Summary:
Wilhelm Reich claimed he had discovered a universal cosmic and biological energy present everywhere and detectable through specified experiments. He called this energy orgone. He built a box with organic material on the outside and metal on the inside that he called an orgone accumulator, which he believed collected and accumulated orgone in the atmosphere. He claimed that exposure to orgone, particularly through sitting in the accumulator, promoted health and vitality, and was an effective treatment for cancer. He also claimed to detect another energy, oranur or deadly orgone radiation (DOR), which produced negative health effects and reacted to orgone. He also built a device he called a cloud buster, with which he claimed he could manipulate the weather by manipulating the orgone in the atmosphere. Reich's claims aroused much controversy, and he was taken to court for fraud by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The court ordered his books and research burned and his equipment destroyed. Reich was given a prison sentence, and he died in prison in 1957.
Major Sources:
Books:
1) Gardner, Martin, Fads & Fallacies In the Name of Science, Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1957.
2) Milton, Richard, Alternative Science, Park Street Press, Rochester, Vermont, 1996.
3) Reich, Ilse Ollendorff, Wilhelm Reich: A Personal Biography, St. Martin's Press: New York, 1969.
4) Reich, Wilhelm, Selected Writings: An Introduction to Orgonomy, Farrar, Straus and Giroux: New York, 1973.
5) Sharaf, Myron, Fury On Earth, St. Martin's Press: New York, 1983.
6) Wilson, Robert Anton, The New Inquisition, New Falcon Publications: Scottsdale, AZ, 1991.
Articles:
1) Brady, Mildred Edie, "The Strange Case of Wilhelm Reich." The New Republic, May 26, 1947, P.20-23.
2) DeMeo, James, "Response to Martin Gardner's Attack on Reich and Orgone Research in The Skeptical Inquirer." Pulse of the Planet, 1989, No.1.
Article available at: http://id.mind.net:80/community/orgonelab/gardner.htm
3) Gardner, Martin, "Reich the Rainmaker: The Orgone Obsession." The Skeptical Inquirer, Fall 1988, Vol.13 No.1.
Article available at: http://www.garlic.com:80/ufo/txt1/891.ufo
Web Sites:
http://www.math.utah.edu/~goodman/orgone.html
Excerpts from Reich's Selected Writings,excerpts from The Orgone Accumulator Handbook by Dr. James DeMeo, and numerous links.
2) Public Orgonomic Research Exchange (PORE)-
http://w3.ime.net/~pore/index.html
Tons of information on Reich and all aspects of orgone, including Reich's court records, past and present research in orgonomy, and much information on controversies surrounding orgone.
3) Orgone Biophysical Research Lab (OBRL)-
http://id.mind.net/community/orgonelab/index.htm
Contains much past and present research and a huge bibliography of research.
http://www.somtel.com/~wreich/index.html
Information on the Wilhelm Reich Museum in the Rangeley Lakes region of Maine, in the building where Reich did most of his orgone research.
5) Another Orgone Research Laboratory (AORL)-
http://www. geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/2514/
A webpage of research done on orgone by Doug Marett, who publishes a weekly synopsis of his orgone measurements.
Assessment:
Wilhelm Reich's claims about orgone sound quite phenomenal. His ideas about orgone energy inspired much criticism from the scientific and medical communities. However, his critics have universally failed to repeat his studies before calling his ideas absurd, calling him a fraud without testing his research. In spite of this complete avoidance of scientific methodology by critics, these criticisms still led to a FDA investigation which resulted in Reich's books, research and equipment being destroyed, and in Reich being sentenced to prison where he died. Hundreds of studies have been done repeating Reich's research and have come up with similar results. These are ignored or dismissed as faulty by his critics. Whether orgone is an actual phenomenon or a mass delusion, I have no idea, as I have done no research myself and have not seen enough studies to come to any definitive answer. The method of science is not to come up with definitive answers, however, but to propose hypotheses and attempt to disprove them, thus forming generalizations about the way thing seem to be based on our observations. This is what Reich seems to have been doing, and he encouraged others to repeat his research. His critics have not troubled themselves with the scientific method, because they already know that he is a fraud. How they know this without repeating his research seems far more mysterious than Reich's orgone.
4) METHODS FOR OBSERVING ORGONE
6) DEADLY ORGONE RADIATION (DOR)
Orgone Energy (OR)- Primordial cosmic energy; universally present and demonstrable visually, thermically, electroscopically, and by means of Geiger-Muller counters. In the living organism: bioenergy, life energy. Discovered by Wilhelm Reich between 1936 and 1940. (DOR denotes deadly OR energy).
-From Selected Writings: An Introduction to Orgonomy by Wilhelm Reich.1
In the late thirties, a psychotherapist named Wilhelm Reich made what he thought was a startling discovery. He believed he had discovered a new kind of energy that somehow other scientists had previously overlooked. He claimed it was present everywhere in our atmosphere and that he had discovered a way to accumulate it and demonstrate its properties visually and through various scientific tests. He called this energy "orgone." His claims were to arouse much controversy. This paper will discuss Reich’s claims about orgone and related phenomena, as well as criticisms and studies done by others regarding these phenomena.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF WILHELM REICH
Wilhelm Reich was born March 24, 1897 in the German Ukrainian part of Austria. He was born to a farmer, and his early years on the farm encouraged his interests in biology and natural science. After a stint serving in the Austrian army during World War I, Reich went to medical school at the University of Vienna, graduating in 1922. This was followed by a postgraduate education in neuropsychiatry at the Neurological and Psychiatric University Clinic there. In 1920, Reich also became a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, headed by Sigmund Freud. From 1924-30 he held various prestigious positions at the Psychoanalyitic Institute in Vienna, followed by three years in Berlin. In 1934 Reich was kicked out of the International Psychoanalytic Association over his increasingly controversial ideas. He had to leave Berlin when Hitler came to power, as Reich was Jewish and a Communist at the time, and the nazis burned his books. He was kicked out of the communist party, and later the socialist party for his radical ideas about the influence of sexual repression on politics.
