Talk:Royal Rife

I'm out of this one

Thanks for the ride, guys. I've now learned the definition of WP:WikiLawyering from firsthand experience, which I can define as "knowing the policy of WP:Ignore_all_rules and blindly and pedantically following one's prejudices anyhow." If this were happening only occasionally or on a distributed basis across all the entries I've made to Wikipedia, it could be construed as accidental; however, where there is a concentration of several persons on one entry doing this on a daily basis, I can only assume that they have a vested interest in the viewpoint they are pushing.

Since I have no vested interest here, I don't need the aggravation. Wikipedia has lost status as an impartial resource in my eyes, and has also lost an editor. Haiqu (talk) 20:07, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

sorry, Haiqu; this was a bad page to cut your teeth on. most of wikipedia isn't like this, but fringe topics have a poor track record with respect to civility, on all sides. unfortunate, but true. try editing something non-contentious for a while; you seem intelligent, and you could probably contribute a lot. come back to this after you've settle in a bit. --Ludwigs2 05:32, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I would agree that this article is so extremely biased that it does the subject matter little good. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.234.206.14 (talk) 01:37, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Edit request

{{editsemiprotected}} Current research which validates Royal Rife's findings:

http://www.livescience.com/health/080205-virus-shattering.html

Scientists may one day be able to destroy viruses in the same way that opera singers presumably shatter wine glasses. New research mathematically determined the frequencies at which simple viruses could be shaken to death.

"The capsid of a virus is something like the shell of a turtle," said physicist Otto Sankey of Arizona State University. "If the shell can be compromised [by mechanical vibrations], the virus can be inactivated." Recent experimental evidence has shown that laser pulses tuned to the right frequency can kill certain viruses. However, locating these so-called resonant frequencies is a bit of trial and error.

"Experiments must just try a wide variety of conditions and hope that conditions are found that can lead to success," Sankey told LiveScience.

To expedite this search, Sankey and his student Eric Dykeman have developed a way to calculate the vibrational motion of every atom in a virus shell. From this, they can determine the lowest resonant frequencies.

As an example of their technique, the team modeled the satellite tobacco necrosis virus and found this small virus resonates strongly around 60 Gigahertz (where one Gigahertz is a billion cycles per second), as reported in the Jan. 14 issue of Physical Review Letters.

A virus' death knell

All objects have resonant frequencies at which they naturally oscillate. Pluck a guitar string and it will vibrate at a resonant frequency.

But resonating can get out of control. A famous example is the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which warped and finally collapsed in 1940 due to a wind that rocked the bridge back and forth at one of its resonant frequencies.

Viruses are susceptible to the same kind of mechanical excitation. An experimental group led by K. T. Tsen from Arizona State University have recently shown that pulses of laser light can induce destructive vibrations in virus shells.

"The idea is that the time that the pulse is on is about a quarter of a period of a vibration," Sankey said. "Like pushing a child on a swing from rest, one impulsive push gets the virus shaking."

It is difficult to calculate what sort of push will kill a virus, since there can be millions of atoms in its shell structure. A direct computation of each atom's movements would take several hundred thousand Gigabytes of computer memory, Sankey explained.

He and Dykeman have found a method to calculate the resonant frequencies with much less memory.

In practice

The team plans to use their technique to study other, more complicated viruses. However, it is still a long way from using this to neutralize the viruses in infected people.

One challenge is that laser light cannot penetrate the skin very deeply. But Sankey imagines that a patient might be hooked up to a dialysis-like machine that cycles blood through a tube where it can be hit with a laser. Or perhaps, ultrasound can be used instead of lasers.

These treatments would presumably be safer for patients than many antiviral drugs that can have terrible side-effects. Normal cells should not be affected by the virus-killing lasers or sound waves because they have resonant frequencies much lower than those of viruses, Sankey said.

Moreover, it is unlikely that viruses will develop resistance to mechanical shaking, as they do to drugs.

"This is such a new field, and there are so few experiments, that the science has not yet had sufficient time to prove itself," Sankey said. "We remain hopeful but remain skeptical at the same time."—Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.9.65.183 (talk • contribs) 03:54, March 15, 2009 (UTC)

 Done I added a line at the end of the intro about it.--Aervanath (talk) 05:54, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

This is not a good edit. First of all, the source says nothing - nothing - about Royal Rife, so at best this is straightforward original synthesis. Secondly, presenting this LiveScience article as "vindication" of Royal Rife makes no sense. It's like pointing to a Boeing 737 to vindicate a guy who thought that people would someday take flight by strapping wings to their arms and flapping hard. MastCell ^Talk 06:35, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Agree with mastcell - there was really no consensus for this edit. --Ludwigs2 18:04, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Edit Request (2)

" These 'small turquoise bodies' are now known to have been the cells of the bacterium Salmonella typhi, which causes typhoid fever.[9] " The source listed does not support this claim, rather presents and refutes it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.26.243.56 (talk) 23:54, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Done by Ward20 (talk · contribs). - 2/0 (cont.) 05:36, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Does a Swiss medical study on cancer validate Royal Rife's medical treatment claims?

