N Ray - Significance

Significance

The incident is used as a cautionary tale among scientists on the dangers of error introduced by experimenter bias. More precisely, patriotism was at the heart of this self-deception. France had been defeated by the Germans in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, and after the major discovery by Wilhelm Röntgen of the X Ray the race was on for new discoveries.

N-rays were cited as an example of pathological science by Irving Langmuir. However, the case is far more interesting than a single event, because nearly identical properties of an equally unknown radiation had been recorded about 50 years before in another country by Carl Reichenbach in his treatise Researches on Magnetism, Electricity, Heat, Light, Crystallization, and Chemical Attraction in their relations to the Vital Force in 1850, and before that in Vienna by Franz Mesmer in his Mémoire on the Discovery of Animal-Magnetism in 1779. It is clear that Reichenbach was aware of Mesmer's work and that researchers in Paris working with Blondlot were aware of Reichenbach's work, although there is no proof that Blondlot was personally aware of it.

A park in downtown Nancy is named after Blondlot. He left his house and garden to the city which transformed it into a public park. This can be seen as appropriate since he made significant contributions to physics before the N-ray debacle. James Randi reported that many citizens of Nancy and members of the faculty at the university did not remember having heard about N-rays or of Blondlot.