From 1934-39 Reich did research at the Psychological Institute of the University of Oslo, Norway. It was there that he first claimed to observe orgone energy in microscopic life forms. In 1939 Reich moved to Forest Hills, New York, where he first claimed to observe orgone energy in the atmosphere and where he built his first "orgone energy accumulator." In 1942, Reich founded the Orgone Institute and acquired 200 acres of land in Maine which he called "Orgonon" after orgone energy.2
Reich was quite famous in psychoanalytic circles for his early works, particularly for his book Character Analysis, and had numerous theories that were widely accepted by psychoanalysts. Most of these theories had to do with the relationships between mental and physical health, and between sexual repression and neurosis. Reich saw a direct link between negative mental states and subsequent physical illnesses. He also thought that many neuroses could be cured through methodical manipulations of the body, and the release of prolonged muscular tension, which he called "character armor." He was the first therapist to encourage patients to scream, weep, and physically release their emotions, which is common practice in psychotherapy today.3 His influence on psychotherapy with his early works was and continues to be widely influential. However, it is not in the scope of this paper to detail these early accomplishments. I would refer the interested reader to the biography of Reich, Fury on Earth by Myron Sharaf, for further information on these subjects.
Although many psychologists agree with and practice many of Reich’s earlier ideas, most do not follow his ideas about orgone energy. Indeed, orgone was not pursued by Reich from the viewpoint of a psychologist, in this area he considered himself to be more of a natural scientist. By the time he moved to America, Reich had little interest in therapy, and biology and physics were the focus of his energies.4
THE DISCOVERY OF ORGONE ENERGY
In 1934, Reich’s ideas about the relations between the psychological and physiological were leading him further away from psychoanalysis and more into the laboratory. He wanted to see if he could find demonstrable and tangible physical evidence for Freud’s concept of the libido, and for his own ideas about psychological-physiological relationships.5 In this direction, he was executing experiments designed to measure if the sexual organs, when excited, would show an increase in their bio-electrical charge. His research indicated that sexual excitation corresponded with an increase in electrical charge on the surface of the organism, while anxiety and other negative emotions corresponded with a decrease in electrical charge.6
These studies made Reich decide to attempt to see if this kind of effect occurred observably with microorganisms as well. This led to what Reich would refer to as "the Bion Experiments." Reich wanted to observe amoebas, a common kind of protozoa, and to do so he put blades of grass in water to observe after ten to fourteen days. After this time, according to biologists, spores come in from the air and become protozoa. Reich, however, did not see things this way. He claimed to observe that as the plant tissue at the edge of the blade gradually disintegrated, it formed vesicular structures, which would swell and detach themselves from the plant. Eventually their structure would come to be almost indistinguishable from amoebas. Reich theorized from these observations that the protozoa developed not from spores in the air but from the decaying grass itself. He called these vesicles he theorized were in a transitional stage from non-living to living "bions."7
He decided to see if this phenomena was observable when using substances other than grass, organic and inorganic, to see if he observed bions in cultures with these other substances. He claimed to observe them in many other cultures, and soon had classified two distinct types of bions. He called these "PA-bions," which were blue in color, and "T-bacilli." These two kinds of bions he observed to have an irritating effect on each other, and claimed that T-bacilli in the presence of PA-bions would tremble and spin, eventually becoming immobile. One culture was of ocean sand that had been heated in a sterilizer, and in this culture he observed what he called "SAPA-bions," or sand-packet bions.8
These bions were intensely blue, and had a much more powerful effect on T-bacilli, protozoa, and cancer cells than the other PA-bions. He claimed that when they were brought together with cancer cells, they killed or paralyzed the cells at a distance of up to ten microns. After observing these SAPA-bions for a period of four weeks, Reich’s eyes began to hurt, and he developed conjunctivitis. He theorized that his conjunctivitis had been caused by radiation emanating from the SAPA-bions. He decided to try observing the SAPA-bions in the dark and noticed a peculiar effect. "the observations in the dark had something uncanny about them. Once my eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, the room appeared not black but grayish-blue. I saw foglike vapors, streaks of blue light, and dots darting about."9 This blue colored radiating life energy he observed he came to call "orgone."
After observing this orgone energy, Reich wanted to build a device that would contain the radiation and prevent its diffusion. Reich had observed that metal seemed to reflect the energy and organic material seemed to absorb it. Based on these observations he built a box with metal walls on the inside and organic material (cotton) on the outside. One side of the box had an opening with a lens through which the researcher could peer inside the box. In this box he continued to observe the SAPA-bions, and the effects of these he saw to be even more intense in the box. However, when he removed the SAPA-bions from the box and ventilated it, he found that he could still see a bluish light radiating from the box, although not as intensely. He assumed that the organic part of the box must have absorbed some of the radiation from the SAPA-bion cultures, so he took the box apart, dipped the metal in water, put in new cotton, and ventilated everything to clean it. When he put it all back together, he found that orgone was still observable. He had another box built which he kept distant in a different room from the SAPA-bions, but he still found orgone energy accumulating in the new box. At this point, he theorized that the orgone was already present everywhere, and the boxes were accumulating it from the atmosphere, and they were to become known as "orgone energy accumulators." Reich claimed he didn’t take this finding lightly. "I doubted every one of my observations. Such impressions as ‘the energy is present everywhere’ carried little conviction; on the contrary they were apt to raise serious doubts. In addition, the continuous doubts, objections and negative findings on the part of physicists and bacteriologists tended to make me take my observations less seriously than they deserved to be taken."10
METHODS FOR OBSERVING AND MEASURING ORGONE ENERGY
Reich realized that his initial observations were mostly subjective, and that he needed to find methods for objectively observing orgone. Reich soon discovered and developed a number of ways in which he claimed orgone energy could be objectively observed and measured.
