Decline of Science in England by Charles Babbage (red white royal blue txt) 📖

forging, trimming, and cooking.

 

OF HOAXING. This, perhaps, will be better explained by an

example. In the year 1788, M. Gioeni, a knight of Malta,

published at Naples an account of a new family of Testacea, of

which he described, with great minuteness, one species, the

specific name of which has been taken from its habitat, and the

generic he took from his own family, calling it Gioenia Sicula.

It consisted of two rounded triangular valves, united by the body

of the animal to a smaller valve in front. He gave figures of

the animal, and of its parts; described its structure, its mode

of advancing along the sand, the figure of the tract it left, and

estimated the velocity of its course at about two-thirds of an

inch per minute. He then described the structure of the shell,

which he treated with nitric acid, and found it approach nearer

to the nature of bone than any other shell.

 

The editors of the ENCYCLOPEDIE METHODIQUE, have copied this

description, and have given figures of the Gioenia Sicula. The

fact, however, is, that no such animal exists, but that the

knight of Malta, finding on the Sicilian shores the three

internal bones of one of the species of Bulla, of which some are

found on the south-western coast of England, [Bulla lignaria]

described and figured these bones most accurately, and drew the

whole of the rest of the description from the stores of his own

imagination.

 

Such frauds are far from justifiable; the only excuse which has

been made for them is, when they have been practised on

scientific academies which had reached the period of dotage. It

should however be remembered, that the productions of nature are

so various, that mere strangeness is very far from sufficient to

render doubtful the existence of any creature for which there is

evidence; [The number of vertebrae in the neck of the

plesiosaurus is a strange but ascertained fact] and that, unless

the memoir itself involves principles so contradictory, as to

outweigh the evidence of a single witness, [The kind of

contradiction which is here alluded to, is that which arises from

well ascertained final causes; for instance, the ruminating

stomach of the hoofed animals, is in no case combined with the

claw-shaped form of the extremities, frequent in many of the

carniverous animals, and necessary to some of them for the

purpose of seizing their prey] it can only be regarded as a

deception, without the accompaniment of wit.

 

FORGING differs from hoaxing, inasmuch as in the latter the

deceit is intended to last for a time, and then be discovered, to

the ridicule of those who have credited it; whereas the forger is

one who, wishing to acquire a reputation for science, records

observations which he has never made. This is sometimes

accomplished in astronomical observations by calculating the time

and circumstances of the phenomenon from tables. The observations

of the second comet of 1784, which was only seen by the Chevalier

D’Angos, were long suspected to be a forgery, and were at length

proved to be so by the calculations and reasonings of Encke. The

pretended observations did not accord amongst each other in

giving any possible orbit. But M. Encke detected an orbit,

belonging to some of the observations, from which he found that

all the rest might be almost precisely deduced, provided a

mistake of a unity in the index of the logarithm of the radius

vector were supposed to have been made in all the rest of the

calculations. ZACH. CORR. ASTRON. Tom. IV. p. 456.

 

Fortunately instances of the occurrence of forging are rare.

 

TRIMMING consists in clipping off little bits here and there from

those observations which differ most in excess from the mean, and

in sticking them on to those which are too small; a species of

“equitable adjustment,” as a radical would term it, which cannot

be admitted in science.

 

This fraud is not perhaps so injurious (except to the character

of the trimmer) as cooking, which the next paragraph will teach,

The reason of this is, that the AVERAGE given by the observations

of the trimmer is the same, whether they are trimmed or

untrimmed. His object is to gain a reputation for extreme

accuracy in making observations; but from respect for truth, or

from a prudent foresight, he does not distort the position of the

fact he gets from nature, and it is usually difficult to detect

him. He has more sense or less adventure than the Cook.

 

OF COOKING. This is an art of various forms, the object of which

is to give to ordinary observations the appearance and character

of those of the highest degree of accuracy.

 

One of its numerous processes is to make multitudes of

observations, and out of these to select those only which agree,

or very nearly agree. If a hundred observations are made, the

cook must be very unlucky if he cannot pick out fifteen or twenty

which will do for serving up.

 

Another approved receipt, when the observations to be used will

not come within the limit of accuracy, which it has been resolved

they shall possess, is to calculate them by two different

formulae. The difference in the constants employed in those

formulae has sometimes a most happy effect in promoting unanimity

amongst discordant measures. If still greater accuracy is

required, three or more formulae can be used.

 

It must be admitted that this receipt is in some instances rather

hazardous: but in cases where the positions of stars, as given

in different catalogues, occur, or different tables of specific

gravities, specific heats, &c. &c., it may safely be employed.

As no catalogue contains all stars, the computer must have

recourse to several; and if he is obliged to use his judgment in

the selection, it would be cruel to deny him any little advantage

which might result from it. It may, however, be necessary to

guard against one mistake into which persons might fall.

