyone.)
We may dub this the (nakedly oxymoronic) Lone-Crazed-Chief-Ass't Theory,
pushed by (among others) ScAm and HAD biggies.
[A possible contributing cause of
the RGO Neptune file's 1960s vanishing:
all RGO mss were being systematically microfilmed for public access;
so, if the file had not been removed, it would soon be unsecret.
(DIO 4.2 [1994]
‡10 §C4 [p.93].)]
This item is but one gauge of how much cred the DIO-shorn
HAD Neptune session has, with respect to the Neptune Controversy.
(Though, panelists M.Brown & G.Laughlin are genuine modern gems
in the planet-search history — even if their work happens to be
quite unrelated to the mathematical methods
by which Leverrier discovered Neptune.)
Problem with blaming a rogue “thief” (as noted in the preface to
DIO 9.1 [1999]
‡ 1) is plain: how could RGO's
Lone-Crazed-Chief-Ass't hide the RGO Neptune File for
over 1 1/2 centuries?! Solution: the history of astronomy establishment
has gone beyond its discovery of
the first backwardly-breasted woman,
by now coming up with the first 150y-old man.
The only mystery left is: what will this produce,
a MacArthur or a Nobel?
Other fantasies which could get promoted either at the 2011/1/9 HAD session or
in the HAD-promoted book Waff&co will inevitably turn out:
[B] Non-specialists
W&S' insistence (ScAm 2005/4) on regression
to former Brit-mythology's ignoring of Adams' erroneous predicted place
(off by 12°: see “Hyp.X” at
DIO 2.3 [1992]
‡9 Tables 1&2 [p.142]), in favor of selectively highlighting
earlier calculations Hyp.1 & Hyp.2 (closer to the mark),
though both's longitudes were ultimately (final prediction-letter to RGO:
1846/9/2) set aside by Adams
himself in favor of Hyp.X.
[On the evidence of Waff's 2011/1/12 email, he seems yet
reluctant to abandon his delusion, denigrating the significance of Adams'
eventual (1846/9/2) prediction by putting “prediction” in quoates
for this orbit and calls it “speculative”. Comments follow.
(Forgive some further repetiveness. But remember: it's part of zombie-rehab.)
[1] Hyp.X was speculative? Well, so was the entire venture.
[2] Speculation is not a synonym for extrapolation.
(Adams computed only two longitudes to extrapolate from,
which may partly explain why Leverrier did better: he had computed
more solutions to figure his estimate from.)
[3] Even to speak of it as a “third” prediction
misunderstands Adams' own attitude, since he himself
said
(DIO 2.3 [1992]
‡9 n.5 [p.116]) that Hyp.1 was not satifactory,
being based upon a single assumed means distance. I.e., Adams'
first & only PREDICTION was the extrapolated one, which was
his best attempt — by his own trend-seeking plan —
at last to get beyond anything arbitrary,
the very desideratum he says (idem)
he had been seeking from the outset.
[4] Adams' defenders want it both ways simultaneously
regarding Adams' extrapolated prediction.
In the same 2011/1/12 email that downplays Hyp.X's longitude,
Waff credits Adams with its smaller (i.e., better) mean distance.
(Actually, this orbit put the theoretical perturber further from
Uranus at U-N conjunction than did Leverrier's predicted orbit.)
[5] Question: Had the real Neptune been found by Galle at
heliocentric longitude 315° (close to Adams' Hyp.X prediction),
not at 327° (within ordmag 1° of Leverrier's final place
and of Adams' Hyp1 & Hyp.2:
DIO 2.3 [1992]
‡9 Table 1 [p.142]), does anyone seriously believe that
Waff&co. (as well as the entire old-guard of Adamsians) would not be
arguing that Adams' Hyp.X was superior to Leverrier's prediction?
Again: this is why the selectivity of
post-discovery discoveries cannot be encouraged
without flirting with a chaos of competing prejudices and sentimentalities.]
[C] Blame Adams' slowness (to communicate his results) upon one of
the variants in the ever-expanding psychological grab-bag generally known
as “autism”. Following the 2004 proposal of this tack for Adams,
Leverrier has now (2010 Oct HAD Newsletter)
been tentatively added to the list of those astronomers in need of
remote-shrinkage. (Will IRS-enforced ObamaCare bill us for this?).
[D] French 1846 skepticism about the Brit claim was unjustified.
[E] The evidence which DR first
brought
to modern attention as evidence of deliberate British secrecy was
mere (?) clubbiness.
