Thursday, October 22, 2009

Accused of plagiarism and Piracy!



I am not accustomed to peppering my writings with exclamation marks, but in this case dear reader, I have made an exception - and you shall see why.
Last month my Google Alert popped up with my "Absolute Vacuum" search - and there, in one of my favorite science forums was a posting by a Russian, a Mr. Constantine Leshan, who was accusing me of stealing his ideas about absolute vacuums in my paper, "Can Gravity be Induced?". I noticed as well that my posts on absolute vacuums had been removed by the moderators of no less than two science forums.
It took only moments to realize that not only was Mr. Leshan shooting from the hip - he was also shooting himself in the foot, because his claim of 'his idea' was published sixteen years after my paper had been written. Once this was realized by the forum moderators, my postings were rehabilitated and on one of them Mr. Leshan was kicked off.
My ideas on absolute vacuums have circulated within the science community for close to two decades and although there is no doubt in my mind that Mr. Leshan developed his ideas on absolute vacuums separate from mine and in good faith, there is no telling what currents and eddies might have influenced him. Although annoyed by the accusation, I was intrigued that there was someone else who had come to similar conclusions about the nature of absolute vacuums and the induction of gravity, and thought it might be worthwhile to engage in discourse, once this misunderstanding had been cleared up. With a little web sleuthing I found one of Mr. Leshans many email accounts and wrote to him, asking if there was a chance of rapprochement.
No such thing.
To my utter amazement, he accused me of - get this - hacking into various servers and placing my paper on them and forging the date! And this, after various moderators had done their own searches and pronounced me bona fide. Over several emails I attempted to assuage him by offering many direct proofs for the authenticity of my paper, but he would have none of it. Towards the end of our discourse I believe he was somewhat convinced that my paper was published in 1979, but unfortunately this realization of his was manifest by a whole new tack, in that he now attacked me with the wacky accusation that I was plagiarizing René Descartes instead!
Finally taking the council of friends, I broke off communication with Mr. Leshan. I can only conclude that this individual is unbalanced and suffering from paranoid delusions of persecution.

Personally, I don't care who thought of this idea first.
If there is someone else out there who came up with the notion before me that super-hot plasmas within a dynamo effect are capable of creating absolute vacuums that can induce gravity and that the Sun is an example of this phenomenon - well, I'm perfectly comfortable with that. But I sure as hell am not going to put up with being accused of plagiarism and piracy by someone who published their paper after mine was written and circulated. The whole episode has been a frustrating waste of my time and energy.
To avoid any such nonsense in the future, I have created this video in which a sealed, post-dated letter from 1981 with my paper enclosed, was opened before a notary public, a stamp and paper expert and two sworn witnesses. To reach the largest audience possible I have also had it translated into Russian. Complementing the video, I have also made public further evidence which I have placed on my server, surely enough to convince any reasonable individual of the facts.
You can find the email correspondence with Mr. Leshans accusations here.
So let that be the end to it.