In Google searching for >Alexandre Barbault Lausanne Switzerland< we come across a series of articles some of which are entitled "Rife Revisited" (among other things). Currently Google.ca hit number 2 is the page Pub Med PMID: 19366446 that is a medical science study indexed by Pub Med that mentions this same researcher's name.

Does it not state (2009 Apr 14) that various EM frequency emissions were used experimentally on slightly less than 1600 163 clinical, late stage cancer patients?

Amplitude-modulated electromagnetic fields for the treatment of cancer: discovery of tumor-specific frequencies and assessment of a novel therapeutic approach.

... CONCLUSION: Cancer-related frequencies appear to be tumor-specific and treatment with tumor-specific frequencies is feasible, well tolerated and may have biological efficacy in patients with advanced cancer.

— Pub Med PMID: 19366446

I move that any mention of “pseudoscience” for this article be seriously reconsidered since Rife's research coincides with the topic and results of this scientific revelation.

What is the level of credibility of Quackwatch, ACS, NCI, and pharmaceutical drug-oriented news items / writings / pieces regarding this topic?

Should these misleading stories that seemingly defend costly pharmaceutical drug, chronic disease treatment, and disputing Rife's treatment claims be purged from the article?

And if not, why?--since these stories don't seem to provide any other grounds for the treatments not to have worked other than the “valued medical opinions” of financially-interested (a.k.a. conflict of interest), drug-oriented medical practitioners, not even scientists who have attempted any research, and who dismissed all previous scientifically published claims by Dr. Arthur Isaac Kendall of Northwestern University and Rife of the time--nor any claims of many other scientists who experimentally found both negative and positive biological effects of EM radiation? I seem to recall that Nikola Tesla had made such claims a very long time ago--circa 1890s when researching the precursor to the Lakhovsky multiple wave oscillator (MWO)? Oldspammer (talk) 02:06, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Can we not immediately claim every tangentially related, preliminary Phase I trial from an obscure journal as vindication for Royal Rife? I won't bother asking for an end to the conspiracy theories, because thta is clearly beyond the realm of possibility for this talk page. Has anyone linked these results to Royal Rife - I mean, any reliable sources? Besides, the details of this study is extremely curious. Are they serious when they say that 7 patients provided "oral informed consent" only - that is, they were treated with an entirely experimental therapy without written informed consent, and presumably without the approval of an institutional review board? And 60% of the treated patients were "not available for response assessment"? When a patient with advanced cancer is "not available for response assessment", they are best considered a treatment failure for the purposes of actuarial analysis. I also don't see how they can make sweeping claims about the safety and tolerability of this treatment when they lost more than half of their patients to follow-up. The handful of documented responses are interesting, certainly, but it may be a bit soon to rewrite the textbooks, and it's absolutely editorial synthesis to cast this as some sort of vindication for Royal Rife. MastCell ^Talk 05:50, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Omissions

What about the trial?

What happened to the research and microscopes?

Where are the citations for each claim that the research was not independently verified? What were the attempts to independently verify the claims?

A clear line should be drawn between Rife and fraudulent businesses that use his name. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.255.199.12 (talk) 00:55, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Modern revival, marketing, and health fraud

This section is getting way too much weight for an article about Royal Rife. Ward20 (talk) 00:38, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree. Royal Rife had nothing to do with these machines. I don't know why most of the article is about people selling machines that he was not involved in, had no part in designing or making. A small section about how people have used his reputation to sell machines would be appropriate, but putting more details about this than about Royal Rife is totally inappropriate. --stmrlbs|talk 01:15, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

The machines are marketed by using his name and his claims. If "most of the article" is about these machines, that's because the only coverage this topic has in independent, reliable sources concerns the fraudulent marketing of these devices. If you took out the material on Rife devices, there would be essentially zero independent reliable sources here, and the article would fail pretty much every content and notability guideline even more epically than it already does. I guess what I'm saying is that we follow the reliable sources. They tell us that Rife is notable mostly for the fact that his name has been leveraged to defraud ill people. One could argue that this article should be renamed to Rife devices, to reflect the balance of reliably sourced coverage, but to exclude the reliably sourced material would be the wrong way to go, assuming the goal here is to produce a serious reference work. MastCell ^Talk 03:55, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Mastcell, you say "They tell us that Rife is notable mostly for the fact that his name has been leveraged to defraud ill people". Who is They? --stmrlbs|talk 04:27, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

There's as much or more verifiable material in, "THE SMITHSONIAN REPORT" From the Annual Report of the Board of Regents of The Smithsonian Institution - 1944, "The New Microscopes", by R.E. Seidel, M.D. and M. Elizabeth Winter, Journal of The Franklin Institute, Vol. 237, Feb. 1944., Observations on bacillus Typhosus in Its Filterable State and "Observations with the Rife Microscope of Filter-Passing Forms of Microorganisms" in Science Magazine Aug. 26th 1932 in real WP:RS sources, as there is about bogus forms of machines bearing his name. There is also this one that seems to be promising. I've not found the full text on, "Suppression, bias, and selection in science: The case of cancer research Accountability in Research," Volume 6, Issue 4 July 1999 , pages 245 - 257. There is also this interesting book review but I don't know if it meets WP:RS http://www.nzma.org.nz/journal/116-1177/507/content.pdf Ward20 (talk) 07:20, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I think there is a limited amount we can wring out of a 65-year-old report or a 75-year-old primary journal article, though the age and obsolescence of these sources have not stopped other editors from trying to pretend that they are the last word on current scientific knowledge. Stmrlbs, "they" are the reliable secondary sources cited in the article. There aren't many of them, but if you can't identify them by scanning the article, I will list them here.

