McEwan was the orthodox response that I had been waiting for. I had not previously had it styled 'ex cathedra'; that is, stated by the accredited expert from an institution (Bradford University), under instruction from the appropriate top official of the institution (Dean of Engineering). I was now in a position to approach the accredited learned institution and ask them to help. This was a better chance to get rational comment on scientific fundamentals than I had had during the previous quarter of a century of searching. I had to tackle it in the best possible way, using comprehension and techniques that had developed since Dingle's day, as the whole of twentieth century science slid deeper into the morass of its own careful devising. Here was the best chance to scientifically establish the facts about today's science; possibly the last chance.

I took the Pepper/McEwan contradiction to the head of the IEE.

Ivor Catt, 121 Westfields,

St. Albans AL3 4JR,

England

(01727 864257

26may95;

Second copy sent 27june95

Third copy sent 18aug95

Fourth copy sent 3sep95

The Secretary,

Institution of Electrical Engineers,

Savoy Place, London.

WC2R 0BL (0171 240 1871

Dear Dr. J. C. Williams,

The Catt Anomaly.

An essential component of classical electromagnetism remains unstated. There is disagreement about this feature by accredited experts, Professor Howie FRS, Professor Pepper FRS, McEwan Reader in Electromagnetics, but no discussion by them to resolve the matter.

Is the IEE the accredited institution with a primary responsibility for Electromagnetic Theory? How does the IEE proceed in a situation like this, where the theory which is the basis for its raison d'être turns out to be unstated and unclear?

Yours sincerely, Ivor Catt

encl.

21june93 statement on the Catt Anomaly by Pepper

20apr95 statement on the Catt Anomaly by McEwan

apr95 Half page note from Symonds to McEwan plus description of the Catt Anomaly

Catt letter to Electronics and Wireless World, May95

Summary of disagreement, or confusion, in classical electromagnetism, below.

Summary of disagreement.

"Dear Professor John Gardiner, As part of our [Bradford university] program, 'What is Education For?', we need comment from the accredited Bradford University expert on the subject below" - Kathy Symonds, 4apr95.

"[Professor] John Gardiner has passed this on to me - I think I can claim to be reasonably competent to discuss it.... .... the new charge required in the one foot of cable DOES flow from somewhere to the left! The charges DON'T have to travel anywhere near the speed of light to do this! .... It may be obvious to the untutored mind [plus Pepper FRS] because they haven't had the [Bradford univ.] theoretical training .... The [Catt] 'anomaly' is very instructive educationally...." - Neil McEwan (Dr), Reader in Electromagnetics [Bradford University], 20apr95.

".... As the wave travels at light velocity, then charge supplied from outside the system [i.e. from the left, or west,] would have to travel at light velocity as well, which is clearly impossible. ....we have a lattice of positively charged atoms surrounded by a sea of free electrons which .... move in response to an electric field...." - Pepper, 21june93.

".... as a TEM wave advances so charge within the conductor .... propagates at right angles to the direction of the wave. ...."

- Professor M. Pepper, FRS., Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, 23aug93.

"Institution of Electrical Engineers - to promote the general advancement of electrical science and engineering and their applications, and to facilitate the exchange of information and ideas on those subjects; 130,000 members." President Sir David Davies - from p1557 of "The World of Learning 1995", Europa Pubs. Ltd. (italics by I.C.)

As you will see from the dating of my letter, the reply, from Williams' deputy, was long in coming. I learned later that Williams and Secker were new men, anxious to show more willing than their predecessors. This led them into the quagmire. The new broom got stuck in old, sticky cobwebs.

Dear Mr Catt

Thank you for your letter of 18 August, to which the Secretary, Dr Williams, has asked me to respond.

Firstly, I should mention that we have had your book reviewed and that the resulting report will be published in the Electronics and Communication Engineering Journal - either in the October or December issue. [Actually oct95.]

The Institution has a responsibility to 'promote the general advancement of electrical science and engineering and their applications and to facilitate the exchange of information and ideas on these subjects to the members of the Institution'. The general view of the experts within the IEE is that the so-called 'Catt anomaly' is not an anomaly at all, and does not, therefore, require discussion or exposition. The favoured explanation aligns with the statement to which you refer, attributed to Professor Pepper, namely that as a TEM wave advances, so charge separation occurs close to the conductor surface effectively giving a transitory current flow at right angles to the direction of wave propagation.

