Id like to correct a couple of minor items in Stephen Blacks otherwise excellent summary (23 January) of the current situation in relation to the PBS "Einsteins Wife" website. Stephen wrote: > The programme made blatant use of half truths and lies to attempt, > with some success, to destroy the reputation of one of the greatest > thinkers the world has ever known.
To be fair to the writer of the website material, they do credit Einstein with being co-author of the celebrated 1905 papers, and grant that he had later achievements that put him in the front rank of physicists. However, they falsely malign Einstein in a different context. After noting the irrational opposition by Einsteins mother to his relationship to Mileva Maric from the time they were students together at Zurich Polytechnic the website has the following: "The greater the opposition, the more Mileva [Maric] protects Einstein, eventually placing his interests before her own. He demands all her time. She sacrifices her studies as well as her friends. In the summer of 1900, they both fail their final exams. He somehow gets a diploma, but is one of the few graduates without a job waiting..." We know from the Einstein/Maric correspondence that this is nonsense. The wish to spend much of their time together was mutual, and Maric made her own decision to do so, with the consequence of some neglect her friends (a not uncommon occurrence!). There is not one iota of evidence that Maric "sacrificed" her studies on Einsteins behalf. On the contrary, the letters show that Maric worked hard both on her coursework and for her exams, and that Einstein strongly helped and encouraged Maric in this, and was keen she should aim for a Ph.D. The stuff about their both failing their exams (for a diploma to teach physics and mathematics at secondary school) is more nonsense, deriving from the Swiss linguist Senta Troemel-Ploetz (of whom more below). Einstein passed, Maric failed, period. > In the meantime I want to commend Allen for his tenacious > effort to right this injustice to the name of Einstein. My motive for the "tenacious effort" was not to right any injustice to Einsteins name, but to try to put the historical record straight. When Stephen raised the issue in November 2005 he cited a number of articles that seemed to provide some evidence that Maric collaborated with Einstein on his early achievements. I knew at once that some of the claims were nonsense, e.g., that Maric helped Einstein with the mathematics for the 1905 special relativity paper: the maths in that paper is quite elementary and Einstein was precociously gifted at maths. But it was only after going through the articles cited by Stephen that I started to become confident that the claims on Marics behalf (that she herself never made, and not so much as even hinted at in letters to her close friend Helene Kaufler) were false. Only then did I set out to examine everything I could on the subject, and contacted the PBS Ombudsman in March last year to complain about their "Einsteins Wife" website and sponsorship of the "Einsteins Wife" film. A couple of general points. (1) It is a depressing fact about the modern media that a claim (about almost anything!) has only to be made in an article or book for it to widely cited *regardless of the quality of the evidence for the claim*. See, for example, my article on the claim by Senta Troemel-Ploetz that Mileva Maric helped Einstein with the maths for his 1905 relativity paper: http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=218 (2) Many people seem unable to read an article/book or see a documentary with a critical frame of mind, e.g., hmmm, thats an interesting contention *but Id like to see the evidence for it, and hear what critics have to say*. This is exemplified by the fact that the "Einsteins Wife" film was the 2004 joint Runners Up for the Japan Prize International Educational Program Contest (one of the aims of which is to contribute "to the advancement of educational programs around the world") http://www.nhk.or.jp/jp-prize/index_e.html Was this success because of the quality of the case made in the film or is it simply that the international panel of jurors liked the "message"? It is evident that senior producers at PBS are still hoping to retain the "Einsteins Wife" website in something like its present form the Editors Note (on the home page) has the following: "Oregon Public Broadcasting, the producer of this companion web site, will be consulting with the broadcast program producer and outside experts to conduct a thorough review of the criticisms before determining what, if any, changes should to be made to the site content." If you had seen the material I have sent to PBS you would be astonished that at this stage the Editor could still write "if any"! In fact the material is permeated through and through with errors. I have cited some 35 erroneous or misleading assertions: http://www.esterson.org/Einsteins_Wife_PBS_Errors_List.htm As to the "outside experts", one wonders who they can have in mind who have the knowledge of both the science and historical facts that John Stachel, Gerald Holton and Robert Schulmann have. Here are brief extracts from comments they have made about the film, plus one long one (all passed on to PBS): Gerald Holton (physicist, historian of physics): "...if such a false product were published by a scientist, he or she would be deprived of eligibility of further funding, and (in the USA) punished by the Office of Research Integrity." John Stachel (physicist, founding editor of the Albert Einstein Collected Papers project): "...the whole series of entangled falsehoods, more the product of mendacity than innocent error..." Robert Schulmann (historian, associate editor of the Albert Einstein Collected Papers project): "Soon after 'Einstein's Wife' was aired on PBS and after scrutinizing the PBS website dealing with the film, I wrote an email to the writer/producer, Ms. Geraldine Hilton, and her company, Melsa Productions. In it I expressed my anger at the distasteful manipulation of facts in which she had engaged. I never heard a word in response. Whatever her intentions, Ms. Hilton chose to misrepresent my comments in her film, adding insult to injury by crowing later that she had put one over on the Einstein scholars. Aside from the pettiness of this remark, I deeply resent how by misrepresentation and stripping of context Ms. Hilton's film skewed statements made by Holton, Stachel, and myself, as well as twisted facts, most egregiously in the case of the so-called Joffe evidence. This goes well beyond personal insult. "It is unconscionable that PBS be a party to distributing this dishonest presentation as classroom material to teachers and students, whose task it is to instruct and learn the proper use of evidence and respect for historical sources. At the very least, I think PBS should withdraw its recommendation of the Hilton film and the film itself as the basis for school curricula. Whatever the agenda of Melsa Productions, falsehoods and shoddy research have no place in the public arena. After many years as a grateful consumer of Public Broadcasting Company programs, I am convinced that PBS shares this concern." Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London http://www.esterson.org/ --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
