N-Rays

Not to be confused with Neutron Imaging, which is also sometimes called N Rays, N-Rays were a scientific discovery at the turn of the 1900s that promised a bright future for humanity... except that that didn't really exist. In the flurry of ground-breaking discoveries around radiation, N-Rays emerged as the elusive new-kid-on-the-block that could only be seen out of the corner of your eye in an extremely dark room. Red flag. But, science quickly correct course as science does and this phenomeon died out. It stands as a cautionary tale about human bias and a triumphant demonstration of the self-correcting nature of science. 

Recommendations

• Abraham: The ‘Burbs (season 1; https://www.peacocktv.com/stream-tv/the-burbs)
• Shane: Converge - Love Is Not Enough  (https://www.epitaph.com/news/article/converge-release-long-awaited-new-lp-love-is-not-enough)

Holidays (2/18/2026):

• Cow Milked While Flying in an Airplane Day
• Crab-Stuffed Flounder Day
• Drink Wine Day
• Eat Ice Cream for Breakfast Day
• National Battery Day
• National Hate Florida Day
• Pluto Day
• Thumb Appreciation Day
• Alzheimer’s Disease and Dementia Staff Education Week
• Build a Better Trade Show Image Week
• Love Teaching Week
• National Condom Week
• National Date Week (Fruit)
• National Green Week
• National Pancake Week
• Ramadan

Links and References: 

1. https://www.aps.org/archives/publications/apsnews/200708/history.cfm
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-ray
3. https://www.aps.org/apsnews/2007/08/robert-wood-debunks-nrays 
4. https://www.phoenixneutronimaging.com/insights-and-updates/n-rays-vs-n-rays-will-the-real-n-ray-please-stand-up
5. https://www.wired.com/2014/09/fantastically-wrong-n-rays/ 
6. https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/what-is-radiation#:~:text=Radiation%20is%20energy%20that%20can%20be%20described,and%20science**%20Nuclear%20techniques%20and%20materials%20production 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Why we Do what we Do? Welcome
to Why We Do what we Do. I am your
hypothetically irradiated host Abraham.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
And I'm your maybe some sci fi from the fifties
host Shane who even before the fifties.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
We are a psychology podcast. We talk about things that
humans and non human animals do, and we happen to
be in a week of debunking pseudosciences, which is really fun.
So if you're one of our favorite thing us for
it really is. If you're joining us for the first time,
we hope that you enjoy what you hear in this
discussion today. If you're a returning listener, then thank you

(00:50):
for joining us again and welcome back either way. If
you'd like to support us, you can leave us a
rating and a review like subscribe, tell a friend, join
us on Patreon. I'll talk more about those things at
the end of this discussion. But this episode publishes on
February eighteenth, So Happy cow Milked while flying in an
airplane Day to those of you who celebrate.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Yeah, of course, of course, it's also crab stuffed Flounder Day,
Flounder Founder Flounder, Flounder flounder, flounder, flounder.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
Sorry, does that mean that the flounder is stuffed with
crab or the crab is stuffed with flounder.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
That reminds me of that bit on The Simpsons when
it's like, I'll have your first finest dish stuffed with
your second finest dish, and the waiter goes very good, sir,
Lobsters stuffed with tacos.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
Writing on that show is so good.

Speaker 3 (01:40):
It's so ridiculous, dude.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
Oh my goodness. All right, it is drink wine Day.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Sure, sure, it is eat ice cream for breakfast Day,
far more fun.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
Yeah, yeah, nutritionists disagree. National Battery Day hopefully not like
a salt and battery.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yeah, yeah, I think it's I think it's mostly like
celebrating the energizer bunny and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
Gotcha.

Speaker 3 (02:06):
It is also National Hate Florida Day, so.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
We celebrate that on this podcast.

Speaker 3 (02:10):
Yeah, we celebrate it all the time.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
You know. It is Pluto Day, and I believe this
is Pluto the Planet's possibly Pluto the dog, maybe both.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
Well, the dwarf planet. Come on, let's be let's be
right right.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Yeah, sorry, it's thumb Appreciation Day. I do appreciate my thumbs.
It is Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia Staff Education Week week week.

Speaker 3 (02:33):
Yes it is. It's also build a Better Trade Show
image week.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
That definitely needed a whole week. Yea. It is Love
Teaching Week. I do love teaching.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
Yeah, it's so great this week. It's national this week.
This week, it is a National condom week.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
We need more than a week for that. It is
National date Week. And although it does feel like that'd
be related to Valentine's Day, we are in fact talking
about the fruit.

Speaker 3 (02:59):
Yes we are. It's National Green Week.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
Sure, it's National pancake Week.

Speaker 3 (03:03):
It is. And it's also Ramadan lovely.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
But we don't just come in here to talk about
the holidays, although it is a thing that we do.
But it is time for us to get to our discussion.
And as I said, we're sort of doing a pseudo
sciencey thing. And before we get into that, we actually
have a tiny bit more preamble because it is February,
and as many of you may know and many of
you will not, it is Black History Month and we
have been taking an opportunity this year to profile some

(03:29):
important people relevance to that month.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
Yes, So our profile for this episode is a woman
named doctor Rebecca Lee Crumpler.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
She was born in the early.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
Eighteen hundreds and is actually a pretty remarkable person. She
was the first African American female in specifically African American
because she identified as an American. She was black in the
United States, but she was the first black female medical
doctor in the US, graduating from the New England Female
Medical College in eighteen ninety four. So if that tells

(04:00):
you anything about kind of like the times and what's
going on here. She actually wrote a book called A
Book of Medical Discourses, and this is widely considered the
first medical text written by a black physician in the
United States and focuses on not only human development and like,
there's a huge because it comes in two parts. There's
a huge part that talks about human development and growth.

(04:22):
There's also large sections of it that talk about infant
and female care. She specialized treating infants and their ailments
and treating women in their ailments, and she spent her
entire life working in that space, despite the fact that
she was dealing with racism and sexism and all the
things that come along with being a black woman in
the US. In at the time, I'm sure, and continues

(04:44):
to be a white male dominated field and so hugely influential, pioneering,
groundbreaking person, and she deserves to get a little bit
more credit than she gets in history books.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
That's awesome, sounds like a really remarkable person and interesting
how much how early this was, Like I actually didn't
know that this was a thing in the eighteen hundreds.
You did say she graduated in eighteen ninety four, but
she's had in eighteen ninety five, so I think.

