Re: another not-April Fool's-post...

Michael Butler (mmb@best.com)
Sun, 28 Mar 1999 21:21:23 -0800 (PST)

What distinguished N rays from X rays was a whole lot of warning signals from the experimenter, such as too many digits' accuracy in reported refraction. One of Rutherford's associates blew Blondlot's methodology by pocketing the aluminum prism before everyone's eyes were dark-adapted... Blondlot kept getting results from the "N-Spectroscope".

There's a paper on pathological science that makes really good reading. This smells like it. Particularly the part about not getting spectra and the homeopathic thang. Let's see the work reproduced.

Like the nanobes, I label it "interesting if true". But I'm a would-be-zetet, not a kneejerk skeptic.

MMB

"An insult is like a drink, it affects one only if accepted."
--Star, Empress of the Twenty Universes in Heinlein's _Glory Road_