He claimed that orgone energy emitted from SAPA-bions could fog film, impart a static charge to insulators and a magnetic charge to steel.11
He created a device called an orgonoscope which he said could observe orgone energy in the sky between flickering stars.12
He developed an "orgone energy field meter" using a Tesla coil and metal plates that he said could show differences in energy levels between people and objects.13
Reich built an "orgone energy pulsation demonstrator" which he claimed showed the energy field pulsations of a large metal sphere moving a smaller metallic/organic pendulum hanging nearby.14
He observed that the space inside an orgone accumulator would spontaneously develop a higher temperature than its surroundings on sunny days, when he said the orgone charge at the Earth’s surface was strong. This effect vanished during stormy and rainy weather, when he believed the Earth’s orgone charge was weaker.15 It is interesting to note that in 1940 Reich actually made an appointment with Albert Einstein, to whom he discussed his findings and demonstrated this effect. Einstein noted the temperature difference, and was initially excited about Reich’s findings, which he said would be a "great bombshell" if they were proven to be true. Einstein soon concluded that the phenomena was caused by convection currents in the room, after which he disassociated himself from Reich.16
Reich and others interested in orgone developed a number of other tests as well, a more thorough list of which is given in chapter 5 of The Orgone Accumulator Handbook: Construction Plans, Experimental Use, and Protection Against Toxic Energy by James DeMeo Ph.D.
THE PROPERTIES AND EFFECTS OF ORGONE ENERGY
We have already discussed how Reich claimed orgone was a radiating energy, blue in color, universally present that was emitted from organic materials and life forms and could be accumulated, observed, and measured. Reich also believed that in specified doses, orgone energy had positive healthful properties, and could help in the treatment of cancer, although not cure it.
Reich did a study between 1937 and 1939 on 178 healthy mice. He injected some with T-bacilli, some with PA-bions, some with T-bacilli and then PA-bions, and some with PA- bions and then T-bacilli. The T-bacilli injected group had many more deaths than the PA-injected group. Also, his data suggested that the PA-bions had an innoculatory effect against the T-bacilli, although damage did not seem to be reversed when the T-bacilli was injected first. Of the 30 mice who died from T-bacilli injections alone, Reich claimed to find cancerous cells in 20. Reich theorized that the T-bacilli he injected acted as a cancer agent.17
However, in the early 1940’s Reich soon found that T-bacilli were present in people who were perfectly healthy as well. Reich observed T-bacilli in both the blood of healthy people and cancer patients, and he observed that in the blood of the cancer patients, the T-bacilli developed easily and rapidly. He also found that the red blood cells disintegrated much more rapidly in the cancer patients, and when it did it formed shrunken granules as opposed to the large uniform granules of healthy people. Reich observed similar findings in the sputum, excrement and vaginal secretions of patients. He claimed he could identify patients at a high risk for cancer by the high levels of T-bacilli in their blood. Interestingly, at the time, no cancer researchers had observed or noted finding evidence of cancer in the blood or other bodily fluids of their patients. It wasn’t until 1955 that classical cancer pathology discovered that cancer cells could be found in the sputum of cancer patients.18
Reich had earlier observed the deteriorating effects of the PA-bions, which he believed to be charged with orgone energy, had on T-bacilli, which he now believed was an agent of cancer. He decided to see how orgone energy collected in his accumulator affected mice with cancer. He found that the average life span of the untreated cancer mice was four weeks, whereas the average life span of the mice who had been treated with the accumulator was eleven weeks. "The very first tests revealed an astonishingly rapid effect; the mice recuperated rapidly, the fur became smooth and shiny, the eyes lost their dullness, the whole organism became vigorous instead of contracted and bent, and the tumors ceased to grow or even receded."19
At this point Reich and his colleagues began using the accumulator themselves, and claimed increased vitality and improved health. Reich claimed that the length of exposure that would be beneficial for each person varied and encouraged people to experiment with the duration. Too much orgone he believed was unhealthy. Reich began experimenting with the use of orgone accumulators on cancer patients. In the fifteen cases he worked with between 1941 and 1943, all were in advanced stages of cancer. Three of them died in the time expected by their doctors, six of them lived five to twelve months longer than expected, and the rest were still alive when Reich published his paper on them in 1943. In all cases he claimed that their pain was greatly alleviated and their use of morphine was lessened or eliminated altogether.20
With the outset of the Korean war in the early 1950’s, Reich hoped he could help the war effort with the healing properties he attributed to orgone energy. In particular, he thought orgone may help inoculate people against radiation poisoning. To this end he planned on doing some experiments with mice being exposed to nuclear radiation. In January 1951, Before he attempted this experiment, Reich decided to see what effect it would have if he placed a one milligram unit of pure radium in an orgone accumulator, hoping that perhaps the orgone would counteract the nuclear energy. Soon after he began this experiment, he found the air in the room "charged and oppressive." Before he had begun the experiment, he had tested the area with a Geiger-Muller counter, and the background count for radiation had been 35 counts per minute (cpm), but he now found the meter to be "jammed." Speculating that it may be a problem with the battery, he took it outside to the fresh air, and it resumed reading at 35 cpm. Reich immediately stopped the experiment and removed the radium to a shed 150 feet away from the laboratory. They then aired out the lab, but it didn’t seem to stop the negative effects, although the Geiger-Muller count returned to normal. People reported feeling nausea, dizziness, headaches, loss of appetite, weakness, and numerous other negative symptoms. Reich speculated that instead of the orgone counteracting the nuclear radiation, nuclear energy had instead altered the orgone. He called this new effect "deadly orgone radiation" (DOR) or "oranur."21
In spite of the negative subjective reactions his colleagues were reporting, Reich decided to continue the experiment, and did so for another six days, with increasing negative effects, until he decided that they were too dangerous to pursue any further. The negative effects of the DOR continued to be reported, and in March 1952, Reich and his assistants evacuated Orgonon, working mostly out of their apartments or homes.22
After the "Oranur experiment" Reich noted the area around Orgonon had a quality of bleakness and stillness, and was impressed by what he called "DOR-clouds." These had a similarity to smog, were black and oppressive, and could be present even on otherwise sunny days. Attempting to get rid of these clouds, he created the "cloud-buster," a device he compared to the lightning rod. It was made of long, hollow metal pipes connected by cables to a deep well. He theorized from earlier observations that orgone was attracted to water and clouds could thus be manipulated by the cloud-buster. "Clouds dissipate when the cloud-buster pipes are aimed at their center; they grow when we aim at the close vicinity in the cloud free sky."23
Reich followed these discoveries with a number of demonstrations of the cloud-buster’s effects, many of which he claimed were highly successful.
