PARADIGMS FOUND AND PARADIGMS LOST:

EXAMPLES OF SCIENCE EXTRAORDINARY

AND SCIENCE PATHOLOGICAL(And How To Tell the Difference!)

How Does Science Handle Extraordinary Claims?

Some Extraordinary Claims:

1. Molecules can be represented as geometric objects in 3D space.

2. Energy is quantized.

3. A teaspoon of oil can still the waves of an angry pond.

4. Ordinary water polymerizes into a new form of water upon contact with glass surfaces.

5. Atoms can undergo nuclear fusion at room temperature in a jam jar.

Paradigm: A characteristic set of beliefs and/or preconceptions (theoretical, instrumental, procedural and metaphysical) that is shared by a community of practitioners. In a global sense the paradigm embraces all of the shared commitments of a scientific group. A paradigm is what defines the scientific community.

Thomas Kuhn. 1923-1996.

CONVENTIONALPARADIGMS

GENERATEPUZZLES

SOLVEPUZZLES?

PARADIGMREINFORCED

YESNORMALSCIENCE

Flow diagram for normal science

An intellectual revolution occurs when new ideas cause a change in the way communities think and act.

A scientific revolution occurs when new ideas cause a change in the way scientists think and act.

The Nobel Prize is given to scientists whose research changes the way other scientists think and act.

CONVENTIONALPARADIGMS

GENERATEPUZZLES

SOLVEPUZZLES?

PARADIGMREINFORCED

YES NO

RESISTANTPUZZLES

ANOMALIESCRISISSCIENTIFICREVOLUTION

NEWPARADIGM

NORMALSCIENCE

REVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE

NOBELPRIZE

Flow diagram for revolutionary science:Extraordinary claims that become acceptedand are integrated into “normal science.”

Physics TodayOctober, 1989, 36-48

Extraordinary claims that do not become accepted.

"There are cases [in scientific research] where dishonesty is not involved but where people are tricked into false results by a lack of understanding about what human beings can do to themselves in the way of being lead astray by subjective effects, wishful thinking or threshold interactions....These are examples of pathologicalScience."

Irving LangmuirNobel Prize, Chemistry 1932“...for his discoveries andinvestigations in surfaceChemistry.”Columbia Graduate, 1906.

Irving Langmuir, “Pathological Science,”Physics Today, October 1989, p. 43.

Flow diagram for pathological and revolutionary science.Will an extraordinary claim become Nobel or Ignobel science?

CONVENTIONALPARADIGMS

GENERATEPUZZLES

SOLVEPUZZLES?

PARADIGMREINFORCED

YES NO

RESISTANTPUZZLES

ANOMALIESCRISIS

PATHOLOGICAL SCIENCE

SCIENTIFICREVOLUTION

NEWPARADIGM

NORMALSCIENCE

IGNOBELPRIZE

NOBELPRIZE

Given an extraordinary scientific claim of phenomena which are outside of the paradigm, consider Langmuir’s characteristics of pathological science:

1. The phenomena responsible for the claim are at the limits of statistical significance or are erratic in terms of reproducibility.

2. The explanation of the phenomena is not only extraordinary, but conflicts with the governing paradigm.

3. Criticisms of the phenomena and/or the explanation of the phenomena by opponents are met with ad hoc rebuttals.

4. Truly critical experiments that discredit the phenomena or its interpretation and which are performed by critics are dismissed by supporters as methodological errors, contamination or absence of key skills or ingredients.

5. The ratio of supporters to opponents rises to a maximum and then suddenly drops to virtually zero.

“Law of Intellectual Closure”

Mental processes tend toward as complete,

stable, self-consistent or “closed” a state as circumstances permit. There is a tendency to

interpret an ambiguous figure in terms of aspects that are familiar to the viewer. An unfinished act tends to be completed; an unfinished thought is

“rounded off”; a word, object, or situation is perceived in a manner that leads to the satisfactory

feeling of closure.

Geometry is an intellectual device which allows the achievement of a high degree of closure.

The Platonic Solids. Geometry very appealing to Chemists.

A chemist’s view of the gaseous fuel, methane. He/she thinks of a molecule of methane as a 3dimensional geometric object consisting of a carbon atom connected to 4 hydrogens atoms that are directed toward the verticies of a tetrahedron.

