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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brian Josephson | 3/4 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Josephson | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:27:16.307860+00:00 | kb-cron |
Josephson became involved in the mid-1970s with a group of physicists associated with the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, who were investigating paranormal claims. They had organized themselves loosely into the Fundamental Fysiks Group, and had effectively become the Stanford Research Institute's (SRI) "house theorists," according to historian of science David Kaiser. Core members in the group were Elizabeth Rauscher, George Weissmann, John Clauser, Jack Sarfatti, Saul-Paul Sirag, Nick Herbert, Fred Alan Wolf, Fritjof Capra, Henry Stapp, Philippe Eberhard and Gary Zukav. There was significant government interest at the time in quantum mechanics – the American government was financing research at SRI into telepathy – and physicists able to understand it found themselves in demand. The Fundamental Fysiks Group used ideas from quantum physics, particularly Bell's theorem and quantum entanglement, to explore issues such as action at a distance, clairvoyance, precognition, remote viewing and psychokinesis. In 1976, Josephson travelled to California at the invitation of one of the Fundamental Fysiks Group members, Jack Sarfatti, who introduced him to others including laser physicists Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff, and quantum physicist Henry Stapp. The San Francisco Chronicle covered Josephson's visit. Josephson co-organised a symposium on consciousness at Cambridge in 1978, publishing the proceedings as Consciousness and the Physical World (1980), with neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran. A conference on "Science and Consciousness" followed a year later in Cordoba, Spain, attended by physicists and Jungian psychoanalysts, and addressed by Josephson, Fritjof Capra and David Bohm (1917–1992). By 1996, Josephson had set up the Mind–Matter Unification Project at the Cavendish Laboratory to explore intelligent processes in nature. In 2002, he told Physics World: "Future science will consider quantum mechanics as the phenomenology of particular kinds of organised complex system. Quantum entanglement would be one manifestation of such organisation, paranormal phenomena another."
=== Reception and views on the scientific community === Josephson delivered the Pollock Memorial Lecture in 2006, the Hermann Staudinger Lecture in 2009 and the Sir Nevill Mott Lecture in 2010.
Matthew Reisz wrote in Times Higher Education in 2010 that Josephson has long been one of physics' "more colourful figures." His support for unorthodox causes has attracted criticism from fellow scientists since the 1970s, including from Philip Anderson. Josephson regards the criticism as prejudice, and believes that it has served to deprive him of an academic support network. Josephson has repeatedly criticised "science by consensus," arguing that the scientific community is too quick to reject certain kinds of ideas. "Anything goes among the physics community – cosmic wormholes, time travel," he argues, "just so long as it keeps its distance from anything mystical or New Age-ish." Referring to this position as "pathological disbelief," he holds it responsible for the rejection by academic journals of papers on the paranormal. He has compared parapsychology to the theory of continental drift, proposed in 1912 by Alfred Wegener (1880–1930) to explain observations that were otherwise inexplicable, which was resisted and ridiculed until evidence led to its acceptance after Wegener's death. Science writer Martin Gardner criticised Josephson in 1980 for complaining to The New York Review of Books, along with three other physicists, about an article by J. A. Wheeler that ridiculed parapsychology. Several physicists complained in 2001 when, in a Royal Mail booklet celebrating the Nobel Prize's centenary, Josephson wrote that Britain was at the forefront of research into telepathy. Physicist David Deutsch said the Royal Mail had "let itself be hoodwinked" into supporting nonsense, although another physicist, Robert Matthews, suggested that Deutsch was skating on thin ice given the latter's own work on parallel universes and time travel. In 2004, Josephson criticised an experiment by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry to test claims by Russian schoolgirl Natasha Demkina that she could see inside people's bodies using a special kind of vision. The experiment involved her being asked to match six people to their confirmed medical conditions (plus one with none); to pass the test she had to make five correct matches, but made only four. Josephson argued that this was statistically significant, and that the experiment had set her up to fail. One of the researchers, Richard Wiseman, professor of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, responded by highlighting that the conditions of the experiment had been agreed to before it started, and the potential significance of her claims warranted a higher than normal bar. Keith Rennolis, professor of applied statistics at the University of Greenwich, supported Josephson's position, asserting that the experiment was "woefully inadequate" to determine any effect. Josephson's reputation for promoting unorthodox causes was cemented by his support for the ideas of water memory and cold fusion, both of which are rejected by mainstream scientists. Water memory is purported to provide a possible explanation for homeopathy; it is dismissed by a majority of scientists as pseudoscience, although he has expressed support for it since attending a conference at which French immunologist Jacques Benveniste first proposed it. Cold fusion is the hypothesis that nuclear reactions can occur at room temperature. When Martin Fleischmann, the British chemist who pioneered research into it, died in 2012, Josephson wrote a supportive obituary in the Guardian, and had published in Nature a letter complaining that its obituary had failed to give Fleischmann due credit. Antony Valentini of Imperial College London withdrew Josephson's invitation to a 2010 conference on the de Broglie–Bohm theory because of his work on the paranormal, although it was reinstated after complaints. Josephson's defense of paranormal claims and of cold fusion have led him to being described as an exemplar of a sufferer of the hypothetical Nobel disease.
== Recognition ==
=== Memberships ===
=== Awards ===
=== Honorary degrees ===
== Selected works ==
== See also == Josephson voltage standard Josephson vortex Long Josephson junction Pi Josephson junction Phi Josephson junction List of Jewish Nobel laureates List of Nobel laureates in Physics List of physicists Scientific phenomena named after people
== Notes ==
== References ==