Speaker 3 (05:10):
I made eighteen sixty four.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
Sorry, eighteen sixty four, got you dyslexia any thing?

Speaker 2 (05:15):
Yeah, oh, just graphia.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
Here we are, but anyway, very good. All right, that's
a great Uh, that's a great profile. So thank you
for doing that.

Speaker 3 (05:23):
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
Okay, let's get to our topic, du joure. Well, we
have a little bit of a preamble here, so I
think I would start by saying, science is, in my opinion,
but arguably the greatest thing humans have ever created. Yes,
it is a creation that is made up of human behavior, though,
and human behavior is influenced by a lot of factors,

(05:46):
and a lot of those factors are not all reasonable,
and a lot of those factors are not without bias,
meaning that sometimes the human behavior that is part of
the fabric of science is flawed. We make mistakes, and
the beauty of the scientific process it is a self
correcting system that specifically identifies those mistakes and then corrects them.

(06:09):
That's kind of its whole point, its whole reason to be.
And this is a story about that process working really well.
But it's also a story about why it needed to
be corrected in the first place.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
Yeah, this discussion is about how bias made its way
into science and kicked off a couple of years worth
of investigations into a thing that didn't exist, although one
person remained convinced for decades that it did.

Speaker 1 (06:33):
Yes, So we're telling the story of prosper Renee Blondeau,
who spent a chunk of his career chasing elusive N rays.
Have you never heard of them? That makes sense. They
were kind of a flash of the pan over a
century ago. Will explain what they were purported to be,
how they briefly became a topic of interest despite never existing,

(06:56):
and what we learned from this experience. Have you heard
of Had you heard of N rays before this?

Speaker 2 (07:01):
Shane no I hadn't heard of N rays, And that's
kind of why I made the joke at the beginning
of nineteen fifty science fiction, because it feels like that.
It feels like something that like Captain America would deal with,
you know, like when he was getting like when he
was getting those rays, like the Vita rays or whatever.
Like it sounds like that. It sounds like something that
is like marketed on. Like I love Lucy.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
I completely see where you're coming from. This did end
about four decades before that, but I do say where
you're coming from, and I could see them pulling from
something like that.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
For Yeah, Yeah, it just sounds it sounds so like
very nineteen fifties fantastical sci fi, like, you know, it
just it feels like that I could see a movie about.

Speaker 3 (07:37):
It, like ooh, beware the N rays, you know, something
like that. Sure, So let's get into it, Okay.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
So before we get into our topic, it's important to
point out that in the last sixty ish years, neutron
radiation a very real and used in legitimate medical imaging.
Because because neutrons can pass through dense materials that are
difficult for X rays to penetrate, radiologists called neutron races
N rays, which is convenient shorthand, but is a little
confusing for those of us who know about the folly

(08:06):
of the non existent N rays that preceded them about
by about fifty years. So like earlier in the late
eighteen hundreds, a little bit of a different conversation.

Speaker 1 (08:15):
Yes, so let's set the context here. Physics was in
the midst of one of the most exciting periods in
their history when the story takes place in eighteen eighty three,
German physicist Victor Schumann probably pronounced Victor Schumann, who discovered
ultraviolet radiation. That was something we didn't know about before,

(08:37):
and he discovered it. Of course, this is better known
as UV radiation, which is how we now use We
use this to cook people in pods. So we also
use it to make posters look cool when we're high,
and that's we use it to be terrified when we
visit hotel rooms.

Speaker 3 (08:53):
Yeah, it works, it's effective.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
Yeah, and it has many other actual practical applications as well.
But that was an eighteen eighty three that was discovered
for the first time.

Speaker 3 (09:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
Now, just two years later, in eighteen eighty five, a
German physicist named Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen Ronskin discovered X rays,
which were a huge game changer and immediately found purchase
in the medical community.

Speaker 1 (09:14):
Yeah, all of a sudden, we could look inside bodies
and see what was going on, at least with bones
and sometimes other matter, and like without having to cut
them open.

Speaker 2 (09:25):
Yeah, I love that. Could you imagine for a second,
like I want you to picture this for a second.
I love the idea that the guy that discovered X
rays the first time that he looked into a body,
or the person that did this, they had never seen
a skeleton. Like, I love this idea that they'd never
seen a skeleton and they do this and they go
and they freak out about what they find because they'd
never seen one before. I would love I would love

(09:47):
that to be the truth, you know.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
Yes, Unfortunately, I'd like had skeletons for what for many
many hundreds of thousands of years before X rays. Sure,
and had seen decomposed bodies, but we had never seen
someone's go elton while it was still inside someone's body.
Still scary, Yes, I think there was probably very little
idea that you could have something like a hairline fracture

(10:10):
in a bone because you wouldn't be able to tell
that it was actually broken. You'd say, like, I just
walk it off, you'll be fine. Rubs short in it, Yeah,
that kind of thing. But yeah, So obviously X rays
hume huge game changer. That was eighteen eighty five. Like,
we're really just at like one hundred and forty years
ago at this point. In eighteen ninety six, Henry Baccherel
discovered that uranium salts emitted radiation similar to X rays,

(10:34):
and around that time, Marie Curie and her husband discovered
radium and polonium and coined the term radio activity. So
we're already at between eighteen eighty three and eighteen ninety six,
just thirteen years, just wave after wave of like reality
altering discoveries about things in our universe.

Speaker 3 (10:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
Absolutely, So with rapid discoveries happening every year in Germany
getting credit for me any of them, our understanding of
radiation was only beginning to develop, and everyone was open
to new innovations, discoveries and ideas about the newly discovered radiation.

