collins son of seven sexes

7/30/2019 Collins Son of Seven Sexes

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Son of Seven Sexes: The Social Destruction of a Physical PhenomenonAuthor(s): H. M. CollinsReviewed work(s):Source: Social Studies of Science, Vol. 11, No. 1, Special Issue: 'Knowledge and Controversy:Studies of Modern Natural Science' (Feb., 1981), pp. 33-62Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/284735 .Accessed: 12/04/2012 08:32

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* ABSTRACT

Workingfrom within the relativistperspective, this paper documents the demiseof credibilityof claims for the existence of high fluxes of gravitationalradiation.The study is based on interview fieldwork conducted in 1975 and builds uponearlier work reported in 1975. Criticismsof the positive claims are presentedschematically and shown to be permeable to alternative interpretations. The

actions of one of the major critics are examined in detail and it is suggested thathis contribution to the debate is best seen as a - successful - attempt torender alternative interpretations less credible. What was seen by many as aminimal technical contribution was thus made into a decisive experimentalaccount. The case is discussed in terms of the metaphor of 'interpretativecharity'.

Son of Seven Sexes:The Social Destruction ofa Physical Phenomenon

H. M. Collins

This paper is concerned with the construction of scientificknowledge. It is informed by a 'relativistic' orientation toward thenatural world.' I hope to show the validity and value of this orien-tation through empirical work focussed on an area of naturalscience - the detection of gravitational radiation. In its empiricalstyle the paper is closely related to a growing number of case-studies which are, broadly, in the relativistic mould.2 However, asits title implies, it builds directly upon work published in 1975 in apaper entitled 'The Seven Sexes...'.3 I will refer to this earlierpaper as '7Ss'.Social Studies of Science (SAGE, London and Beverly Rills), Vol. 11 (1981), 33-62


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Social Studies of ScienceIn this paper I report on fieldwork carried out in 1975, whereas7Ss reported fieldwork done in 1972. In 7Ss I used interviewmaterial, gathered from scientists working on the detection ofgravitational radiation, to show the problems involved inreplicating experiments which test for the existence of novelphenomena.4 The acquisition of the skill required to do an experi-ment requires the transfer of tacit knowledge, and the successfultransfer of such knowledge is indicated only by the successful prac-tice of the corresponding skill.5 Usually, successful practice of an

experimental skill is evident in a successful outcome to an experi-ment, but where detection of a novel phenomenon is in question, itis not clear what should count as a 'successful outcome' - detec-tion or non-detection of the phenomenon. Thus arguments concer-ning the existence of the phenomenon turn, not upon experimentalresults, but upon what comes to count as a 'well-done experiment'.If those experiments which produce positive results come to countas competently performed experiments, then the new phenomenonwill be taken to have been detected - and vice versa. In 7Ss theambiguity of experimental results was documented, and the pro-cesses of 'social negotiation' involved in determining which ex-periments were to count as competent were examined. In this paperI continue the documentation of the history of the detection ofgravitational radiation, showing some of the social processes in-volved in the growth of almost universal disbelief in the positiveclaims that were being made up to the mid-1970s. I try to showthat there were no purely cognitive reasons that would 'force' scien-tists to disbelieve these claims. Their incredibility is a social product- though they are none the less incredible for that.6The paper has two main sections and a concluding discussion. Inthe first section, I sketch in the scientific background to the con-troversy - interested readers should turn to the Appendix for moredetails. In the second section, which is divided into three parts, Idescribe the critical response of experimenters to the initial positiveclaims, and the defences against these criticisms made by theoriginal experimenter. This second section reveals the permeabilityto counter-claim of the purely scientific arguments against the ex-istence of gravity waves. I suggest that critics of the original claimswere aware of this permeability and acted in a way that would beconsistent with this awareness - that is, they tried to reduce thecredibility of the positive experiments and increase the credibility ofthe negative ones by more than purely 'scientific actions'.7 In the

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Collins: Gravitational Radiationdiscussion section I have used Gellner's metaphor of 'interpretativecharity'8to re-describethe negotiating stances of the scientist actorsinvolved in the controversy.

The Detection of Gravitational RadiationGravitational radiation can be thought of as the gravitationalequivalent of electromagnetic radiation, and most scientists wouldagree that Einstein's general theory predicts that moving massivebodies will produce it.'However, gravity waves appear to be soweakly coupled to matter that their detection is very difficult. Forexample, no-one has so far suggested a way of generating detec-table fluxes of gravitational radiation on Earth - at least, notwithin the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, it is now accepted thatsome sensible proportion of the vast amounts of energy generatedin the violent events which take place in the universe should bedissipated in the form of gravitational radiation, and this may bedetectable on Earth. Exploding supernovae, black holes, binarystars and so forth should produce sizeable fluxes of gravity waveswhich would manifest themselves on Earth as a small oscillation inthe value of 'G' - the constant that is related to the gravitationalpull of one object on another.While some experiments have been designed to follow thisoscillation in detail (mostly using laser interferometers), thepredominant approach to the detection of the radiation has been totry to integrate the energy of the radiation in a device that willvibrate naturally at the same frequency as that of the putativewave. The first such devices, which set the broad pattern for subse-quent work, were designed and built by Professor Joseph Weber ofthe University of Maryland. The integrating device was a large bar(several tons) of aluminium alloy that would 'ring' at a char-acteristic frequency. (1661 Hertz in the case of Weber's detectors.)Vibration in the bar would be detected by piezo-electric straingauges glued onto it, their output amplified and recorded. Suchdetectors are often referred to as 'antennae'.Such a device would not, in theory, distinguish between vibra-tions that are induced in it by gravitational radiation and those in-duced by any other force. Thus to make a reasonable attempt todetect gravitational radiation the bar must be insulated from allother known potential disturbances. Electrical, magnetic, thermal,