H. Kolbe, J. Prakt. Chem., 15, 474 (1877)

"In a recently published paper, I pointed out that one of the causes of the present regression of chemical research in Germany is the lack of general, and at the same time thorough chemical knowledge; no small number of our professors of chemistry, with great harm to our science, are laboring under this lack. A consequence of this is the spread of the weed of the apparently scholarly and clever, but actually trivial and stupid, natural philosophy, which was displaced fifty years ago by exact science, but which is now brought forth again, out of the store room harboring the errors of the human mind; by pseudoscientists who try to smuggle it, like a fashionably dressed and freshly rouged prostitute, into good society, where it does not belong."

H. Kolbe, “A Sign of the Times”J. Prakt. Chem., 15, 474 (1877).1818-1884

“A Dr. J. H. van't Hoff, of the Veterinary School at Utrecht, has no liking, apparently, for exact chemical investigation. He has considered it more comfortable to mount Pegasus (apparently borrowed from the Veterinary School) and to proclaim in his book how the atoms appear to him to be arranged in space, when he is on the chemical Mt. Parnassus which he has reached by bold flight.”

H. Kolbe, “A Sign of the TimesJ. Prakt. Chem., 15, 474 (1877).

J. H. van't Hoff(1852-1911)First Nobel Prize, Chemistry, 1901

At the turn of the century, Max Planck published mathematical computations intended to resolve an anomaly which had challenged the classical theory of light, considered at the time to be an unshakable paradigm of Physics. The anomaly was termed the "ultraviolet catastrophe" (which provides some idea of how the anomaly disturbed the community!). Planck make the extraordinary suggestion that light consisted of "bits" or "quanta" of energy, rather than being a continuum of energy. The suggestion was considered bizarre and not physically realistic at the time, but is now universally accepted by the scientific community.

"New scientific truth usually becomes accepted, not because its opponents become convinced, but because opponents gradually die and because the rising generations are familiar with the new truth at the outset."

M. Planck, Naturwissenschaften, 33, 230 (1946).

Max PlanckNobel Prize, Physics, 1918, "for the discovery of energy quanta".

Water, water, everywhere,Nor any drop to drink.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 1798.

If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water....

Its substance reaches everywhere; it touches the past and prepares the future;

it moves under the poles and wanders thinly in the heights of the air;

It can assume forms of exquisite perfection in asnowflake,

or strip the living to a single shining bone cast up by the sea.

Loren Eiseley(Anthropologist)

“In 1757, being at sea in a fleet of 6 sail bound against Louisburg,

I observed the wakes of two of the ships to be remarkably smooth,

while all the others were ruffled by the wind, which blew fresh.

Being puzzled with the differing appearance, I at last pointed it out

to our captain, and asked him the meaning of it? "The cooks,"

says he, "have, I suppose, been just emptying greasy water through

the scuppers, which has greased the sides of those ships a little,"

and this answer he gave me with an air of some little contempt as

to a person ignorant of what everybody else knew. It occurred to me

the learned are apt to slight too much the knowledge of the ancients

and the vulgar.

This art of smoothing the waves with oil is an instance of both!

-Benjamin Franklin, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1776

"...at Clapham I observed a large pond very rough with the wind. I fetched a cruet of oil and dropt a little of it on the water. The oil, though not more than a teaspoonful, produced an instant calm over a space of several yards square, and then spread amazingly till it filled a quarter of the pond, perhaps half an acre, as smooth as a looking glass. .... If a drop of oil is put on a polished marble table, or on a looking-glass that lies horizontally, the drop remains in place, spreading very little. But when put on water it spreads instantly many feet around, becoming so thin as to produce the prismatic colors, for a considerable space, and beyond them so much thinner as to be invisible, except in its effect of smoothing the waves."

---Benjamin Franklin, letter to William Brownrigg, November 7, 1773.

Clapham Pond

H2O H2O H2O H2O H2O H2O H2O H2O H2O H2O H2O H2O

Drop hits water. Drop spreads onwater.

Monolayer formson water.

This incredibly simple experiment provides a means of understanding fundamental facts about molecules and the forces between them. It even leads to a means of determining molecular size and shape!

For example, if the teaspoon were 2 cc of oil and the area of a half an acre is approximately 2000 m2, the film thickness (volume/area) would be ca 10-7 cm (1 nanometer, 10 Å), which is right on the molecular dimensions of an "olive oil" molecule!!! This is clearly within the experimental uncertainty of measuring acreage!

Polywater [H2O]n

Polywater is prepared by placing freshly drawn glass capillary tubes in an atmosphere that is nearly saturated with water. The vapor pressure of the water surrounding the capillary is held slightly below saturation to deter normal condensation of water in the tube. After a few days, a condensate forms inside the capillary tube. Normal water is removed from the condensate through evaporation, leaving only the thick polywater in the tube. Polywater freezes at –50oCand boils at 300oC.

