The Campaign for Philosophical Freedom

By Michael Roll
This article was published in Psychic News, October 10, 1998.

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Adrian Berry, the science correspondent of The Daily Telegraph, says that few subjects more infuriate scientists than claims of paranormal phenomena, because if confirmed,

"the whole fabric of science would be threatened."

This statement is not correct because nothing can threaten science - the Latin name for seeking after knowledge. The only thing that is threatened by uncomfortable discoveries in physics are pseudo-scientists. Their reputations will be destroyed immediately ordinary people find out that Sir William Crookes proved that we all survive the death of our physical bodies with repeatable experiments under laboratory conditions.

Following this revolutionary discovery in 1874 this outstanding British scientist was knighted, made President of the Royal Society, and King Edward VII gave him the highest decoration in the land - The Order of Merit.

Sir William Crookes was able to wipe the floor with contemporary professional wreckers who dared to attack him. The following is how he dealt with Professor W.B. Carpenter, a biologist from London University, who made a very unfair and anonymous attack upon him in the 'Quarterly Review'. Carpenter had been unfortunate enough to describe Crookes as "a specialist of specialists".

"My greatest crime (he wrote in his reply to Carpenter's diatribe in the 'Quarterly Journal of Science') seems to be that I am a 'specialist of specialists'. It is indeed news to me that I have confined my attention only to one special subject. Will my reviewer kindly say what that subject is? Is it General Chemistry, whose chronicler I have been since the commencement of the Chemical News in 1859? Is it Thallium, about which the public have probably heard as much as they care for? Is it Chemical Analysis, in which my recently published Select Methods are the result of twelve years work?

Is it disinfection and the 'Prevention and Cure of Cattle Plague', my published report on which may be said to have popularized Carbolic Acid?

Is it Photography, on the theory and practice of which my papers have been very numerous? Is it Metallurgy of Gold and Silver, in which my discovery of the value of Sodium in the amalgamation process in now largely used in Australia, California and South America?

Is it Physical Optics, in which department I have space only to refer to papers of some Phenomena of Polarized Light, published before I was twenty one; to my detailed description of the Spectroscope and labours with this instrument, when it was almost unknown in England; to my papers on the Solar and Terrestrial Spectra; to my examination of the Optical Phenomena of Opals, and construction of the Spectrum Microscope; to my papers on the Luminous Intensity of Light; and my description of my Polarization Photometer?

Or is it my speciality Astronomy and Meteorology, in as much as I was for twelve months at the Radcliffe Observatory, Oxford, where, in addition to my principal employment of arranging the meteorological department, I divided my leisure between Homer and Mathematics at Magdelen Hall, Planet-hunting and transit tracking with Mr. Pogson, now Principal of the Madras Observatory, and celestial photography with the magnificent heliometer attached to the Observatory? My photographs of the Moon, taken in 1855, at Mr. Hartnup's Observatory, Liverpool, were for years the best extant, and I was honoured by a money grant from the Royal Society to carry out further work in connection with them. These facts, together with my trip to Oran last year, as one of the Government Eclipse Expedition, and the invitation recently received to visit Ceylon for the same purpose, would almost seem to show that Astronomy was my speciality. In truth, few scientific people are less open to the charge of being a 'specialist of specialists'."

There is a vast conspiracy to make sure exciting scientific discoveries never come to the attention of the general public. Genuine scientists are banned from supporting the work of Sir William Crookes in the press and on every radio and television programme that is made on the so-called paranormal. People are only allowed access to the views of "experts" who can be relied upon to play the Establishment game - suppress anything that could embarrass the orthodox scientists who hold the reins of power.

Nobody is allowed to balance the opinions and conclusions of these self-styled experts on the "paranormal". These professional wreckers have unrestricted access to all media outlets, while my colleagues and I have been refused permission to write and broadcast by almost every editor and producer that we have approached. The British people are not allowed to hear the secular scientific case for survival after death in this "free" country of ours!Recent discoveries in subatomic physics confirm that Sir William Crookes was correct in his conclusions, and that he was not a liar, cheat, crank, a fraud or a sex maniac as we have been criminally led to believe. His only "crime" was to tell the truth.