Yours sincerely [signed] Professor Philip E Secker Deputy Secretary IEE 4sep95

Secker was politically inept to admit that the IEE had a responsibility in this matter, and in so doing he betrayed the forces of darkness. However, he showed better obfuscatory tactics by introducing the irrelevant question of the review of my latest book, which had been hanging over the IEE for more than a year. (Up to that date, there had been no evidence in IEE literature that Catt had ever contributed to electromagnetic theory. Except for the belated admission, fifteen years too late, of his contribution in another field, Wafer Scale Integration, Catt remained a non-person. The reader can learn about all these matters in Catt's may95 letter to Electronics World + Wireless World, reprinted here as appendix 3. Its present editor Eccles has since turned chicken and will not publish anything more by Catt. [ "Mr. Catt returns" 2003])

The important point is that Secker wrote that his IEE experts had backed the wrong horse, opting for Cambridge with its aberrant Pepper; (defying Gauss's Law by) producing charge from the south from inside the conductor like a rabbit from a hat. The IEE opted for prestige rather than for the more tenable explanation from lowly Bradford; that the charge came from the west, and somehow managed to do so even though it travelled too slowly. The IEE did not know that Pepper's boss Howie FRS was a Westerner, or they would have gone for his revered Cavendish seniority, and avoided the quagmire. The Westerner view could have been brazened out, and had been for the previous decade since the discovery of the Catt Anomaly in aug81, for instance in many letters to Wireless World. Pepper's ingenious but mad Southerner view could not.

I now no longer had to take sides, but only to get Westerners and Southerners to resolve their differences, a task which was to prove Herculean, as I expected. That is, I knew that the forces of darkness in today's science were entrenched, strong and determined.

Much activity followed during the next few weeks, but first we should jump to two further comments by Secker, to give a brief taste of what followed. Whereas above, on 4sep95, Secker wrote "....The favoured explanation aligns with the statement to which you refer, attributed to Professor Pepper, ....", seven weeks later, on 25oct95, he wrote; "Dr. McEwan really has the answer; ....". Thus, he was backing both the views whose contradiction was the cause of Catt writing to Secker's boss in the first place, and his boss instructing Secker to reply! Further, although on 4sep95 Top Dog in the IEE chose him as the appropriate expert to reply, after seven weeks of repeated pontification and obfuscation, Secker wrote on 26oct95; "I should explain that I am no expert in the area to which the 'Catt Anomaly' refers....". He repeated this claim on 19dec95. This earned the riposte on 15nov95 from Luca Turin, lecturer in biophysics in London University; "To claim, as Professor Secker does, that this is a problem requiring unusual erudition and expertise is disingenuous. It belongs in chapter One of all the textbooks." It also raises the question as to why Top Dog Dr Williams delegated to Deputy Dog Professor Secker the task of replying to Catt's letter. Was Professor Secker Emeritus Professor of the London School of Ducking and Weaving, not of Electromagnetism? Had Top Dog from the start seen the Catt Anomaly as a political, not a technical, problem, to be handled by his most senior political, rather than technical, Deputy Dog? Who then was Top Dog's most senior expert on electromagnetism? We get a clue from Secker writing on 19dec95; "I asked a number of 'experts' familiar with Ivor Catt's views if they would .... [review his book], but all declined." This leads us to a statement on 8nov95 by Wilson of the IEE; "The Institution does not have Technical Committees which address scientific principles." In turn, we compare this with Secker's original 4sep95 letter, above, which quoted; "The Institution has a responsibility to 'promote the general advancement of electrical science and engineering and their applications and to facilitate the exchange of information and ideas on these subjects....'", which Catt had copied to Top Dog in his original 18aug95 letter. Also we note Secker 25oct95; "The reason that the Catt Anomaly has been around so long is that the 'experts' have not thought it of sufficient standing to take the trouble to demolish it!"

The repeat experiment

Membership of the London I.E.E. totals 130,000. That of the New York Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) totals 300,000. All other electrical and electronic engineering institutions in the world have tiny memberships of around 6,000. Thus, a repeat of the experiment - finding that the institute 'top expert' disqualifies himself after a period - could only be usefully made with the other large institute, the New York IEEE.

I wrote to the Chief Executive of the IEEE;

John D Powers, 12sep95

Executive Director, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers,

345 East 47th St., New York, NY10017, USA

Dear Dr. John Powers,

The Catt Anomaly.

A hiatus has recently become apparent in classical electromagnetism, described in the attached sheet. This is a matter of growing concern.

