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First Supersonic Flight - Old Data, New Questions
Although U.S. Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager is recognized as being the first human to break the sound barrier (on October 14, 1947, in the rocket-powered Bell X1), a recent newspaper obituary and a recent magazine article lend credibility to the belief that other pilots flying high performance swept wing fighters may have broken the sound barrier before Captain Yeager.
An obituary in The New York Times on November 14th indicates that "Tex" Johnston, a daring Bell test pilot, came very close to flying the X1 at supersonic speed. According to Johnston's obituary, he held the X1 below the speed of sound because the Air Force insisted that a military pilot make the record-breaking attempt. But with Johnston's X1 flight speeds reaching Mach .99, it interesting to speculate whether Johnston actually broke the sound barrier before Captain Yeager.
A recently-published book and concurrent article in Air and Space magazine (published by the Smithsonian Institution) by former aviator and air historian Al Blackburn lends credibility to the claim that test pilot George Welch broke the sound barrier in a prototype F 86 jet fighter before Captain Yeager's flight. In his book, Blackburn states that Air Force officials wanted to ensure that Captain Yeager and the X1 broke the sound barrier first.
Unfortunately, Blackburn has little data upon which to rest his claim. The North American Aviation team that coordinated the XF 86's test flights did not have access to instruments that could accurately measure the XF 86's speed until November, 1947. But with Welch flying at the edge of the XF 86's performance envelope, it appears that the XF 86 broke the sound barrier on at least one occasion before Yeager's October 14th flight. The speed of the XF 86 was finally measured with precision on November 13th, and showed that the fighter was capable of exceeding the speed of sound in the same type of dives Welch performed weeks before Yeager and the X1 officially broke the sound barrier.
At least two other swept-wing jet fighters may have broken the sound barrier before Yeager. The ME 262 was a WWII Luftwaffe fighter that was capable of dives that appraoched the speed of sound. The Russian MIG 15 was also being tested in 1947. Tex Johnston's obituary was written by Robert McG. Thomas Jr., and appears on page A16. The Air and Space magazine article appears on page 79 of the November-December issue.
Book Review: Psychoanalytic Theories Lacked Data
A book review of "Madness on the Couch, Blaming the Victim in the Heyday of Psychoanalysis," by Edward Dolnick, appeared in The Washington Post book review section on November 15th. The book and the review examine both medical and psychoanalytic research both before and after the advent of experimental design and randomized controlled studies (which have become common only during the past 50 years).
For most of its history, medicine was exclusively a narrative art. The patient told his story and the physician, examined and treated, then retold the story to colleagues and students, with special attention to his interpretation of the illness and his account of the outcome. This narrrative tradition is still an important part of medicine. But it is not without hazard, and it can do great damage.The book tells the story of the branch of medicine last to recognize the value of scientific inquiry: psychiatry. The agent of the mistakes is one of mankind's most influential narratives: Freudian psychology.
Beginning with The Interpretation of Dreams in 1900, Sigmund Freud constructed a "system" for understanding nearly every aspect of human behavior. His theories explained the "reasons" for human behavior and mental illness. In time, Freud's followers enlarged their psychoanalytic theories to cover mental illness - like schizophrenia - which have since been shown to have genetic causes. Freud's followers harshly blamed parents for the schizophrenic behavior of their children, with utter lack of experimental data to prove their hypotheses. Moreover, data from follow-ups of psychiatric patients who received psychotherapy for schizophrenia 40-60 years ago indicate that treatment success rates were very low.
In fairness to Freud and his disciples, there were no effective medications for mental illness 50-60 years ago. Psychotherapy was less traumatic than treatments, like electroshock. It also must be said that good pyschiatric research is hard to do. Experiments involving behavior present many more confounding variables than experiments involving conditions like cancer. And outcomes are harder to measure, and can take a long time to reach. The book was reviewed by Post science reporter David Brown.
Book Review: Scientific Fraud? Misinterpretation? Or Carelessness?
A book review published in the November 15th issue of The Washington Post discussed the problems researchers encounter today when conducting complex scientific research under the scrutiny of various academic and political "authorities." Science writer Marcia Bartusiak reviewed Daniel Kelves's The Baltimore Case, A Trial of Politics, Science, and Character, and accepts the author's argument that ambiguous government regulations, misunderstandings, and a highly charged political atmosphere at universities, government regulatory agencies, and in the U.S. Congress makes academic life increasingly diffficult for researchers.
According to Keveles's book, MIT researcher Thereza Imanishi-Kari and the co-author of her genetic research paper, David Baltimore, faced near-expulsion from their scientific discipline because of the accusations of a post-doctoral researcher who worked in their lab. The controversy soon grew because of scrutiny by the news media, the U.S. Congress, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). As a result, Imamishi-Kari's 1986 paper, and many individuals connected to it, received extensive criticism and ridicule.
In 1996, Imanishi-Kari was finally exonerated. The book's author builds a hard-hitting indictment against the media and overzealous investigators, who he criticizes for turning honest errors into "fraud" and making up the rules of their investigation as they went along. Once consequence of the "Baltimore Case" is that NIH and universities now have procedural guidelines to follow when they suspect that scientific fraud has occurred. David Baltimore is now President of California Institute of Technology and Thereza Imanishi-Kari is a tenured professor at Tufts University.
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Comments: dqemail@aol.com (11/15/1998)