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Social Studies of Scienceacoustic and seismic disturbances must be guarded against. Weberattempted to do this by suspending the bar in a vacuum chamber ona thin wire. The suspension was insulated from the ground by aseries of lead and rubber sheets. (The seismic insulation seems tohave been a particularly simple and ingenious solution to whatmany had thought to be an insoluble problem.)Even these precautions will not result in the bar remaining com-pletely quiescent when undisturbed by gravitational radiation, for,so long as the bar is at a temperature above absolute zero, vibra-tions will be induced in it by the random movements of the atomsof which it is made. Thus the strain gauges will registera continualoutput of 'noise'. If this is recorded on graph paper by a penrecorder (as it was in many experiments), what will be seen is aspiky wavy line showing random peaks and troughs. A gravitywave would be represented as a particularly high peak (see Appen-dix), and a decision has to be made as to a threshold above which apeak counts as a gravity wave rather than noise. However high thethreshold that is chosen, it must be expected that occasionally apeak due entirely to noise would rise above this threshold. So inorder to be confident that some gravity waves are being detected itis necessary to estimate the number of 'accidental' peaks oneshould obtain as a result of noise alone, and to make certain thatthe total number of above-threshold peaks is more than thisnumber. Weber first claimed to have detected such peaks in 1969-several (about seven) every day.At the time of writing (1979), Weber's claims are nearly univer-sally disbelieved but the search for gravitational radiation goes on,and many of the experimental devices are, in principle, similar toWeber's. The problem with Weber's findings was that he seemed tofind far too much gravitational radiation to be compatible withcurrent cosmological theories. Calculations can be made of the pro-bable sensitivity of Weber's device, and of the amounts of energy,dissipated in the form of gravity waves, that should be generated bycosmic events. It seemed that if Weber's results were extrapolated,assuming an isotropic universe, and assuming that gravitationalradiation was not concentrated into the 1661 Hertz frequency thatWeber could best detect, then the amount of energy that was beinggenerated in the cosmos must mean that its lifetime would be veryshort indeed. It would soon be completely burnt up.The antennae currently under development aim to be 109(one-thousand-million) times more sensitive in order to find comparable

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Collins: Gravitational Radiationnumbers of gravitational radiation events. Thus, though I am goingto talk of the extinction of certain claims to have found a newnatural phenomenon - gravity waves - it must be understoodthat I refer only to the phenomenon claimed to have beendiscovered by Weber. This should properly be referred to as 'high-fluxes-of-gravity-waves', and I will try to preface each appropriatereference to the phenomenon with the letters (hf), for 'high fluxes'.Finally, it must be remembered that the experiment was beingconducted at the frontiers of technology. It was a very difficult ex-periment, requiring that movements as small as 2xl0-14cm -smaller than the radius of an electron - be detected in a massivebar metres in length. One of the smaller antennae that I was shownwas encased in a glass vacuum vessel. The impact of the light froma small flashgun was enough to send the recording trace to the edgeof its scale. I, as a relative layman, found this demonstration veryimpressive, though scientists have suggested to me that it representsa fairly insensitive test of one of these devices.

Though Weber's first claims were not entirely credible, in theearly 1970s he produced a series of ingenious modifications whichled other laboratories to attempt to replicate his work. (See the Ap-pendix for a schematic presentation of gravity wave detection.) Themost important of his later claims was that above-threshold peakscould be detected simultaneously on two or more antennaeseparated by about a thousand miles. At first sight it seemed thatonly some extra-terrestrial disturbance, such as gravity waves,could be responsible for these simultaneous observations. Weberalso discovered a periodicity in the disturbancesof around 24 hours(see Appendix). This suggested that the radiation came from oneextra-terrestrialdirection only. What is more, the periodicity seem-ed to relate to the Earth's disposition with regard to the Galaxy,rather than with regard to the Sun, and this suggested an extra-solar - that is, galactic - source for the disturbance. (This effectbecame known as the 'sidereal correlation'.)Encouraged (or incensed!) by these results, several otherlaboratories began work on gravity wave detectors, and by 1972 afew of these were 'on the air'. In 1972, I interviewed most of thescientists engaged in this work, and reported my results in 7Ss. In1975, I interviewed these scientists a second time, and it is theresults of this second round of interviews that I report here. Mostof this paper was drafted early in 1976, and has undergone onlyminor stylistic alterations since. I note this since I think that it is im-

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Social Studies of Scienceportant to record the temporal relationship between the analyst andhis/her subject where - as is the case for contemporaneous studyof scientific activity - rapid changes of perceived value are to beobserved.

The Detection of Gravitational Radiation:Fieldwork 1975In July 1973, negative results were formally published by twoseparate groups (one two weeks after the other) in Physical ReviewLetters. In December 1973, a third group published negative resultsin Nature. Between then and my interviews in 1975, further articlesclaiming negative results at increased sensitivity had been publishedby these groups, and also by three other groups. No results suppor-ting Weber have been published to date.After 1972, the thrust of experimental activity changed, alongwith the growth of certainty that Weber's results were incorrect.Whereas, in 1972, about a dozen groups were engaged in active ex-perimentation directed at Weber's findings, by 1975 no-one butWeber was still working in this direction and even he faced severefunding problems. Of other American and European groupsknown to me, two had dropped out completely from the search forgravity waves; seven groups were building (or considering thedesign of) antennae of several orders of magnitude greatersensitivi-ty in the hope of detecting the small theoretically-predicted radia-tion flux; one group was searching for two detector coincidences inthe hope of finding interesting non-gravitational phenomena, butclaimed that their antennae were so much more sensitive thanWeber's that even if they succeeded in this aim their discoverywould not corroborate his results in any way; and one other grouphad ceased active experimentation but were still comparing earlydata with Weber's corresponding data in a search for coincidences.In addition there were groups in Australia, Russia, Canada andJapan whose activities were known to me only through publica-tions, and the reports of third parties.In 1972, a few scientists believed in the existence of high fluxes ofgravity waves, and hardly any would openly commit themselves totheir non-existence. By 1975, a number of scientists had spent timeand effort actively prosecuting the case against Weber. Most of theothers accepted that he was wrong, and only one scientist, other

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Collins: Gravitational Radiationthan Weber, thought the search for high fluxes worth pursuing. Itmight be fair to refer to 1975 as, in the words of one of myrespondents, belonging to 'the post-Weber era'.I am now going to look in some detail at the arguments aboutWeber's results that were produced between 1972 and 1975 anddiscussed by my respondents in 1975. I will divide up this discussioninto three sections. In the first section, I will look at four majortypes of criticism of Weber's results, without examining Weber'sreplies. I will show that even critics of Weber found this evidencepermeable. In the second section, I will look closely at the actionsof one of Weber's major critics and try to explain them in the lightof the preceding section. In the third section, I will look at Weber'sreplies to his critics. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations areextracts from interviews conducted in 1975.

What Major Reasons did Critics Give for Thinking that Weber'sResults WereSpurious?(a) Computer Error

The real gist of the story is that all the experiments Weber has published haveturned out to have been based on faulty computer programs. (Sceptical Scientist)One scientist (Peters)9discovered a fault in the program used byWeber to process a batch of data. This fault was acknowledged by

Weber to be responsible for the majority of the reported 'signal' inthat batch. However, after some delay he changed his program andreported that the new program, which contained no errors, andwhich corrected certain 'additional errors', found a significantsignal in the same batch of data.There is considerable controversy over the significance of thecomputer error and the legitimacy of Weber's response. Severalscientists made comments such as:... the zero delay excess was still there and in any case, Weber has corrected thatsince.