[Classic projective cult-guiltlessness.
Are those running and-or condoning a fixed 2011 Neptune conference counting on
future pliably robotariate
“historians” to create
similar alibis for HAD's freezing out Social Inferiors?
This revives Astronomer Royal Airy's attitude, which he believed excused
his not informing fellow Brit astronomers (Hind, Dawes, Lassell)
of any of the Cantab secret operations aimed at bagging Neptune
for the glory (& further astronomy-supporting coin)
of the Duke of Northumberland.
Airy had helped talk the Duke into funding Cambridge Observatory's
big Northumberland refractor — a factor that may have played a part
in Airy's choice of it for the Neptune search, which could
have been more efficiently carried out with a transit instrument.
Exclusively; or simultaneously with the Northumberland telescope search.]
If those who promote such contra-DIO myths really believe
in them, then: why did they assent to a panel that precludes
DIO's bringing strong counter-evidences against
all five of the above contentions ([a]-[e])?
Again: what're the cringers so afraid of?
[Back in the 1970s, long before DIO's ultimate triumph
in its contention — against Gingerich&clonies —
that Johns Hopkins physicist R.Newton was right (to charge
that Ptolemy faked observations and stole Hipparchos' 1025-star catalog),
centrists held a meeting in Britain where it was planned to refute RN —
while neglecting to invite him.
So the upcoming perpetration of
another such audience-deprivation ploy may help explain
why DIO has often asked aloud:
how can supposed HISTORians be so immune to learning from HISTORY?
RN's attitude was, at that time, what DIO's is now:
there is no use even going to conferences of an establishment
which has shown that it will resort to absolutely ANY censorial device
— non-invitation or hamstringing controversy-central figures,
smear, exile,
arbitrarily-invented rules,
ridiculous time-limits
(perhaps even crude noise) —
to block heretical communication from defiling its rabbitariate's ears.
Fear that DR might mention ScAm's
forgeries is sufficient cause in itself
for banning DIO from the Seattle panel.
Now, let's see how this works: ScAm commitsan
a repulsive offense against DIO, so:
the latter not the former gets suppressed?
(Welcome to Alice-in-EstablishmentLand.)
Are stunts like this actually deliberate experiments —
to gauge when a shunning target is finally beginning to give up?
If he objects, then the shun-dosage must be upped; but if he stays quiet
(i.e., assists coverup
for private gain [at the expense of public enlightenment])
so to make himself more establishment-Trustworthy,
then the shunning is finally working. Whew.]
Recapping Contradictions to Promoting Adams
as Neptune Co-Discoverer:
We start by emphasizing a point
which those who promote priority for Adams either forget or slip past:
Leverrier's longitudinal prediction was completed 1846/8/31;
Adams', 2 days later:
1846/9/2. So, by attempting to use Adams' 1845 work to claimjump Leverrier,
all Adams-advocates are drawing attention to is the hardly-helpful-to-Adams
fact that he started 1st but finished 2nd.
A race's winner is normally measured at the finish line,
not the starting line.
[To repeat and summarize the deficits of
Adams' 1846/9/2 Hyp.X prediction:
[i] Private (vs Leverrier public).
[ii] Later (by 2 days) than Leverrier's final prediction.
[iii] Less near real Neptune.
[iv] Unrelated to Galle's success;
[v] Followed a period of secrecy
(and present spotty documentation) that makes it hard
(DIO 2.3 [1992]
‡9 §§G [pp.134f])
to pin down when parts of Adams' work were actually accomplished
and-or smoothened.]
Judging from the Waff 2011/1/12 email's approving quote of T.Williams
(deeming priority-evaluation here to be a “slippery-slope”),
it seems that some HADvolk seek endless Waffling over credit
for the discovery (nothing sells books like the-controversy-continues),
using items that are patently irrelevant to priority
(which most of us DIO 2.3 [1992]
‡9 Tables 1&2 [p.142])
of LG&A's Bode-Law deflected solutions.
[c] Doubting whether Challis's search
followed A's Hyp.X (ScAm Letters 2005 April).
[d] All Adams-defenders' counter
Leverrier's open double publication (1846/6/1 & 8/31) by
putting into priority-contention Adams'
“1845” Hyp.1, even though:
[i] Hyp.1 was only finally revealed publicly in late 1846
(11/13), long after the planet's discovery).
[ii] This,
after needlessly suspicious delay.
[iii] Hyp.1 was undatedly-calculated
and undatedly-delivered.