My biggest problem with this entire article and discussion page is simple: it represents a focused and sustained effort to promote and advocate for this subject, rather than an effort to produce a serious, respectable reference work drawing from independent, reliable sources and reflecting the current state of human knowledge. That bugs me, I guess. MastCell ^Talk 01:31, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

My problem with this premise is that we are talking about a scientist of the 1930s, and therefore documentation on him is going to be from this time. I agree, the article should not be about advocating the theories - that is not what Wikipedia is about (even though I see plenty of this on both sides of the alternative fence on Wikipedia), a fair article about Royal Rife has to involve past documents. First, you have to fairly state just what his theories were, before you can talk about the current state of human knowledge and how this relates to his theories. This article really does none of that. But, to be honest, I think trying to present his theories - not trying to prove or disprove them, just presenting them, is a lost cause, because even that will be seen as "advocacy". --stmrlbs|talk 02:14, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Of the 1930s, yes. A scientist? No. Midgley (talk) 00:14, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

No, the problem is that a group of editors refuse to contextualize Rife as a scientist of the 1930s. An honest characterization would inform the reader that his ideas were little-investigated even during his heyday, and have completely dropped off the scientific radar since the 1940s. Instead, this article and talk page basically consist of a sustained effort to obscure or downplay that obvious truth in favor of obscure, unsourced fringe claims. MastCell ^Talk 03:17, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

rife.org

rife.org seems to be listed as malware-related by Google as well as Avast Antivirus. The link to rife.org should be changed to rife.de.

 Done by User:Stmrlbs. AJCham 02:15, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Australia has a cure for cancer!!!???

The wiki states "In Australia, the use of Rife machines has been blamed for the deaths of cancer patients who could have been cured with conventional therapy."

"Conventional therapy" is surgical tumor removal, radiation, and chemotherapy (radiation in a pill). These are not even treatments for cancer, only for the symptom of tumor. Australia, according to this article has a "cure", and not just any cure, but a cure that is carried out by means of these three "conventional therapies".

The cancer lobby groups (AMA, ACA, etc...) have put themselves in over their heads on this one. It should be noted in the wiki that their claims, critical of Royal Rife and otherwise, are substantially invalid. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dream2000 (talk • contribs) 19:47, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Rife microscope and holography

Dennis Gabor, the father of holography, is featured on Google today. Of interest is the fact that he developed the theory of holography back in 1947 (years before the laser) through experiments using a heavily filtered mercury arc light. Rife's use of a mercury arc light in his microscope is explicit here. AJRG (talk) 11:25, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Relevant PhD thesis (especially page 60 forwards) discussing direct imaging at the atomic scale using an X-ray photoelectron diffraction self hologram technique. AJRG (talk) 22:38, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Pending changes

This article is one of a number selected for the early stage of the trial of the Wikipedia:Pending Changes system on the English language Wikipedia. All the articles listed at Wikipedia:Pending changes/Queue are being considered for level 1 pending changes protection.

The following request appears on that page:

Comments on the suitability of theis page for "Penfding changes" would be appreciated.

Please update the Queue page as appropriate.

Note that I am not involved in this project any much more than any other editor, just posting these notes since it is quite a big change, potentially

Regards, Rich Farmbrough, 23:53, 16 June 2010 (UTC).

Cancer rates caused by germs link and percentages

The wiki article of Cancer has been updated some time ago. It increased the percentage of cancer cases due to infections. A number of infomercials have been broadcast recently that state that beyond carcinogens like tobacco smoking, infections are the next greatest triggers / causes for cancers citing a female researcher--See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Cancer/Archive_4#This_article_is_cited_by_the_Royal_Rife_article

In section http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Rife#Cancer_and_disease_treatment_claims , the figure of this Royal Rife article had been quoting an older figure of 15% should now be updated to what the linked cancer article specifies: 20% -- and have the link changed to the new link to the renamed section in that cancer article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer#Infection rather than the old one from a while prior to these cancer article updates.

A small part of the reason why the cancer article had to be updated was because of the work of the relatively recent Nobel Prize (Medicine) winning researchers who affirmed / confirmed prior theories that GI tract ulcers were caused by Helicobacter pylori bacterial infections, when mainstream opinion was seriously mistaken ("reversing decades of medical doctrine which held that ulcers were caused by stress, spicy foods, and too much acid.").