CRITICISMS OF WILHELM REICH AND ORGONE ENERGY
Orgone energy was and is a controversial subject for many reasons. First of all, if it truly existed, why had no one previously detected it? There are historical precedents to energies resembling orgone, however. Chinese and Japanese herbalists, acupuncturists, and martial artists all claim to manipulate a similar energy with the names "chi" or "ki." Yogis in India speak of a similar energy called "kundalini." Many other cultures have similar parallels; in parts of Africa and Polynesia they have "mana," in some Moslem countries they have "baraka," and some of the Plains Indians they have "wakan." In the sixteenth century, Paracelsus claimed to observe a similar energy he called "munia," in the eighteenth century, Goethe claimed to observe a similar energy he called "Gestaltung."24 Numerous other historical examples exist of a similar elusive life energy, such as Franz Mesmer’s "animal magnetism," Karl Reichenbach’s "odic force," and Walter Kilner’s "human atmosphere."25
Another obvious problem with Reich’s orgone energy ideas is that if they are true, they bring into question many well established paradigms in multiple scientific fields, notably biology and physics. If his claims that the temperature of the air in an orgone accumulator is different than the air around it were proven true, for example, this would seem to defy the second law of thermodynamics. If any of his theories about orgone were shown to be accurate, it would require a lot of rethinking in numerous scientific disciplines.26
In the introduction to Wilhelm Reich in Hell, author Robert Anton Wilson states, "The major serious argument against orgone… is Occam’s Razor. That is, most physicists and biologists do not perceive any need for such a theory, and in science an unnecessary theory is generally considered a meaningless and useless theory."27 However, as Wilson also observes, just because most physicists’ and biologists’ current models do not require the concept of orgone energy to work, this does not mean that they would not benefit from its inclusion. If orgone energy does exist, and is demonstrable as Reich claimed, then these scientists certainly would want to start formulating theories to fit it into their frameworks.
Reich and his orgone energy theories were targets of numerous criticisms from the scientific community and other sources. One of the first of these came on May 26, 1947 in an article by Mildred Edie Brady published in The New Republic. It was titled "The Strange Case of Wilhelm Reich" and subtitled "The man who blames both neuroses and cancer on unsatisfactory sexual activities has been repudiated by only one scientific journal." The journal she refers to was Psychosomatic Medicine , which characterized Reich’s orgone energy as "a surrealistic creation," according to Brady. This article was a criticism of Reich’s entire career, and was a call for the psychiatrists of America to better discipline their field. However, the article misrepresents a number of Reich’s ideas in its criticisms (such as the off base assumption that orgone accumulators were supposed to increase your "orgiastic potency," which Reich never claimed), and most of the criticisms seem to be that the author simply doesn’t like or agree with Reich’s ideas. While the criticism of these ideas is not a problem, Brady seems to think that Reich should not have been allowed to pursue them. Indeed, she argued that Reich should not be allowed to practice psychiatry. The article implies that Reich is either a fraud or he’s crazy, and Brady does not take Reich’s ideas seriously. She also does not attempt to repeat his experiments, which would be the scientific way to judge whether orgone energy is an actual phenomenon or not. Unfortunately, this is a pattern you see repeated with most of Reich’s critics.28 Regardless of whether this article was fair, it was very influential on Reich’s future critics and was a factor that led to Reich’s future problems with the Food and Drug Administration, which will be discussed later.29
Another major critic of Reich’s is Martin Gardner, a member of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). He has written a number of criticisms of Reich since the fifties, the most recent of which appeared in the Fall 1988 Skeptical Inquirer, the journal of CSICOP. Once again, these criticisms misrepresent Reich’s work, paint him as a fraud or a lunatic, and fail to reproduce any of his experiments or refer to any experiments refuting Reich’s theories. The most recent criticism places undue emphasis on Reich’s personal life and Reich’s speculations about UFOs that he claimed to have witnessed, and which has little to do with whether Reich’s ideas about orgone are valid or not. 30 Reich theorized that UFO’s could perhaps be crafts from other planets powered somehow by orgone energy. It should be noted that many thousands of other people have also claimed to have observed UFOs. Even if Reich was incorrect with these ideas, even if Reich became crazy as a three-eyed monkey, it does not necessarily invalidate his other research, especially if his experiments can be reproduced with similar results by other researchers. In Gardner’s book Science: Good, Bad and Bogus, Gardner says, "The reader may wonder why a competent scientist does not publish a detailed refutation of Reich’s absurd biological speculations. The answer is that the informed scientist doesn’t care, and would, in fact, damage his or her reputation by taking the time to undertake such a thankless task."31 It comes as no surprise that Gardner is not a scientist. The entire basis of science rests on experimental testing of hypothesis, and Reich encouraged the testing of his hypotheses. But Gardner claims this is unnecessary because he already knows what the results of the tests will be before anybody does them. Strangely, Gardner also claims he doesn’t believe in precognition.
