Sir

Gottfried and Wilson1 remark critically that “SSK [sociology of scientific knowledge] accounts often treat only the earliest phases of a scientific development, when the evidence is uncertain, and largely ignore subsequent convincing confirmations”. This is true of controversy studies in SSK, but not of one of the books at issue, my own Constructing Quarks2. There I documented and analysed the history of the establishment of the standard model as the ‘new orthodoxy’ in elementary particle physics.

Ellis3 makes a similar mistake, and adds that he would “also like [me] to document and compare more thoroughly the rejection by the scientific community of false ‘discoveries’”. I have published essays on discredited ‘discoveries’ of magnetic monopoles and isolated quarks, and on the ultimately unsuccessful theoretical arguments that the new particles (the J/psi and so on) were manifestations of quark colour rather than charm (see, for example, ref. 4). The analysis in those essays goes along the same lines as that of Constructing Quarks, and if Ellis wants to dispute it, I will be happy to respond.

Capasso5 is mistaken in asserting that successful technology “validates the specific theories on which it is founded”. A machine works because it works, not because of what anybody thinks about it6. And, as I believe Gottfried and Wilson recognize, Capasso's idea that technology owes everything to prior science is as historically misleading as its inverse. In short, the continuing criticism of science studies in your pages remains wide of its mark.