Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (47 page)

Nowadays there’s a certain danger of the same thing happening, even in the famous field of physics. I was shocked to hear of an experiment done at the big accelerator at the National Accelerator Laboratory, where a person used deuterium. In order to compare his heavy hydrogen results to what might happen with light hydrogen, he had to use data from someone else’s experiment on light, hydrogen, which was done on different apparatus. When asked why, he said it was because he couldn’t get time on the program (because there’s so little time and it’s such expensive apparatus) to do the experiment with light hydrogen on this apparatus because there wouldn’t be any new result. And so the men in charge of programs at NAL are so anxious for new results, in order to get more money to keep the thing going for public relations purposes, they are destroying–possibly–the value of the experiments themselves, which is the whole purpose of the thing. It is often hard for the experimenters there to complete their work as their scientific integrity demands.

All experiments in psychology are not of this type, however. For example, there have been many experiments running rats through all kinds of mazes, and so on–with little clear result. But in 1937 a man named Young did a very interesting one. He had a long corridor with doors all along one side where the rats came in, and doors along the other side where the food was. He wanted to see if he could train the rats to go in at the third door down from wherever he started them off. No. The rats went immediately to the door where the food had been the time before.

The question was, how did the rats know, because the corridor was so beautifully built and so uniform, that this was the same door as before? Obviously there was something about the door that was different from the other doors. So he painted the doors very carefully, arranging the textures on the faces of the doors exactly the same. Still the rats could tell. Then he thought maybe the rats were smelling the food, so he used chemicals to change the smell after each run. Still the rats could tell. Then he realized the rats might be able to tell by seeing the lights and the arrangement in the laboratory like any commonsense person. So he covered the corridor, and still the rats could tell.

He finally found that they could tell by the way the floor sounded when they ran over it. And he could only fix that by putting his corridor in sand. So he covered one after another of all possible clues and finally was able to fool the rats so that they had to learn to go in the third door. If he relaxed any of his conditions, the rats could tell.

Now, from a scientific standpoint, that is an A-numberone experiment. That is the experiment that makes ratrunning experiments sensible, because it uncovers the clues that the rat is really using–not what you think it’s using. And that is the experiment that tells exactly what conditions you have to use in order to be careful and control everything in an experiment with rat-running.

I looked into the subsequent history of this research. The next experiment, and the one after that, never referred to Mr. Young. They never used any of his criteria of putting the corridor on sand, or being very careful. They just went right on running rats in the same old way, and paid no attention to the great discoveries of Mr. Young, and his papers are not referred to, because he didn’t discover anything about the rats. In fact, he discovered _all_ the things you have to do to discover something about rats. But not paying attention to experiments like that is a characteristic of cargo cult science.

Another example is the ESP experiments of Mr. Rhine, and other people. As various people have made criticisms– and they themselves have made criticisms of their own experiments–they improve the techniques so that the effects are smaller, and smaller, and smaller until they gradually disappear. All the parapsychologists are looking for some experiment that can be repeated–that you can do again and get the same effect–statistically, even. They run a million rats–no, it’s people this time–they do a lot of things and get a certain statistical effect. Next time they try it they don’t get it any more. And now you find a man saying that it is an irrelevant demand to expect a repeatable experiment. This is _science?_

This man also speaks about a new institution, in a talk in which he was resigning as Director of the Institute of Parapsychology. And, in telling people what to do next, he says that one of the things they have to do is be sure they only train students who have shown their ability to get PSI results to an acceptable extent–not to waste their time on those ambitious and interested students who get only chance results. It is very dangerous to have such a policy in teaching–to teach students only how to get certain results, rather than how to do an experiment with scientific integrity.

So I have just one wish for you–the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel heed by a need to maintain your position In the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom.