The cause of scientific innovation is noticing that which has previously been ignored, or to see things in a new light. Treating research in unpopular areas as absurd or off limits discourages innovation, by socially ostracizing those who do pursue these fields of research, and by limiting funding granted to these fields. We are fortunate that many scientists do not share Gardner’s anti-scientific attitude, and have the courage to conduct research in fields that smaller minds may find off limits. Many people have even dared (and many continue to dare) to repeat the "absurd" experiments of Wilhelm Reich.
INDEPENDANT STUDIES ON ORGONE ENERGY
James DeMeo, Ph.D., the director of the Orgone Biophysical Research Lab, claims to have reproduced many of Reich’s experiments with similar results to Reich’s. By October 1988, DeMeo claimed to have participated in over thirty cloud busting experiments, more than half of which took place during drought conditions, and approximately 80% of which were successful in that rain appeared within 48 hours. In addition he has published a Bibliography on Orgone Biophysics covering research people h ave done on orgone energy from 1934 to 1986. It contains over 400 separate citations by more than 100 different authors. The bibliography includes fifty citations for articles supporting Reich’s results on cloud-busting, six studies supporting his ideas about cancer retardation or wound healing from orgone accumulators on lab mice, and numerous other studies supporting Reich’s claims. The bibliography noted one German study called "The Psycho-Physiological Effects of the Reich Orgone Accumulator," a double-blind, controlled study which supported Reich’s theories of beneficial stimulation of the body from accumulated orgone. DeMeo claims, "There has never been, to the best of my knowledge, any researcher who has ever carefully reproduced Reich’s experiments and obtained clearly negative findings."32 Reich’s observations on temperature differences in the accumulator have been replicated in almost 20 studies. Dr. Courtney Baker, a psychiatrist with graduate training in physics, did 204 readings over 15 days, finding positive temperature differences 51% of the time, negative differences 25% of the time, and no difference 24% of the time.33 Many other studies have been published on the World Wide Web, particularly at the Public Orgonomy Research Exchange (PORE) website. Gardner criticizes that nobody has detected orgone energy outside of orgonomy circles. It seems more likely that any person whose data agreed with Reich’s would be labeled an orgonomist by Gardner, whether they were particularly sympathetic to Reich or not. This is, therefore, not really a valid criticism, but rather an attempt to discredit people by calling them names.
The only major studies done that claim to refute Reich were done by doctors and scientists for the Food and Drug Administration. Influenced by Mildred Brady’s negative article on Reich in The New Republic, Reich was investigated by the FDA. It is interesting to note that in all of the testimonials the FDA received from users of the accumulator, there were no negative reports.
One study was performed by Dr. Kurt Lion, testing the temperature differences inside the accumulator, to see if they were higher, as Reich claimed. He found no positive temperature differences, although he did find a number of negative temperature differences. According to physics, there should be no temperature differences, hotter or colder. Lion also did not make it clear whether he followed all of the requirements of Reich’s study. For example, he didn’t say how he achieved an even room temperature, which, if done by air conditioning, would supposedly effect the orgone energy in the room. Reich himself sometimes got negative readings, which he attributed to weather conditions which he claimed lessened the orgone in the atmosphere, such as rain.34
The FDA also studied the effects that the accumulator had on cancer patients in various hospitals. However, their testing once again failed to follow Reich’s requirements. For example, they often only had patients sit in the accumulator a few times. One 64 year old woman with cancer of the large intestine and pelvis was treated four times with the accumulator for 20 minutes each time. She died shortly after this. Reich never claimed that using the accumulator for such a serious condition would cause improvements in such a short time, and he never claimed orgone cured cancer, but rather improved the health of those who had cancer. Indeed, most of Reich’s patients with cancer died from it as well, but he claimed orgone exposure gave them a longer and less painful life. The tests also ignored Reich’s emphasis that radioactive substances such as X-rays and radium should be nowhere near the accumulator, as they would produce DOR. One of the doctors conducting these studies, Dr. Frank H. Krusen wrote, "It was very difficult for me to bring myself to take the time to prepare this report because of the fact that this quackery is of such a fantastic nature that it hardly seems worthwhile to refute the ridiculous claims of its proponents."35 With such close-mindedness towards Reich’s ideas, the lack of care in reproducing his tests comes as no surprise.
These and other poorly replicated studies led the FDA in 1956 to take Wilhelm Reich to court for fraud, as they claimed orgone did not exist, and for the sale and rental of orgone accumulators across state lines.
On May 25, 1956, Reich was sentenced to two years in prison and a $50,000 fine to the Wilhelm Reich Foundation. It was also ordered that his scientific equipment and orgone accumulators be destroyed, and his scientific papers and books burned. On June 5, FDA agents went to Orgonon and ordered Reich’s coworkers to chop up his accumulators with axes. All the accumulators that had been shipped out had to be recalled and destroyed. On June 26, the FDA forced a worker at the company that built the accumulators to burn 251 pieces of literature about orgone. On August 23, they made other colleagues of Reich’s burn six tons of Reich’s work, some of which were books not having directly to do with orgone. One colleague, Victor Sobey, commented, "I felt like people who, when they are to be executed, are made to dig their own graves…" Three other cases of court ordered book burnings of Reich’s work continued into the 1960’s. On November 3, 1957, Reich was found dead in his prison cell from heart failure. It was illegal to reprint his works for a number of years after his death.36
Reading this paper may make one assume that I agree with Reich’s ideas and theories. This is not the case. I have no idea what to believe about Reich’s findings. I have done no studies myself and have not seen enough data to pass any kind of definitive judgment. While science is probably our most accurate and precise way of looking at the world, it still has severe limitations, and no system of observation could ever be entirely objective. All observations we make must first be filtered through our senses, and then analyzed by our reason. Since neither senses nor reason are infallible, no observation made using them is infallible. Various experiments in quantum mechanics have emphasized this fact, such as the observation that photons and electrons can appear to be acting as either particles or waves depending upon how you observe them.37 The purpose of science is not to find definite answers or beliefs. That is the result of dogmatism. It is rather to propose hypotheses and attempt to disprove them, thus forming generalizations about the way things seem to be based on our observations. It would seem that this is what Wilhelm Reich was doing in his experimentation. His critics, however, seem to believe they know definite answers. How they could know these answers without duplicating Reich’s research seems far more mysterious than Reich’s orgone.
