NEW ETHICAL DAMNATION - BOOKS TO BE PULPED!

[offlineastro3]

The Journal ‘Isis,’ the most prestigious US History of Science journal, recently reviewed ‘The Biographical Encyclopaedia of Astronomers,’ a two-volume tome. It found something so terrible about these volumes, that it advised anyone owning copies at once to return them to the publishers - the prestigious science publisher Springer-Verlag, of Berlin- where they should be pulped. (Isis 101:1 2010 pp197-8)

What could be so terrible about history of astronomy? Is this not normally quite a serene realm, detached from the world’s bitter strife? But one of the contributing authors, it turned out, was a Revisionist! He had been thrown out of his college UCL in April 2008 with a severe, internet-posted damnation by the Science and Technology Studies Department, where he had been a member of staff for 11 years.

He had contributed three biographical essays to the forthcoming volume about astronomers: one on Sir Isaac Newton (12 pages), one on the Reverend John Flamsteed (Britain’s first Astronomer Royal) and a short one on John Couch Adams (who predicted where Neptune would be found).No-one is criticising these essays. No-one has even suggested that anything in his CODOH essays is untrue. The mere fact that a science –historian has written about Revisionism appears as unbearably shocking, to the Isis journal.

The Editor of this volume did not know about these Revisionist essays - as publication had taken several years – but this was not enough to exonerate his book from this doom, of needing to be sent back to its publisher and pulped.

But why stop there, shouldn’t they be burning piles of the accursed volumes in the street?

In place of debate – to be avoided at all costs - the slur was cast that this author's Revisionist essays had linked to pro-Nazi and anti-Jewish sources. Isis did not blush at publishing that poisonous lie: ‘He defends Nazis and condemns their victims, and supports his claims by links to strident Jew-hating websites’. Revisionists are folk who aspire to a more fair and balanced account of WW2: but, as Richard Widmann wrote to me, with terrible finality, ‘If you are a Revisionist, you will be called a Nazi.’

So, 1340 pages of the two volumes need to be sent back and pulped! Merely mention of the title of my CODOH essay ‘The Auschwitz Gas Chamber Illusion’ is enough to explain this. I love it! But, I’m an optimist: I believe that in a few years from now the English-speaking peoples will allow themselves to think about the nature of the illusion perpetrated concerning the Auschwitz gas chambers: though, maybe not just yet...


Notes:
1. Hardly relevant here, but I wrote a book about the London bombings of 2005 called ‘Terror on the Tube’ and this Isis reviewer – Noel Swerdlov - brazenly averred that I had claimed that ‘International Zionism’ perpetrated this deed: again, Isis did not blush at such a shocking, barefaced lie. Nowhere on its pages can you find anything resembling this.
2. Tsar NICHOLAS was murdered on SVERDLOV's orders night of 16/17th July 1918. (now canonised - feast day 17th July NS). For red jew killing the Tsar, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakov_Sverdlov The Editor of these astronomy-history volumes, Tom Hockey, wrote to me about all this on July 17th so excuse me alluding to this synchrony. I might check out ancestry of Noel M. Swerdlow born 1941 in LA, history of astronomy lecturer.
3. For earlier CODOH thread on my college expulsion: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4941&p=31953&hilit=kollerstrom&sid=acf9203785b4a1c14f514cdd7eb91f22#p31953 ‘Dr Nicholas Kollerstrom a Courageous Hero’ (thank you ‘Vlad’ for that)
4. All my Revisionist essays are on this CODOH site - http://www.codoh.com/author/kollerstrom.html but recently I did one for the TruthSeeker: http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=12960

[offlinenathan]

I would be curious to see Swerdlows review

The original Wikipedia entry for Kollerstrom cited (with source) a piece by “Unity” which justified the UCL action on grounds of Kollerstrom’poor scholarship. A natural inference from Unity’s original phrasing could have been that Kollerstrom had shown poor scholarship in his professional work, which Unity had in fact not discussed. A friend of accuracy change the entry to:

Britain's Index on Censorship asked Brendan O'Neill of Spiked and "Unity" of Liberal Conspiracy to comment on Kollerstrom's loss of his fellowship in Science and Technology studies. Unity argued that it was justified because of the poor scholarship and lack of judgment evident in Kollerstrom's essays about Auschwitz.

One clarifying amendment “fellowship in Science and Technology studies” has been allowed to stand. But the crucial antithetic phrase “about Auschwitz” has been removed. The deletion has restored the implication that Kollerstrom was sacked because of defective scholarship in his own field. I myself have no idea whether or not Kollerstrom is poor scholar in his own field, and neither does Unity; if he is such, then it is odd that UCL has spent ten years not noticing the fact. But in any case that was obviously not the reason he lost his fellowship.

Thirty years ago there would have been a noisy petition of academics defending Kollerstrom’s political and professional rights. Today, not a squawk. Since then, the sway of corporate power over universities has selectively bred a professoriat of beakless chickens.