I enclose the 'Southerner' viewpoint presented under instruction by M Pepper FRS in his 21june93 and 23aug93 letters. On the reverse side you will find a description of the Catt Anomaly, followed by the 'Westerner' view, presented under instruction by Neil McEwan, Reader in Electromagnetics at Bradford University.

Please would you instruct your leading expert(s) on electromagnetism to comment on the matter, with a view to resolving a worrying uncertainty? As you know, the IEEE is the leading learned institution in the world in this field, and so will carry very great weight. Its high status is backed up by its massive 320,000 membership.

Yours sincerely, Ivor Catt

Powers caused his top expert, Mink, to write the following letter to me. I have retained Mink's errors and exotic punctuation. However, the key point is that his letter is drivel, much on the lines of Pepper's drivel. Since Pepper came from the semiconductor theory stable, not Mink's microwave stable, their drivel does differ somewhat. (Compare Anglican with Catholic liturgy.)

Dear Mr. Ivor Catt,

As chairman of the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society committee on Microwave Field Theory, MTT-15, I have been asked to respond to your request to Dr. John Powers, Executive Director, Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.

I reviewed the previous responses you received from Professor M. Pepper and Neil McEwan. I am in general agreement with their assessment of the "Catt Anomaly".

I will limit my comments to the region of the electromagnetic spectrum corresponding to "microwave" frequencies. Hence, the wavelength of electromagnetic waves are very much greater that the atomic and hence, electron spacing in a good conductor. Our, view is one of looking at the macroscopic effects, not microscopic.

Conductors are material whose atomic outer shell (valence) electronics are not held very tightly and can migrate from one atom to another. These are known free electrons and for metal conductors they are very large in number. Assuming, one valence electron per atom, then the number of free electrons equals the number of atoms in the material since the material maintains charge neutrality. Hence, we have a "sea" of electrons in the metal. With no applied external field, these free electrons move with different velocities in random directions producing zero net current through the conductor. If an electric field is applied, there is a net migration of electrons parallel to the electric field, hence current flows. However, if we consider individual electrons, when an electron is added at one end of a structure (e.g. a transmission line), one leaves the other end of the structure and charge neutrality is maintained. If we tag the entering electron, we find that it is not the electron that leaves the structure. The electron that leaves, is one that was already near the output and was forced out by the addition of an electron at the input. This is the same phenomenon that we see in fluid flow. When a liquid flows through a pipe, adding a droplet of fluid at the input of the pipe causes an immediate expulsion of a droplet of fluid from the output of the pipe, however, it is not the same droplet. When viewed from the input and output the system exhibits a finite yet extremely fast response time, however, the time required for any given droplet to propagate through the system is much longer than the input/output system response time. Back, to the electrical problem, when a free charge is first placed inside a conductor it is subjected to a static field, the charge density at that point then decays exponentially until the static electric field in the conductor goes to zero. The time constant of that exponential decay is known at the "relaxation time constant", tr. For conductors, such as copper that time constant is of the order 10-19 s. This time constant is much shorter that the period of a microwave signal, therefore, we can consider the electrons to always be is a state of equilibrium in the material.

Concerning, the question of charges terminating electric fields incident upon the conductors. With no applied electric field, free electrons on average are positioned in the conductor to exactly compensate for the positive charge of the nucleus of the atoms making up the material. When an electric field is applied, the electrons, on average move so that the total electric field inside of the material remains at zero. (Ei + Ea = 0). Where Ei is the field within the conductor due to slight net movement of the electrons relative to the fixed atom position. This results in a polarization of the atoms. The distances that any individual electron has to move is extremely small because of the collective effects of many electrons involved and occurs within a period equal to a few relaxation time constants. Ea is the applied field. The net effect of all this is that, a equivalent surface charge appears which terminates the applied electric field. Since the displacement of any individual electron is small, it can follow a rapidly changing electric field as discussed in the Catt Anomaly description.

In conclusion, from the microwave point of view, which is macroscopic, the so called "Catt Anomaly" is well understood and does not play a role.