However, whether Reich’s ideas were right or wrong is really irrelevant. For science to progress as it should, it requires a free flow of ideas. Reich should not have been imprisoned, his equipment should not have been destroyed, and his books and papers should not have been burned. As Reich put it, "I would like to plead for my right to investigate natural phenomena without having any guns pointed at me. I also ask for the right to be wrong without being hanged for it."38
It would be comforting to think that Reich’s case is an isolated example. However, suppression of scientific knowledge has a long history, going back at least to the times of Bruno, Galileo, and Copernicus, and shows no signs of stopping now. Both Edison’s electric light and the Wright Brothers’ airplane were widely believed to be fraudulent when they were first invented. "Experts" were so certain that the laws of physics made heavier than air flight impossible that they rejected the Wright Brothers’ claims without the bother of actually examining the evidence themselves. Even two years after their first flight, and in spite of numerous public demonstrations, the Wrights were ridiculed as a hoax in the January 1906 Scientific American.39 One notable example of suppressed science in recent years is the theory of continental drift, which was initially rejected and ridiculed by the scientific community, but has come to be accepted in recent years as probable. In March 1989, Professors Martin Fleishmann and Stanley Pons claimed to have observed a process they called "cold fusion." This process they claimed could produce usable amounts of energy in a glass of water at room temperature through what seemed to be a nuclear process. Scientists were skeptical, and many were actively hostile to their announcement, some publicly accusing Fleishmann and Pons of fraud. Researchers at MIT and Harwell, two institutions where billions of dollars in research money had gone into researching "hot fusion," soon claimed that Fleishmann’s and Pons’ results could not be reproduced. It was soon discovered that researchers at MIT had manipulated the results of their study. Based on these studies, however, little subsequent research money could be found for cold fusion, and the US patent office still relies on the MIT study in rejecting all patent claims having to do with cold fusion. In the meantime, at least 92 studies at various other universities and corporations have replicated the cold fusion reactions of the initial study. A European fusion scientist, Dr. Paul Henri Rebut, complained of Fleishmann and Pons, "To accept their claims one would have to unlearn all the physics we have learnt in the last century."40 Obviously, Dr. Rebut is quite comfortable with his model, and does not wish to have cold fusion rocking his boat, regardless of whether his model is right or not.
One could argue that science is self correcting, and ideas that are valid will eventually come to be accepted. It is possible that this is often so, but such a statement cannot be proven or falsified. One is left wondering how many valid scientific ideas are simply ignored because they do not fit in current paradigms, and are rather unlikely to ever be accepted by the scientific community. As I have already noted, ideas that are not accepted by the scientific community at large are unlikely to be funded, and without funding it is unlikely research will be pursued in these areas. This ignoring of unpopular ideas is certainly the case with orgone, in spite of hundreds of studies claiming his research is valid. Some other scientists whose research seems to have inspired some degree of scientific suppression in recent years include Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky, two time Nobel Prize winner Dr. Linus Pauling, and Dr. Rupert Sheldrake. It is interesting to note that Sheldrake’s theories have to do with a "morphogenetic field," another field surrounding the Earth, and are in that sense similar to Reich’s ideas about orgone. The prestigious science journal Nature, in its September 24, 1981 issue published an article about one of Sheldrake’s books titled "A Book For Burning."41 The interested reader is referred to the informative books The New Inquisition by Robert Anton Wilson and Alternative Science by Richard Milton for further reading on these subjects, and many other subjects covered in this paper.
The most obvious agents of this apparent scientific suppression are, ironically, the so-called "skeptics organizations," the most notable of which is the aforementioned CSICOP. CSICOP has some famous scientists in its ranks, such as Stephen Jay Gould and Carl Sagan. But it should be noted that many of the members are not scientists, and that thirteen of CSICOP’s members are magicians, including three on the Executive Council of the Committee, "The Amazing" James Randi, Ray Hyman, and the aforementioned Martin Gardner. Magicians professionally manipulate the truth in an entertaining fashion, which would also seem to be the major tactic of CSICOP. Indeed, the skeptics groups grew out of magicians groups, and magicians have over 400 years of history of controversy with the paranormal.42
While true skepticism is absolutely essential to good science, the members of CSICOP are not truly skeptical, but rather "prove" exactly that which they already hold to be true. These fellows apparently have no skepticism about their own skepticism. In their eagerness to show people to be frauds, cranks and "pseudo-scientists," they throw good science out the window, selectively ignoring evidence, failing to reproduce experiments, and not allowing people with differing viewpoints a forum for rebuttal.
I have already given examples of Martin Gardner of CSICOP ignoring evidence in the Reich case, and this selective ignorance is also apparent in CSICOP's lack of attention to papers presented in respectable science journals showing supporting evidence for psychic abilities. As far as actual scientific research goes, CSICOP has a policy of not conducting research itself. This policy was implemented after CSICOP did research about the "Mars Effect" theory in the "pseudo-science" astrology. The story behind this is quite revealing in what it shows us about the attitudes prevailing in the organized "skeptics groups."
A French statistician, Michael Gauquelin, had published a statistical sampling which seemed to support the Mars Effect theory. The Mars Effect makes the claim that of the twelve positions that Mars occupies in the sky, two of them are particularly favorable for great athletes to be born during. Statistically, there should have been approximately 2/12 or approximately 17% of the athletes observed born in that range, but Gauquelin found 22%. The statistical odds against this occurring by chance are several million to one.