INDEX

Addison-Wesley Company, 290

Adrian, Edgar, 58

_Advanced Calculus_ (Woods), 71

_Arabian Nights_, 155, 157

Aristophanes, 280

Baade, Walter, 211

Bacher; Robert, 89, 115, 198, 210-11, 233

Bader (physics teacher), 71

Bausch and Lomb Company, 38

_Be Here Now_ (Ram Das), 303

Bell, Alexander Graham, 6

Bell Labs, 37, 83-84

Bernays, Peter; 25-26, 112

Bethe, Hans, 95, 96, 115, 138,

143-44, 150, 157, 174-75

Block, Martin, 226-27

Boehm, Felix, 229, 231

Bohr; Aage (Jim Baker), 115-116

Bohr, Niels (Nicholas Baker), 115-16

Brazilian Academy of Sciences,

182-83

Bronk, Detlev, 58

Bullock’s, 244

Byers, Nina, 285-86, 288, 289

Cabibbo, Nicola, 232

_Calculus for the Practical Man_, 71

California Institute of Technology (Caltech), 59, 79,

89, 190, 211-13, 229,

238, 250, 289, 295

California State Board of Education, 264–76

Calvin, Professor; 210

Case, Ken, 228

Center for Physical Research, Rio de Janeiro,

179-82, 191-98, 285

CERN, 284

Christy, Robert, 95, 104, 111, 125, 231, 232

Compton, Arthur Holly, 91-92

Cornell University, 50, 118,

150-57, 158, 179, 209-10,

211, 213, 286n, 314

Crick, Francis H. C., 59

Curie, Marie, 251

de Hoffman, Frederic, 42-43,

129-33

Delbrück, Max, 59

Del Sasso, Professor; 53

Demitriades, Steve, 242-43

Dirac, Paul, 230

Dresden Codex, 286-89, 290

Dreyfuss, Henry, 251

Edgar, Robert, 59, 62

Einstein, Albert, 23-24, 65, 66, 84, 155-56, 254

Eisenhart, Dean, 48, 53-54

Eisenhart, Mrs., 48-49

Electrical Testing Labs, 38

Erhard, Werner, 300

Esalen, 309

_Faust_ (Goethe), 31

Feller, Professor, 210

Fermi, Enrico, 114, 213

Feynman, Arlene, 87-89, 93, 95, 98-101, 111-13

Feyriman, Gweneth, 246, 248, 284

Feynman, Lucille, 144

Feynman, Mary Lou, 184-85, 213, 223, 286

Feynman, Mel, 72-74, 144, 286

Feynman Lectures, 290

Frankel, Stanley, 108–9

Frankfort Arsenal, Philadelphia, Pa., 84-87

_Frogs, The_ (Aristophanes), 280

Fuchs, Flaus, 112

Geller, Uri, 310

Gell-Mann, Murray, 203, 227, 229, 232, 290

General Atomics, 42

General Electric Company, 138

Gianonni (restaurant owner),

246-47, 248, 249-50

Gibbs, Professor, 152, 153

Griffin, Dr., 210

_Guys and Dolls_, 295-97

Harvard University, 62-63, 303

Harvey, E. Newton, 57-58

Harvey, Thomas, 264

Heisenberg, Werner, 254

Hughes Aircraft Company, 301

Huxley, Thomas, 31

Institute for Advanced Studies,

Princeton University, 149, 156

Institute of Parapsychology, 316

International Correspondence

Schools, 238

Irwin, Robert, 252

Jefferson, Thomas, 254

Jensen, Hans, 229, 231

Jewish Theological Seminary, 259

Kac, Professor, 210

Kellogg Laboratory, 190

Kemeny, John, 101

Kerst, Donald, 132-33

Kislinger, Mark, 233

Lamfrom, Hildegarde, 61

Lattes, Cesar, 181-82

Laurence, William, 117

Lavatelli, Leo, 119

Lee (physicist), 227-28

Leighton, Ralph, 294-95, 296,

297-301

Leighton, Robert, 294

_Life of Leonardo, The_, 14

Lilly, John, 301-3, 306, 308

Lodge, Sir Oliver, 142

Lollobrigida, Gina, 285

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 252

Madrid codex, 289