Peters was himself convinced by the computer error that Weber'sresults were wrong, but did not think it a crucial point in thepublic

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Social Studies of Sciencedebate. In fact he made no moves to make his discovery of the errorgenerally known. In the first place he told Weber of it in confi-dence. The first public announcement was forced by another scien-tist (Quest) at a conference. Quest eventually published a Letter in apopular physics journal which included the statement:

Peters showed that in a.. [certain tape].. nearly all the so-called 'real' coin-cidences... were created individually by this single program error. Thus not onlysome phenomenon besides gravity waves could, but in fact did cause the zero-delay excess coincidence rate [in these data]. (Quest's stress)To sum up, the quotatiop at the head of this section typifies theattitudes of a considerable set of scientists to Weber's computingerror, which is to them a major justification of their negative at-titudes toward his results. Another group do not invest this mistakewith such central significance but would agree that it was a 'damag-

ing point'.

(b) Statistical Massage and the Four-Hour ErrorWe felt that the way he was doing his statistical analysis was open to greatmisinterpretation...By massaging data again and again, knowing what youwant for an answer, you can increase the apparent statistical significance of anybump... I'm pretty sure he could get there out of pure noise. (Sceptical Scientist)All the scientists I spoke to thought that Weber's presentation ofhis statistical techniques was less than convincing. A large number

agreed with the sentiments expressed in the above quotation, andbacked this up with detailed description of Weber's techniques, ex-plaining how the fudging could come about. In several cases an ex-plicit (and unprompted) comparison was drawn with the use ofstatistics in ESP research.

Quest, in the published Letter mentioned above, described an ar-tificial 'analysis' performed by a member of his group on 'two in-dependent streams of random computer generated data' which pro-duced a significant number of 'coincidences'. The implication ofthis was that Weber could be producing his 'coincidences' in asimilar manner. Quest concluded his Letter by stating:

This 'experiment' demonstrates in a simple manner the extreme importance ofpublishing the details of the selection of data in the processing algorithm thatmight be used by the Weber group in any future publications.

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Collins: GravitationalRadiationThis kind of accusation was given great force by another incidentinvolving a tactical error by Weber of classic simplicity. Webercompared a section of one of his data tapes with a correspondingsection of tape from the antenna of Peters' group. He reported at aconference that these two antennae showed coincident excitationswith an excess of 2.6 standard deviations over background noise.Later it emerged that, because of a misunderstanding over clocksettings, the two tapes had not been synchronized, but that in factWeber had compared sections recorded 4 hours and 1.2 secondsapart! Inadvertently, he had done an experiment like that reported

by Quest - but on himself! He had produced a signal from whatshould have been pure noise.This error, too, was mentioned by Quest in his Letter, and was asignificant point for a large set of scientists. Others believed that itwas an important point but perhaps did not outweigh Weber's laterclaims that he was still seeing coincidences. He did not report the2.6 standard deviation result as a 'positive' result - because, asWeber said, it was not statistically significant by the standards ofmodern particle physics.A final issue, related to the statistical problem, was the form ofWeber's results. Several scientists (including Quest in the Letter)pointed out that the shape of the delay histogram as published byWeber was not the shape that would be expected if the signal weregenerated by some source of energy outside of the experiment (seeAppendix). The histogram was too sharply peaked - a character-istic more typical of artificial generation of the signal from noise.

(c) The Reduction of Weber's SignalThe major thing that dissuaded everybody though - that eventually killed it off- was that no more talk or mention had been made of the sidereal correlation.(Sceptical Scientist)

Though there were rumours in 1975 that Weber had found a cor-relation with sidereal time in some later data, the early loss of thissignal characteristic was important for most scientists, and adominating criticism for at least one. The sidereal correlation wasespecially important because it suggested that some significantphysical effect was the cause of the signal. It is not easy to think ofa trivial effect (electronic correlation, correlated TV programmes,

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Social Studies of Sciencetape recorder faults) which would yield an artifact with a periodici-ty related to the Earth's disposition relative to the Galaxy and thestars rather than the Sun. Prevailing opinion, among those highlycritical of Weber's statistics, was that the original reported siderealcorrelation was a result of (unconscious) fudging, such as carefulselection of reported data, or the like.Another important criticism concerned Weber's failure to im-prove his signal-to-noise ratio despite several years intensivemodification of his apparatus. The signal stayed obstinately justabove threshold (and had deteriorated), a characteristic whichprompted some critics to draw parallels with other phenomena of'pathological science' (see below).'?These problems worried most scientists, but were a dominantfactor in accounts of only one or two of them.

(d) Experimental Results of Other Laboratories

Once, say, two other groups have repeated the experiment, with greater sensitivi-ty, and found nothing, you have to say, either 'all these people are incompetentto repeat the experiment', or 'the first person has made a mistake'. And it's afairly easy choice. According to the rules of science, Weber has been disproved,even though you can't necessarily find what it is or how he went wrong. (Scep-tical Scientist)At the time of my interview in 1975, scientists had a field ofabout six negative experiments to compare with Weber's one

positive result. But only one of those six experiments was cited byevery sceptical scientist as being a good refutation of his results.(This will be referred to as the experiment of the 'King' group.) Itstood out as being the only experiment intended to be an exact copyof Weber's - a programme described as 'pedantic' by severalscientists interviewed in 1972.1 Only the scientist most sympatheticto Weber's claims believed the King experiment to be less than aconvincing refutation of his results. But Weber himself criticized ittrenchantly (see below).

There were five other negative experiments. One of these was dis-counted by all scientists in 1975 because of its short experimentalperiod - a run of days rather than months as was normal. Allscientists agreed that another experiment surveyed a frequencyrange too low to be directly comparable with Weber's results. Ofthe remaining three experiments two also searched at a different

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Collins: GravitationalRadiationfrequency from Weber, and for some scientists this rendered themincapable of confronting him directly: however, as the searchedfrequency was in the region of Weber's, not all the scientists con-curred with this view. In addition one of these two experiments wasthought by at least one experimenter to be too complex to confrontWeber directly, and the other was distrusted by more than onescientist on the grounds of incompetent analysis of results andnegative rumours concerning the performance of the apparatus.The final experiment was that of Quest. Scientists nearly alwaysdiscussed this with reservations for it was the smallest experimentof all. Nevertheless its impact was high because of the way it waspresented. As one scientist put it:

...as far as the scientific community in general is concerned, it's probablyQuest's publication [of the experiment - not his Letter, referred to above] thatgenerally clinched the attitude. But in fact the experiment they did was trivial -it was a tiny thing... But the thing was, the way they wrote it up... Everybodyelse was awfully tentative about it... It was all a bit hesitant... And then Questcomes along with this toy. But it's the way he writes it up you see.