CSICOP set out to "debunk" Gauquelin’s statistics. The CSICOP report claimed to prove that 22% of sports champions were born in this time period because 22% of all humans were born in this time period. However the research did not prove this, the result was obtained by rearranging the figures, particularly by reducing the number of athletes in the study from 2088 to a selectively chosen 303. Indeed, when the entire 2088 athletes are returned to the data, they confirm Gauquelin’s findings.
When the CSICOP Executive Council member and astronomer Dennis Rawlins found out about this statistical fraud, he attempted to correct the error. The rest of CSICOP chose to ignore him, and The Skeptical Inquirer refused to publish a letter by Rawlins regarding the affair, even though he was the Associate Editor of the journal. When Rawlins did another study about the Mars Effect which did contradict Gauquelin’s findings, The Skeptical Inquirer was glad to publish it, but wouldn’t let him note the mistakes of the original report. When they published the article, they failed to publish a disclaimer that they had agreed to publish that stated they had censored his article.
At this point Rawlins asked for a group of "impartial referees" to look at the matter. When the CSICOP appointed referees looked at the data, they agreed that the original report was seriously flawed, and confirmed Gauquelin’s data. CSICOP then refused to print the referees’ report.
Rawlins was subsequently forced out of the Committee, and published an article about the whole affair in the October 1981 issue of Fate, the same month CSICOP instituted its no research policy.43
In James DeMeo’s response to Martin Gardner’s 1988 criticism of Reich he notes that the editors of The Skeptical Inquirer not only refused to publish his response, but wouldn’t even acknowledge that he had sent them a letter and rebuttal. 44
One of the founding fathers of CSICOP, Professor Marcello Truzzi, a sociologist, resigned from CSICOP over their lack of objectivity, and has referred to it as "an advocacy body upholding orthodox establishment views." He published his own scientific journal, The Zetetic Scholar, where, in a novel fashion, they allowed articles on more than one side of an issue, and encouraged debate.45 In issues 12-13 of The Zetetic Scholar, Truzzi published an article he titled, "On Pseudo-Skepticism." In it he states, "In science, the burden of proof falls upon the claimant; and the more extraordinary a claim, the heavier is the burden of proof demanded. The true skeptic takes an agnostic position, one that says the claim is not proved rather than disproved. He asserts that the claimant has not borne the burden of proof and that science must continue to build its cognitive map of reality without incorporating the extraordinary claim as a new "fact." Since the true skeptic does not assert a claim, he has no burden to prove anything. He just goes on using the established theories of "conventional science" as usual. But if a critic asserts that there is evidence for disproof, that he has a negative hypothesis --saying, for instance, that a seeming psi result was actually due to an artifact--he is making a claim and therefore also has to bear a burden of proof ."46
The reasons for many scientists’ and the skeptical groups’ close-mindedness are hard to fathom. Perhaps some people have a psychological need for certainty in their beliefs. Maybe some scientists fear ideas that change, widen or refute established paradigms, paradigms they may have a great deal of professional or emotional attachment to.
Money, politics and power certainly could be a large part of it. Indeed, some influential "skeptics," such as Martin Gardner and "The Amazing" James Randi have created whole careers out of the skeptics’ movement, and have much financially at stake in it. Politics influence anything humans participate in, and science is no different. There is certainly political motive to ignore orgone. If orgone could help those with cancer, for example, then drug corporations and allopathic physicians would stand to lose a lot of money from their established treatments if orgone accumulators became an acceptable treatment. Power goes beyond money and politics, to the power to influence peoples ideas and beliefs. Science certainly has a great deal of influence on what people believe, and CSICOP and the skeptics groups seem to seek to control these beliefs with the papal authority of a scientific church. Using science properly and open-mindedly, this is not possible, so they have to use "whatever means necessary" to support their established dogmas.
Some claim that incorrect ideas about science and scientific concepts are dangerous. I would argue that what people choose to do with concepts is where the real danger lies. Real science, after all, is what led to the atom bomb. True ideas can be just as dangerous as false ones.
What I do find truly dangerous is the repression of free scientific inquiry. This is the cause of the burning of Wilhelm Reich’s books, this is the cause of the destruction of Wilhelm Reich’s equipment, and this is the cause of Wilhelm Reich dying alone in a prison cell.
"Space travel is bunk."-Sir Harold Spencer Jones, Britain’s Astronomer Royal, two weeks before the Russians launched Sputnik I. 47
"Science is a maw, or a headless and limbless stomach, an amoeba-like gut that maintains itself by incorporating the assimilable and rejecting the indigestible." -Charles Fort.48
Wilhelm Reich and His Amazing Orgone is copyright 1997 by Steven Stwalley.
1 Selected Writings: An Introduction to Orgonomy By Wilhelm Reich. Glossary.
2 Selected Writings: An Introduction to Orgonomy By Wilhelm Reich.. Biographical Note.
3 The New Inquisition By Robert Anton Wilson. P.41.
4 Fury On Earth By Myron Sharaf. Chapter 20.
5 Fury On Earth By Myron Sharaf. Chapter 17.
6 Sexual Radicals By Paul A. Robinson. P.63.
7 Fury On Earth By Myron Sharaf. Chapter 17.
8 Ibid.
9 Selected Writings: An Introduction to Orgonomy By Wilhelm Reich. P.198.
10 Fury On Earth By Myron Sharaf. P.278.
11 Selected Writings: An Introduction to Orgonomy By Wilhelm Reich. Chapter 4.
12 Ibid.
13 The Orgone Accumulator Handbook: Construction Plans, Experimental Use, and Protection Against Toxic Energy By James DeMeo, Ph.D. Chapter 5.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 Fury On Earth By Myron Sharaf. P. 283-288.