Speaker 1 (11:08):
So enter our hero or protagonists, our main character, prosper
Renee Blondeau. I also saw this written as Renee Prosper
Blondeau and also just Renee Blondeau. And by the way,
the last name is b l O n d l
O T sure, but he's French. Oh, blonde Low. I've

(11:28):
been saying it wrong the whole time. Blonde Low something
like that is the name. Yes, yes, it's not pronounced
ad Low. All right, maybe I said it right the
first time. I don't know. But back from the ADS,
so we were describing this history of radiation and physics

(11:50):
and light and we're learning all of these things and
it's a great time for physicists, and Renee blonde Low
enters the scene. So let's get into so the history
of his life and history a little bit.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
Yeah, so Renee or Prosper or blonde Low. We'll probably
go with blonde Low since that's the most consistent.

Speaker 1 (12:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:09):
Was born on July third, eighteen forty nine in Nancy, France,
where I love, Actually I love that name for a place, Nancy, France.
It feels very it flows really well. Yeah, there's also
nice or Niee France.

Speaker 1 (12:23):
Yeah, Niece is a different place, bah.

Speaker 3 (12:25):
Very different place.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
So this is where he spent much of his life
and where his work relevant to the story takes place now.

Speaker 1 (12:31):
His early accomplishments were significant. He developed an instrument that
would later be used to measure the speed of light.
He created a device to measure the speed of electricity
and a conductor for the very first time. He also
measured the speed of radio waves, which later confirmed that
light was also an electro magnetic wave. He was doing
a lot of really good work, Like, he was well respected,

(12:53):
well known, and helped develop things that led to later
very significant breakthroughs in side and physics.

Speaker 2 (13:01):
Yeah, and so for as contributions, he received many accolades,
awards and recognition. So in the midst of the radiation discoveries,
when he announced a new type of radiation, the scientific
community listened.

Speaker 1 (13:13):
Yeah, I mean they were primed for They're like, hey,
this guy knows what he's talking about. Also, it's been
a few years since our last major discovery. This makes
a lot of sense. Also, he was French, so they
could steal a little bit of the limelight from the
Germans with respect to the Germans' many contributions to understanding radiation.
And so the people of France and Blonde Loeou were

(13:34):
quite enthusiastic about this prospect and they're contributing to this
burgeoning field of understanding and radiation and physics.

Speaker 3 (13:43):
Yeah. Absolutely so.

Speaker 2 (13:44):
As a quick primer, radiation is a form of energy
that moves as a wave or as a particle. The
heat you feel from a fire is radiation, and there
are lots of types of radiation that we're exposed to
on a regular basis that are non ionizing and basically
harmless to us, at least we have evolved to handle it.
Is probably another way to look at it now. High
energy radiation can strip the electrons off of atoms or molecules.

Speaker 3 (14:07):
This is bad for you.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
It sounds just like it sounds like if there is
a type of radiation that is stripping things from you,
probably not good, right, Yeah, yeah, so this is bad
for you, and enough exposure to this ionizing radiation will
result in radiation sickness and if untreated, death. We did
it many on this a while back, so it's worth
going back and listening to that. Some forms of radiation

(14:27):
perfectly fine, some not very good for you.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
Yeah. Yeah. We did a mini on the guy who
was like drinking bottles of radiation where for a hot minute,
it was like radiation thought was believed to cure everything.
It doesn't, particularly ionizing radiation.

Speaker 3 (14:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:43):
Anyway, in the winter of nineteen oh three, blonde Low
was investigating some properties of X rays and he was
intending to measure the waves of X rays. As we've
seen before, he really likes measuring waves of things, and
so as part of the experiment, he fired X rays
through a quartz prism, which should have done nothing because
the experimentation had already shown that quartz prisms did not

(15:07):
reflect X rays, so it shouldn't really do anything. And
just as a reminder, at this point, X rays are
still pretty new. People are very excited about what we
can learn about them. So he was doing his own
research with X rays. He shoots us through this quartz prism.
I believe this is part of a control because they're
thinking this shouldn't do anything. We just want to set
it up so we can do that and then maybe
we'll tweak something about the experiment. However, as he's doing this,

(15:29):
out of the corner of his eye, he thought that
he observed an electric spark flicker and brightness slightly and
the gap between two electrodes.

Speaker 2 (15:39):
Sure this could not have happened because that would have
meant that the prism had reflected the X rays, which
it could not. The next most reasonable explanation he had
discovered a new form of radiation, of course, so it
should have happened. But it did, and it's because there's
new radiation involved. After his hometown of Nancy. He named
the new radiation or the new rays n rays. So

(16:00):
naturally he published his findings to invite review and replication
from the scientific community. And hey, this is Blonde Low
we're talking about. There must be something to his findings.
He is a reputable scientist. Before we get too far
into this, I think there's something. There's something really fascinating
about this. I think as a scientist, I understand how
he got here, right, Hey, this thing happened. I don't

(16:22):
understand it. However, I probably wouldn't write a paper on it.
I'd probably try to replicate it, but that's just another conversation.

Speaker 1 (16:28):
Yeah, a little more time. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (16:31):
At the time, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 (16:33):
Yeah. Scientific papers were almost like like personal diaries at
this time.

Speaker 3 (16:37):
They're just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (16:40):
Was doing this thing, and I noticed this thing, and
isn't that cool? Huh? So, yes, he's doing this experiment
out of the corner of his eyes. He's not looking
at it, but he's like, oh, I think I saw
this thing get a little brighter over here, and so
he's like, that's probably a new form of radiation. I think,
is what's happening. That was the sequence of events. And
you might hear that and be like that seems far stretched,

(17:01):
and I would agree with you, But that's what happened.
So he presumed that what was happening was this is
a very weak form of radiation, and therefore it was
difficult to detect. But it was new and nevertheless came
with a host of properties that might make it valuable
for medical sciences as well. So, for example, they described
that as they researched these waves, they learned that they

(17:22):
could pass right through dense materials such as metal or wood,
but were stopped by simple materials that would typically allow
the passage of light, such as water.

Speaker 3 (17:31):
Hmm into this thing. Now.

Speaker 2 (17:33):
He further elaborated on these experiments by placing phosphorescent coded screens,
which he claimed would glow slightly when struck by N rays. Great,
now the world replicate and explore this natural phenomenon in
all its glorious wonder.

