O U R R E A D E R S W R I T E Letters |
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[Send your letters via email to cpierre@jhu.edu] |
Don't poke fun at cold fusion Unfortunate word choice Why not "Dover Birch"? Gamow, that joker Not a noble goal In the article "Chasing the Great Beyond" [February] you include this: "As [Adam] Riess and [Brian] Schmidt e-mailed back and forth to each other in early 1998, they were hardly confident in their findings. They signed their e-missives 'Pons' and 'Fleischmann' — tongue-in-cheek references to Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, the two University of Utah electrochemists who made a big splash with the 'discovery' of cold fusion in 1989, an idea soon refuted by others. 'We didn't want dark energy to be the next cold fusion,' says Riess." This is completely incorrect. The cold fusion effect was replicated at high signal-to-noise ratios by researchers at the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division at China Lake, Amoco, SRI, Texas A&M University, Los Alamos, Mitsubishi Research Center, BARC Bombay, Tsinghua University, and more than 200 other world-class laboratories. Hundreds of positive, peer-reviewed papers on cold fusion were published in mainstream journals, such as the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry, Fusion Science and Technology, Naturwissenschaften, and the Japanese Journal of Applied Physics (Japan's most prestigious physics journal).
You, Riess, and Schmidt should check original-source
scientific papers before poking fun at research that has
been published by thousands of professional scientists
worldwide. You owe these researchers an apology. Editor's note: Jed Rothwell is correct that peer-reviewed journals have published numerous papers on cold fusion experiments since Pons and Fleischmann announced their findings in 1989. But scientists remain divided, sometimes bitterly so, over the validity of cold fusion research. In their joking e-mail signatures, Riess and Schmidt were alluding to their anxiety that publication of their work might be greeted by the same rush of media attention, followed by a backlash from other scientists dismissing their claims.
In looking through the February issue, I came across the
inside-front-cover ad for the Hopkins vs. Maryland lacrosse
game. I get the clever take on the Cliffs Notes version of
To Kill a Mockingbird (Terrapin). But the use of the
word "kill" in a sporting context is an unfortunate choice
— insensitive at best and offensive at worst.
(Substitute "Blue Jay" for "Mockingbird" to feel the full
effect.) Surely poor sportsmanship needs no boost from a
magazine affiliated with (older? wiser?) university
alumni.
As a sometime poetaster, I found the brief account of
Hollis Robbins' [A&S '83] poetry course
[Wholly
Hopkins, "Syllabus," February] both interesting and
thought provoking. Her idea of having students write
sonnets, Spenserian stanzas, villanelles, and other forms
of poetry not only demands a closer reading of poems than
might otherwise be required, but it also is an excellent
means of gaining insight into the craft of poetry as well
as an appreciation of the effort that goes into the writing
of a poem. I was struck, too, by the inclusion of Anthony
Hecht's "The Dover Bitch" in the reading list. I
immediately recalled the delight I experienced upon both my
first reading and subsequent readings of this witty foil to
Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach." Indeed, it was only after
several readings that it occurred to me that given a Beach
and a Bitch, why not a Birch also? For my own amusement
and, I suppose, as a test of the idea, I wrote [the poem,
which] has lain gathering dust in my filing cabinet these
many years.
The November [2007] issue has an obit of Ralph Alpher,
pioneer of the Big Bang theory
[Wholly
Hopkins, "'Big Bang' Pioneer Dies"], but fails to
mention one of his claims to fame: the Alpher-Bethe-Gamow
paper, a fun bit of trivia that deserves mention. Just
something they taught us at Sewanee about 40 years ago. (I
was house staff at Johns Hopkins Hospital from 1979 to
1983, and later faculty.) Editor's note: The Alpher-Bethe-Gamow paper, written by Alpher and his adviser, George Gamow, when Alpher was a doctoral student, was a serious paper. But Gamow, known for his whimsical sense of humor, decided to add his friend, renowned physicist Hans A. Bethe, to the list of authors, as a play on the first three letters of the Greek alphabet: alpha, beta, gamma. Bethe did not object, though Alpher was less than amused. The paper has entered the lore of physics as "the alphabet paper."
No doubt gender equity is an important issue. No doubt there are cultural obstacles and forms of unequal treatment that need to change. In my opinion, the goal of equal opportunity is a laudable one. It is also a difficult goal to reach and very difficult to measure.
Unfortunately,
"Necessary Steps" [November] suggests that JHU is
fixated on equal outcomes. While much easier to measure, I
do not consider it a noble goal. It is a goal to appease
the politically correct and for those who are too lazy to
address equal opportunity. I expect this from politicians
and activists. I expected better from an institution with
such great intellectual strengths. |
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