Virus, bacteria, mycoplasma, fungus were thought not to be able to persist in various parts of the body without (symptoms) the immune system attacking and destroying them, but it turns out that some of these things are chronic infections some of which can trigger or serve as a co-factors in causing cancer. In Rife's day, military germ warfare labs had not developed the sophistication of recent decades so that fewer such disease agents existed in those days. Oldspammer (talk) 04:30, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

OK. If a reasonably reliable independent source credits Rife in some way, or even draws a link between him and the current understanding of infection-mediated carcinogenesis, then let's discuss that source here for possible incorporation into the article. MastCell ^Talk 16:19, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

"OK?" Please carefully re-read the archived talk page for the cancer article linked above? WP:RS are linked there. Verbiage of the Rife article DOES NOT materially change. (I was too slow, and an edit conflict delayed this entry) Oldspammer (talk) 21:24, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

There's also a more general issue here, which is that some of the material used to debunk Rife's theories now carries less weight because science has moved on. For example, the alleged resolution limit for optical microscopes has recently been breached. It was done based on the 1931 doctoral dissertation of a future Nobel prize winner who had that year moved to America. As another example, the future Nobel prize winner Dennis Gabor in 1947 used a heavily filtered mercury arc light to invent holography. AJRG (talk) 18:58, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Information supportive of Rife is ALWAYS gone pretty quickly. Extensive article history shows mention of 2-photon microscopes was in there, then deleted. Also, the Gaston Naessens' Somatoscope mention was deleted. Also, other optical virus microscopes mention was deleted. Physicist's report of Rife microscope theory of operation was in there--gone. Description of the components of the microscope as outlined in the reports--gone. Mention of Rife-contemporary and modern day scientists supporting certain of Rife's theories--gone. Clinical trials of the Beam Ray were in there--gone. Particulars of Beam Ray Corporation court case trial--gone. Explanations of the historical events surrounding conspiracy theories regarding Rife--gone. These are "trimmed" on purpose. The article was getting too supportive of Rife (a.k.a. large), and that is not the trend wanted by politically powerful and wealthy interests (that shall go unnamed) and their multitude of unreformed "well educated" minions. If the business "powers that be" and their tax-exempt charitable foundations supported Rife's ideas, he would have been scientifically published / supported too; the disease cures would have been more widely clinically trialled all around the world; microscopes mass produced, and so on. "Royal Raymond Rife" did not get a real doctorate, his microscopes had too many expensive components--were hand made--too small a market--unprofitable to manufacture, nor did Rife build any of those other supposed working optical virus microscopes, nor did Rife prove his prior theories correct by forcibly getting the peer-reviewed, establishment scientific press to publish his findings. Would those findings oppose business interests? Repercussions: stifle drug company profits, stifle grants to universities, stifle funding for research in fields rendered irrelevant, lower disease treatment expenses, inhibit depopulation efforts, possibly open the medical field to "less qualified curing machine operators." I would invite anyone brave or foolish enough to revive any of the deleted material as long as reliable elite rich establishment sources could be cited. Oldspammer (talk) 21:24, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

How much of the removed information was based on independent, reliable secondary sources about Rife? MastCell ^Talk 23:19, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

The court case should be usable. Also, sources don't all have to be independent - once notability is established, other sources are acceptable if used correctly. So Rife's own lab notebook saying what he did might be quotable. AJRG (talk) 00:33, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Er, the only decent and notability-establishing sources discuss "Rife machines" as a particularly invidious form of quackery. What sources, exactly, do you have in mind? MastCell ^Talk 05:33, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

This article isn't about other people's scams - it's about Rife himself. Start here. The last of his microscopes is in the Science Museum in London and the Smithsonian holds an archive (Science Service, Records, 1902-1965, Record Unit 7091, Box 129 of 459, Folder 10 - Rife-Kendall microscope, 1931. News reports of research in bacteriology by Royal Raymond Rife and Arthur Isaac Kendall) AJRG (talk) 09:37, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

That's not totally true. Wikipedia articles are about anything related to the subject. This isn't a biography in the usual sense. It's more than just a biography. Anything about Rife, including (mis)use of his devices, is potentially eligible content. -- Brangifer (talk) 15:30, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

This is indeed an interesting source. It reads, in part:

... one can go to Google and search for Royal Raymond Rife. There you will find a rich assortment of conspiracy theorists and their various attempts to explain how Rife’s ingenious discoveries (including optical microscopic identification (magnification x 31 000) of living viruses and ‘silver bullet’, EMR-frequency therapy for polio, most tumours and viral infections, protozoan, bacterial and fungal diseases, stiff muscles, headaches, motion sickness and ‘prostrate’) have been suppressed by the medical/pharmaceutical establishment.

... which makes me wonder if the author had perused Talk:Royal Rife. MastCell ^Talk 16:34, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Rife was all over the American newspapers in 1931 and 1932, has been the subject of TV programs and has accidentally spawned a whole subculture. Hopefully we can agree that he's personally notable and move on from there. AJRG (talk) 16:48, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

OK, the Rife article was updated to say 20% of cancers caused by infectios, but the cancer article link still is to a section that was renamed (as I initially stated above), and although the link takes you to the cancer article, it does not take you to the infections section (or whatever it is called now). Oldspammer (talk) 02:19, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Fringe Theories

This article has been treated as WP:FRINGE in line with reliable sources. Recently, however, mainstream science has been catching up - notably in the breach of the Abbe resultion limit and the destruction of viruses by electromagnetic means. Of interest is the realisation that the technology involved was (just) available in the 1920's.