Another scientist said:Quest had considerably less sensitivity so I would have thought he would havemade less impact than anyone, but he talked louder than anyone and he did avery nice job of analyzing his data.

And a third:[Quest's paper] was very clever because its analysis was actually very convincingto other people, and that was the first time that anybody had worked out in asimple way just what the thermal noise from the bar should be... It was done ina very clear manner, and they sort of convinced everybody.In discussing the experimental evidence ranged against Weber,scientists tended to cite different combinations of experiments.'2No experimental group was unanimous in citing their own experi-ment alone as sufficient reason for discounting Weber's results. Itis also the case that no scientist claimed to have developed negativeopinions of Weber's findings as a result of a single experiment. Infact most outspoken critics of Weber's work had well formed opi-nions of it before anything subsequently claimed to be a significantnegative experiment was completed.It is important to distinguish between negative belief and publicstatement. The role of experiment in developing scientists' personal

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Social Studies of Sciencebeliefs did not seem to have been either crucial or clear cut. But ex-periment was important in legitimating, first, the publication ofnegative results, and second, the certainty with which it was claim-ed, in public statements, that Weber's findings were false.The first negative results were reported with careful explorationof all logical possibilities for error. The style of presentation wasthus consonant with the authors' lack of complete publishable cer-tainty that Weber's results were entirely spurious. Following closelycame the outspoken second experimental report of Quest with itscareful data analysis and suggestion that the results were 'insubstantial conflict with those reported by Weber'. Then, as onerespondent put it, 'that started the avalanche, and after that,nobody saw anything'. However, of the Quest report itself, onerespondent suggested:

Of course he wrote it that way because he could feel more confident having reallyread and looked at the work of the other people. He said, well God dammit, thisis the third time round and still nothing, it's clear Weber's wrong... (Questhimself denied this interpretation.)Thus the picture that emerges with regard to experimentation isthat the series of experiments legitimized the openly publishablestatement of strong and confident disagreement with Weber'sresults, but that this confidence came only after what one might calla 'critical mass' of experimental reports had built up, and that thismass was 'triggered' by scientist Quest.It is important to note that even the sceptical scientists disagreedabout which experiments constituted the set of satisfactory con-

frontations with Weber, each negative experiment (except King's)being thought unsatisfactory in one or more respects by at least onesceptical scientist.

(e) Summary: More Ships and BottlesThe picture developed by the whole of this section (a-d) is very likethat which emerges from the analysis of experimental results only(d alone). Individual scientists first came to their personal conclu-sions about Weber's results from one or more of the strands ofevidence (a-d), but they were not unanimous in their assessment ofthe importance of the strands in demonstrating that he wasmistaken. I will pick up a metaphor used in my earlier discussionof gravitational radiation to illuminate this process.

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Collins: Gravitational RadiationIn 7Ss I compared pieces of knowledge with ships in bottles. Atthat time I was concerned to stress that it is only by examiningscientific controversies while they are in progress that themechanism by which ships (scientific findings) get into bottles(validity) can be understood. If this process is not seen in opera-tion it may be thought that the ships were always in the bottles, andthat all scientists did was to find them 'ready assembled', as it were.The ship under consideration here is the absence of (hf) gravitywaves. (The absence of something is just as much a physical fact asits presence.) The four sections of argument (a-d) may be thoughtof as four masts which, once erect, will make it appear that the shipcould never have been outside the bottle. Yet each of the sets of

arguments and evidence (a-d) has been found unconvincing - or,at least, less than satisfactory - by one or more of Weber'scritics.In just the same way, each of the negative experiments in section(d), excepting the King experiment, was found wanting by one ormore of the critics. One might say that these discoveries of flaws inthe critical arguments are like discoveries of hinges and joints in themasts of the ship in the bottle. They show how it gets in, and thusmake it conceivable that it might be got out again. A hypotheticalscientist (call him 'H-Weber') could reveal the artifactual and flim-sy nature of the 'ship of no gravity waves' by using arguments andopinions drawn entirely from his critics. (Only the King experiment'stay' would be immune.) Thus arguments (a-d) were themselvesinsufficient to keep the ship in the bottle. It was necessary,therefore, to persuade the scientific community that the masts, andnot the joints and hinges, were the crucial thing. Quest's contribu-tion to the debate can be understood in this way.

Masts, not HingesQuest's experiment and experimental findings, it seems, were ameans to an end: dissuasion. As he put it:

...what we could have done in the beginning was simply to have analyzedWeber's performance and to have shown in principle that he couldn't havedetected the gravity waves that he said he was detecting... We could have arguedfrom the abstract that he couldn't have been detecting them even under ideal cir-cumstances. But we felt that we wouldn't have any credibility if we didthat... and that the only way we could get standing, was to have a result of ourown.

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Social Studies of ScienceOnce again, it is important to stress that this section is in no way

intended as any kind of criticism of any scientists' actions. Questbelieved from the beginning that Weber was mistaken and acted onthat belief as he thought proper. Only the most superficial readingof this paper would lead to the conclusion that Quest's actions wereany less scientifically 'heroic' than Weber's. It is tempting to castWeber in the role of uniquely maltreated 'hero' because he has lostthe battle for (hf) gravity waves, but these observations are intend-ed to be entirely neutral to such considerations. It should also benoted that Quest had prepared a strategy should it prove that highfluxes of gravity waves were found: he can thus claim to be lessclosed-minded than the f6llowing would suggest from a quickreading. With these qualifications in mind, Quest's actions and at-titudes (as perceived by himself and others) can be furtherdocumented.

Quest's attitude to the debate can be clearly seen in the way hepresented his experiments, in his publicizing of the computer errorand the four hour error in the face of Peters' (their discoverer's)willingness to keep them quiet, and in his writing of a damning Let-ter in a popular physics journal claiming that

The Weber group has published no credible evidence at all for their claim ofdetection of gravitational radiation.

Regarding Weber's errors Peters remarked:As regardsthe... conference, Quest forced my hand. I went to the... conferencenot intending to mention the computer error unless Weber made a mis-statement... But when I got there Quest presented me with a copy of his remarksalready written up, and since I was heading off the session... I didn't get anylunch that day, putting in to what I was going to say, what happened, in what Ifelt was an accurate way, without being emotional... that was the first public an-nouncement.

Another scientist commented:... I felt that was a very inflammatory issue. It was clearly a case where Weberhas tripped himself up because of his data analysis and I felt that it spoke foritself, and that those few people who knew about it were enough. But Quest didnot feel that way and he went after Weber...and I just stood on the sidelinescovering my eyes because I'm not really interested in that kind of thing, becausethat's not science.