A Sample of PolywaterIn a Thin Capillary Tube

Schematic of the ApparatusTo Synthesize Polywater

“Several structures are proposed which are consistent with the spectral data and the remarkable properties and stability of the material. It is concluded that the material is a true polymer of water, and, therefore, is named polywater.”

“There are several ways in which water can freeze so that its atoms can stack and lock in an orderly, rigid way. Suppose this kind of ice, let’s call that sort ice-1, is only one of several types of ice that can exist. Suppose water on earth always froze as ice-1 because it never had seeds to teach it how to form other forms of ice, you know, ice-2, ice-3, ice-4, and so on. Now suppose there was one special form of ice, let’s call it ice-9, exists somewhere and that ice-9 is hard as a diamond and suppose that someday a tiny seed of ice-9 was somehow got into one of the oceans..…”Paraphrased from Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

“I regard this polywater as the most dangerous substances on the face of the earth. Treat it as the most deadly virus until its safety is established.”F. J. Donahoe, Nature, 224, 198 (1969).

"Our investigations led to the discovery in 1962 of what we claimed to be an anomalous new, stable form of water with a density almost one and a half times that of ordinary water and which possessed a molecular structure that could only be described as polymeric.

We have now established that there are no samples, both free of impurity atoms and simultaneously exhibiting anomalous properties. Attempts to produce typical anomalous samples on a thoroughly washed, polished surface of quartz have failed... Consequently, the claimed properties should be attributed to impurities in ordinary water rather than to the existence of polymeric water molecules..."

B. Deryagin and N. Churayev, "Anomalous Water", Nature, 232, 131, 1971.

COLD FUSIONThe fusion of two nuclei of deuterium together to form helium releases an enormous amount of energy. The paradigm requires that a huge input of energy is required to overcome the strong repulsion between positive charges as the nuclei approach and attempt to fuse and lower the energy. This is done within the paradigm under the condition of “high energy physics”, i.e., 100 million degrees Celsius (10,000 times hotter than the surface of the sun).

Cold fusion was reported to achieve the fusion of deuterium at room temperature through the use of a simple electrochemical cell made of palladium, long known to adsorb deuterium. In effect, the electrochemical cell “catalyzed” fusion of the deuterium atoms.

Close packing of deuterons within the atomic matrix of metallic palladium is the proposed mechanism of cold fusion. When a voltage is applied to the electrodes, molecules of heavy water split into ions which migrate to the electrodes. Atomic deuterons accumulate in the spaces between the palladium atoms of the negative electrode. Somehow two deuterium atoms get very close to one another, overcome their mutual repulsion of their nuclei and nuclear fusion occurs to produce helium and neutrons.

".....Things are not hemmed in by the presence of solid bodies in a tight mass. This is because there is a vacuity in things... By vacuity I mean intangible and empty space. If such empty space did not exist, things could not move at all…. Nothing could proceed, because nothing would give it a starting point by receding"

"Basically, we have established a sustained nuclear fusion reaction by means which are considerable simpler than conventional means which are simpler than conventional techniques. Deuterium, which is a component of heavy water, is driven into a metal rod-exactly like the one that I have in my hand-to such an extent that fusion between these components, these deuterons in heavy water, are fused to form a single new atom. And with his process there is a considerable release of energy: and we’ve demonstrated that this can be sustained on its own. In other words, much more energy is coming out than we are putting in."

Fleischman and Pons, Press conference, 1989.

Physicist's Paradigm for Fusion:Princeton Tokomak Reactor

Chemist’s Paradigm for Fusion:Utah Tokomak

Transmutation of Hydrogen into Helium

Fritz Paneth And Kurt Peters

Ber. d. Deutschen Chem. Ges., 59, 2039 (1926).

The Transmutation of Hydrogen into Helium by Fritz Paneth

“A few months ago, K. Peters and I published an account of experiments we had made in an attempt to transmute hydrogen into helium[by passinghydrogen gas over powdered palladium] (Ber. d. Deutschen Chem. Ges., 59, 2039; 1926).

In this communication, as a result of further experiments, we feel that we are in a position to give an explanation of the occurrence of the observed very small quantities of helium in our experiments without having recourse to the assumption of a synthesis of helium. [These experiments] have shown that the liberation of helium from glass is dependent on the presence of hydrogen…The source of the helium is not in the palladium, but in the glass, in spite of appearances to the contrary.”

Nature, 119, 706, May 14, 1927.