Speaker 1 (17:47):
Yeah, so he's got these cool screens, he's tweaking all
these experiments, et cetera. Importantly, he did lay out guidelines
for how to conduct these experiments, otherwise they wouldn't work.
So it's like sure, he's like, this is how to
create the experimental setup so that you can study end rays.
That makes sense, Like, that's how a lot of other
science works, Like you have to create the appropriate conditions

(18:08):
to study your phenomenon of interest, and so he laid
out these sort of ground rules here. First, you needed
to conduct these experiments in an extremely dark room, Okay, okay,
like pitch black, as black as you can get it.
Measurement occurred by indirectly observing the phenomenon with the human
eyes once they had spent about a half an hour

(18:31):
to an hour getting accustomed to the darkness. So you
basically have to create this dark room and you sit
in that room for like thirty minutes to an hour
just waiting, just getting used to the darkness of a room.
So that's step one. Second, and this is very important.
You must not look directly at the effect of the

(18:53):
n rays. Okay, don't look at him, Nope, you look
off in a direction that would allow you to notice
a slight illumination from your peripheral vision only.

Speaker 3 (19:04):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (19:05):
So I remember reading this and thinking to myself, is
there any other phenomenon that anyone had ever described to
any point where you couldn't look at it to be
able to measure it, and where it was best observed
without the use of observation?

Speaker 3 (19:18):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (19:19):
That was a red flag to me at least, but
not to them.

Speaker 2 (19:22):
Okay, let me ask a question just so I'm clear. Sure,
So the phenomenon that they're indirectly observing is illumination. It's
a bright flash of light, right, that's related to this,
n ray.

Speaker 3 (19:31):
Yeah, it's a dim flash of light. Dim flash of light?

Speaker 1 (19:33):
Right?

Speaker 2 (19:33):
Okay, sure, dim flash of light. Let's say okay, either way,
flash of light right?

Speaker 1 (19:37):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (19:38):
Would it not make more sense to conduct this experiment
as soon as you walked into a dark room where
your eyes are not adjusted, because then you're going to
be more sensitive to light. Why would you allow your
eyes to adjust the darkness in that space? Like to me,
it would seem like you're in a dark room, and
you would Maybe I'm wrong, but like to me, it's
like if I'm in a dark room and there's a
dim light, I'm going to be more sensitive to light

(19:58):
when my eyes are not adjusted to the DAR.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
I see what you're saying, but I actually think that
they because it was so weak. It was like if
your eyes were just getting adjusted to the darkness when
you first walk in, like anything that's not at a
certain threshold, like your eyes were prepared to receive a
lot of light before. Then you walk into a dark room,
and then like something that's barely brighter than the darkness

(20:21):
itself would not really register. So I guess it was
because it was so weak that it's like you had
to have your eyes be like maximum sensitivity to any
kind of light coming into them. Yeah, without looking directly
at that light. Well, and I.

Speaker 2 (20:34):
Guess that just exposes how little I know about how
eyes work. So so thank you for helping with that. No,
I think that makes I think that makes sense. Okay,
So at this point in time, nevertheless, all the stuff
that we're talking about with these guidelines, they were over
one hundred other scientists who started researching and publishing papers
on the amazing new n rays over the next year
in France. Not that the science didn't make it out

(20:56):
of France, but no one else was able to replicate
the findings, and one can physicists comedically observed blonde Low
was working with quote a radiation so feeble that no
one outside of France has been able to detect it
at all, which is like, that's such a scathing review.
I mean, it's very funny. That's a very funny observation.
But also just like man, what a what a bummer there,

(21:17):
you know, what a bummer for France, Like, who's trying
to discover something new? And like now there now it
would become a joke, you know, in that space.

Speaker 1 (21:23):
And at this point there was still people thinking there
might be something here, but for some reason, we're not
getting it sure. But anyway, the French scientists were working
diligently on the properties of N rays and they made
some very remarkable discoveries about N rays. First, almost everything
that exists emits M rays N rays. The sun emits

(21:43):
N rays, Human bodies emid N rays, mostly from the brain,
but everything else also emits N rays except for fresh
cut wood. Regular wood would be fine, but not if
it was freshly cut, and some treated metals would also
not emit N rays. And I feel like there was
maybe one specific animal that they tried, but like frogs
doing N rays something like that.

Speaker 3 (22:05):
Interesting.

Speaker 1 (22:06):
But also N rays might be extremely healthy for you
supposedly in these experiments, being mean, N rays at the
tongue or parts of the face or the frontal lobe
of the brain would heighten your senses. So if this
sounds like a mixture of bizarre and too good to
be true, you're not wrong.

Speaker 2 (22:25):
Yeah, I mean it sounds like they have the same
benefits that ads have. Okay, so now we've laid a
little bit of groundwork around the kind of like what
the N rays are in current context and what we've
seen as far as the science goes up until a

(22:46):
certain point. But this is where skepticism comes to the rescue. Now,
perhaps the real hero of the story is an American
physicist working at Johns Hopkins. Of course it's an American.
It's got to be the American hero, like just so
everybody knows that. But maybe the hero is Robert William Wood.
That's such an American name, really is, right, Like when
you hear that, you're like, that guy probably is a doctor,

(23:08):
but also for sure built his own log cabin. So
Robert William Wood, who had become enamored with science and
physics at an early age. He had also become notorious
for debunking pseudosciences. My kind of guy, and was sometimes
called a playful genius, mischievous and a prankster. I want
to know this guy. I mean, based on that description.

(23:28):
Who knows what else he did that might have been
really terrible, But that description sounds like somebody I would
probably be friends with.

