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Overview

In the research field of the history and philosophy of physics, Professor Emeritus Allan Franklin studies the long-term impacts of physics discoveries on the scientific community and the greater society. Research is comprised of finding episodes in the history of physics which have methodological or epistomological issues associated with it by compiling a history of that episode to investigate methods used to resolve these issues.

Current Project

"Experiment, Then and Now"

One interesting aspect of high-energy physics from the 1960s to the present has been the changes in the statistical criterion required for a discovery claim. This led me to investigate other changes in the reporting of experimental results, particularly those involving elementary particles, from 1893, the publication date of Volume 1 of Physical Review to the present. Topics include the problem of exclusion of data and the selection of data, the scale of experiments, the change in from a very realistic presentation of an experiment to a more schematic presentation, and the amount of historical detail presented. Examples will include Robert Millikan's oil drop experiments, Edwin Hall's experiments on falling bodies, and some recent experiments on the pentaquark.

Previous Publications

• "The Appearance and Disappearance of the 170keV Neutrino." Reviews of Modern Physics 57(1995), 457-490.
• "Doing Much Nothing." Arch. Hist. Exact Sci. 58(2004), 323–379.
• Franklin, A., A. W. F. Edwards, D. J. Fairbanks, et al. (2008) Ending the Mendel-Fisher Controversy. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
• "The Machine Speaks Falsely." Spontaneous Generations: A Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science 4(2010).
• "William Wilson and the Absorption of Beta Rays." Phys. perspect. 4(2002), 40–77.
• "Experiment in Physics." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• "Gravity Waves and Neutrinos: The Later Work of Joseph Weber," Perspectives on Science 18(2), 119-151.
• " Selectivity and the Production of Experimental Results," Arch. Hist. Exact Sci. 53(1998), 399–485.