On 28 February Mike Palij wrote [snip] > Rely on Primary Sources instead of Secondary Sources: > although it is tempting to think that an article in a newspaper > or magazine or a website or a news program might be > unbiased and comprehensive in its presentation of a subject, > we need to remember how often secondary sources distort, > misrepresent, or just get wrong specific detailsÂ…
> Oh yeah, and don't believe everything you read in the > newspapers or see on TV. You can say that again, Mike! Going back to the Albert Einstein/Mileva Maric issue, here is a particularly egregious example from the "Einstein's Wife" documentary broadcast on PBS in 2003. The commentator describes the period immediately following the marriage of Albert and Mileva in January 2003 as follows: "The Einstein's settle into a comfortable routine, Albert at the [Bern] patent office and Mileva at home. They hold regular evening meetings with friends interested in science, calling themselves the Olympia Academy. It is part dinner society, part debating club. One of the members Maurice Solovine writes: 'Mileva would sit in the corner during our meetings, listening attentively. She occasionally joined in. I found her reserved but intelligent and clearly more interested in physics than housework'." Seems clear enough. Evidently the commentator is quoting verbatim what Solovine wrote. Don't you believe it! Leaving aside that the little group around Einstein started meeting in the early summer of 2002 before Mileva came to Bern, here is what Solovine actually wrote (in his Introduction to the book containing Einstein's *Letters to Solovine* [1987]) in relation to Einstein's marriage to Mileva in January 2003: "This event occasioned no change in our meetings. Mileva, intelligent and reserved, listened attentively but never intervened in our discussions." So not only does he not say that Mileva occasionally joined in, he actually wrote the opposite, that she never intervened! Nor does Solovine write the last part about her being clearly more interested in physics than housework. So where did the writers of the documentary get the grossly misleading quotation from? The Einstein scholar Alberto A. Martinez has pointed out that the words ascribed to Solovine in the documentary are actually a misleadingly embellished version of Solovine's report by the Deputy Science Editor of The New York Times, Dennis Overbye, in his book *Einstein in Love: A Scientific Romance*. [Martinez, A. A. (2005). "Handling Evidence in History: The Case of Einstein's Wife." School Science Review, March 2005, 86 (316).] This example is just one of a multitude of tendentious errors and misconceptions in both the "Einstein's Wife" documentary and the accompanying PBS website material and school student Lessons. Anyone interested can find my detailed critiques of the documentary and of the PBS website material at: http://www.esterson.org/einsteinwife1.htm http://www.esterson.org/einsteinwife2.htm For those with a deeper interest and more time [Stephen? -:)] I've also written a lengthy article examining the claims of the main protagonists who contend that Mileva contributed to Einstein's early achievements. Among other things, this reveals the dubious sources of many of the assertions and quotations in the "Einstein's Wife" documentary and on the PBS website. http://www.esterson.org/milevamaric.htm Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.human-nature.com/esterson/index.html http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=10 http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=57 http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=58 http://www.srmhp.org/0202/review-01.html --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