What Rife claimed to be doing was therefore not impossible per se, and so reliable sources that claim impossibility should now be given less weight. AJRG (talk) 08:08, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

As soon as independent, reliable sources start treating Rife as anything besides an obscure fringe scientist, and his claims as anything other than quackery magnets, then we will do so as well. MastCell ^Talk 05:46, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

There's a balance to be struck here, and it has shifted very slightly. Rife was not obscure in 1931, as shown by the New York Times report and many others like it in US newspapers, though he is now. Over the years, reliable sources have said that everything he was claiming was impossible. After two Nobel prizes (Goeppert-Mayer, Gabor) and other recently published work, that view appears dated. With the benefit of hindsight, we now have to weigh those reliable sources and tease out the ones that still stand up. Despite the weight of formerly reliable sources, Wikipedia doesn't pretend that the Earth is in the centre of the cosmos, because science has moved on. AJRG (talk) 09:37, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, it's easy to find independent, reputable verification for the idea that the Earth isn't the center of the cosmos. It's difficult (or impossible) to find any independent, reputable verification that Rife's claims are credible today. I'll repeat my earlier request, since it seems to have been ignored: do any independent, reliable sources link Rife in any way to the more recent work you cite? Do any such sources argue for a reappraisal of Rife's claims, or extend them any sort of credibility? I'd rather talk sources than your personal opinions, or mine, since that's what policy requires. MastCell ^Talk 18:27, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

You're asking for a source that says "X was right when he claimed Y". That's unnecessary - all that is needed is a reliable source that confirms Y. It doesn't affect any other claims made by X, or indeed say anything about the integrity of the original claim, but being encyclopedic requires being up to date with what is (and isn't) considered possible. AJRG (talk) 18:44, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

AJRG: that's not correct. What MastCell is asking you to provide is some indication in reliable sources that this modern research has any relationship to Rife's work - that means a researcher who specifically says that his work is inspired by a reconsideration of Rife's work, or a third-party author who explicitly draws the comparison between what Rife did and what these researchers are doing. Similarity is not sufficient grounds for asserting that a relationship exists. You don't get to sleep with a woman because she happens to look like your wife, and you don't get to rehabilitate Rife because what he did happens to look like what modern researchers are doing. There needs to be a more substantive relationship described in credible sources. --Ludwigs2 18:56, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Ludwigs2 - that's exactly what I was getting at. MastCell ^Talk 18:57, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

It's not about people being inspired - it's about basic science, such as the Abbe resolution limit. AJRG (talk) 19:27, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

OK. Has any independent, reliable source linked the Abbe resolution limit to Rife's claims? Has knowledge of the resolution limit triggered any demonstrable re-evaluation of Rife's claims by reputable sources?

I will note in passing that the 1932 Science article claims that Rife's microscope was not necessarily able to visualize very small particles, but rather employed novel staining methods. (The article also speculates that Rife had shown poliomyelitis and HSV encephalitis to be caused by streptococci, which is of course now known to be incorrect). MastCell ^Talk 21:25, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

You're misquoting the Science article, which in any case was by Rosenow and not by Rife. The Abbe resolution limit was discussed in relation to Rife and others in The New Microscopes, A Discussion By R.E. SEIDEL, M.D. AND M. ELIZABETH WINTER, Journal of the Franklin Institute Volume 237(2):103-130 (1944). AJRG (talk) 21:56, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Please correct my misunderstanding. MastCell ^Talk 22:03, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Your statement that 'the 1932 Science article claims that Rife's microscope was not necessarily able to visualize very small particles' is just wrong. What it actually says is:

Examination under the Rife microscope of specimens, containing objects visible with the ordinary microscope, leaves no doubt of the accurate visualization of objects or particulate matter by direct observation at the extremely high magnification (calculated to be 8,000 diameters) obtained with this instrument. AJRG (talk) 22:23, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Ah. I suppose I was reading the part that says: They are not visible by the ordinary methods of illumination and magnification, not because they are too small, but rather, it appears, because of their peculiar non-staining hyalin structure. Their visualization under the Rife microscope is due to the ingenious methods employed rather than to excessively high magnification (emphasis mine). The point being that it was his staining methods, rather than high magnification, which was believed to be the actual breakthrough. In light of the fact that streptococci, or "turquoise bodies", or what-have-you are now known to be uninvolved in the pathogenesis of HSV encephalitis and polio, it seems these findings have lapsed into obscurity. MastCell ^Talk 22:35, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Now you're misrepresenting the words by reframing the context and putting your own spin on it. The article does not support your contention that 'The point being that it was his staining methods, rather than high magnification, which was believed to be the actual breakthrough' - what it actually says is:

Proper visualization, especially of unstained objects, is obtained by the use of an intense beam of monochromatic polarized light created by rotating wedge-shaped quartz prisms placed between the source of light and the substage quartz condenser. AJRG (talk) 04:56, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Now we're talking past each other, because the excerpt you're quoting doesn't address the excerpt I quoted. Actually, both excerpts seem to support the idea that high magnification was not integral to Rife's microscope - so why are we perseverating about the Abbe resolution limit again? MastCell ^Talk 05:07, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