[iv] Adams himself rejected Hyp.1
explicitly
and implicitly.
[Again: keep in mind that Hyp.2 has no priority-value
since it was mailed to RGO 2 days
after Leverrier's final public prediction.]
That such spectacularly-lawyerlike special-pleading is uncritically
taken seriously at HAD may help explain how seriously the HAD itself
is taken in the real world of scholarship.
The Adamsians' at-least-give-us-half-a-planet plea
(ah, that'll be the front half, thanks)
is perfectly designed to the specs of what is probably already destined for
television-mythological immortality; though, given what all observers
outside the deliberately lop-sided HAD have been learning
since the 1960s, neutral scholars (as distinguished from popsci-salesmen,
establishment-sycoes,
and cult-flamekeepers)
will recognize what's going on. And on. And on….
Hypothetical Humility:
If the HAD et ilk ever attain DIO's combination of
self-confidence and humility, to the point
where it wishes the assistance of DIO's expertise,
or the participation of DIO's sometime dissent,
at its meetings, it can
earn that privilege
by first laying a groundwork for trust by:
[1] Its Newsletter's unfettered citation to DIO's
activities (as it reports on those of others
of the field's journals), and similar signals — including
(a shocking idea!) occasional amiable HAD-DR communications.
[During the two decades of DIO's existence
and its internationally prominent discoveries, HAD officers
(who receive the journal or postcards announcing its postings regularly)
never once contacted the publisher. Stupidity? Fear? Both?]
[2] Engaging in sober written debate under the
novel fairness-ensuring rules which
DIO has established and long offered its page-space for.
(Heretofore vainly, which suggests that calm, fair written mutual discourse
is not quite
at the top of archons' wish-list.)
[The stratospherically stellar quality of DIO's
board-members
and prize-judges guarantees that
hypothetical debates would be carried out equitably.
The boards would resign otherwise.
Yet the press-cravin', debate-craven JHAD's
reaction for many years has been pathetically constant: run away and hide.]
Until these simple conditions are met, there will be no meaningful chance
for mutual trust that allows serious, fruitful communication.
Not
that we're holding our breath.
[DR's Harvard-educated sociologist-librarian wife
Barbara is betting that, before the HAD acquires sanity or ethics
in this regard, its Newsletter will be announcing
discovery of the new constellation,
Pigasus —
since pigs will be flying sky-high by the time
JHADists (and archons who take them seriously)
act in any way that even implicitly
acknowledges merit to DIO research, originality,
worth, honesty, or fairness. (It gives one some idea of who's crazy
around here that those behaving thusly think that such shunning
confers superiority upon them.
And they wonder why DIO occasionally
satirizes such dementia?)]
The 2011 gathering will of course
add some (hopefully a great deal of) valuable data to the Neptune saga.
E.g., DR has learned from every one of the well-researched Sheehan
writings he's encountered. And Waff has doubtless unearthed some
fascinating new mss and periodical contributions to the history.
But the myth-making examples ([a]-[e]) just cited
presage the danger that the Seattle session will also
contribute what R.Newton used to call (see cover of
DIO 16 [2009]):
“subtractions from the sum of human knowledge”.
Wilfully Creating Delicious Material for Genuine Historians
of Scientific Institutions:
Throughout all the years the HAD has shunned DIO,
there is no public record of a single one
of the ordmag 100 HAD members (most of whom have received
DIO issues or issue-posting-alert-postcards for years, gratis)
ever lodging a protest at this offense against communality, progress,
competence-expectation, and fairness. So, given the HAD rabbitariate's
demonstrated immunity to enlightenment by high scholarship,
should DIO be bothered even to attend this conference?
Though a free exchange of all viewpoints would be enlightening to neutral
and able historians, there seems scant chance this unique opportunity will be
taken advantage of. (Unless in future a less cultish AAS division
convenes an all-sides panel for serious discussion-debate.
Better: a written debate, which DIO
would be glad to publish,)
This, because the HAD places little priority on the advance of
historical truth, compared to stroking the pride of HAD archons
who are still smarting from defeats by the very journal they — with poor
prescience regarding poetic justice — long slandered as inferior.
The purpose of the present DIO posting is not to beg favors from
the academically mitey, but rather to warn neutral, free-tongued observers
at Seattle (if there'll be any) that —
however much such scholars as Mike Brown brilliantly represent
current planet-discovery — the Neptune-discovery history portion of
the 2011/1/9 meeting has been sanitized and skewed beyond any semblance
of equity and thus of essential scholarly legitimacy.