How do we know Einstein was not a crank?

The 2006 book, “E=Einstein – His life, his thought, and his influence
on our culture, ” contains 23 papers by distinguished physicists and
humanists. Among the papers is one by Jeremy Bernstein, a science
writer as well as a physicst himself, entitled “How can we be sure
that Albert Einstein was not a crank?” I think his answer maybe of
interest to this newsgroup, sci.physics.relativity.

Bernstein imagines himself to be a professor of physics at a German
university in 1905 who receives four papers in the mail from an
unknown person writing from the Swiss National Patent Office in Bern.
The person describes himself as a patent examiner, third class. The
papers are revolutionary to say the least.

How to tell if these are yet more of the frequent papers that show up
regularly in the offices of physicists in every university? These
papers still arrive, claiming to have revolutionized physics. Most
are never read. Those who try to respond to these authors are almost
always disappointed by the experience. If flaws are pointed out in
the paper, a revised paper is sure to follow, this time guaranteed to
be correct. If the paper seems disconnected from past work, the author
is not interested in relating it.

Einstein's papers were rejected by many, but after some vigorous
refereeing they were published in the Annalen der Physik, vol. 17. To
be accepted by this journal meant that an author was guaranteed to
have further papers accepted, so it was quite an honor to have one's
first paper accepted.

Bernstein wonders if he would have dismissed these papers had he
received them. He believes that he would not, because they pass two
important criteria of his own devising.

First, is what he calls “coherence.” The paper describes how its
ideas mesh with what is already known. If it is claimed that the old
physics needs to be fixed, it is shown why this has not been
discovered before. The author demonstrates his knowledge of the field
and of the work that has gone on in the past. Benstein, who has seem
many of these papers, say most of them fail at this point, the authors
having ignored what has gone before.

In the case of Einstein, it is important that he discussed why the
increase of mass with velocity had not already been seen. The highest
velocity experienced by anyone in 1905 was about 100 mph, which less
than about one millionth of the speed of light, and the effect on a
mass is another millon times smaller than that.

But if the paper passes the coherence test, Bernstein looks for a
second characteristic, “predictiveness.” Does the author show how his
new ideas can be tested? Does it make predictions? Yes, Einstein did
make predictions. His theory was “falsifiable,” a term invented by
Karl Popper to label theories that could in principle be shown to be
false by experiment. That is a virtue, not a vice. The theory that I
am continually being followed by a giant peach that disappears
whenever anyone looks for it, cannot be proven false. Thus it can be
dismissed. The Aether seems to hide from investigators in the same
way, which is why no serious person takes it seriously anymore.

But the electron had just been discovered and it was known that it
could be observed in an evacuated tube and accelerated to high
speeds. That would be the first test. The curvature of the path of an
electron beam by a magnet gives one the ratio of its electric charge
to its mass. The curvature decreases with speed!

The Bernstein paper adds quite a bit of color and information to this
story. The book is published by Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., New
York.

Uncle Ben
.

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