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Collins: Gravitational RadiationAnother scientist said that he was tempted to disregard Quest's ex-perimental results because Quest embarked on this as a sort of aholy crusade. He thought that Quest had been rather 'vindictive',had a reputation for vindictiveness, and 'could have been morepolite'. Another remarked that Quest was 'a dangerous man. Someof the best scientists in the business have told me: "Quest is a toughcookie".' And another commented:

[Quest and his group] are so obnoxious, and so firm in their belief, that onlytheir approach is the right one and that everyone else is wrong, that I immediate-ly discount their veracity on the basis of self delusion.Quest's own attitude has already been indicated by his quotedremarks regarding the purpose of his experiment, but some moredocumentation might be of interest. After completing work andpublishing the report on their 'tiny' antenna, the Quest group builta second antenna of greater size and sensitivity but small enough toutilize the same peripheral equipment (vacuum chamber, etc.). Iwas interested in their reasons for going ahead with this if they con-sidered that their first antenna, though small, was large enough todo the job of legitimizing their disproof of Weber's results.Quest himself answered simply in terms of maximum utilizationof available equipment - the new experiment cost next to nothingand pushed the upper bound of possible gravity waves down stillfurther. However, another of Quest's group answered:... well we knew what was going to happen. We knew that Weber was building abigger one and we just felt that we hadn't been convincing enough with our smallantenna. We just had to get a step ahead of Weber and increase our sensitivitytoo.At that point it was not doing physics any longer. It's not clear that it was everphysics, but it certainly wasn't by then. If we were looking for gravity waves wewould have adopted an entirely different approach. [For example, an experimentof sufficient sensitivity to find the theoretically predicted radiation]... there'sjust no point in building a detector of the [type]... that Weber has. You're justnot going to detect anything... and so there is no point in building one, otherthan the fact that there's someone out there publishing results in Physical ReviewLetters... it was pretty clear that [another named group] were never going tocome out with a firm conclusion... so we just went ahead and did it... We knewperfectly well what was going on, and it was just a question of getting a firmenough result so that we could publish in a reputable journal, and try to end itthat way.

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Social Studies of ScienceThe last phrase in the above quotation is highly significant.Quest's group had circulated a paper by Irving Langmuir'3 o otherscientists and to Weber himself. This paper was quoted to me also.The Langmuir paper deals with several cases of 'pathologicalscience' - 'the science of things that aren't so' - and Quest believ-ed that Weber's work was typical of this genre. He tried to per-suade Weber and others of the similarities. Most of the cases cited

by Langmuir dragged on, taking many years to settle, and, as amember of the Quest group put it, 'we just wanted to see if it waspossible to stop it immediately without having it drag on for 20years.' They were particularly worried because, though they knewthat Weber's work was incorrect, they could see that thisknowledge was not general - indeed, quite the opposite. To quoteagain:

Furthermore, Weber was pushing very hard. He was giving an endless number oftalks... and... we had some graduate students - I forget which university theywere from - come around to look at the apparatus... They were of the veryfirm opinion that gravity waves had been detected, and were an established factof life, and we just felt something had to be done to stop it... It was just gettingout of hand. If we had written an ordinary paper, that just said we had a lookand we didn't find, it would have just sunk without trace.In sum, it can be said with some degree of certainty that Questand his group set out to kill Weber's findings in the shortest possibletime. There is no reason to believe that they had anything but themost honourable motives for these actions but they pursued theiraim in a more vigorous way than some scientists considered proper.In at least one or two cases their vigour was counter-productive -

leading other scientists to distrust their findings. They did their ex-periment with the intention of developing a position from whichthey could more effectively destroy Weber's findings. They wouldnot have bothered to carry out any experimental work if it hadn'tbeen that they 'looked at what some other people were planning todo and decided that there wasn't anybody who was going to makethis confrontation.'Thus, Quest acted as though he did not think that the simplepresentation of results with only a low key comment would be suf-ficient to destroy the credibility of Weber's results. In other words,he acted as one might expect a scientist to act who realized that sim-ple evidence and arguments are not sufficient to settle unam-biguously the existential status of a phenomenon. There is no

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Collins: Gravitational Radiationreason to think that Quest was unsuccessful in his aims and, in theterms of the metaphor, he may be credited with encouraging andpersuading scientists to ignore the joints and hinges and see a solidship of no gravity waves built from the stock of findings, reasonsand arguments available to them. These, in themselves, could be in-terpreted in other ways. It is Weber, of course, who had thegreatest stake in drawing attention to the weaknesses in the hope ofshowing how the bottle could still be emptied to make room forhis own ship - high fluxes of gravity waves. The next section dealswith Weber's defence of his own work.

Weber's Defence Against His CriticsNot surprisingly, Weber himself believed that all the argumentsandevidence against him contained fatal flaws. Taking points (a) to (d)in turn, I will now discuss Weber's replies to his critics.Regarding the computer error Weber, while admitting to thismistake, insisted that it was unimportant. In a technical report hewrote:

A copy of [a] tape together with an unpublished list of coincidences was sent toPeters...Peters discovered a program error and incorrect values in the un-published list of coincidences. Without further processing this tape, he reachedthe incorrect conclusion that the zero delay excess was one per day. This incor-rect information was widely disseminated by him and Quest. After all correc-tions are applied the zero delay excess is 8 per day. Subsequently, Peters reporteda zero delay excess of 6 per day for that tape.In other written reports, and in interview, Weber insisted that thesignificant issue was that his programming had been independentlychecked by several others, who reached reasonable agreement withthe above analysis after 14 months' 'correspondence'. Thus heremarked:

There are also issues relating to the computer programming. Our computer pro-grams have been carefully checked by three independent groups. There was in-itially an error which was significant but not dominant. To the best of myknowledge the other groups have not had their computer programs checked inthis way.He claimed that Peters's mistake in his re-analysis of the data wasto estimate the mean height of chance coincidence from a section of

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Social Studies of Sciencethe delay histogram (see Appendix) which was too close to the cen-tre and which, therefore, overestimated the background noise byincluding in it some of the signal.As regardsthe four-hour error, Weber remarkedthat there was a2.6 standard deviation effect with the right time and also a 2.6 stan-dard deviation effect with the wrong time, but that 'this doesn'tmeet the standards of modern particle physics and we never claim-ed it to be a positive result.' Regarding the accusation of statisticalmassage, Weber has replied by giving fuller details of his processingprocedure in technical reports, and by showing that changes 'over alarge range' in the parameters used to extract the signal from noiseleave a clear signal in at least one batch of data.In a reply to Quest's Letter in the popular physics journal, Weberremarked that 'Computing errors have been an important factor inthe politics but not in the physics of our experiment.' Weber in-sisted that loss of signal strength and character, and failure to im-prove signal-to-noise ratio over a period, are both explicable. Hehad recently observed periods when no signal at all could be pickedup, and remarked to me:

People like 'Robinson', for instance, regard a published event rate [like that wepublished in 1969] as a claim that it is a law of nature. It is nothing of the sort.It's an observed event rate... We see this more and more in astronomy: for in-stance all the X-ray sources are very highly variable on a time scale of months,which is what we observe from our sources - large variability on a time scale ofmonths.