Sincerely James W. Mink Ph.D. Chairman MTT-15 (IEEE) Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, North Carolina State University 16nov95

Mink's letter is such a mess that we cannot tell whether he discerns a contradiction between Pepper and McEwan. In an attempt to establish this, the following letter was sent to Mink;

Dear Mr. Mink,

I recently received some interesting correspondence from a dear friend of long standing in England. I find the whole subject most fascinating and need some assistance in clearing up this apparent ambiguity. I wonder if you could help clarify this apparent duality. Do you believe that there is a contradiction between Pepper and McEwan? In thanking you for your time I remain,

Yours sincerely, Francine Russo New York 24feb96

The reference documents are enclosed

This letter was repeated two months later, and still there is no response. Similarly, McEwan and Pepper keep themselves totally incommunicado, apart from the initial letters which their superiors instructed them to send. They all ignore all enquiries by third parties.

Here are further letters ignored by Mink;

200a Merton Road,

London SW18 5SW

26 January 1996

Dear Dr. Mink, second copy sent 7may96

The Catt Anomaly

I have seen your letter to Catt dated November 16, 1995.

Is there a fundamental contradiction between Pepper 21june93/23aug93 and McEwan 20apr95? Yours sincerely, T S Harriss London

encl. Catt anom EWW sep84; Pepper 21june93/partial23aug93; McEwan20apr95

Dear Dr. Mink,

The Catt Anomaly

With regard to your letter to Catt on November 16, 1995, do you not find a fundamental disagreement between Pepper, June 21, 1993, and McEwan, 20 April 1995, over the direction from which the charge comes?

Yours sincerely, Graham Lyons London 29 May 1996

5oct96 [Second copy sent 8nov96]

Dear Dr. Mink,

The Catt Anomaly

Thank you for your letter dated 16nov95

You appear to find no contradiction between Pepper and McEwan. Is this so?

Yours sincerely, Ivor Catt

Here is a further letter which has been ignored by an embattled professional. Note that these punkah-wallahs all draw salaries from electromagnetic theory. They will ignore every communication, be it from the President or the Queen! (The only exception is their immediate boss, whom they will obey once only, and then defy, see p54. Whether they hide under 'academic freedom', or the Fifth Amendment, or both, I know not! However, we can rest assured that they continue to draw salary.) See how you fare! Write to them, or telephone them!

11th February 1996

Dear Professor Pepper, second copy sent 7may96

The Catt Anomaly

I shall be including a brief section on the alleged Catt Anomaly in the book on electromagnetism that I am writing. I have read the exposition of the alleged anomaly in Wireless World Sept84, copy enclosed, and your comment on it in your letter dated June 21, 1993, copy enclosed.

I am anxious to paraphrase you correctly, and so I shall be very grateful if you confirm the following detail;

As the TEM step passes, the electric field is terminated initially by charge rising up from inside the conductor at right angles to the direction of travel of the TEM step. This is because such charge coming from the left would have to travel at the speed of light, which is clearly impossible.

I enclose a s.a.e. for your reply, which need only be to initial the second copy of this letter.

Yours sincerely, T S Harriss London

McEwan, Pepper, Howie, Mink found that they passed examinations with high marks. This gradually took them further and further up the hierarchy of academe. We have only limited evidence, e.g. McEwan on p6, that they claim competence in electromagnetic theory. It has usually been attributed to them by others. This is the way in which the vital disciplines underpinning our culture gradually disintegrate. Those very few who do have a grasp of electromagnetic theory are elbowed aside by ignoramuses who have floated to the top on a sea of confusion. I have found the same grave situation in my other fields of research; computer architecture and Wafer Scale Integration (see Wireless World, July81 and March89). McEwan, Pepper and Mink show us how scientific knowledge gradually descends into liturgy, examples being their letters. In the same way as the parish priest, having forgotten his theological training, thinks he still retains the key to his religion, so these scientific quacks think they hold the key to their subjects. However, the unanswered questions give them a rare glimpse of the real subject that they should study and discuss. Concern to continue to pay their mortgages and retain the respect of their wives makes them ignore the letters with their awkward questions. Our task is to square the circle; to bring them back into the scientific fold. Unless we do this soon, science will remain at best sterile, and will more probably disintegrate.

The background.

Why did I latch onto the Catt Anomaly, and pursue it with vigour?

Catt, Davidson and Walton had already been prevented from publishing their lesser advances in electromagnetic theory for a decade by earlier officials who preceded Secker. Then, in May 1976, they made major advances. First, Walton excised Displacement Current. Then, in the same month, Catt discovered Theory C. They withheld this theory for some years, but finally published it in Wireless World in dec80. However, still, today, members of the IEE or of the IEEE, the two major relevant learned institutions in the world, do not know that this team claim a major scientific advance made in may76. Even the fact that an advance is claimed, let alone the nature of the claim, has been suppressed for twenty years! The first admission of the claim is made in a ridiculing aside in Lago's review of my last book, in the IEE's ECEJ journal, oct95, partly reproduced as appendix 4.