The article doesn't 'support the idea that high magnification was not integral to Rife's microscope' at all - its 8000x magnification [which certainly breaks the Abbe resolution limit, though this particular article doesn't say so] is mentioned twice. The point of the text you cherry-picked was that a specific sample couldn't be stained, and so was not visible by ordinary methods. AJRG (talk) 05:29, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Is this just degenerating into a Koffee Klatch discussion if Rife's work? Brass tacks, AJRG: I'm not a physicist or a medical doctor, you're not a physicist or a medical doctor (not to my knowledge). neither you nor I are qualified to judge whether the modern research is in any way related to Rife's research. That's why we need a reliable source for this - we need someone who is qualified to make the judgement, making the judgement. If not, I might as well just go get my uncle Louie (and heaven help you my 14 year old nephew - they both are quite certain they know everything, despite the fact that they usually disagree). If we're not going to use reliable sources, they are just as good sources as you and I are. Is that what you want?

Get some sources that prove your point for you, or let the issue go. it's that simple. --Ludwigs2 05:44, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't have any need to 'rehabilitate Rife' and you shouldn't have any need to denigrate him. If you don't consider yourself qualified to comment on basic science then I respect your assessment. This isn't about 'Koffee Klatch' discussions - it's about proper use of reliable sources. AJRG (talk) 05:57, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Reliable sources which you have not yet provided. These two sources would be perfectly fine for articles about (say) the Abbe limit, or microscopy, or antiviral techniques, but neither of them draws any relationship to Rife. not even a hint. I mean, I'm really not getting you here - do you understand that your own personal assessment of the scientific relationship between this modern research and Rife's research is not acceptable grounds for including something in wikipedia? because I don't see anything here except your personal assessment that the two are related. If you don't understand that point, you don't understand wikipedia, and you don't really understand the concept of an encyclopedia. Encyclopedias are boring little things that don't say anything new or exciting; they simply plod out material that is already well-established in other sources and regurgitate it. You want to say something here that nobody else anywhere in the world is saying - that's way too exciting and original for the likes of wikipedia.

If you want to do something new and interesting, go get your Md PhD and publish your new, interesting material in one of these journals. and when you do, MastCell and I will joyously regurgitate it into wikipedia. until then... no.--Ludwigs2 07:20, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

An assessment of Rife's last microscope by Neil Brown, former Senior Curator, Classical Physics, Science Museum has already been cited above. Among other things, it discusses the [Abbe] limit of resolution of a light microscope in relation to Rife. AJRG (talk) 08:15, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, but (a) it is written by a museum curator (whose area of expertise, assumedly, is history, not physics or medicine), and (b) it does not mention the modern research at all. let me spell out exactly the logical error you are making here, so we're clear on it:

1. ✓ Rife made an instrument that operated on (unknown) principle X
2. ✓ One critique of Rife's instrument was that it couldn't work because of the Abbe limit
3. ✓ Modern research has (apparently) surpassed the Abbe limit using principle Y
4. ✗ Rife's original instrument may have worked, because the critique in point 2 has been removed
   • this last logical point fails because (a) there is no reason to believe that the Abbe limit was the only critique of Rife's instrument, and (b) there is no scholarly source which claims there is any relationship between the unknown principle X that Rife used and the known principle Y that modern researchers use.

Give a source that establishes these last two subpoints, and then you have a case for including this material in this article. --Ludwigs2 14:36, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Since you don't provide evidence of Neil Brown's qualifications (or lack of them), I'll take it that you have no knowledge of them...

The Journal of the Franklin Institute paper mentioned above (and reprinted in the Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1944, pp 193-219) contains two photomicrographs taken using Rife's third microscope, so (a) is hand waving. I'm not trying to establish that Rife did break the Abbe limit (the Franklin paper believes that he did, but an adequate modern standard of evidence is lacking) - as stated above I'm pointing out that it's not an impossibility. Your characterisation of X as an unknown principle is an overstatement, as we have most (though not all) of the details:

From the Deposition of Royal Raymond Rife in "The People of the State of California Vs. John Marsh, Lallas Bateson, and John Crane", 1961:

This slide is placed on the microscope stage of any of the five virus microscopes that I designed and built. A special risely prism which works on a counter rotation principle selects a portion of the light frequency which illuminates these virus in their own characteristic chemical colors by emission of coordinative light frequency and the virus become readily identifiable by the colors revealed on observation. 8,000 to 17,000x magnification is sufficient to see them.

