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Proof that Hawksford was wrong?? Hmm.

Posted by John Escallier (A) on March 13, 2003 at 06:50:16

In Reply to: Re: OK I am now Logged in lets discuss posted by Nightfly! on March 12, 2003 at 21:46:34:

""Hawksford works regarding skin effect on speaker cables were proven fallable and flat out wrong. I find very little credibility in the man, especially since he refused to repeat his work and admit his errors.""

I would like to see that proof myself...

Personally, from previous experience, I have duplicated the waveforms he produced in support of his argument, and found those waveforms to be an artifact of an incorrect test setup. So I conclude that his setup indeed suffered from that error mechanism, based on his writeup, and his schematic of his test setup..

In attempting to discuss these possibilities in a professional and courteous manner with Hawksford (John Curl was copied on that correspondence, please do not question me on how courteous and professional I really was, as that would force me to provide a copy of that correspondance without Hawksford's permission); after the second e-mail, where I detailed specifically the test setup errors I met with and corrected, and how they are exactly the same errors he may have encountered: He stopped all correspondance...Complete, total, utter radio silence..

My personal opinion: he inadvertantly embraced one test result, one which was just a test setup error artifact; he did not baseline the test setup, to see if indeed the setup was correct; he did not repeat the same test (or at least present data) for several different guages of wire, showing without any doubt the fact that wire diameter has an effect on the snapback he presented as proof. If what he purveyed was indeed skin effect, testing a range of wire sizes, from #30 awg all the way up to #4 guage welding wire, would have strengthened his argument.

I personally have not "proven" to a high degree of confidence, that he was wrong...I will in the near future, duplicate his setup at home and contrast it with my own corrected version, to do so...

My view of Hawksford's credibility: Given the possibility of error within his work, I would view the rejection of my legitimate questioning of that work based on my experience and education, is something a credible researcher would never do.. And I would be forced to conclude that he has no desire to entertain any views that would require him to publicly acknowledge a previously undetected error. That type of attitude, one of tying one's credibility to the permanent acceptance of one's published work with complete disregard for any and all conflicting evidence, is an attitude which would be untenable within the work environment I personally enjoy. That of the high energy physics community, within all the national labs on the planet..

I find, unfortunately, that Hawksford is not the only one to present that image to the public...And that is unfortunate, given all the other contributions he and others afford the public. For me, it casts a shadow over all the other contributions, as I may not have a thorough enough understanding of the work to easily accept the conclusions..That results in a slowing down of acceptance of new ideas, because you end up not trusting the source.

Cheers, John

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