Speaker 1 (23:34):
Yes, I would have liked Robert Wood, I think, yeah,
I agree with I agree with you completely. Sounds like
someone who I would love to have as a guest
on the show. Or he not dead for a century? Yeah, yeah,
yeah sure, Like other scientists around the world. Would was
also unable to produce the experiments as they were claimed
by Blonde Low, so he went to France to see

(23:56):
the experiments for himself, thinking I'm just the I need
to go to the belly of the beast observe this
in real time. Okay, Yeah, He's like, whatever I'm doing
is not working. Let me see what they're doing. I'm
gonna figure it out. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:10):
I mean, if that is not a scientist at work,
I don't know what it is like Hey, maybe I'm
missing something. Let me go ahead and see what's going on,
to see if, like, maybe something I'm doing is wrong, right, Like,
if you're making this claim, maybe I'm doing something wrong.
And he admitted he was doubtful about the veracity of
the claims, writing quote, I went, I must confess in
a doubting frame of mind, but with the hope that

(24:30):
I might be convinced of the reality of this phenomenon,
the accounts of which had been read with so much skepticism.

Speaker 1 (24:37):
Yeah. So, I mean like he is approaching this as
like someone who is like legitimately doing critical thinking. He
wants to understand he is sort of he's admitting, like
I do have a bias about this, but like I want,
I want to be convinced, Like, try and show me
the evidence. We all know and respect Blondelow. He's made
great contributions so far. There's got to be something here.

(24:58):
It seems like there's probably something here that I'm missing.
Let's find out. Okay, he did seem genuinely interested being
convinced of the experimentation, So Blondelow himself and his colleagues
set up their most impressive demonstration of n rays, and
proceeded to wow Wood Robert Wood over the course of
three hours of demonstrations in their laboratory arrangements.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
Yeah, or at least they hoped they would wow him.
They showed him a setup in which a large steel
file was emitting N rays. Wood, for his part, was
unable to detect the N rays, so after attempting to
observe them, he surreptitiously stole the metal file and replaced
it with a piece of wood. Yet, even after the swap,
Blondelow and his assistant continued to report seeing the N

(25:43):
rays admitted by the no longer present file.

Speaker 1 (25:48):
Yeah. So, and like they claimed to be able to
tell the difference between the types of N rays. So anyway,
he's like, just takes their file and they're like, yep,
nrays are still there. Clear that it's that file that
put on the stand. And remember weren't a dark room
at this point. So sure, that was a pretty damning
little prank that he played where he changed their experiment
and they did not detect a change in their experiment. Sure,

(26:11):
in another experiment, they presented a situation in which there
were apparently fluctuations and N rays. By placing a lead
screen in front of enrays, So they basically were shooting
them at a thing, and then they would move a
lead screen in front of that thing, and then they
would report how they saw the change in the N
rays because the red screen was now obstructing the nway's

(26:32):
ability to shine through them. Sure, Except would lie. Sometimes
he wouldn't place the screen at all. Sometimes he would
say that he hadn't placed it, but he had. And
Blonde Low and his associate were so incorrect in the
reports of when the fluctuations did and didn't happen that,
in reflecting on this, Would later wrote, quote, he was

(26:54):
almost one hundred percent wrong and called out fluctuations when
I had made no movement at all, and that proved
a lot, but I held my tongue end quote.

Speaker 3 (27:03):
So again, this.

Speaker 1 (27:04):
Whole time, Wood is like going along with their experiments.
He's telling them that he's doing what he's doing, but
half of the time or more he's lying, and they
are not at all able to actually genuinely identify when
he has done something or hasn't.

Speaker 2 (27:20):
Yeah, so Wood has not seen the N rays, and
Blonde Low and his colleagues are inaccurately reporting N rays
in those arranged conditions, yes, or at least the conditions
that wood is setting up right, Well.

Speaker 1 (27:31):
They set up most of them, well, they set up
most of them.

Speaker 2 (27:33):
But he's like altering them in a way that is
consistent with what the research is already showing. Like replacing
the file with wood would suggest that they shouldn't see
enrays when the wood is present because freshcoat wood is
a whole thing. They don't produce end rais And so
here we are, right, like, that's that's part of that conversation.

Speaker 1 (27:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
And finally, in one experiment, the Krem de la Crem,
blonde Low places an aluminum prism which would supposedly refract
the N rays into distinct wavelengths that were directly a deservable.
After the first demonstration, would ask Blondeload to repeat the experiment. Unbeknownst,
the blonde Loa would remove the prism from the experiment,
but blondload is assistant reported the same results.

Speaker 1 (28:11):
Yeah, so they're basically like, if you use an aluminum prism,
it will refract the N rays and you can see
these distinct patterns and woods like, oh cool, show me again,
and then he just steals the prism and they do
it again, and like, see, look at these refracted different patterns.
That was also pretty damning, so Wood wrote quote, after
spending three hours or more and witnessing various experiments, I

(28:34):
am not only unable to report a single observation which
appeared to indicate the existence of the rays, but left
with a very firm conviction that the few experimenters who
have obtained positive results have been in some way diluted.
End quote.

Speaker 3 (28:50):
Brutal.

Speaker 1 (28:50):
Yeah, that is like the nicest brutal takedown ever.

Speaker 3 (28:54):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (28:55):
Now.

Speaker 2 (28:55):
These quotes were taken from an article he published in
a journal of Nature after his visit to France. He
did not named Blondlow directly, but everyone figured it out
on their own.

Speaker 1 (29:03):
So by the way, he just as a reminder. The
first publication of this was in nineteen oh three. By
nineteen oh five, no one believed n rays actually existed
any longer, except for blonde Low, sure, but the fallout
of this devastated his career. He continued working on nrays
for a few years, but he retired soon after and

(29:25):
reportedly suffered mental and physical health issues, and the last
known report that someone gave indicated that he reported still
believing in n rays up until nineteen twenty six, at
least that was like when he was last asked about it,
But he passed away shortly after in nineteen thirty, probably
still believing in n rays and hoping that someone would

(29:49):
be able to resurrect this line of research that had
been gone for at that point twenty five years and
written off as an oops in the footnote of History
in Science.

Speaker 3 (30:02):
Yeah. Absolutely so.

Speaker 2 (30:04):
I think, you know, when you hear this, you kind
of go, well, you know, if ny rais don't exist,
why are we talking about this? And I think that
this is really the crux of this. This episode is
like understanding how like we get here in these situations
where we're spending so much time studying something that we
have been proven to not exist. Right, humans are very
good at seeing patterns. We're so good at it that

(30:26):
sometimes we see patterns that aren't there, we delude ourselves
into believing and then can't see past them to any
other possible situation we have. We say, no, I know
this pattern exists, I've seen it, I believe it, and
then despite evidence to the contrary, we still continue to
believe in that pattern.