 

If an observer calculate particular stars from a catalogue which

makes them accord precisely with the rest of his results,

whereas, had they been computed from other catalogues the

difference would have been considerable, it is very unfair to

accuse him of COOKING; for—those catalogues may have been

notoriously inaccurate; or—they may have been superseded by

others more recent, or made with better instruments; or—the

observer may have been totally ignorant of their existence.

 

It sometimes happens that the constant quantities in formulae

given by the highest authorities, although they differ amongst

themselves, yet they will not suit the materials. This is

precisely the point in which the skill of the artist is shown;

and an accomplished cook will carry himself triumphantly through

it, provided happily some mean value of such constants will fit

his observations. He will discuss the relative merits of

formulae he has just knowledge enough to use; and, with admirable

candour assigning their proper share of applause to Bessel, to

Gauss, and to Laplace, he will take THAT mean value of the

constant used by three such philosophers, which will make his own

observations accord to a miracle.

 

There are some few reflections which I would venture to suggest

to those who cook, although they may perhaps not receive the

attention which, in my opinion, they deserve, from not coming

from the pen of an adept.

 

In the first place, it must require much time to try different

formulae. In the next place it may happen that, in the progress

of human knowledge, more correct formula: may be discovered, and

constants may be determined with far greater precision. Or it

may be found that some physical circumstance influences the

results, (although unsuspected at the time) the measure of which

circumstance may perhaps be recovered from other contemporary

registers of facts. [Imagine, by way of example, the state of

the barometer or thermometer.] Or if the selection of

observations has been made with the view of its agreeing

precisely with the latest determination, there is some little

danger that the average of the whole may differ from that of the

chosen ones, owing to some law of nature, dependent on the

interval between the two sets, which law some future philosopher

may discover, and thus the very best observations may have been

thrown aside.

 

In all these, and in numerous other cases, it would most probably

happen that the cook would procure a temporary reputation for

unrivalled accuracy at the expense of his permanent fame. It

might also have the effect of rendering even all his crude

observations of no value; for that part of the scientific world

whose opinion is of most weight, is generally so unreasonable, as

to neglect altogether the observations of those in whom they

have, on any occasion, discovered traces of the artist. In fact,

the character of an observer, as of a woman, if doubted is

destroyed.

 

The manner in which facts apparently lost are restored to light,

even after considerable intervals of time, is sometimes very

unexpected, and a few examples may not be without their use. The

thermometers employed by the philosophers who composed the

Academia Del Cimento, have been lost; and as they did not use the

two fixed points of freezing and boiling water, the results of a

great mass of observations have remained useless from our

ignorance of the value of a degree on their instrument. M.

Libri, of Florence, proposed to regain this knowledge by

comparing their registers of the temperature of the human body

and of that of some warm springs in Tuscany, which have preserved

their heat uniform during a century, as well as of other things

similarly circumstanced.

 

Another illustration was pointed out to me by M. Gazzeri, the

Professor of Chemistry at Florence. A few years ago an important

suit in one of the legal courts of Tuscany depended on

ascertaining whether a certain word had been erased by some

chemical process from a deed then before the court. The party

who insisted that an erasure had been made, availed themselves of

the knowledge of M. Gazzeri, who, concluding that those who

committed the fraud would be satisfied by the disappearance of

the colouring matter of the ink, suspected (either from some

colourless matter remaining in the letters, or perhaps from the

agency of the solvent having weakened the fabric of the paper

itself beneath the supposed letters) that the effect of the slow

application of heat would be to render some difference of texture

or of applied substance evident, by some variety in the shade of

colour which heat in such circumstances might be expected to

produce. Permission having been given to try the experiment, on

the application of heat the important word reappeared, to the

great satisfaction of the court.

 

CHAPTER VI.

 

SUGGESTIONS FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE IN ENGLAND.

 

SECTION 1.

 

OF THE NECESSITY THAT MEMBERS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY SHOULD EXPRESS

THEIR OPINIONS.

 

One of the causes which has contributed to the success of the

PARTY, is to be found in the great reluctance with which many of

those whose names added lustre to the Society expressed their

opinions, and the little firmness with which they maintained

their objections. How many times have those whose activity was

additionally stimulated by their interest, proposed measures

which a few words might have checked; whilst the names of those

whose culpable silence thus permitted the project to be matured,

were immediately afterwards cited by their grateful coadjutors,

as having sanctioned that which in their hearts they knew to be a

job.

 

Even in the few cases which have passed the limits of such

forbearance, when the subject has been debated in the Council,

more than one, more than two instances are known, where

subsequent circumstances have occurred, which proved, with the

most irresistible