mulator, but he did find a number of negative temperature differences^25. Although Dr.
Lion did not balance the accumulator and the control box so that they fluctuated equally
with changes in room temperature, he did place the accumulator and the control in a fairly
constant room temperature and took a great number of readings over a two-week period.
However, Dr. Lion did not describe in his protocol how he achieved a fairly even
room temperature. If this was done by air conditioning, particularly in a closed air system,
it could affect the orgone energy properties of the atmosphere. * This is another example
of the subtle problems involved in replication of orgonomic experiments. In a legitimate
effort to control an extraneous variable, such as fluctuations in room temperature, one may
obliterate the very thing under study. These issues place a responsibility on the experimenter
to meet Reich’s conditions and at the same time achieve an objective test of the hypothesis.
Before considering the significance of these temperature difference replications,
positive and negative, let us look briefly at the control studies of the electroscopic findings.
Here again the best positive replication was done by Dr. Courtney Baker. Like Reich, he
found a slower rate of discharge for the electroscope in the accumulator than in free air^26.
The main negative replication was contained in a brief report to the FDA by another physi-
cist, Dr. Noel C. Little of Bowdoin College. His report states that “Identical quantitative
measurements were obtained both inside and outside the accumulator.... Results were exact-
ly what would have been expected.”^27 There is no supporting description of such factors
as atmospheric conditions in the experimental room or the weather.
Dr. Lion also presented for the FDA a theoretical refutation of Reich’s electroscop-
ic findings. Unlike Dr. Little, Dr. Lion believed that one would not expect identical readings
on the electroscope inside and outside the accumulator. On the basis of electrostatic theo-
ry,one would expect the results Reich obtained—a slower discharge in the accumulator—
since metal acts as a shield against ionizing radiation in the air^28 .So Dr. Lion did not carry
out any replication.For him,Reich’s findings were completely predictable—and banal. Thus,
two reputable physicists derived from the same theory very different predictions concerning
the accumulator’s effect on the discharge rate of the electroscope.
There are several further problems with the replications. First, all the positive stud-
ies have been conducted by persons enthusiastic about much, if not all, of Reich’s work.
Could not experimental bias have been the chief reason for the positive results? When asked
to comment on this, Dr. Baker replied:
It is true that I am “sympathetic” to Reich’s work in the sense that I believe
in its value and validity, and that it should be supported. Does this make me unre-21 : The Discovery of Orgone Energy: 1940 271
- In this connection, Ernest Hemingway has made an interesting comparison of several “bad” atmospheres simi-
lar to Reich’s analysis: “I can be depressed by [the weather] when it is rainy, muggy, and with constant barometric
changes. ... So I’m working in an airconditioned room which is as false a way to work as to try to write in the pres-
surized cabin of a plane When mornings are alive again I can use the skeleton of what I’ve written and fill it in.”
Ernest Hemingway, “The Private Hemingway: From this Unpublished Letters,” ed. James Atlas,The New York Times
Magazine, Feb. 15, 1981, 98-99.