I had already known about suppression in science, and published my first paper thirty years ago in IEEE Trans. Comp. feb66 under a misleading title, and because of this, it was the only paper on the subject to pass the referees. Nobody else succeeded in publishing on the very important subject of The Glitch until many years later, (Couranz in IEEE Trans. Comp., June75,) because the subject was taboo. This suppression led inevitably to frequent computer crashes, and meant that computers were unreliable. This caused the computer industry to lose the real time market for two decades. My third (and major) paper, finally published in the IEEE Trans. Comp. EC-16 dec67, was delayed for three years in horrendous political wrangling, which involved Narud, the head of R&D in Motorola Phoenix, where I worked, instructing my boss Emory Garth to fire me. Because Emory failed to fire me, he himself had to leave. My paper began to outline the techniques needed to interconnect the fastest ECL logic systems, which we had developed. Our failure to educate our customers meant that the market fell back to our competitors' ten - times - slower TTL circuit, and we lost our market to Texas Instruments. Also, computers ran much slower for decades. (Narud had refused to develop the slower TTL circuits.)

Twenty years later, in The Daily Telegraph on 1may89, the worst suppresser of all, Maddox, long time editor of Nature (recently retired), re-enacted Lewis Carroll's "The Walrus and the Carpenter" when he expressed concern about suppression in science. He wrote that a discovery like Crick and Watson's Double Helix could not be published in today's heavily censored scientific journals. Certainly, censorship is more severe than twenty years ago, when my 1967 paper was delayed for a mere three years.

'It seems a shame,' old Maddox said,

'To play them such a trick.

We've led them up the garden path,

And made them write so quick!'

J C Williams said nothing but

'My carpet's not too thick!'

'I weep for you,' old Maddox said:

'I deeply sympathize.'

Holding his pocket-handkerchief

Before his streaming eyes.

'O Scientists,' called Prof Secker,

But answer came there none -

And this was scarcely odd, because

They'd censored every one.

The Earlier Background

After graduating from Cambridge, I published everything that I wanted to publish in the leading learned journals for the next twelve years. These included the Fall Joint Computer Conference, The IEEE Transactions on Computers, and later New Society and New Scientist. By 1972, it was clear that the British were determined to get out of hi technology. As for me, after twelve years of increasing disillusionment with the slow progress of digital electronics, I decided to start a new career. First, I went teaching Remedial English.

I had already written a book about hire and fire in the U.S.A., which was published in six languages. Now, as a parting shot, I published a further book, "Computer Worship", which discussed the idiocies of the computer industry. So far, so good. However, the trouble came with my third book, a text book on digital computer hardware design. While researching this, I made major breakthroughs in fundamental electromagnetic theory which were more important than anything I had published in the past. Suddenly, I found that I had gone from 100% acceptance of all my articles for publication to 100% rejection. Since that date, 1973, I have generally failed to publish anything in learned journals, particularly failing in Britain, but also failing round the world. Now that my material was more advanced and important, it was totally rejected for the next 25 years. During that time I have made periodic written approaches to the President of the IEE and similar potentates expressing concern, but to no avail. However, as my reputation worldwide grew, the resulting difficulty for the IEE and other relevant learned institutions kept increasing. Still, they have held to their policy, not even admitted to themselves, to suppress all major advances in the art.

Denied information on my work of even decades ago, other researchers in my specialisms fall further and further behind. They now have no chance of catching up with me and my team; D. S. Walton and Malcolm Davidson, so that today we stand totally unchallenged and unexampled. However, to be such an unnoticed Historical Object gives us no satisfaction.

The decades of suppression have increased the divorce between me and all accredited journal referees for my work, leading to the totally uncomprehending review of my latest book by Lago in the oct95 issue of the IEE Electronics & Communication Engineering Journal. Twenty years earlier, in Wireless World, July79, Lago had attacked our first major dec78 and mar79 publications, on Displacement Current; ".... the articles are wrong in every detail and it is vital that this should be clearly demonstrated before undue damage is done." Now he surfaced again with a second attack, ending with the flourish; ".... this reviewer, after lengthy and careful consideration, can find virtually nothing of value in this book.".