A Risley prism is shown here. In modern language he was using fluorescence microscopy. AJRG (talk) 16:48, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

there's the problem right there: who says that "in modern language he was using fluorescence microscopy." I don't see that in any of the sources you've presented. Do you have a source that says Rife was using fluorescence microscopy, or are you yourself comparing what is known about what Rife did to assert that it was fluorescence microscopy? The first might be a valid source for wikipedia if you have it, but the second directly violates wp:SYN (you are taking material from two sources - the deposition given above and the description of the modern research - and combining them to produce a conclusion that does not appear in either source). Wikipedia does not allow editors to do that, for very good reasons. --Ludwigs2 18:16, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

From the Science Museum report:

Hubbard believed that Rife had somehow managed to combine fluorescence, polarization and interference microscopy, but he does not attempt to explain how this might have been done. AJRG (talk) 20:11, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Is that what you're suggesting for a source? the somehow managed and does not attempt to explain bits are not really a convincing claims that Rife was using fluorescence microscopy. --Ludwigs2 20:47, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

It depends on your opinion of a Professor of Pathology at the State University of New York in Buffalo. Microscopy (of all kinds) would be a large part of his job. AJRG (talk) 21:18, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

No, it depends on whether he explicitly draws a connection between Rife and fluorescence microscopy, or whether that's something you're doing for him. If he says it explicitly, then I'm in no position to question it. if you're doing it, well... are you a Professor of Pathology at the State University of New York? --Ludwigs2 21:29, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

If he counts as a competent authority on microscopy, then his characterisation of the Rife microscope as a combination of fluorescence, polarization and interference microscopy is valid. Text already quoted on this page would support all three. No one knows completely how Rife actually used the microscope, so "somehow managed" is inevitable. AJRG (talk) 21:42, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

See now, you avoided my question, and that's not nice. does he explicitly draw a connection between Rife and fluorescence microscopy, or is that a connection you're drawing for him? --Ludwigs2 07:52, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

The connection is explicit in the quote above: Hubbard believed that Rife had somehow managed to combine fluorescence, polarization and interference microscopy - the uncertainty is not about the kinds of microscopy used, but as to how (if at all) they could be made to work together, and Hubbard does not attempt to explain how this might have been done. AJRG (talk) 08:14, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

that is not explicit, that is implicit - check your dictionary. Note the following problems:

• Hubbard was making these claims in the 1950's or 1960's, and would have had no knowledge of the technique of fluorescence microscopy being researched in the 21st century.
• "Somehow managed to" is not a methodologically authoritative statement. A teenager who was playing with the correct chemicals and "somehow managed to" blow up his garage can not be said to have invented C4 (at least not until a scientist examining the rubble with proper methodology says he did).

No one is completely sure how Rife's process worked; no one is completely sure that Rife's process produced results that were meaningful, reliable, or valid; no one in the scientific literature is saying that Reich used what modern researchers would call fluorescence microscopy - if they were, you'd have quotes to that effect, and would not need to rely on an archaic quote filled with speculation and hand-waving.

I am tired of arguing with you on this point - we keep pointing out that you cannot do what you're doing under wikipedia policies; you keep talking past that point and trying to suggest that your perspective is true for scientific reasons. From wikipedia's perspective, it does not matter whether you think it's true or whether you can logically/scientifically prove that it's true. You need to find someone in the literature who thinks/proves it's true in explicit terms that require no interpretation on our part. what you are doing now is a textbook example of tendentious editing, and I suggest you read that essay before you continue pushing this point. --Ludwigs2 14:31, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Firstly, since you raise the history of fluorescence microscopy, you might usefully look at Two-photon excitation microscopy.

Secondly, you seem to be unaware of the context of the quote in the Science Museum report:

Most of the background information about the persons involved in the Rife microscope saga comes from comments made by a Professor Hubbard when he visited the Wellcome Museum to see the microscope in 1978. ... It is worth quoting extensively from the notes of his comments. ... Hubbard positively identified the microscope then housed at the Wellcome Museum as Rife 5. ... The curator of the Wellcome Museum, who wrote the notes of the conversation with Hubbard, added comments of his own. Hubbard obviously understood optics well and was technically skilled. ... Hubbard believed that Rife had somehow managed to combine fluorescence, polarization and interference microscopy, but he does not attempt to explain how this might have been done.

Neil Brown is quoting from notes written by the Director of the Wellcome Museum of a conversation he had with Hubbard in 1978. AJRG (talk) 16:16, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

What's your point - that it was 1978 rather than 1960? it's still not peer reviewed, not a scientifically framed, not a definitive statement. you fail to get the point here, so let me put it in bold: Wikipedia does not care if you are right, wikipedia only cares if you have sources. this is a report of a conversation between some museum curator and a medical doctor who (apparently) never tested the device in question and would have no knowledge of modern fluorescence microscopy techniques. That is not an adequate source.

since you are simply failing to get the point, the next step (if you want to continue arguing this) is to take the question over to Reliable sources/Noticeboard, where you can find a greater number of people who will repeat to you exactly what Mathsci and I have been saying. how many people will it take to convince you that this is not a reliable source for the claim you're trying to make? --Ludwigs2 16:38, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