Changes in the strength and character of the signal can then be at-tributed to changes in the source of the radiation.Regarding the signal-to-noise ratio, Weber pointed out thatthough huge improvements had been made in the sensitivity of hisdetector, these had allimproved the sensitivity for short pulses. But there's every indication that thepulses we see are not short and as soon as you say they are not short there's noreason to believe that the signal-to-noise ratio should be any better now than itwas a few years ago...We can build detectors and carry out certain noise measurements on them andknow what their specifications are, but unless the characteristics of the sourceare known, you don't know what to expect.

This remark is quite clear. One cannot make systematic im-

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Collins: Gravitational Radiationprovements in signal-to-noise ratio if one doesn't know thecharacteristics of the signal. The improvements that had been car-ried out over the years may have been informed by false assump-tions in this respect.Weber did not consider that any of the other experiments con-stituted serious challenges to his work. In 1973 he was quoted in apopular physics journal as follows:

More than ten groups of physicists worldwide are now doing research of highquality... It is most unusual that at this time, January 1973, no one has repeatedthe 1969... experiments with similar or improved instrumentation and data pro-cessing. Other experimental groups have either employed smaller detectors, in-strumentation with more noise, substantially different data processing or verydifferent quality factors.

In 1975 his position was broadly the same as that expressed in theabove quotation, except that his criticisms of the King experimentwere more complicated. In 1973 Weber was holding on to the hopethat King would produce results that would confirm his own.King's experiment was intended to be an exact copy of Weber's,and though in 1972 Weber would not commit himself to the state-ment that it was being done 'to his satisfaction', this experimentwas the only one which he would agree could be described as thesame as his own. He said:

...the King machines will be very similar, I think, to the ones we built here. Ihave had extensive contact with both groups. I have seen the Kingmachine and Iwas very favourably impressed with it.What is more, in August 1974 Weber was to write in a technicalreport that 'On the whole, our results are in fair agreement with theobservations of the Kinggroup.' By October 1975Weber claimed hewas 'not terribly optimistic about the King group', giving me cer-tain (confidential) reasons for his belief that they were not keen todiscover gravity waves. Also, by this time the King group hadpublished a paper which claimed to find no disturbance in theirantennae which should be attributed to external signals. But theydid find coincidences between two detectors over a sixteen dayperiod at a significance level of 3.6 standard deviations. Theyclaimed that this result should not be attributed to gravity wavesbut to an expectable statistical oddity. Critics thought the same.But Weber (and Weber's one sympathizer) noted the 'positive'

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Social Studies of ScienceKing group findings and claimed that they backed up the Weberresults. Thus there was disagreement over the supportive status ofthe King experiment. The Weber viewpoint can be maintained if itis assumed that the source might be variable, or that the King ap-paratus functioned properly for only those sixteen days.If the matter could be left there it would make my own analysiseasier: however, the issue is confused by a second criticism levelledat the King group by Weber. The King group used a different signalprocessing algorithm to Weber - the 'linear' rather than the'quadratic' - for all but a short period of their experimentation.For this reason Weber felt that their experiment was not a properreplication of his own - except for that short period. Even then hethought that the period was too short to count as a test: they shouldhave run for at least a year with the quadratic algorithm.The problem is that the sixteen days of data in which the Kinggroup found a significant result were initially processed with thelinear algorithm. When processed with Weber's quadratic al-gorithm, so they reported, the effect disappeared completely. Thusit did seem that Weber wanted to claim both that the King groupfound a positive result and that they should have run with thequadratic algorithm - while the King group suggest that thepositive result that they reported would completely disappear ifthat algorithm were used. Weber did seem to argue at cross pur-poses here.

DiscussionIt may be that the last point represents a genuine flaw in Weber'sdefence of his position. Perhaps, on the other hand, if I were todiscuss it with him further he could explain the rationale behind theapparent conflict. Fortunately it does not seem to matter at all asfar as the existence of (hf) gravity waves is concerned. No respon-dent suggested to me that it was this particular crucial flaw inWeber's reasoning that led him to disbelieve the Weber claims. In-deed, the apparent discrepancy is a 'discovery' of my own - no-one else mentioned it. Nor would they need to, for there is quiteenough in the earlier part of the story to suggest a sceptical vieweven though Weber had a technical answer for every other point.The problem is - in Gellner's terms14 - how 'charitable' to be inthe interpretation of systems of belief.

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Collins: Gravitational RadiationErnest Gellner, writing about the interpretation of the belief

systems of primitive tribes, has argued that the anthropologist maymake them seem coherent and rational, or incoherent and irra-tional, according to how charitable his interpretation is.'5 This is aproblem that confronts the sociologist (and historian) of scienceand the working scientist equally. In this case the charitable inter-pretation allows all Weber's defences and lets the 'ship-of-no-gravity-waves' out of the bottle again. The uncharitable interpreta-tion is that championed by Quest and his group. Since, as we haveseen, the evidence in this case was not inviolable, scientists' conclu-sions regarding the existence of (hf) gravity waves rested on thedegree of charity invested in their interpretations of events. I havealready argued this, in different terms, when I discussed Quest'srole in the dispute (see above, p. 45). Since we are dealing withmore or less charitable interpretations, it matters not whetherWeber really tripped himself up on some occasion or not. All thatmatters is whether he was perceived (interpreted) as doing so. Thuseffort expended in trying to decide whether Weber was 'really'behaving consistently or not is misplaced. Weber's thought pro-cesses are not relevant to the dispute. 'Hypothetical-Weber' is thecrucial individual in establishing the permeability of the dispute todifferent interpretations and in drawing attention to the social pro-cesses which determined the outcome of the debate. Advantage isonly to be gained - in this regard - by talking to the real Weberbecause the scientist who is deeply involved in the debate is likely tobe more ingenious in showing the permeability of the debate than isa sociologist at constructing an 'H-Weber'.16But if the real scientistmakes an occasional slip, or mistake, this only matters to the out-come of the debate if it is widely noticed by his peers and his peersare not preparedto find a charitable interpretation themselves or toexcuse the slip. Thus Weber's apparent slip, since it was of no im-portance to his peers, is of no concern to this analysis.We can see, then, that the question of charitability in an-thropology has a parallel in scientific disputes. In anthropology,lack of charity in interpretation implies a defence of the an-thropologist's conception of rational behaviour and a licence tochange primitive tribes in a direction which finds favour in'Western eyes'. In science, too, lack of charity implies a defence ofthe status quo and a licence to expel anomalous findings from thebody of scientific knowledge. Charitable interpretations imply theopposite. In this paper I have tried to show the possibility and