That first important dec78 article in Wireless World was photocopied by staff and circulated within U.K.A.E.A. Culham, followed by a meeting there to discuss the situation. The meeting delegated to B. G. Burrows the task of telephoning Tom Ivall, Editor of Wireless World. He threatened Ivall that if he published any more material by Catt et al., Wireless World would be boycotted by the scientific community. (This is exactly the treatment previously meted out to the intended publishers of Velikovsky's first book.)

Ivall should have capitulated. However, he reacted in my favour for two reasons. Firstly, he had independent means. Secondly, he had spent many hours with me and many hours with Burrows, and found my technical stature to be no lower than that of Burrows. Ivall continued to publish material on my theories every month for the next ten years, making me the most published and most read suppressed author in history. However, the reader may not know that if a scientist reads Wireless World (now called Electronics World) he loses caste, much as you would lose caste if you read the "Sun". Certainly, before I published in the semi-reputable Wireless World, I had never read it. Thus, my theories did not reach graduate engineers and college lecturers by being published in Wireless World. Quite the reverse. Wireless World was read by technicians, not by engineers, even though Ivall did not allow such dismal rubbish as slips into the journal today, for instance page 937, dec96.

As the decades drifted by, I continued to fulfil my duty of attempting to get my work published. I also delved deeper into the theory of the Politics of Knowledge, or the Sociology of Science. Basil Bernstein, of the Institute of Education, London, gave me the first clue, which can be paraphrased as follows;

Knowledge is Property, with its own market value and trading relationships, to be protected by those who trade in that body of knowledge.

It was many more years before I realised that

He who brings new knowledge is a vandal, much as the Nazis who burned the books were vandals.

The reason is that the intrusion of new knowledge results in the rejection of the old books. New knowledge has to be defined.

Knowledge is new if its acceptance would lead to a change in an A level syllabus. It is also new if it would lead to the change of a first degree syllabus. It is not new if it would merely lead to the addition of an extra section in a first degree syllabus, leaving the text books untarnished. This last is merely new (written without italics).

One has to consider the knowledge broker, or lecturer, with his slabs of lecture notes. Each slab of notes represents capital which brings in sixty pounds of income each year from two hours of lecturing. The professional is unwilling to tear up those notes, or to give up the royalties on his text book. His text book probably gained his promotion.

The professionalisation of teaching in around 1850, and the merging of research with teaching, set the stage for the inevitable ossification of science a century later. The professional cannot afford to allow knowledge to advance.

Any attempt to push forward the bounds of knowledge by paying professionals to do so must fail. Even when employed specifically to advance knowledge, the professional will freeze it.

The existing knowledge base is the professional's identity, his security, and his income. New knowledge threatens all of these.

It took further years for me to realize that the role of the professional institution was similar to that of the educational establishment. In the 1970's, when the IEE was obstructing our efforts to publish and to initiate discussion of fundamentals, we naively assumed that if only we could get past the 'decadent' officials to the 'vibrant' membership, all would be well. I am now convinced that this was a delusion, for the following reasons.

Those students who studied, learned, and passed exams in the IEE's static knowledge base developed subject loyalty and also a vested interest in its maintenance and defence against new knowledge. Some had even passed the IEE's own exams. They now paid their subscriptions to the IEE, not to encourage it to advance knowledge, but so that it would defend the knowledge base which was now their identity and their security.

When working at Lucas forty years ago, the manager told me that the average time a production line girl worked for the company was six weeks. This made nonsense of the SDP idea of worker participation in management decisions. We might as well ask British Rail to have its Board meetings on a platform of Victoria Station and ask the passengers waiting for their trains to help to make decisions on running the railway system, there and then.

Decades later, my son pointed out that the worker's interest was best served if reinvestment were held to a minimum, and his company closed down when he took retirement. That way, his income would be maximised. We can apply the same rule of thumb to the professional engineer, member of the IEE.

My article "The Scientific Reception System as a Servomechanism", Appendix 2, gives the next stage in the argument.

Like the Catholic Church, the IEE paying member would allow the IEE to sin a little - to allow small increments, or changes in, the knowledge base. This mirrors the production line worker benefiting from minor improvements to the existing production line. However, major theoretical advances must be held up until the IEE paying member retires. At that point, the bulk of membership would be younger, of an age to want further delay in the publication of major scientific advance, and so ad infinitum. Thus, the IEE and its members mirror the conservative stance of the professional lecturer. Neither benefits from major advance, which would cause short and medium term damage to his career. The professional engineer has no interest in major advance in the art. Major advance benefits only;

(1) putative future generations of engineers, who do not yet pay their membership fees to the IEE, and

(2) society at large, which does not pay membership fees to the IEE.

