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From: G.Joly@cs.ucl.ac.uk (Gordon Joly)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Modelling reinforcement
Message-ID: <1384@ucl-cs.uucp>
Date: 24 Jan 91 17:59:09 GMT
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In article <JMC.90Dec29161242@Gang-of-Four.stanford.edu> John McCarthy said

> Curiously enough, Millikan came up with approximately the correct
> charge on the electron in the oil drop experiment that Gordon Joly
> claims he faked.  Picking over old notebooks is an uncertain methodology,
> because not all the considerations for what measurements to
> report are likely to have been written down.  By the 1930s,
> the Millikan oil drop experiment was doable in undergraduate
> laboratories.  Now those are the notebooks to look at!

Yup; indeed. But suppose Millikan was a team and suppose the names of
the team members were Fleischmann and Pons and suppose they had come
up with Cold Fusion.... would you buy a used Cadillac from them? Or
trust their theory?

Gordon Joly                                       +44 71 387 7050 ext 3716
Internet: G.Joly@cs.ucl.ac.uk          UUCP: ...!{uunet,ukc}!ucl-cs!G.Joly
Computer Science, University College London, Gower Street, LONDON WC1E 6BT

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