[offlineCarto's Cutlass Supreme]

Don't let it get you down. It's analogous to Galileo. It really is. If you know something is true, but authority is against it, and you're into science, well it's Galileo then and Kollerstrom now.

I see footnotes above, but they're not in the body of the post.

[offlineHelenChicago]

And, as with Galileo, years from now everyone will know Kollerstrom was right all along.
"We simply didn't know back in those benighted days what we know now."

[offlinenathan]

Distinctions can be useful. It is useful to distinguish defending a right from defending a truth. As regards Auschwitz I myself am not at all persuaded by the statistical argument which Dr Kollerstrom finds so convincing. That is off the point. Like Kollerstroms views on 9/11 an 7/7, all this is absolutely no business of the UCL Astronomy specialists, nor of any ISIS reviewer of the work discussed. Similarly, even if Galileo were wrong, the Church has no authority on matters which can be settled by observation and experiment.

However, if Dr Kollerstrom were to espouse the geocentric view of the solar system then I think that UCL would have a right to let him go - but even then only on the condition that they first gave him a fair hearing.

[offline Hektor]

And, as with Galileo, years from now everyone will know Kollerstrom was right all along.
"We simply didn't know back in those benighted days what we know now."

Unlike Revisionists, Galileo was given a chance to defend his point of view.

[offlineKurland]

As regards Auschwitz I myself am not at all persuaded by the statistical argument which Dr Kollerstrom finds so convincing. That is off the point.

Nathan have you looked a daftmans excellent study of the faked morgues in Auschwitz? It should answer any problems you have from Kollerstroms helpful but not decisive work.
http://www.codoh.com/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 4b7356860f

This is why I think too many revisionists arent looking at things in the best possible light. They know that the holocaust is a hoax but thats it. They dont know what REALLY happened but just no what didnt. I think we must move forward on things. More on my idea can be seen in my posts about Treblinka Belzec and Sobibor.
http://www.codoh.com/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 4b7356860f

[offlinenathan]

Even if Dr Kollerstrom were proved entirely wrong to put so much weight on a single t-statistic when discussing the chemistry of Auschwitz, I say it would have no bearing on his right to employment as a historian of astronomy. But as far as I can see there is nothing in daftmans thread to show that Dr Kollerstrom was wrong about this or any other matter.

The subject here is the persecution of Kollerstrom for expressing revisionist views. Mr Daftman’s thesis can surely be pursued on his own thread by those who understand it.

[offlineTreeHuggingHippie]

Here is a PDF of the book review: http://drop.io/kmmmsxq/asset/82533-pdf

[offlinenathan]

Treehugginhippie has joined up expressly to bring us the words of Swerdlow. Rare benevolence. Unfortunately my View and Zoom buttons are of no avail here. Is there another trick which can enlarge PDF print as microscopic as this? By squinting from two inches I was only able to make out some of the concluding paragraph.

The gist is that the editor who included the article in the collection was unaware that Kollerstrom had crossed a line in his extra-curricular activities. Nevertheless the inclusion of the article cannot be excused. Since a line has been crossed, though not within this article, the volume containing the article should be withdrawn and pulped.

[offlineTreeHuggingHippie]

Nathan -- just use the download button to the right. Or click "full screen" above the document.

By "crossing a line", I assume you are talking about Kollerstrom's dissenting views on the Holocaust. I disagree, I don't think his articles on Astronomy should be judged by how much of the Holocaust he buys into. That's dark age thinking.

[offline Occam's Razor]

TreeHuggingHippie:

By "crossing a line", I assume you are talking about Kollerstrom's dissenting views on the Holocaust. I disagree, I don't think his articles on Astronomy should be judged by how much of the Holocaust he buys into. That's dark age thinking.

I think nathan only summarized what Swerdlow said in his article. He didn't say that he agrees with him.

[offlinenathan]

I was summarising Smerdlow's opinion, which years ago would to most academics have seemed self-evidently wrong and even, to a vocal minority, outrageous. Swerdlow has clearly found nothing in Kollerstrom’s three articles to warrant withdrawing and pulping the volume

The worst that Swerdlow can say that is the articles are undistinguished, and one of them has old-hat ideas about Newton’s originality. The worst that can be said is certainly what will be said. After Faurisson became famous for his extramural activities, the word went around that his work on French literature, which had earned him some distinction, was not really up to the mark after all. I would take a small wager that after 1976 people also started saying the worst that could be said about Butz’s technical writings, finding shortcomings in that work which had hitherto gone unnoticed.

Kollerstrom does not control the presses in this country. Anyone who thinks that he voices crackpot ideas in his spare time will not lack outlets to say so. Swerdlow’s only relevant accusation is that Korherr is an astrologer. The common understanding of this would surely be that Kollerstrom thinks the position very distant objects, far outside our solar system, can exert a predictable influence on individual destinies on this planet. If Kollerstrom does think that, then I have to concede that UCL may have had a case for him to answer. If he does not think that, then he would have every right to sue.