Professor Emiritus Hal Lewis Resigns from American Physical Society

[pintobean]

From: Hal Lewis, University of California, Santa Barbara
To: Curtis G. Callan, Jr., Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society

6 October 2010

Dear Curt:

When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago).

Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

http://my.telegraph.co.uk/reasonmclucus/reasonmclucus/15835660/professor-emiritus-hal-lewis-resigns-from-american-physical-society/

[47of74]

1. Good riddance, then.

[Orrex]

2. He also tore up his Flat Earth Society membership card as a matter of principle

:eyes:

[Davis_X_Machina]

3. If he could...

...explain how and where the trillions of dollars driving academic science came and went with very little of it sticking to actual academics, I'd be more inclined to listen. But the research physicists I know are as broke as ever, and still spatch-cocking their equipment together, maybe not with Bank-of-England sealing wax any more, but not much better.

[n2doc]

4. exactly

He betrays his senility with that statement alone.

[Kolesar]

5. Age related cognitive dysfunction? eom

[Demoiselle]

6. Did Olivia Newton-John found the American Physical Society?

Just a feeble attempt at humor.
Is this guy a pal of the boob who was on Rachel Maddow's show the other night. I've (mercifully) blocked his name.

[Davis_X_Machina]

7. No, but her grandfather...

...was no mean physicist.

[DrGregory]

10. Born Approximation

...was no mean physicist.
==========================

Olivia Newton John's grandfather was
physicist Max Born.

Dr. Greg

[Dead_Parrot]

15. Isn't that the film...

...where Matt Damon tries to calculate a diffraction pattern while the CIA shoot at him?

[Demoiselle]

14. Isaac? Who knew!

[DrGregory]

16. Born Approximation - part 2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_approximation

Dr. Greg

[Dead_Parrot]

8. Bye then, dipshit. nt

[Hissyspit]

9. Should I rec this or unrec it?

:shrug: Rec for 'Yay, the dickwad is gone' or unrec for 'Stupid words from a dickwad?' I'm confused. :)

[caraher]

11. Well, I'll be glad not to get another email from him

I remember getting the first one and thinking "WTF?" before deleting it. I'm really not aware of any other issue for which someone has used the APS membership list that way and was kind of irritated by it.

Now he says he tried to start a topical group, and if he's really being stonewalled in that effort and there's really sufficient interest he might have a valid complaint. But his tantrum about the action APS took in response to his activism is way out of proportion. I think his side really won that round; the disclaimer on the APS statement on climate change really does diminish its impact immensely. He couldn't have seriously expected anything close to his language to be adopted (basically striking out anything that said we know anything, and calling for more research). So I rather suspect his complaints of unfair behavior over the topical group proposal doesn't accurately reflect the real story, either.

[struggle4progress]

12. Link to the APS statement that threw him into a tizzy:

http://www.aps.org/policy/statements/07_1.cfm

I think he's nuts

[hatrack]

13. Whatthefuckever, Dr. Asshat

Toodles, clown.

[caraher]

17. A postscript

I just received my latest APS News and was surprised to read that APS are indeed forming a topical group on Physics of Climate. From the tenor of Hal Lewis' tantrum I thought the request for a TG was being ignored, but upon closer re-reading of his screed I see that actually he denounces the group "still another secret and stacked committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful petition."

Well, it turns out that the chair of the new TG will be Jerome Friedman, a signer of the Roger Cohen-organized petition Hal Lewis signed. Proving what we all suspected all along: Hal Lewis is a blowhard solely interested in playing martyr to the crowd of climate change deniers.

Some good commentary available by Arthur Smith and "stickman".

[Nederland]

18. This is what helped get William M Connolley banned from Wikipedia

For years he (and others) would delete anything that was critical of AGW. When people amended the Wikipedia page for Hal Lewis to include parts of this resignation letter, Connolley would immediately delete the references. Granted, Wikipedia pages are battlegrounds for all sorts of feuds, and global warming skeptics are known for trying to put ridiculous things on the site. However, regardless of it's content, a person's resignation letter is a relevant part of their bio. Connolley deleting it (multiple times) was unjustifiable according to Wikipedia standards for the biography's of living persons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Climate_change/Proposed_decision