April 8, 2002

The report by R. P. Taleyarkhan et al. of observations of tritium decay and neutron emissions associated with the collapse of tiny bubbles in deuterated acetone -- and the possibility that those observations may have arisen from fusion reactions within the imploding bubbles -- has generated substantial attention. In the 8 March 2002 issue of Science. An editorial by Science's Editor in Chief, Donald Kennedy, is presented on why Science decided that"publication is the best option."

The “New” Cold Fusion?

Paradigm: teaches us how to rank the following

Possible Impossible

Plausible Implausible

Probable Improbable

Proven Unproven

"The main object of physical systems is not the provision of pictures, but the formulation of laws governing phenomena, and the application of these laws to the discovery of new phenomena. If a picture exists, so much the better: but whether a picture exists or not is a matter of only secondary importance."

P. M. Dirac, Principles of Quantum Mechanics, 3rd ed, Oxford, 1961, p. 10.

P. M. Dirac, 1902-1984 Nobel Prize, Physics, 1933.

"The human mind would not be fully satisfied with a universe in which all phenomena are governed by a mathematical process that is completely coherent but totally abstract. Are we not then in wonderland?

In the situation where man is deprived of all possibility of intellectualization, that is, of interpreting geometrically a given process, either he will seek to create, despite everything, through suitable interpretation, an intuitive justification of the process or he will sink into resigned incomprehension.”

Rene’ Thom, "Structural Stability and Morphogenenesis," W. A. Benjamin, Reading, MA, 1975, p.5.

TopologicalThinking inChemistry

To a topologistBreakfast is aDifficult mealBecause the Donut and the Cup are identicalTopological Objects.

Topological geometry: The Mathematics of Elastic Distortions.

Topological geometry is the study of the properties of geometric shapes which do not change (composition and constitution) when the shapes themselves are stretched, twisted, skrunched up or otherwise deformed from one shape into another. Equivalent (identical) topological figures may be of different size and shape as long as they have the same composition and constitution.

Intellectual Processing Through Structure and Geometry

Topological Geometry

•Composition (Numbers and Kinds of Elements)

•Constitution (Connections of Elements to Form a Structural Unit)

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Euclidean Geometry

•Constitution (Representation of Structural Units in 3D Space)

•Dynamic Transformations (Change of Structural Unit with Time)

•Interactions Between Structural Units

"Many, perhaps most, of the great issues of scienceare qualitative not quantitative, even in physicsand chemistry. Equations and measurements areuseful when, and only when, they are related to proof:but proof or disproof comes first and is in fact strongestwhen it is absolutely convincing without anyquantitative measurement.

.....you can catch phenomena in a logical box or in a mathematical box. The logical box is coarse, but strong. The mathematical box is fine-grained, but flimsy.The mathematical box is a beautiful way of wrappingup a problem, but it will not hold the phenomenaunless they have been caught first in a logical box.”

John Platt, “Strong Inference,” Science, 146, 347 (1964).

“The moment one has offered an original explanation for a phenomenon which seems satisfactory, at that moment affection for the intellectual child springs into existence, and as the explanation grows into a definite theory parental affection cluster about the offspring...There is then imminent danger of an unconscious selection and of a magnifying of phenomena that fall into harmony with the theory and support it and an unconscious neglect of phenomena that fail of coincidence.”

“[Multiple hypotheses] distribute the effort and divide the affections....The investigator becomes parent to a family of hypotheses and by his parental relations to all is morally forbidden to fasten his affections unduly on any single one.”

T. C. Chamberlin, J. Geology, 5, 837 (1897)

T. C. Chamberlin (1843-1928)

Some advice for the Working Scientific Revolutionist

•Know the best available paradigms and understand the risks associated with departing from them.

•Always generate multiple hypotheses to explain observations.

•Reproduce, reproduce, reproduce.

•Collaborate with experts in other paradigms when going into new fields.

•Do the unthinkable: Try to kill your own ideas! The more extraordinary the results appears, the more sensational the interpretation that seems to be required, the greater the burden of the investigator to run the critical experiments which verify or refute.

"But of that most important kind of new knowledge, that which does not seem to relate to an existing field, it is harder to speak on the basis of anything but faith. And yet in this knowledge lies the true seed of the future. It will come only from the least conforming of minds, and the discoveries of the greatest ultimate moment are the least likely to have been favored by official support or encouragement. They must be like the flowers of the poet.'Daffodils, that come before the swallow dares, and take the winds of March with beauty.'

We may well ask whether the winds of future Marches may not be more tolerant than those of the past"

C. N. Hinshelwood1897-1967.