102
The Body Electric
This experiment demonstrated unequivocally that there was a real
electric current flowing along the salamander's foreleg, and it virtually
proved that the current was semiconducting. In fact, the half-dozen tests
I'd performed supported every point of my hypothesis.
Scientific results that aren't reported might as well not exist. They're
like the sound of one hand clapping. For scientists, communication isn't
only a responsibility, it's our chief pleasure. A good result from a clean,
beautiful experiment is a joy that you just have to share, and I couldn't
wait to see these data in print. I went for the top this time. The journal
in American science is aptly named Science. Each issue reports on all
fields from astronomy to zoology, so publication means a paper has more
than a specialized significance. Mine was accepted, and I was jubilant.
With three major papers in three major journals after my first year of
research, I felt I'd arrived. The world has a way of cutting you down to
size, however, and in the science game the method is known as citation.
No matter how important your paper is, it doesn't mean anything unless
it's cited as a reference in new papers by others and you get a respectable
number of requests for reprints. On both counts, I was a failure. I was
learning how science treats new ideas that conflict with old ones.
I didn't stay discouraged long, though. I was doing science for the
love of it, not for praise. I felt the concepts emerging from my reading
and research were important, and I was passionately committed to test-
ing them. I knew that if the results were ever to change any minds, I
would have to be careful not to misinterpret data. In going deeper into
the electrical properties of nerves, I realized, I was about to get over my
head in an area I really wasn't trained for—physics. I made one of the
best decisions of my life; I looked for a collaborator.
The basic scientists at the State University of New York Upstate
Medical Center, the medical school affiliated with the VA hospital, were
not only uninterested, they were horrified at what I was doing and
wouldn't risk their reputations by becoming associated with me in any
way. So, I walked across the street to the physics department of Syracuse
University and spoke to the chairman, an astronomer whom I'd met a
few years earlier when I volunteered to watch the northern lights during
the International Geophysical Year. After a few minutes' thought, he
suggested that a guy on the third floor named Charlie Bachman might
be "as crazy as you," and wished me luck.
The instant I opened the door, I knew I was in the right place. There
was Charlie,
bent
over a workbench with an electromagnet and a live
frog.