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Volume 10: Number 2: Article 5
Illegitimate Science? A Personal Story
Bruce Maccabee, 6962 Eyler Valley Flint Road, Sabillasville, MD 21780
In the 1960's experimental results were reported by physicist Erwin
Saxl claiming certain small gravitational anomalies associated with
solar eclipses. Saxl claimed that the period of a torsional pendulum
inside a grounded Faraday cage was observed to increase during an eclipse.
The "Saxl Eclipse Effect" was published in Nature and in Physical
Review. This essay recounts the efforts of the author, at the time
an enthusiastic graduate student, to replicate these experiments. This
did not meet with success and the Saxl effect has now been forgotten.
The essay discusses these efforts and their relevance to the question
of what constitutes legitimate vs. illegitimate science.
