Monday, April 9

Eadweard Muybridge and the integrity in science







Today Google's doodle is about Eadweard Muybridge's 1892 experiment for the former governor of California Leland Stanford a businessman and race-horse owner.

Muybridge, an English photographer who lived in America, received $25,000 to perform an experiment to prove  that a horse has all his hoovers off the floor for a very brief moment when trotting.
It was a subject of controversy in horse-racing circles.

It was necessary to capture the images slowly because human eyes cannot see where the legs are.
Muybridge took  numerous pictures in the experiment called The Horse in Motion.

This experiment was used by some artists later like Marcel Duchamp.

I want to stress this aspect of the whole story: Wikipedia:

"Muybridge and Stanford had a major falling-out concerning his research on equine locomotion. Stanford asked his friend and horseman Dr. J. B. D. Stillman to write a book analyzing The Horse in Motion, which was published in 1882.[15] Stillman used Muybridge's photos as the basis for his 100 illustrations and the photographer's research for the analysis, but he gave Muybridge no prominent credit. The historian Phillip Prodger suggested that Stanford considered Muybridge as just one of his employees and not deserving of special credit.[16] As a result of Muybridge not being credited in the book, the Royal Society withdrew an offer to fund his stop-motion studies in photography. Muybridge filed a lawsuit against Stanford to gain credit, but it was dismissed out of court."

This is the way scientists have been working. They receive money from corporations and their work is driven according to the corporations needs.
Scientists research what the corporations tell them to research and the results of their work that is published defend what the corporations need usually with no consideration to those who will use the products. The aim is profit.

This is the way science is being done and this is why there are scientists fighting for integrity in science.
Leland Stanford was the founder of the Stanford University. He considered Muybridge as one of his employees.