Speaker 1 (30:44):
There is a benefit to being able to use like
a mental heuristic or shortcut to recognize a pattern and
behave with respect to that pattern without necessarily confirming that
that pattern really exists or is there. Because a lot
of the times that will work if you imagine just
basic survival things in cooperation. Being able to see patterns

(31:05):
and things and make decisions as part of what makes
us stand out among animals as a creature that can
do things very very very efficiently by use of tritcuts
like this, like these patterns, and sometimes those things send
us down the wrong path, we get distracted by them, right,
And an enormous part of our experience of the world

(31:26):
is filtered through several layers of language that influences what
we expect and how we interpret things around us. So
you might have one person who makes an unlikely recovery
from an illness, and in doing so they credit the
human ingenuity that went into developing the interventions that saved
their life. They're like, thank goodness that we had these

(31:47):
people who figured this out. A different person going through
the same experience sees this as evidence of a divine entity. Right,
Like if you already have your idea about what the
answer is it's a lot easier to see evidence for
that answer and a lot harder to see contradictory evidence
that says that might not be right. Actually, like, if

(32:09):
you're answered all unexplained like all ambiguous phenomenon is it's aliens,
then like that's what you see. Whenever there is a
new phenomenon, you're like, it's clearly it's got to be aliens.
Like that just makes the most sense. Like that's just
how a lot of people operate. Is they get good
at seeting patterns and things, whether or not those patterns
are there, because they're serviceable enough. And again the main

(32:32):
point is that they're serviceable in as far as like
survival and success of our species, and we use them
in a lot of important ways. But also, as I said,
they can really send us down the wrong path.

Speaker 2 (32:43):
Yeah, absolutely, And even when we prove ourselves wrong or
someone does it for us or both, we can just
ignore the counter evidence and move the goalposts so that
we can continue believing in what we believe. There's an
underappreciated power and the reinforcement gained from correspondence things corresponding
with our language about those things. Like that's kind of
what we're looking at it can be intoxicating and it's

(33:04):
difficult to get past. It's really hard when you start
kind of buying in and believing in something, to have
evidence to the contrary and start to believe in that
new evidence. For some people, it's very difficult.

Speaker 1 (33:15):
Yeah, So I think this is a cool opportunity. And
we've mentioned things like this on the show before. But
for our behavior analyst friends who sometimes struggle to see
reinforcement that's not super tangible in the form of a
direct outcome, is that, like reinforcement for humans exists in
an incredibly, incredibly broad spectrum because it can move well

(33:38):
past tangible, observable outcomes and into hypothetical and arbitrary ones. Yeah,
like winning a game that gets you nothing, like you
just people said good job, Like there's so yeah, I
mean there are there are tangible benefits to things like
in sports where you get paid a huge amount of money,
the all that you might get paid either way, but

(33:59):
like there are like times when it's like playing rock
paper scissors and you win just just to do it,
like just because, and it's like there's no stakes, there's
no out, there's no anything. But symbolically it was really meaningful,
and so finding correspondence between what you believe and what
you observe is also very powerful. And belief is just language,

(34:21):
and identifying something as correspondence is more language. So like
those things I think are something that are useful for
us to recognize as being powerful motivators, as being powerful
outcomes that drive some of our behavior, is just that
when we see correspondence between things and what we want

(34:42):
to believe about those things, that strengthens our behavior and
ideas about those things and makes them more workable. But
the trick is that the correspondence doesn't need to actually exist,
We only need to perceive that it could possibly exist.
We can draw lines between things that aren't there. That's
honestly how a lot of metaphor works. If I describe
a metaphor, I'm talking about something that isn't It isn't there,

(35:05):
it doesn't exist, we can't observe it. And comparing that
to something that is right there in front of us,
and that can have a meaningful impact, like we can
follow that logic and understand it and even in sometimes
change our behaviors just by virtue of that. And all
we're doing is using our language to draw correspondence between
things either you know that might have some valance too,

(35:27):
like these are good comparisons or these are bad comparisons, right,
And like just being able to coordinate those it can
have a feeling of reward that really facilitates continued engagement
in the behaviors around those beliefs.

Speaker 3 (35:42):
Yeah. Absolutely, I think you nailed.

Speaker 1 (35:44):
It perfect well. I think we nailed an ad break.

Speaker 3 (35:47):
We certainly did. You're welcome, all.

Speaker 1 (35:57):
Right, we're back. I do want to say one more
thing that, like, what's kind of a cool feature of
this that's worth highlighting and going back to this whole
discussion about science is like science is this opportunity for
human behavior to self correct, right, Like is it is
the things that we do and then we figure out
that like it's not that effective, And so what we

(36:19):
see in this is like this is science doing what
science does. Like this is not the first and it
won't be the last time that somebody has described a
phenomenon that turns out to be different or non existent
from what's actually going on. But it's because we work
together to make sure that we have validated that phenomenon

(36:40):
and we've supported it, that we learn and grow and
like that conversation it doesn't have to be confrontational, like
it was rough for Blonde Loan in those particular instance.
But had he been more willing and open minded to
admit his own faults, it probably would have just been
like a, oh, I can see why I thought that,
but it turns out I was wrong, moving on, going
on to the next thing. He probably would have gone
on to do great things with his careers, but was

(37:01):
so dedicated to the idea they had to support this
that it kind of fell apart. But it only took
to less than two years from the discovery of N
rays to the complete dismantling of N rays for science
to fix that process. And like, where at a point
right now where our own government in the United States
is now pretending that like there's no such thing as

(37:24):
as climate change, Like they're just changing the laws and
saying like no climate change doesn't harm health. It's fine,
everything's fine, it's not real. Look over there, shut up
and buy more cars. Sure, And like that's that's the
place where like we are in a really dark, depressing,
horrible place in the United States where science is absolutely
being shoved out of the room in service of essentially money,

(37:45):
Like that's just all it comes down to. Is just
the only thing that matters to these people is making
more and more money, and who cares who dies along
the way, Like, as long as I make money, everything's good.
And so they just pushed science out the door, and
like that will be only to our detriment. Like this,
there is no benefit from this.