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Social Studies of Sciencescope of charitable interpretations in the debate over the existenceof (hf) gravity waves and then I have tried to show one of the waysin which the credibility of charitable interpretations was reduced -by Quest.To uncover the scope for charity, and to interpret the actions ofthe 'victorious' side as less 'charitable' - rather than more 'ra-tional' or 'correct' - than those of the 'defeated' party, requires asuspension of the normal mode of receiving scientific knowledge.The existence of (hf) gravity waves is now literally incredible. Myclaim is not that sociology can bring them back, but that theirdemise was a social (and political) process. Where Weber (seeabove, p. 50) distinguished between the physics and politics of ex-periment, I have tried to show that they are not so easilydistinguishable.'7 To do this requires that, at least for the purposeof constructing the account, a relativistic attitude is taken to thescientific phenomenon under investigation. To press the accountforward requires that it be taken that the phenomenon itself doesnot dictate the outcome of the debate, otherwise the failure of thedefeated party - the incredibility of the discredited phenomenonwill seem so natural as not to require an explanation at all. Theappropriate attitude for conducting this kind of inquiry is toassume that 'the natural world in no way constrains what is believ-ed to be'.'8 I hope that the detailed empirical work found in thispaper, and in other papers in the same tradition,'9 will bear out theclaims made for the relativistic approach and encourage its adop-tion as a methodological prescription, even by those to whom it isepistemologically distasteful.20

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Collins: Gravitational Radiation* APPENDIX

Techniques and Innovations inthe Searchfor (hf) Gravity Waves

Figure 1Signals as Peaks above Threshold Figure2

Signals as Sudden Changes in Energy

Even the most well isolated detector will produce a 'noisy' output because of ther-mal noise in the aluminium alloy bar. Some method of extracting signal from noisehas to be used. In the early days Weber counted each peak above a predeterminedthreshold as signifying a wave pulse (Figure 1). An alternative is to look for suddenchanges in the energy of the bar, irrespectiveof whether or not a threshold is crossed(Figure 2). The latter seems to be a more efficient method. Weber's early analyses ofhis output were done by 'eyeball'. This was a widely distrusted aspect of his design,though it can be defended. (After all, the eye is much better at pattern recognitionthan is a computer.) All the later experiments used a computer to do a 'hands off'analysis of data.

I n

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Social Studies of Science

i ~~~~~~~i~I I

II

III I II III

II rr~~II I II I II I I II

i I I

I

I I I I

III~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~r I r~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Figure 3Signals as Coincidences from Two Detectors

A major innovation was the comparison of output from two (or more) isolatedantennae. Antennae A and B produce output traces that are compared (Figure 3).Only coincident peaks (arrowed) count as genuine gravity waves. There is still theproblem that a few coincident peaks will occur because of coincident peaks of noisein the two detectors. These are known as 'accidentals'. Accidentals and genuinepeaks can be separated with a 'delay histogram' analysis.

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A

B


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Collins: Gravitational Radiation

-2 ' 2,

.-2 ._. ::':--1 ^^^^A^_---

2 _w_. 2 3\

-4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3

A

B

signal

noise

relative timeFigure 4

Signal Extracted from Noise by Delay HistogramThe delay histogram (Figure 4) is constructed by taking the output from antennaA and comparing it with output from B when that output is displaced in time by

varying amounts. When the time displacement is large, the coincident peaks on theoutputs should be the product of noise alone. An estimate of the number of acciden-tals can thus be obtained from the height of those histogram bins which are far fromthe centre (zero time displacement) of the delay histogram. The signal is thenrepresented by the height of the central bin less the height of the background ac-cidentals. Since the time resolution of bar antennae is not perfect, signals will spreadslightly in time, so that bins near to the centre of the delay histogram should registerabove the noise level.

------ I-----

-- ---------

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58 Social Studies of Science

12 (24?) hours

signal , i ,size ,

absolute time

Figure 5Periodicity in Signal

If the excess signal over noise is determined for each hour of the day and night,and the hourly totals are aggregated for each hour over a period of weeks or months,a periodicity may be noticed. The histogram in Figure 5 shows the results of such anexercise and reveals a periodicity with about a 12 hour cycle. In the early days,Weber claimed to find a periodicity with about a 24 hour cycle. He reasoned that ifgravity waves come from one point in space (for example, a point where there are alot of stars - such as the centre of the Galaxy) then, as the Earth rotates, an antennafixed to its surface will be in a disposition that is most efficient for detecting radia-tion from that direction once per Earth rotation - that is, about once every 24hours. It was then pointed out that since the Earth is virtually transparentto gravita-tional radiation the efficient disposition would be attained twice in each rotation(once on each side). Later Weber claimed that the periodicity had, in fact, about a12 hour cycle.


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Collins: Gravitational Radiation

/ ~\ ~centre of galaxy

July 1st- 12 midnightearth

> 12noon.

October 1st A April 1st- 6pm V I -6am0


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60 Social Studies of Science* NOTES

An earlier version of this paper was presented at a Conference on 'New Perspectivesin the History and Sociology of Scientific Knowledge', jointly sponsored by theBritish Society for the History of Science and the British Sociological AssociationSociology of Science Study Group, at the Universityof Bath, UK, 27-29 March 1980.The research was supported by (UK) SSRC grant HR 3452/2. I am grateful to allthose scientists who gave up time to talk to me about their fascinating research inphysics.