17 Fury On Earth By Myron Sharaf. Chapter 22.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid.
21 Fury On Earth By Myron Sharaf. Chapter 26.
22 Ibid.
23 Selected Writings: An Introduction to Orgonomy By Wilhelm Reich. P.447.
24 Wilhelm Reich In Hell By Robert Anton Wilson. P.29.
25 Alternative Science By Richard Milton. P.64-67.
26 Fury On Earth By Myron Sharaf. Chapter 21.
27 Wilhelm Reich In Hell By Robert Anton Wilson. P.31.
28 "The Strange Case of Wilhelm Reich" By Mildred Edie Brady. The New Republic, May 26,1947, p.20-23
29 Fury On Earth By Myron Sharaf. P.360-361.
30 "Reich the Rainmaker: The Orgone Obsession" by Martin Gardner. The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol.13 No.1.
31 . Science: Good, Bad and Bogus By Martin Gardner. P.10.
32 "Response to Martin Gardner’s Attack on Reich and Orgone Research in The Skeptical Inquirer." By James DeMeo, Ph.D. Pulse of the Planet No.1.
33 Fury On Earth By Myron Sharaf. P.288
34 Fury On Earth By Myron Sharaf. P.288-291.
35 Fury On Earth By Myron Sharaf. P.414-418.
36 Fury On Earth By Myron Sharaf. Chapters 31-32.
37 The New Inquisition by Robert Anton Wilson. P.176-178.
38 Fury On Earth By Myron Sharaf. P.366.
39 Alternative Science By Richard Milton. P.11-13.
40 Alternative Science By Richard Milton. Chapter 3.
41 The New Inquisition By Robert Anton Wilson. P.92.
42 "CSICOP and the Skeptics: An Overview." By George P. Hansen. Journal of the American Society For Psychical Research, January 1992, Vol.86.
43 The New Inquisition By Robert Anton Wilson. P. 45-47.
44 "Response to Martin Gardner’s Attack on Reich and Orgone Research in The Skeptical Inquirer." By James DeMeo, Ph.D. Pulse of the Planet No.1.
45 The New Inquisition By Robert Anton Wilson. P. 47-48.
46 "On Pseudo-Skepticism" By Marcello Truzzi. The Zetetic Scholar. No. 12-13.
47 Alternative Science By Richard Milton. P.22.
48 The Complete Books of Charles Fort By Charles Fort. P.628.
Books:
1) DeMeo, James, The Orgone Accumulator Handbook: Construction Plans, Experimental Use, and Protection Against Toxic Energy,1989.
Chapters 5-11 available at: http://www.math.utah.edu/~goodman/orgone.html
2) Fort, Charles, The Complete Books of Charles Fort, Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1974.
3) Gardner, Martin, Fads & Fallacies In the Name of Science, Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1957.
4) Gardner, Martin, Science: Good, Bad and Bogus, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, New York, 1981.
5) Milton, Richard, Alternative Science, Park Street Press, Rochester, Vermont, 1996.
6) Reich, Ilse Ollendorff, Wilhelm Reich: A Personal Biography, St. Martin’s Press: New York, 1969.
7) Reich, Peter, A Book of Dreams, Harper & Row: New York, 1973.
8) Reich, Wilhelm, Character Analysis, The Noonday Press: New York, 1961.
9) Reich, Wilhelm, Selected Writings: An Introduction to Orgonomy, Farrar, Straus and Giroux: New York, 1973.
10) Robinson, Paul A., The Sexual Radicals, Temple Smith: London, 1970.
11) Sharaf, Myron, Fury On Earth, St. Martin’s Press: New York, 1983.
12) Wilson, Robert Anton, The New Inquisition, New Falcon Publications: Scottsdale, AZ, 1991.
13) Wilson, Robert Anton, Wilhelm Reich In Hell, New Falcon Publications: Phoenix, AZ, 1990.
1) Brady, Mildred Edie, "The Strange Case of Wilhelm Reich." The New Republic, May 26, 1947, P.20-23.
2) DeMeo, James, "Response to Martin Gardner’s Attack on Reich and Orgone Research in The Skeptical Inquirer." Pulse of the Planet, 1989, No.1.
Article available at: http:// id.mind.net:80/community/orgonelab/gardner.htm
3) Gardner, Martin, "Reich the Rainmaker: The Orgone Obsession." The Skeptical Inquirer, Fall 1988, Vol.13 No.1.
Article available at: http://www.garlic.com:80/ufo/txt1/891.ufo
4) Hansen, George P., "CSICOP and the Skeptics: An Overview." Journal of the American Society For Psychical Research, January 1992, vol. 86.
Article available at: ftp://ftp.rutgers.edu/pub/ufo/csicop-and-skeptic
Part 2 at: ftp://ftp.rutgers.edu/pub/ufo/csicop-and-skeptic.2
5) Rawlins, Dennis, "sTARBABY." Fate, October 1991.
Article available at: ftp://ftp.primenet.com/pub/lippard/rawlins-starbaby
6) Truzzi, Marcello, "On Pseudo-Skepticism." The Zetetic Scholar, 1987, No.12-13.
Article available at: http://cloud9.net/%7Epatrick/anomalist/pseudo.html
http://www.math.utah.edu/~goodman/orgone.html
2) Public Orgonomic Research Exchange (PORE)-
http://w3.ime.net/~pore/index.html
3) Orgone Biophysical Research Lab-
http://id.mind.net/community/orgonelab/index.htm
http://www.somtel.com/~wreich/index.html
5) Another Orgone Research Laboratory (AORL)-
http://www. geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/2514/
http://id.mind.net/community/orgonelab/f_biblio.htm
http://cloud9.net/%7Epatrick/anomalist/welcome.html
http://www.forteantimes.com/
9) FortPages-
http://www.clas.ufl.edu/anthro/fortpages/fortpages.html
10) Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP)-
http://www.csicop.org/
http://www.skeptic.com/ss-skeptic.html
12) The Skeptic-
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/skeptic/
13) Sources of Skeptical Information on the Internet-
http://www.primenet.com/%7Elippard/skeptical.html#archives-critiques
This Page is copyright 1997 by Steven Stwalley.
EMAIL: monkey23@avalon.net