We reanalyse the 1919 data, and identify the error that undermines the conclusions of Earman and Glymour.Ħ November 2019 was the centenary of the presentation to a joint meeting of the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society of the scientific results from the May 1919 solar eclipse expeditions. The 19 analyses of the same data provide two discordant conclusions. This claim, and the resulting accusation of Eddington's bias, was repeated with exaggeration in later literature and has become ubiquitous. However, in 1980 a study by philosophers of science Earman and Glymour claimed that the data selection in the 1919 analysis was flawed and that the discarded data set was fully valid and was not consistent with the Einstein prediction, and that, therefore, the overall result did not verify General Relativity. Three data sets were obtained: two showed the measured deflection matched the theoretical prediction of Einstein's 1915 Theory of General Relativity, and became the official result the third was discarded as defective.Īt the time, the experimental result was accepted by the expert astronomical community. Einstein became world famous on 7 November 1919, following press publication of a meeting held in London on 6 November 1919 where the results were announced of two British expeditions led by Eddington, Dyson and Davidson to measure how much background starlight is bent as it passes the Sun.
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