The more exposed, and the more absurd, Williams and Secker were to appear, the more supportive and grateful the IEE membership would be that they had risked so much to protect and maximise members' careers.

In the case of electromagnetism, there was good reason why the blocking of advance was particularly easy for the official to come to terms with, without feeling of guilt or compunction. Books on electromagnetism state that the theory was completed a century ago, and no further advance is possible or necessary. Thus, the IEE officials knew that any purported advance was fallacious.

Strategy

At first instinctively, later by design, I devised a strategy based on the following behavioural model. A college lecturer or an IEE official sets out to block major scientific advance while not admitting even to himself that that is what he is doing. It was the intrinsic hypocrisy and self-deception of my adversaries that gave me the possibility of success in causing the Catt Anomaly to become a legitimate subject for discussion. This pioneering attempt to bring one institution, the IEE, back to basics, and causing it to legitimise one subject only, the Catt Anomaly, might be the model for the opening up of the IEE to other matters. We might then move on to reviving all our other defunct institutions, giving us the possibility of scientific advance in the next century, something which the twentieth century lacked. (David Quinn, page 26, had the same idea.)

This last assertion is supported by my experience in electromagnetic theory. In 1964, Motorola hired me to solve the problems involved in interconnecting their very fast ( 1 nsec ) logic gates. This I did, without the help of theoretical ideas generated in the twentieth century; the scientifically dead century. Later, I found that I had been rediscovering the ideas of Oliver Heaviside, who published them late in the nineteenth century but had since been suppressed. Modern Physics pundits have no knowledge of Heaviside's ideas and of the Heaviside tradition. For instance, nobody in Modern Physics knows about the impedance of free space, 377 ohms, although it is an essential feature of electronic design. I pointed this out in my paper at an IERE/IEE International Conference on EMC, Surrey University, sep84, and nobody has since cited a case where 377 ohms appears in the literature of Modern Physics. The claim that Modern Physics (= The Copenhagen Interpretation) enabled us to reach the moon is false. Neither semiconductor theory nor my interconnection theory and practice rely on Modern Physics.

I was there when major advances were made in integrated circuit technology. They did not rely on Modern Physics; quite the reverse. Modern Physics confused the situation. If it is true that advanced computers got us to the moon, then credit goes to Oliver Heaviside and his successors including Ivor Catt, who did their work in spite of the obfuscations of Modern Physics. (However, the reality is that rocket fuel is what got us to the moon, not computers. It's difficult to miss the moon with your eyes open!)

The missing ingredient in all our institutions is of course accountability. This means that Williams and Secker need to be brought to account, and to be widely known to have been brought to account, pour encourager les autres. One possibility is to serve a Writ in Chancery demanding that they perform the function outlined in Secker's own first letter, to 'promote the general advancement of electrical science and engineering and their applications and to facilitate the exchange of information and ideas on these subjects....'. Since they are breaking the Rules of Conduct for members of the IEE, they are vulnerable, and in principle the mainstream sludgy IEE members cannot protect them. It is of course true that when brought to account, the IEE disciplinary committee, packed with sludge members, will also break those same rules, as it has done in the past, for instance when I reported Professor D A Bell to them. That will also have to be publicised in further editions of this book. The salvation of our civilisation will not be achieved easily, and the forces of darkness will fight a determined rearguard.

Philosophy

We have to make considerable effort to gain some understanding of the behaviour of captains of science like Atiyah, Pepper, McEwan, Williams, Secker and the rest. This will enable us to control and limit their destructive activity more effectively, and direct them towards doing what they are paid to do. The picture is clarified if we think of them as politicians first, administrators second and scientists third. However, it is probably more useful to think of them as not scientists at all, as Stalin was not a communist or Marxist. More accurately, whether Stalin was a Marxist or not had minimal influence on his behaviour, which was driven by other forces.

The attack on scientific principles was mounted a few decades following the professionalisation of science in the mid-nineteenth century. Professionals feared the career insecurity when they stood on a shifting knowledge base. At a subconscious level they realised that they had to freeze their body of knowledge. Further, they had to suppress the knowledge that they were doing so. This is the dialectic which makes these commissars of knowledge vulnerable and manipulable. Most of them will go to considerable effort to avoid admitting to themselves, and more particularly to their admirers - wives, maiden aunts and so forth, that they represent the forces of darkness.

