With Robin van Spaandonk's assistance, I have been able to educate myself on the Mills chronology. It is, insofar as chronology alone can be, supportive of Mills's authenticity. However, if Mills is real, as this chronology seems to indicate, it sheds new light on the sociology of science in the US.
First the significant chronology, then the new light on the sociology of US science: The essential insight required for a revolution in physics was published in 1964 by George Goedecke <http://physics.nmsu.edu/people/emeriti/GeorgeGoedecke.html> in a paper titled "Classically Radiationless Motions and Possible Implications for Quantum Theory <http://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.135.B281>". The response to this paper's fundamental importance was utter silence except for Wigner who was relieved that it had not been published earlier in the 20th century because it would have side-tracked physics into a classical paradigm rather than the development of quantum mechanics. However, and this is important, Mills, in developing his "Grand Unified Theory of Classical Physics <http://www.blacklightpower.com/wp-content/uploads/theory/TOE%2002.10.03/Djvu%20Files/EntireBook.djvu>", had not read and was therefore not influenced by Goedecke. It was in 1985, when Mills took a course from H. A. Haus at MIT, that Haus showed Mills the manuscript to Haus's paper "On the radiation from point charges <http://scitation.aip.org/content/aapt/journal/ajp/54/12/10.1119/1.14729>", regarding free electron lasers, that Mills saw the *potential* importance of "the nonradiation condition <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonradiation_condition>" to a revolution in physics. Haus did not see the potential importance of his own paper, as did Mills. Haus did not see the potential importance, in part, because he had not read Goedecke's paper and, in part, because his intellect was not so attuned to the structure of theory as to recognize when a cornerstone had appeared. It was not until 1988 that Mills had the empirical impetus to pursue his intuition that the nonradiation condition exposed by Haus's paper could revolutionize physical theory. That impetus came in the form, *not* of cold fusion (which wouldn't appear until 1989), but of the discovery of high temperature superconductors. These materials, unlike cold fusion, were reliably reproducible and seemed to challenge then-current interpretations of physical theory. Then in 1989 cold fusion came a long and the signal to noise ratio surrounding Mills's work went to hell. Mills didn't learn of Goedecke's paper for another decade. Implications of Mills's authenticity for the sociology of science in the US: It is unfortunate that cold fusion came so close on the heels of high temperature superconductors as Mills might have had a chance to develop his theory in the absence of such a sociologically confounding phenomenon. Having said that, three social factors stand out as significant in the sociology of science beyond the standard notion of tribal instincts of the physics community protecting a dominant interpretation of theory: 1) As has been noted before about cold fusion, the University of Utah is not only not Ivy League, it is in a State known primarily as an ultimate expression of the founding culture of the United States as a nation of settlers fleeing theocracy seeking intellectual as well as religious freedom. 2) Goedecke was at the University of New Mexico. While not as "in your face" as Utah, New Mexico is also very much part of the wild-west frontier settlement culture of the United States. 3) Mills, while being a graduate of the heart of the Ivy League in cambridge, was from a farming family. I think it is reasonable to conjecture that if Mills had been a graduate of some place like the University of New Mexico, Utah or even the upper midwest <http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml> land grant colleges (such as the Iowa State College of Agricultural and Mechanic Arts where courts have ruled the digital computer was invented), and had come up with exactly the same theory, he probably wouldn't have received nearly as much derision, because he would not have received any substantial investment and his theory would have been dismissed with more casual prejudice than was Goedecke's paper by Wigner. That Mills was an Ivy League PhD is critical. Being Ivy League isn't enough to remove the taint of being a product of the nation of settlers. The sociology of US scientific conflict is not "Ivy League vs no-name schools" nor even so much "accepted theory vs revolutionary theory". The sociology of US scientific conflict is very similar to the conflict that has been playing out in the US over the last century: The US as a nation of settlers vs the US as a nation of immigrants. The key to understanding this is the political economics of land. Immigrants, however disadvantaged, talented and penniless, arrive in a settled civilization. The fiction of "property" as a "natural right" is introduced very soon after settlement but it is a fiction just the same. Settlers arrive in an uncivilized land where land is not yet claimed as legally recognized property. It is no mere metaphor that settlers have to fight, kill and be killed to "found" a regime of property rights, hence civilization, on land. Upon the closing of the American frontier the widest selling book other than the Bible was Henry George's "Progress and Poverty" in which he recognized the key importance of land in political economy's notion of "economic rent". Rent seeking is a, to use a systems engineering term, "bug" in civilization. George attempted to fix that bug. However, as Machiavelli warns in "The Prince" <http://www.constitution.org/mac/prince06.htm>: there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them. Immigrants bring with them deep experience in and adaptation to rent seeking cultures. This adaptation to the exploitation of the rent seeking bug in civilization becomes both a dependence and an advantage in wresting land and associated economic rent streams from the settling culture. US science, like much of US politics, has become a battle ground in which the acquisition of economic rent streams is increasingly sought by peoples increasingly adapted to evolutionary contests in rent seeking. The Ivy League, by handing out what amounts to life patents of nobility in the guise of "degrees", has taken the place of the old world aristocracy with its claim on economic rent streams but, as we see with Mills -- blood line taints even those granted life titles. On Fri, Aug 1, 2014 at 12:33 AM, James Bowery <jabow...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 11:22 PM, <mix...@bigpond.com> wrote: > >> It's actually the other way around. Mills came up with the theory first, >> then >> started looking for ways to realize practical benefits from it. >> > > Ah! Then that is a start on an answer to my request for a chronology > stated in my prior response: > > I guess what might help buy this enough to start diving into the theory > more seriously would be a chronology of the genesis of this theory to see > to what degree Mills is guilty or innocent of what he accuses others: at > hoc over-fitting to achieve these "miracles" of theory and technology. > >