Speaker 2 (38:04):
Right absolutely, you know, even like it's its base issue, right,
the idea of pursuing a line of questioning that has
been demonstrated to be wrong.

Speaker 3 (38:14):
Like there are.

Speaker 2 (38:14):
People that are like, yeah, maybe we didn't ask the
right question and ensure, but like in the face of
definitive proof, we should be asking more clarifying questions, not
outright denying evidence, because we're just wasting resources, wasting time,
and ultimately, like because we're doing that, we we can't
get time back. And because we can't get time back,
we are missing opportunities to study and use resources towards

(38:37):
actual helpful outcomes. Like here, I would imagine that blond Low,
had he given up the the n rays theory, he
probably could have spent more time discovering new inventions or
new tools or instruments that could have been doing the
work that he was doing previously that was really powerful.
But now this mind is wasted on on a topic
that has been debunked and there's there's not enough evidence

(39:00):
to continue that line of inquiry. And who knows what
we could have discovered had he been like you know what,
I was wrong and we haven't. There's not sufficient proof here.
You know, we could have been in a very different space.
I think, Yeah, this is why it's so wonderful to
be wrong. As we get to learn new things, and
probably more importantly, we learn how to spot in our language,

(39:20):
how we can cloud our own judgment in things, and
like you think about like people who I was trying
to imagine putting myself in someone else's sort of body,
and like their mind and their experiences and who they
are and the things they've learned, and just feeling like
once you have committed to a thing, feeling like you
just have to stick with it, as opposed to those

(39:43):
of us who are sort of more in the scientific
field who have learned that like start just saying I
was wrong, Yeah, start just admitting that, like, oops, I
know how I got here, I know why I thought
that this was right, but it was wrong. And that's okay,
We're just going to fix it and move on, right,
And like, when people have give themselves that out and

(40:03):
they've already established that they are someone who can learn
from mistakes, who can learn from history, who can.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
Like correct course as they're going, then it's fine. And Honestly,
even people who have like spent their whole life dedicated
to just digging in their heels, like if they start
learning all of a sudden, like we'll still appreciate that.
It's like we are flexible, right, And I'm not just
talking about you, and I am talking about humans broadly speaking,
like we learned to just sort of roll with the punches.

(40:30):
And so when we benefit ourselves so much by allowing
ourselves to be wrong and gracefully moving on from that
and just admitting, like, yep, mess that one up, too bad,
Let's try something different.

Speaker 3 (40:43):
I guess yea on the next thing.

Speaker 1 (40:45):
Yeah, let someone else have their ideas, populate that space
and use that to motivate like where we go next.
That's I think the sort of main point of this
whole discussion is is thinking about when we get stuck
in these ruts and acknowledging that, like it's important to
be wrong. Like we get to learn things. We've been
wrong on this podcast, and we have done corrections on

(41:06):
this podcast. And I hope that I get to learn
more ways than I'm wrong, so that in the future
I get to be more right. Yeah, because if people
just keep telling me that I'm right when I'm wrong,
then I'm not gonna learn. And like, that is the
recipe for making stupid, and I don't want to be stupid.
I would like to be someone who has an opportunity
to learn and grow and get better at things.

Speaker 3 (41:24):
Agreed.

Speaker 1 (41:24):
You could either admit that you're wrong and be stupid
or so you can either refuse to admit that you're
wrong and be stupid, or you can admit that you're
wrong and learn and get better at things.

Speaker 3 (41:32):
Agreed. I think you nailed it.

Speaker 1 (41:34):
Cool. Well, I think that's all we have to say
about n RAISE.

Speaker 2 (41:37):
Yeah, yeah, And we don't have to say anything else
about nrais because they're done.

Speaker 1 (41:41):
They are done. And you know, I think the other
other reason to talk about this is just that it's fun.
It's just it's fun to know about these things that
happened in the past and just be familiar with history and.

Speaker 3 (41:51):
Just fun weird science.

Speaker 1 (41:52):
Yeah, fun weird science is exactly it. But there is
also like a deeper lesson in there, which we've already
talked about. So yeah, but I think that's what we
have to say about that. So let's go ahead and
wrap this one up. And at the end of our
discussions we recommend things because it's fun to do that
as well. It's not about n rays in this particular case.
A matter of fact, it's almost never about the thing
that we were discussing. Just a recommendation we like to do.

(42:14):
But first we get through the credits and talk about
the people who helped make this podcast a podcast. But
first we get through some more ads. All right, we're
back really quickly. Before we get to recommendations, I would
like to say thank you all for listening, thank you

(42:34):
for going through this little jaunt down history road with us.
It was I had a good time with us. I
hope that you did too, And if you would like
to support the work that we do, you can head
over to Patreon. If you do that, you will get
bonus content, add free episodes, early episodes, you get to
join a community of awesome people. And at the end
of our discussions. I will read the names of the
people who are supporting us right now, and we just

(42:56):
really appreciate them and all that they do and for
continuing to be around with us. So a giant Thank
you so much to Mike m Megan, Mike T, Justin
KiB Brad, Stephanie, Brian, Ashley, and Kiara. We really really
appreciate having you all continue to just help us do
our thing.

Speaker 3 (43:14):
Yeah, y'all are just so so wonderful.

Speaker 1 (43:17):
Thank you so much to a team of people writing
and fact checking from Shane and myself. Thank you for
recording with me today, Shane, Thank you for having me.
Our social media coordinator is Emma Wilson. And the person
who does all of our audio editing sound stuff so
that we sound like we're speaking a language that you
can understand is Justin, who is now executive producer.

Speaker 2 (43:35):
I guess yes, we've made in that, yes, somehow, some way.
Official titles, Official titles.

