Science and Pseudoscience

Story of the N-Rays

 

Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable claims; reliance on confirmation bias rather than rigorous attempts at refutation; lack of openness to evaluation by other experts; absence of systematic practices when developing hypotheses; and continued adherence long after the pseudoscientific hypotheses have been experimentally discredited.

The story of N-rays is a fascinating and classic cautionary tale in the history of science, illustrating the power of self-deception, the importance of rigorous methodology, and the social dynamics of scientific discovery. Slightly edited, and illustrated, this tale is dug up from the pages of early twentieth century science in France by ChatGPT.

The Discovery - A New Kind of Invisible Light

In early 1903, Professor René-Prosper Blondlot, a respected and well-established physicist at the University of Nancy in France, was experimenting with X-rays (discovered by Röntgen in 1895). He was investigating whether X-rays could be polarized. 

Blondlot’s setup involved an X-ray tube and a spark gap in a dark room. He observed that the brightness of the spark seemed to increase slightly when he passed the X-rays through an aluminum prism. Intrigued, he continued his experiments and eventually concluded that he had discovered a new form of radiation, entirely distinct from X-rays. He named them N-rays (after his hometown of Nancy).

[Prosper-René Blondlot was a professor of physics at the University of Nancy studying electromagnetic radiation. Blondlot was a respected member of the scientific community and one of eight physicists who were corresponding members of the French Academy of Sciences and was awarded the Academy's Gaston Planté prize in 1893 and the LaCaze prize in 1899. His attempts to measure the speed of electromagnetic waves were commended by J J Thomson and Henri Poincaré. Blondlot began investigating the nature of X-rays shortly after their discovery, trying to determine whether they behaved as particles or electromagnetic waves. This was before wave-particle duality became widely accepted among scientists.]

The Properties - Elusive and Bizarre

Blondlot and, soon, dozens of other scientists in France (particularly in Nancy) began reporting a flood of amazing properties for N-rays:

• Emission: They were emitted not only by X-ray tubes but also by incandescent light bulbs, gas flames, and even certain metals under stress.
• Detection: The primary detector was the human eye, specifically its ability to perceive a faintly illuminated object in a dark room. N-rays were said to make a dim spark appear brighter or a faintly glowing painted surface easier to see.
• Strange Interactions: They could be stored in certain materials (like brick or wood) and re-emitted later (!). They could be refracted by aluminum and quartz prisms, and even focused with lenses.
• Biological Emission: Most remarkably, Blondlot and others claimed that the human body, particularly the nervous system, emitted N-rays. They reported that the rays intensified when a person was excited and diminished when asleep or under anesthesia.

The Frenzy - Acceptance and Skepticism

For a few years, N-rays were a sensation, primarily in France.

• Widespread Acclaim: Over 100 scientists published nearly 300 papers on the phenomenon.
• Prestigious Recognition: In 1904, the French Academy of Sciences awarded Blondlot their prestigious Leconte Prize, largely for his discovery of N-rays.
• National Pride: The discovery became a matter of national pride, seen as a French answer to the German Röntgen's X-rays and the Englishman Crookes's work on cathode rays.

However, outside of France, particularly in Germany, Britain, and the United States, physicists were deeply skeptical. A major red flag was that no one outside the core French group could replicate the effects. The key "measurement" was a subjective visual judgment—"Does this spark look brighter to you?"—which was notoriously prone to bias.

The Demise - The American Skeptic

The turning point came with Robert W Wood, a brilliant and pragmatic American physicist from Johns Hopkins University, who was deeply skeptical of the entire affair.

In 1904, the journal Nature sent Wood to Blondlot's laboratory in Nancy to investigate firsthand.

Wood witnessed Blondlot's demonstrations with all due attention. In one key experiment, Blondlot used an aluminum prism to project an N-ray spectrum onto a screen with a faintly glowing paint, claiming he could see distinct bright lines. Wood, in the dark room, saw nothing.

The decisive moment came when Wood, unseen by Blondlot, secretly removed the crucial aluminum prism from the experimental apparatus.

When Blondlot continued his demonstration, he confidently described the N-ray spectrum and its bright lines exactly as before, even though the essential component for creating that spectrum was lying in Wood's pocket.