Relativity

Relativity came at an auspicious moment. Professional scientists had already made minor errors before 1905, but it was the major error of Relativity which set Modern Physics on its way to ever more nonsense. The beauty of Relativity was that it was self-referencing in that, claiming no absolute space, it seemed to claim no absolute truth. Modern Physics, the new religion, then set upon a lucrative half-century of profitable obfuscation before the chickens came home to roost in 1971 when Shirley Williams, then a Member of Parliament and later (1976-9) Secretary of State for Education and Science, spelled out an unmistakable warning in The Times, 27feb71;

For the scientists, the party is over .... Until fairly recently no one has asked any awkward questions .... Yet there is a growing suspicion about scientists and their discoveries .... It is within this drastically altered climate that the dramatic decline in expenditure on scientific research in Britain is taking place.

Much like the incessant, superficially profound, content-free, intoned propaganda for the Holy Ghost, the unremitting propaganda for Modern Physics blinds us to a rational appraisal of its content, including its philosophical content. After much reading of Einstein, Heisenberg, Born and the rest, I have been forced to conclude that the intellectual level of Modern Physics, and of the bizarre Philosophy of Science that it has spawned, is shallow. (See my letter, The Betrayal of Science by Modern Physics, re-published as appendix 5.) Philosophers, who should have known better, but who preferred to pick up the crumbs of funding falling from the wealthy Modern Physics table, now buttress a nonsensical Modern Physics with a nonsensical Philosophy of Science.

The Catt Anomaly goes to the core of all this nonsense, since Einstein and the rest put electromagnetism at the centre of Modern Physics.

The special theory of relativity owes its origin to Maxwell's equations of the electromagnetic field - written by Einstein in P. A. Schilpp's book "Albert Einstein, Philosopher-Scientist", pub. Library of Living Philosophers 1949, p62.

If none of the Modern Physics Wallahs can answer the most simple question about where the electric charge comes from, then we can dismiss their Quarks, Strangeness, Neutrinos and the rest as hog-wash.

I have to emphasise this extraordinary principle. If a band of Wallahs were to put out unremitting propaganda that they were all brilliant and revered mathematicians, but persistently failed to agree on the sum of 2 plus 2, then you would dismiss everything they said; even more so if, half of them having given the answer three and the other half five, they followed up by saying that they were in agreement! So much for the whole 'scientific' razzmatazz called Modern Physics. The apparent pretence that Pepper and McEwan agree means that the Modern Physics pundits are stocking their armoury with dishonesty as well as ignorance.

The Remedy

The blocking of new information by all our institutions means the end of civilisation. It is of the utmost importance that the facts of the situation be established soon and that remedial action be taken. The remedy is simple - to introduce accountability. I fear that at present a knowledge broker is rewarded for blocking new information.

The necessary reform will be that should a knowledge broker be proved to have blocked new information, he will be dismissed.

AIDS: The failure of contemporary science.

In his above-titled 1996 book on AIDS, Neville Hodgkinson quotes David Quinn on page 335;

The scientific establishment ... bears an uncanny resemblance to Medieval Christiandom. It is as totalist and unified in its world view as was the Medieval Church. While heretical movements exist, as they did in the Middle Ages, they are kept at the outer margins of the scientific world via various time-honoured devices for maintaining doctrinal control such as censure, ridicule and de facto excommunication. Organs such as Nature act as a sort of Holy Inquisition.

But the early symptoms of a schism are beginning to develop. The authority of the Catholic Church was challenged over an issue which is to us relatively unimportant, i.e. the doctrine of justification. Yet once that authority was successfully challenged on one issue, it did not take too long for the great unified world view of the Middle Ages to unravel. One can envisage the current scientific 'Magisterium' being successfully challenged over an issue such as Aids, and then, with its credibility damaged, finding itself challenged over a host of other issues.

On page 393, Hodgkinson himself writes;

Perhaps when the illusions are shed and a clearer picture of Aids finally emerges, the enormity of what went wrong will be turned to good advantage by the world of science, as a catalyst for a radical rethink about its observational methods, assumptions, and institutional checks and balances.

I would argue that the Catt Anomaly is the simplest, best honed focus for our attempt to analyse, reform and so save science before it is too late.

Continued