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I describe my collaboration with Professor Herbert Dingle in his campaign against Einstein's special theory of relativity, and my subsequent attempts to draw attention to the inadequate response by scientists to his criticisms. Our active collaboration started with the publication of Dingle's book Science at the Crossroads in 1972 and continued until his death in 1978. This paper celebrates the 40th anniversary of that book, and points out that the dogmatic adherence of scientists to the special theory has continued to make it difficult for honest and informed criticism to be heard. Two arguments against the special theory are presented, both of which a very distinguished mathematician tried to refute but failed.

Professor Herbert Dingle was a long-time critic of the special theory of relativity, who believed for many years that the theory was self-contradictory. Although he was unsuccessful in persuading the scientific world of the inconsistency of the theory, his questions and arguments were not satisfactorily answered during his life. Now, thirty years after his death, the subject is of historical interest. This paper examines two main problems that have contributed to the confusion that still surrounds this issue. The first problem is the fact that some scientists answered Dingle's Question, which is explicitly about the special theory, by invoking the general theory. It is argued that, if there is a valid answer to Dingle's Question, it would have been valid if the same question had been asked in 1905 before the general theory appeared. The second problem is that many scientists have claimed that Dingle's thesis has been refuted by experiment, although experimental results cannot disprove the existence of an internal contradiction. An answer to Dingle's Question is still wanting.

Albert Einstein's scientific career is studied, with the purpose of trying to explain why he became such a universally famous and revered person. Various events of the past century are considered, and their effects on his scientific and personal reputation. Some of the events studied are: the publication of the special and general theories of relativity, the 1919 solar eclipse and the famous meeting at which the results of the eclipse observations were announced, and Einstein's visit to the United States in 1921. After his death, many biographies of Einstein were written, both before and after the availability of further information that became available about his personal life after the deaths of Helen Dukas and Otto Nathan; some of these are discussed, including the strange story of what happened to Einstein's brain after his death. Celebrations of the centenary of his birth, the centenary of special relativity, and the centenary of the solar eclipse are also discussed. In spite of all the information that is available, the reasons for Einstein's great and enduring fame remain mysterious.

In November 1919 it was announced to the world that observations of a solar eclipse that occurred in May 1919 supported Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. That announcement was one of the most influential events of 20th-century science, since Einstein's instant rise to enormous fame arose directly from it. In spite of the confidence with which the announcement was made, however, it was later realized that the accuracy of the observations was insufficient to constitute a reliable confirmation of the phenomenon that was predicted. Furthermore, another of the formulas published in the general theory, for the variation in the perihelion of the planet Mercury, had already been derived by another scientist several years earlier using another method. In spite of the fact that the experimental evidence for relativity seems to have been very flimsy in 1919, Einstein's enormous fame has remained intact and his theory has ever since been held to be one of the highest achievements of human thought. The resulting deification of Einstein has had some unfortunate effects: critics of his theory are often dismissed as cranks, and the search for better theories has been inhibited. It is suggested that the announcement of the eclipse observations in 1919 was not a triumph of science as it is often portrayed, but rather an obstacle to objective consideration of alternatives.

This note presents an argument based on Einstein's original paper on special relativity, showing that the theory reqires that each of the two clocks in uniform relativite motion actually works slower than the other. This shows an internal inconsistency in the special theory.

Arguments that have been used to defend the special theory of relativity against criticism contain many inconsistencies. These problems should be thoroughly and objectively examined by scientists and philosophers to attempt to ascertain the truth of the matter.

Some scientists, such as Fox and Moon and Spencer, have questioned the validity of some of the experimental evidence that is usually interpreted as supporting the second postulate of special relativity, the postulate that the velocity of light is independent of the velocity of its source. Moon and Spencer have shown that the introduction of a certain Riemannian metric can explain observations of binary stars without requiring the second postulate. The purpose of the present note is to suggest a new metric whlch appears to be an improvement over the one suggested by Moon and Spencer, and which makes their argument more convincing.