macleod@drivax.UUCP (MacLeod) (10/19/87)
In article <MINSKY.12342324547.BABYL@MIT-OZ> MINSKY@OZ.AI.MIT.EDU writes:
(discussion of fallacies in Dean Drive mechanics)
:...I wrote back (to John Campbell, who was championing the Dean Drive
: through the science-fiction magazine "Amazing", later "Analog")
:pointing out that every real scientist would sacrifice an
:arm, leg, or gonad cheerfully to be able to PROVE that all the others
:were wrong. It went on and one, with Ron Hubbard's Dianetics, too,
:and a silly machine that work just as well when you replaced the
:hardware by a circuit diagram of it.
John Campbell had a lot of fringe science interests, but I thought that
his involvement with L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics ended when he became
disgusted with the way Hubbard was running the Dianetics organizations -
as his personal fiefs, with no others allowed to contribute to Dianetic
research. A recent biography of Hubbard quotes Campbell as saying that
to the extent others can duplicate the results and perform useful research,
that Dianetics would be a science; otherwise it would be a cult.
Did he later come up with specific disproofs of Dianetic theory?