In another experiment involving the dimming of a spark when a heavy file was placed in the N-ray path, Wood silently replaced the file with a piece of wood of similar size. Blondlot still reported the spark dimming, proving the effect was entirely in his mind.

The Aftermath - A Lesson in Scientific Rigor

Wood published his devastating account in Nature in 1904. The report was polite but unequivocal: the phenomena were illusory.

The impact was swift and brutal.

• Loss of Credibility: Blondlot's reputation was destroyed. He never recovered from the humiliation and spent the rest of his life in obscurity, still believing in his discovery.
• Rapid Collapse: Interest in N-rays evaporated almost overnight. The field, which had seemed so promising, was exposed as a house of cards built on subjective observation and experimenter bias.
• The "N-Ray Effect": The case became a textbook example of the ideomotor effect and confirmation bias. Scientists saw what they expected to see. The slight, natural fluctuations in the perception of a dim spark were interpreted as real effects caused by their manipulations.

The Legacy

The story of N-rays is not just a historical curiosity; it serves as a permanent lesson for all scientists:

1. The Necessity of Blind and Double-Blind Experiments: To avoid bias, the person measuring an effect should not know whether the experimental condition is active or not.

2. The Danger of Subjective Measurement: Human senses are easily fooled. Objective, instrument-based measurement is crucial.

3. The Importance of Skepticism: Healthy skepticism and independent replication are the bedrock of the scientific method.

4. The Power of Expectation: The story is a powerful demonstration of how a strong belief can literally alter one's perception of reality.

In the end, N-rays were not a new form of radiation, but a profound insight into the psychology of science itself.

[PS:  The current hysteria over the visitation of the extraterrestrial comet 3I/ATLAS may very well lead to another "N-Ray Effect".] 

 

When scientists turn unscientific!

Some forgettable examples

 

If it were widely understood that claims to knowledge require adequate evidence before they can be accepted, there would be no room for pseudoscience.

-       Carl Sagan

Science uses the scientific method to generate reliable knowledge through testable, empirical evidence and peer review, while pseudoscience uses a method that mimics science to promote unproven or false claims, often relying on anecdotal evidence, personal conviction, and resistance to falsification.

Contrary to common belief, even great scientists are known to have actively indulged in or subscribed to patently unscientific pursuits.  Triggered by one such contemporary incident, and aided by ChatGPT, this article highlights some glaring and no less embarrassing examples from the history of science.

 

The trigger

My last blog entry carried a guest-written article (see here) dissecting threadbare, using the tools of Carl Sagan’s Boloney  Detection Kit, a preposterous claim by the famous Israeli-American Harvard harbored astrophysicist Abraham Loeb that the interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS may have alien technology with possible malign intent against planet Earth. Not content with airing his views in technical publications yet to be peer-reviewed, he has gone on a media blitz which may die down only when the visitor leaves the solar system by the year end. This is a glaring case of a scientist turning pseudoscientific and negating the very methodology of science which sets it apart from other human endeavors.

Abraham Loeb

Turning the pages of history, we find any number of similar examples. Here we focus on just a few of the truly top-notch figures of science going rogue.

1.     Isaac Newton (1642-1727) — Alchemy and Biblical Chronology

Isaac Newton

Despite being the father of classical mechanics that laid the very foundations of science, and one of the greatest historical figures of all time, Newton spent more time writing about alchemy and Biblical numerology than on physics. He believed that hidden codes in the Bible could reveal divine truths and even the date of the Apocalypse. His secret alchemical experiments, which he took very seriously, aimed to transmute base metals into gold — pursuits that violated empirical principles he himself helped establish. The transmutation of one element to another had to wait well over two centuries, and then not in the manner he had thought possible. Newton was also instrumental in delaying wider acceptance of the wave theory of light proposed by his Dutch contemporary, Christian Huygens.

2.     Lord Kelvin (1824-1907)— Rejection of Geological and Biological Timescales

Lord Kelvin

A towering personality of his generation, Lord Kelvin used thermodynamics to calculate the Earth’s age at 20–40 million years, rejecting the much longer timescales (about 4.5 billion years) demanded by geologists and Darwinian evolution. He assumed the Earth cooled as a solid sphere and refused to accept evidence for internal heat sources like radioactive decay (then undiscovered). His reputation delayed acceptance of more accurate geological models for decades.

