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Tabor Williams

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If you tell a lie and it becomes the truth, does it matter that you once lied?

In the way that some people questions whether or not the ends justify the means, I'm wondering if you tell a lie and it becomes the truth, does it matter that you once lied?

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Thanks for all the participation and discussion everyone!

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  • richard moody jr 10+

    • +1
    Nov 18 2012: Two of the greatest scientific revolutions in the 20th Century started out with lies. General relativity went from an obscure concept to the prevailing paradigm as the result of the lies told to the world by Arthur Eddington, an astronomer who fabricated data from Principe in Africa and from Sobral, Brazil in 1919 just to prove Einstein right. Now we are told that "better data" confirms the theory so the "truth" started out with a lie.

    In quantum mechanics the fraudulent experimental physcist, Emil Rupp, provided Einstein and others with lies that took a decade to unmask. Now quantum mechanics is generally regarded as one of the most well documented, predictive models every discovered---but, it started out with lies.
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      natasha nikulina 50+

      • +1
      TED Translator
      Nov 22 2012: I've googled a bit :
      " Dr Rupp had been ill since 1932 with emotional weakness( Psychastenia ) it was a matter of intrusion of dreamlike states into the area of his scientific activity."
      Interesting ... What about his other scientific experiments , did any of those eventually prove to be not that ' fake ' ?
      Maybe it was not a lie or was it ?
      Thank you for bringing it here !

      • richard moody jr 10+

        • +1
        Nov 23 2012: The eclipse data confirming general relativity are dicey because the amount of deflection or curving of space is so small that there are both systematic and random errors that exceed the level of precision necessary to distinguish between the Newtonian, Einstein and Carezani deflection. Think of it this way---it is on a par with attempting to determine the width of a human thumb from 3 miles away with a primitive telescope and hostile environmental conditions.

        In the case of Eddington, Charles Lane Poor, Professor Emeritus in celestial mechanics from Columbia University, indicated that Eddington had thrown out over 85% of the data from Sobral, Brazil to get the numbers he wanted i.e. he threw out all the data differing from general relativity and kept only the data consistent with it!

        What is sad is that Sir Stephen Hawking in his book: "A Brief History ot Time From the Big Bang to Black Holes" said on page 32 that the data "was shear luck...". Later in his homage to Einstein in Time's "Person of the Century" issue, Hawking stated that the eclipse data, "Confirmed in spectacular fashion..." general relativity. When I tried to contact Hawking through his press secretary to clarify his two conflicting statements, he never responded.

        I knew that Rupp was mentally not all there but your research is an interesting side light. Thanks!

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