Silence is the greatest persecution

1.  Talking about Science: 1 Boys and Frogs 
2. Talking about Science: 2 Poincaré and The Search for Truth
3. Talking about Science: 3 Tony Smith and “arXiv.org” 
4. Carlos Castro Perelman and the tide 
5. Bertrand Russell and Independence in Science 
6. Questions About Science: Is Science rational?
7. The Taboo of Subjectivity 
8. Can Science be just?
9. Einstein and Klein, Plagiarism 
10. Religion and Science – cruel Gods 
11. Bertrand Russell and “A Way of Feeling" 
12. Plato and The Value of Myths and Parables 
13. Cronus and Uranus 
14. Defining "Science" 
15. Wrong use of Science 
16. Curiosity, intellectual freedom and Science 
17. The Curiosity of Alfred Russel Wallace 
18. The Encyclopedia Universalis Twists the Truth 
19. Clifford’s Solution
20. Language Barriers Make Knowledge Barriers 
21. Forbidden Science 
22. You Shall Know Them by Their Fruits 
23. No True Science Allowed! A Priori Assumptions Prevail 
24. William Crookes and the Paranormal: True Science 
25. Ray Hyman and Modern Apathy: To Explain Away and Dismiss
26. Dangerous to be Curious? Quantum Future - Gossip and Censorship 
27. A Brush With the Dark Side of Science 
28. Brian D. Josephson on Censorship in Science 

All these posts about Science, posted so far, come from a book that I wrote some ten years ago and decided to publish in a blog form now. While posting these pages, here and there, I am updating, adapting to the blog format, adding links, but otherwise it is a copy-and-paste work. This gives me time to keep my blog running, while I can concentrate on doing science. And I will continue this way for awhile (we are in the middle of the book), while working on the time consuming mostly mathematical details, where the devil hides and where the science grows the way I dream it should.

John Lennon

Of course, you may say I am a dreamer. But I’m not the only one. Martín LópezCorredoira and Carlos Castro Perelman published a collection of horror stories experienced by several scientists in “Against the tide”. An alternative preprint server, vixra.org, was created, where there is no hidden censorship. Of course the result is that there are many papers there that are not worth reading. But it is the reader that decides what to read and what not, not a secret committee – “for your own good”. Secret committees, secret vetoes, all that is a shame upon Science. Of course, some people may believe that that is how it should be. I think these people are politicians – not scientists. But they will not give up – as otherwise, due to lack of creativity, they would not be able to keep their jobs.

Luc Montagnier

In 2010 (December, 24 issue) Science Magazine featured an interview with French Nobel Laureate, Luc Montagnier. The title was: “French Nobelist Escapes ‘Intellectual Terror’ to Pursue Radical Ideas in China”. Montagnier remarked there:

There is a kind of fear around this topic in Europe. I am told that some people have reproduced Benveniste’s results, but they are afraid to publish it because of the intellectual terror from people who don’t understand it.

Pierre Duhem

StanleyJaki, Benedictine priest and Distinguished Professor of Physics at Seton Hall University, describes a particular case of covert censorship in his paper “Science and Censorship: Hélène Duhem andthe Publication of the ‘Système du monde’” Editions Herman was delaying the publication of the last volumes of Duhem’s Opus for years, playing endless stalling games with his wife. Jaki makes these comments:

No definition of truth can be hoped to be accepted universally in a professedly pluralistic society. But any definition of truth which permits the cavalier handling of monumental facts would certainly contradict scholarship insofar as it ought to be based on as full knowledge of facts as possible.

He then adds:

Duhem’s posthumous persecution could be ignored only by those in the field who did not wish to know it was happening, or perhaps deep in their hearts were happy about its happening.

Josephson’s observation that “if the result is sufficiently unusual, it is just ignored despite the evidence” and Blaise Pascal “Le silence est la plus grande persécution “ - “Silence is the greatest persecution” (920), quoted at the end of Jaki’s article – both say essentially the same thing. They tell us how Science is devouring her children, but first seasoning them with silence.

P.S1. 20-04-23 13:08 Related and important

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