3. Albert Einstein (1879-1955) — Denial of Probabilistic Nature of Quantum Mechanics

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein is often regarded as the greatest scientific genius of all time. As the architect of the theories of relativity, he changed the course of scientific history.  But, his “God does not play dice” stance led him to resist the probabilistic framework of quantum mechanics built by the Copenhagen school of thought led by Niels Bohr et al, despite mounting experimental support. While certainly not pseudoscientific, it was unscientific in spirit — his conviction that reality must be deterministic was philosophical, not empirical. His attempts (e.g., the EPR paradox) sought to show quantum theory incomplete but instead actually helped strengthen it.

Niels Bohr

4.     Linus Pauling (1901-1994)— Vitamin C megadoses as Cancer Cure

Linus Pauling

A double Nobel laureate (Chemistry 1954 & Peace 1962), and one of the most influential figures in recent history, Linus Pauling later promoted massive Vitamin C intake as a cure for colds and cancer — without credible evidence. His claims contradicted clinical data and were refuted by rigorous studies. Yet his fame lent enormous influence to pseudoscientific “megavitamin” therapies still popular in alternative medicine today.

5. Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958) — Serious Interest in Mysticism and Jungian Synchronicity

Wolfgang Pauli

Wolfgang Pauli, a Nobel-winning theoretical physicist and the architect of the exclusion principle that is at the heart of all chemistry, worked closely with psychologist Carl Gustav Jung to explore “synchronicity” — a supposed acausal connection between mental and physical events. He tried linking quantum theory to Jungian psychology, venturing into territory devoid of falsifiable hypotheses. Though intellectually rich, his efforts blurred science with mysticism.

Carl Gustav Jung

6. Brian Josephson (1940- ) — Support for Paranormal and Psychic Phenomena

Brian Josephson

British theoretical physicist Brian Josephson, Nobel laureate for the 1962 discovery of the Josephson Effect known after him, became an outspoken supporter of paranormal research, claiming that telepathy and homeopathy might one day be explained by quantum theory despite no reproducible evidence.  He defended Jacques Benveniste’s discredited “water memory” experiments and has spoken at conferences on parapsychology. His prestige has lent undue credibility to pseudoscientific fields that invoke “quantum” language without empirical basis. His insistence that mainstream science is too “closed-minded” toward psychic phenomena has made him an icon of the “crank” fringe, despite his genuine scientific brilliance. He is an instance of a rational scientist gone completely overboard.

7.   Freeman Dyson (1923-2020) — Climate Change Skepticism

Freeman Dyson

British-American mathematician and theoretical physics Freeman Dyson, known principally for his work in quantum field theory, rejected the mainstream consensus on anthropogenic global warming, claiming climate models were unreliable and that CO₂ might be beneficial. His expertise in mathematical physics didn’t extend to climatology, and his arguments ignored mountains of empirical climate data. His reputation made him a hero among climate-change deniers, despite offering no peer-reviewed evidence.

8.   Roger Penrose (1931- ) — Quantum Consciousness and Orch-OR Theory

Roger Penrose

A mathematician and mathematical physicist who won the 2020 Nobel Prize for his path breaking contributions to astrophysics, Roger Penrose (with anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff) proposed Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch-OR) — a theory that human consciousness stems from quantum collapses in neuronal microtubules. The hypothesis remains untestable and unsupported by neuroscience. While not “pseudoscience” in intent, it is unscientific by virtue of its speculative nature and lack of falsifiable predictions.

9. Michio Kaku (1947- ) — Popular Overreach and Speculative Claims

Michio Kaku

Michio Kaku’s pronouncements constitute an example of frequent conflation in popular media of speculative physics with established fact. Kaku is brilliant, but in public discourse he often blurs the line between science and science fiction, presenting multiverse or Type III civilization ideas as if experimentally grounded. Critics accuse him of trading precision for publicity, sometimes giving the public a distorted sense of how solidly certain “future physics” claims are founded.

Common Threads

Here are some common threads that hold together most pseudoscientific ideas:

• Overconfidence outside their domain (Pauling, Kelvin, Josephson)
• Philosophical rigidity (Einstein)
• Mystical or metaphysical leanings (Newton, Pauli)
• The “authority trap”: public credibility masking weak evidence

Some Patterns in Modern Case

1. Authority drift: Expertise in physics used to assert credibility in unrelated fields (climate, consciousness, medicine).
2. Media amplification: Public fascination with “quantum” ideas blurs the line between legitimate speculation and pseudoscienc 
3. Human fallibility: Even brilliant physicists crave comprehensive explanations — and sometimes fill evidence gaps with belief or aesthetics. Intellectual power doesn’t immunize anyone against cognitive bias, disciplinary overreach, or philosophical obsession.