Speaker 1 (43:41):
If you'd like to tell us your thoughts on n
rays or any other things in here, or just say
hello to us, you can email us directly at info
at WWDWWD podcast dot com. You can also reach us
on the social media platforms, and we do look forward
to hearing from you if you would like to support
us in non financial ways. Leaving us a rating is
very helpful. It helps us the algorithm put us in
more people's feeds as a recommended episode. Leaving a review

(44:04):
does that even more. Both of those things are great,
And of course just tell a friend so you can
say like, hey, I heard this crazy episode about n
Rays and then they'll be like, I don't know what
that means. And then you'll put your headphones in their
ear and they'll go, oh, that was really good, and
welcome to the podcast person who just had a headphones
shoved into their ears. But I think that that is
what we have to say about those things. Are you

(44:24):
ready to move on to recommendations or is there something
you'd like to add before we do that.

Speaker 2 (44:28):
No, I think we can do recommendations now. That feels good.

Speaker 1 (44:30):
Let's recommend some things.

Speaker 2 (44:32):
Yay, recommendations, All right, folks, I'm gonna recommend some music.
I will say this is not for everybody, because if
you don't like loud, screechy, like metal hardcore, then you're

(44:54):
not gonna like it. So I'm gonna recommend a record
from the band Converge. They're one of my favorite bands.
They are one of the most influential bands in my life,
in my music career, and I don't know that I
would be in so many of the bands or even
write the music that I write without them. And so
they have a record called They just put out a
brand new record. It's their ninth full length called Love

(45:14):
is Not Enough. I believe it's their ninth full length.
Whatever it is, it's up there.

Speaker 1 (45:18):
They've been around for a while.

Speaker 3 (45:19):
They've been around for a long.

Speaker 2 (45:20):
Time, you know, and every time they put out a record,
it's flawless, and this is no different. I think that
if you like this type of music, then you know Convergeon,
you appreciate them. But this record is great, and it's
ten songs. It's only thirty one minutes long. Generally speaking,
Converge is known for having some like extra long songs
somewhere on the record, like anywhere between six and ten minutes,

(45:41):
depending on the record. This doesn't have any of that.
The longest song is it's almost five minutes and that's it.

Speaker 3 (45:48):
It's just to me, this record.

Speaker 2 (45:50):
Plays like it's all go no slow, classic Converge, very punky,
compared to some of the other older Converge and just
I think, just another perfect entry into their discography. So
if you like Converge and you like the type of music,
then go listen to it because it's unbelievable.

Speaker 1 (46:06):
Might be good like exercise music, or doing DIY project music,
or doing something very creative kind of having stuff in
the background, or if you just really loved listening to
talented musicians play cool metal type of music, all of
that applies. Yes, agreed, awesome. I've listened to one track
off of this so far. I'm looking forward to checking

(46:28):
out the rest. This does feel like something that's probably
going to make it into a regular rotation for me,
So thank you for that recommendation. Yeah, of course, and
I am recommending a brand new TV series. It came
out immediately after the Super Bowl, and unlike many other
streaming services that have returned to a weekly released schedule,
they released the entire season all at once, so it

(46:51):
was like the season's coming out on February whatever it
was eighth, I guess, and then they were like, the
whole thing is up now stream the whole thing. This
is the TV show called The Burbs. It is on Peacock.
It is loosely based off of the nineteen eighty something
movie with Tom Hanks called The Urbs. Sure, although it

(47:13):
really doesn't take much from that show other than there's
a bunch of neighbors in sort of a cul de
sac e neighborhood and there are some suspicions and confrontations
between them. It is, I would say, more in the
genre of like murder, mystery comedy is maybe how do
you put it? So, it's pretty funny. It has a

(47:34):
great cast. So we've got Keky Palmer, Julia Duffy, Jack Whitehall,
Paula Pell, Justin Kirk, Mark Procks. So people would recognize
Mark Procks. She was on the he was Nate on
the Office, he was on What We Do in the
Shadows TV show? Is Colin Robinson? Yeah, that guy? So

(47:55):
he's He's and he is between he and Keky Palmer
and Paula Pelle. They are the comedy lynchpins of this show.

Speaker 3 (48:04):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (48:04):
Anyway, I really enjoy it. They call it dark comedy.
It's streaming on Peacock. I thought it was really fun
and I think it's maybe nine or ten episodes. It
does end on quite a quite a Cliffhanger, so they're
definitely planning on more seasons, I'm thinking, but I don't know.
I really enjoyed it, and I think other people will too.
I thought the cast was great. I thought the show

(48:25):
was fun. So, like I said, go check it out.

Speaker 3 (48:27):
I love it.

Speaker 2 (48:28):
I'm super stoked. I wanting to watch it because I
love the original movie, so I'm really excited to see
how how they did it.

Speaker 3 (48:36):
How well.

Speaker 1 (48:37):
Yeah, the original movie is really fun, and I haven't
seen it in a while, but I've watched it a
few times and I really liked it. This was, like
I said, it had some like vibes similar to the
original movie. Sure, a little else was in common, really,
just kind of the setting was what they had in
common for the most part.

Speaker 3 (48:56):
That makes sense.

Speaker 1 (48:57):
And the fact that it's it's sort of surrounded with
like a maybe murder mystery, suspicion of your neighbor type
thing with a creepy house going on.

Speaker 2 (49:05):
Yeah yeah, that creepy house that every neighborhood has that
you're like, something's wrong there.

Speaker 1 (49:11):
Yeah, yeah that. So anyway, it's fun, it's light, it's comedy.
Go check it out.

Speaker 3 (49:16):
Love it.

Speaker 1 (49:16):
I think that those what we have to say about
the urbs, and about Converge, and now about n rays.
So I think we can wrap this one up. Is
there anything I'm forgetting or you'd like to add before
we say goodbyes?

Speaker 3 (49:27):
No, I think that covers it all right.

Speaker 1 (49:29):
Pseudo Science Week debunking is over this, Abraham is a Shane.
We're out.

Speaker 3 (49:35):
See. Yeah, you've been listening to Why We Do What
We Do.

Speaker 2 (49:39):
You can learn more about this and other episodes by
going to WWD WWD.

Speaker 1 (49:45):
Podcast dot com.

Speaker 2 (49:46):
Thanks for listening, and we hope you have an awesome
day