Manhattan Project, 42, 90-118, 119-37, 150

Marcuso (taxi driver), 159

Marshall, Leona, 213-14

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

(MIT), 9, 17, 30, 37–38, 47,

49-50, 51

Meselson, Matthew, 60, 212

Messenger Lectures, 286n

Metaplast Corporation, 42

Meyer, Maurice, 19, 83

Mill, John Stuart, 30

Millikan, Robert, 312-13

_Modern Plastics_, 41, 42

Munger, Professor, 300

_My Later Years_ (Einstein), 254

National Accelerator Laboratory, 315

Neugehauer, Otto, 286

Neumann, John von, 64-65, 115

_New York Times_, 289

Nick the Greek, 208-9

Nishina (physicist), 217

Nobel Prize, 158, 276-85

Norris (lawyer) 264, 265, 274

Oak Ridge, Tenn., Laboratory, 103-8, 125-28

Ofey (Richard Feynman), 244

Olum, Paul, 71, 93, 94, 175-176

“On a Piece of Chalk” (Huxley), 31

_On Freedom_ (Jefferson), 254

Onsager, Lars, 222

Oppenheimer, J. Robert, 91, 93,

104, 105, 110, 227, 286n

Pais, Abraham, 221-22, 223

Pamilio, Pete, 274-75

Pasadena Art Museum, 239-41

Pauli, Wolfgang, 65, 66

Pauling, Linus, 203

Phi Beta Delta, 17-20

_Physical Review_, 94, 233

Polytechnic School, 294

Princeton University, 23, 47-50, 51, 53,

56, 63, 67, 69, 73, 77, 83, 84,

91, 149, 155-56, 173

_Process and Reality_ (Whitehead), 56-57

Rabi, I. I., 91

Ram Das, 303

Ramsey, Norman, 227

Ravndal, Finn, 233

_Reminiscences of Los Alamos,

1943-1945_ (Badash et al.), 90n

Rhine, Joseph, 316

Robertson, Mrs. H. F, 288

Robinson, Professor, 32-34

Rochester Conference, 227

Rogers, Carl, 238

Rowan, Robert, 289

Russell, Henry Norris, 64

Rutishauser, Tom, 295

Sands, Matt, 278

Schrodinger, Erwin, 229, 254

Segre, Emil, 103-4

Serber, Robert, 95

Shockley, Bill, 38, 83

Sholokhov, Mikhail, 282

Sigma Alpha Mu, 17

Slater, Professor, 47, 51, 144

Smith (patent officer), 164-65

Smith, J. D., 60

Smyth, H. D., 91, 117

_Spellbound_, 138

Sputnik, 266

Staley (Los Alamos scientist),

123-24

State University of North Carolina, 235-36

Talmud, 259-60

Telegdi, Valentine, 232-33

Teller, Edward, 102-3, 141

Thompson, Eric, 288, 288-89n

Three Quarks, The, 295

_Time_ magazine, 203, 223,

278-79

Tiomno, Jaime, 179

Tolman, Richard, 91-92

Tomonaga, Sinitiro, 217

Trichel, General, 84

Trowbridge (schoolmaster), 294

Tuchman, Maurice, 253

Ukonu, 293-94

University of Alaska, 277

University of California at Los

Angeles (UCLA), 285

University of Chicago, 213-14

University of Rio, 183

Urey, Harold, 91

Villacorta, 286, 288

Wapstra, Aaldert, 229, 231

Watson, James Dewey, 59, 62

Webb, Julian, 105

Weisskopf, Victor, 284

_What Is Life_ (Schrodinger), 254

Wheeler, John, 51, 63-66, 217, 218

Whitehouse, Mrs., 265

Wigner, Eugene, 64-65

Wildt, Professor, 48

Williams, John, 94

Wilson, Robert, 90, 92, 93, 118, 156, 286n

Woodward, Bill, 73

Wright, Dudley, 244, 249

Wright, Frank Lloyd, 217

Wu, Chien-Shiung, 227, 228

Yang (physicist), 228

Young (psychologist), 315-16

Yukawa, Hideki, 217

Yukawa Institute, 224

Zorthian, Dabney 245

Zorthian, Jirayr, 236-40, 241, 242, 244-45, 250, 279

Zumwalt, Lieutenant, 105-6, 107