The Irony of Genius

• Same traits that produce great science — imagination, conviction, aesthetic intuition — can fuel unscientific beliefs when unchecked by evidence.
• Fame amplifies fallibility: once canonized, even speculative remarks can be treated as gospel.
• Science’s strength lies not in infallible scientists, but in self-correcting methods.

Summation

here’s a summative list of arguments that examines why even the most brilliant scientists have occasionally espoused patently unscientific causes. It weaves the historical and modern cases we have seen into a coherent psychological and sociological explanation.

1. The Overreach of Intellectual Confidence

The first and most obvious factor is disciplinary overreach. Great scientists are accustomed to being right — often spectacularly so — in domains where intuition and abstract reasoning prevail. This habit of success breeds an almost unconscious belief in transferable authority. Lord Kelvin, who quantified heat and energy with precision, assumed the Earth’s cooling could be solved by the same equations, ignoring unknown factors like radioactive decay. Freeman Dyson’s confidence in mathematical reasoning led him to dismiss the consensus of climate scientists without studying the data himself. In both cases, mastery in one realm fostered unwarranted certainty in another.

2. The Seduction of Aesthetic Coherence

Scientists often prize beauty, simplicity, and symmetry — qualities that guide scientific intuition but can easily seduce it. Einstein’s rejection of quantum indeterminacy sprang less from data than from an aesthetic conviction that “God does not play dice.” For him, randomness was philosophically ugly. Similarly, Roger Penrose’s Orch-OR model of consciousness stems from an aesthetic longing to see mind and matter united under elegant quantum laws. When elegance becomes a criterion of truth, it can lead even great thinkers astray.

3. The Lure of the Ultimate Explanation

Science is a lifelong dialogue with mystery. For many great physicists, the incompleteness of knowledge provokes not humility but obsession. Newton’s turn to alchemy and Biblical prophecy, and Pauli’s fascination with Jungian synchronicity, both reflect a deep metaphysical hunger — a desire for a total synthesis of nature, mind, and meaning. When empirical science fails to satisfy that hunger, the scientist’s imagination can spill into mysticism. What begins as the search for unification ends as the collapse of methodological boundaries.

4. The Psychological Need for Significance

Genius can also isolate. The scientist who has seen further than others may begin to feel uniquely capable of perceiving hidden truths. Linus Pauling’s belief in Vitamin C megadoses as a panacea was sustained by the conviction that he, a two-time Nobel laureate, could not be mistaken where others were merely timid. This is the “Nobel disease” — a kind of cognitive immunity to criticism that allows unsupported ideas to flourish in the soil of self-assurance.

5. Sociological Amplification

Modern celebrity science compounds these tendencies. Physicists like Michio Kaku, operating at the intersection of science and media, face constant pressure to simplify, dramatize, or speculate to maintain public attention. The boundary between “possible” and “probable” blurs under the glare of publicity. When fame rewards vision over verification, the incentives of entertainment replace the discipline of evidence.

6. The Paradox of the Scientific Mind

In the end, the same psychological traits that make a scientist revolutionary — imagination, aesthetic sensitivity, intellectual daring, and defiance of convention — also make them vulnerable to self-enchantment. The difference between the discoverer and the dreamer is not intellect but restraint: the willingness to let nature, not conviction, have the final word.

Conclusion

History’s most luminous minds illuminate not only the power of human reason but also its limits. The paradox is striking: individuals who shaped our deepest understanding of nature have, at times, defended ideas utterly divorced from the scientific method. This tension reveals something profound about genius itself — that the same intellectual fire that fuels discovery can, when untempered, ignite delusion.

The fact that great scientists sometime champion unscientific causes is neither scandalous nor surprising; it is a human inevitability. Genius magnifies both reason and folly. The enduring lesson is not to venerate scientists as prophets, but to venerate the method that corrects them. Science progresses not because its practitioners are immune to error, but because its framework ensures that no one — however brilliant — remains unchallenged by reality itself.