1. See for example Barry Barnes, Scientific Knowledge and Sociological Theory(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974); David Bloor, Knowledge and SocialImagery (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976); H. M. Collins and G. Cox,'Recovering Relativity: Did Prophecy Fail?', Social Studies of Science, Vol. 6(1976), 423-44.2. Readily available studies include H. M. Collins, 'Upon the Replication ofScientific Findings: A Discussion Illuminated by the Experiencesof ResearchersintoParapsychology', Proceedings of the 4S/ISA Conference on Social Studies ofScience, Cornell University, November 1976 (unpublished mimeo: copies availablefrom the author, University of Bath, UK); Collins and T. J. Pinch, 'TheConstruction of the Paranormal: Nothing Unscientific is Happening', in R. Wallis(ed.), On the Margins of Science: The Social Construction of Rejected Knowledge(Keele, Staffs.: University of Keele, Sociological Review Monograph No. 27, 1979),237-70; B. Harvey, 'The Effects of Social Context on the Process of ScientificInvestigation: Experimental Tests of Quantum Mechanics', in K. Knorr, R. Krohnand R. D. Whitley (eds), The Social Process of Scientific Investigation, Sociology ofthe Sciences Yearbook, Vol. 4 (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1980), 139-63; Harvey,'Plausibility and the Evaluation of Knowledge: A Case-Study in ExperimentalQuantum Mechanics', Social Studies of Science, Vol. 11 (1981), 95-130; A. R.Pickering, 'The Hunting of the Quark', Isis, Vol. 72, No. 262 (June 1981), in press;Pickering, 'Constraints on Controversy: The Case of the Magnetic Monopole',Social Studies of Science, Vol. 11 (1981), 63-93; T. J. Pinch, 'Normal Explanationsof the Paranormal: The Demarcation Problem and Fraud in Parapsychology',Social Studies of Science, Vol. 9 (1979), 329-48; Pinch, 'The Sun-Set: ThePresentation of Certainty in Scientific Life', Social Studies of Science, Vol. 11(1981), 131-58; S. Shapin, 'The Politics of Observation: Cerebral Anatomy andSocial Interests in the Edinburgh Phrenology Disputes', in Wallis (ed.), op. cit.,139-78; G. D. L. Travis, 'On the Construction of Creativity: The "MemoryTransfer" Phenomenon and the Importance of Being Earnest', in Knorret al. (eds),op. cit., 165-93;Travis, 'Replicating Replication: Aspects of the Social Constructionof Learning in Planarian Worms', Social Studies of Science, Vol. 11 (1981), 11-32;B. Wynne, 'C. G. Barkla and the J Phenomenon: A Case Study in the Treatment ofDeviance in Physics', Social Studies of Science, Vol. 6 (1976), 307-47.3. H. M. Collins, 'The Seven Sexes: A Study in the Sociology of a Phenomenon,or the Replication of Experiments in Physics', Sociology, Vol. 9 (1975), 205-24.4. See also Collins, 'Upon the Replication...', op. cit. note 2.5. For a relevant application of the concept of tacit knowledge see H. M.


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Collins: Gravitational Radiation 61Collins, 'The TEA Set: Tacit Knowledge and Scientific Networks', Science Studies,Vol. 4 (1974), 165-86.6. See also Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, Laboratory Life (Beverly Hills,Calif.: Sage, 1979).7. The distinction between 'scientific' and 'non-scientific' action is not one thatcan be maintained, within the relativistic approach, as anything other than adescription of the style or location of action. Within this new approach thedistinction has no epistemological basis. Elsewhere, the distinction has beendiscussed in terms of 'Constructive' and 'Contingent' forums of action - seeCollins and Pinch, 'The Construction of the Paranormal...', op. cit. note 2. Forthe distinction discussed as ideology see M. J. Mulkay, 'Norms and Ideology inScience', Social Science Information, Vol. 15 (1976), 637-56.8. Ernest Gellner, 'Concepts and Society', in Bryan Wilson (ed.), Rationality(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1970), 18-49.9. Other than Weber the proper names of all scientists given in the text arepseudonyms.10. I. Langmuir, edited by R. N. Hall, 'Pathological Science' (Schenectady, NY:General Electric R. and D. Center Report No. 68-C-035, 1968). See also JohnZiman, 'Some Pathologies of the Scientific Life', The Advancement of Science,Vol. 27, No. 131 (September 1970), 7-16.11. No member of the King group could be interviewed in 1972.12. The King group experiment was common to all, however.13. Langmuir, op. cit. note 10.14. Op. cit. note 8.15. Gellner went on to argue that charity goes too far when all interpretationendsin a rational reconstruction - but that is not the argument of this paper.16. In this case of overt disagreement among scientists the relevant argumentsarepresented 'ready-made' by the scientist actors. For this methodological reason con-troversy is a good location for sociological fieldwork. For a case where thearguments were successfully constructed by the sociologist see Harvey, 'Plausibil-ity...', op. cit. note 2.17. Other 'political' acts essayed by scientists in attempting to bring about oneconclusion or the other to this debate included:(a) Writing 'round robin' letters attempting to gather a list of signatures endorsingone position or another with the intention of publishing such a list.(b) Writing strongly worded papers for submission to journals where eitherreferees or editors persuaded the author to moderate the tone.(c) Putting pressureon editors of journals either to accept, or refuse to accept, cer-tain particular papers or certain classes of paper in the future.(d) Acting so as to influence the funding of particular projects.(e) Attempting to persuade others that their work was a variety of 'pathologicalscience' (see above, p. 48, and op. cit. note 10). (A means of defence to this

ploy is to cite counter cases, where results which were eventually to be ac-cepted, were either ignored, disbelieved or proved difficult to replicate. In thisconnection two cases were cited by different scientists - the 'Compton Effect'and the discovery of non-conservation of parity in weak interactions. In-terestingly, in the latter case, evidence for which was ignored for at least 20years, one of the eventual co-discoverers was Quest!).


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62 Social Studies of Science(f) Writing letters to scientists' heads of department, overall bosses, and so on, inan attempt to constrain the actions of those scientists.(g) Using sources of 'inside information' to discover the details of an ex-perimenter's work, unknown to the scientist in question.(h) Making use of the popular press to publicize particular points.This list, of course, includes nothing of the flavour of performances and an-tagonisms in conferences, articles, letters and conversations.For an excellent study of the influence of 'large-P' Politics on a scientific con-troversy see Shapin, 'The Politics of Observation...', op. cit. note 2.18. 'Occasionally, existing work leaves the feeling that reality has nothing to dowith what is socially constructed or negotiated to count as natural knowledge, butwe may safely assume that this impression is an accidental by-product of over-enthusiastic sociological analysis, and that sociologists as a whole wouldacknowledge that the world in some way constrains what is believed to be' (Barnes,op. cit. note 1, vii). For discussion of this claim, see Collins and Cox, op. cit. note 1;John Law, 'Prophecy Failed (for the Actors)!: A Note on "RecoveringRelativity" ', Social Studies of Science, Vol. 7 (1977), 367-72; and Collins and Cox,'Relativity Revisited: Mrs Keech - a Suitable Case for Special Treatment?', ibid.,372-80.

19. See the works cited in notes 2, 3, 6 and 7.20. For defences of relativism as an epistemological position, see the works citedin note 1.

H. M. Collins is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Bathand Convenor of the Sociology of Science Study Group of theBritishSociological Association. He is the author of a number ofpapers in the area of sociology of scientific knowledge, mostusing case material from physics and from parapsychology. Abook - Frames of Meaning: The Social Construction ofExtraordinaryScience (co-authored by Trevor Pinch) -

examining physicists' investigations into psychokinesis will bepublished in 1981. Author's address: School of Humanities andSocial Sciences, University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath BA27AY, UK.

collins son of seven sexes

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