My point is that it does no harm to get the facts straight. I'm trying to refresh your memory of the history of Fluorescence Microscopy. Oskar Heimstädt built the first successful fluorescence microscope in 1911 and modern fluorescence microscopy techniques are based on knowledge that was already current by 1931 when Maria Goeppert-Mayer wrote her doctoral thesis. You'll find her credited at "Milestone 15" in Milestones in Microscopy. It's the technology that has moved on, rather than the basic knowledge. AJRG (talk) 17:23, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

then you should be able to find good sources that explicitly link Rife's work to fluorescence microscopy. and yet, all you are presenting is this vague, indirect, third-hand suggestion that there might be a relationship. why are you trying to use such a poor source if there are better sources? --Ludwigs2 17:58, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Let me ask you a question. Is the (in this case hypothetical) statement Martin Lersch believed that Hester Blumenthal somehow managed to combine roast scallops, white chocolate and caviar, but he does not attempt to explain how this might have been done. evidence that Hester Blumenthal used roast scallops? AJRG (talk) 18:22, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

again, you've avoided my question, and that's not nice. but to answer yours: the fact that Martin Lersch merely believed this to be the case means that that text is not a reliable source for the fact that she did this. Evidence doesn't matter, because on wikipedia we don't consider evidence about content issues; we only consider evidence about the reliability of sources. Martin Lersch may believe all sorts of things that are wrong, and that piece of text gives no reason to believe that Martin Lersch is right on this point. Most people believe that nuclear power works, but our article on nuclear power is not filled with testimonials from believers about nuclear power. do you see the difference? --Ludwigs2 18:42, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Better sources for what? I'm using it because it's to hand. Is the (reasonably accurate) statement Diarmuid MacCulloch [a Professor of History at Oxford University] believed that Ivan the Terrible somehow managed to combine Orthodox Christianity with extreme cruelty, but he does not attempt to explain how this might have been done. evidence that Ivan the Terrible was Orthodox? AJRG (talk) 19:32, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

again, the fact that Diarmuid MacCulloch merely believed this to be the case means that that text is not a reliable source for any fact, except the fact that MacCulloch believed it. MacCulloch - as a notable history professor who has (assumedly) studied the matter - is certainly entitled to that belief, and in an article about Ivan the Terrible that belief would certainly have a place among other notable perspectives. Please note the differences, however: Ivan the Terrible's religious beliefs and cruelty are a matter of thoroughly studied historical record; Rife's research techniques are not. No claim is being made by MacCulloch that Ivan the Terrible's beliefs are equivalent to modern orthodox beliefs; you are claiming that Rife's research is equivalent to modern research. Obviously, It's doubtful that MacCulloch would make such a vague statement as you gave above in scholarly works (because such a statement would not be accepted by his peers) and such a statement would not generally be considered a reliable source for the topic (except as his personal belief) unless there was a significant amount of support for it from other more authoritative sources.

and you know as well as I do that I asked you for better sources that Rife was using something equivalent to modern fluorescence microscopy. If you can't handle an honest debate, say so and I'll switch tactics.

Keep in mind, AJRG, that I can continue explaining this for as long as it takes you to get tired of evading the issue. the source you're offering cannot be used for any reliable claim about Rife's techniques or their relationship to modern techniques. it could be used to source Hubbard's opinions about Rife's techniques, but Hubbard was not in a position to make claims about methods used by modern researchers that were unknown in his time (and it's questionable whether Hubbard is sufficiently noteworthy for his beliefs to be important). --Ludwigs2 20:31, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Let me deal with the straw man first - I'm not claiming 'that Rife's research is equivalent to modern research'. I believe we've made some progress. The Science Museum report quoted reliably records that in 1978 a Professor of Pathology at SUNY Buffalo, who was both a published author on Microscopy and had made a detailed study of the Rife microscopes, believed that Rife used Fluorescence Microscopy (a technique known since 1911). AJRG (talk) 22:27, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

well, that is not precisely what he said, is it? he said "Rife had somehow managed to combine fluorescence, polarization and interference microscopy." now, why would he say that? If we assume that he was acquainted with fluorescence microscopy (as we must assume for your argument to make sense) why didn't he just say 'Rife was using fluorescence microscopy'? why the 'somehow managed' bit? This is like a physicist looking at a catapult and saying "It somehow combines leverage and gravity to make the cannonball fly through the air, but I'm not going to explain." it's an oddly vague statement for a professional in the field to make.

but let's give him (and you) the benefit of the doubt, and assume that he was having an aphasiac moment. What does it prove? Hubbard thought that Rife's device might have involved fluorescence microscopy - he doesn't know that it did (or at least, he doesn't say that he knows that it did). Further, even if he was correct in his belief, the fact that fluorescence microscopy can be used to break the Abbe limit (which wasn't, apparently, demonstrated until 2009) does not mean that Rife's device could break the Abbe limit (any more than the fact that it's possible to break 200mph in a car means that any car can break 200mph - try it in a Kia). For this source to be meaningful in the article, it needs to confirm at least one of those points, because those are the points that are in contention in the article. it confirms neither, and merely gives Hubbard's vague and ill-formed opinion about the first. see what I mean? --Ludwigs2 00:07, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

To be strictly precise, the statement was reported by the Director of the Wellcome Museum, so the exact wording was his. Let me repeat what I said earlier:

I'm not trying to establish that Rife did break the Abbe limit (the Franklin paper believes that he did, but an adequate modern standard of evidence is lacking) - as stated above I'm pointing out that it's not an impossibility. AJRG (talk) 06:56, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

well, if you're "not trying to establish that Rife did break the Abbe limit", then what relevance does any of this discussion have on the article? The article doesn't say that Rife couldn't have broken the Abbe limit (not unless he was using a regular optical microscope). what are you arguing for? --Ludwigs2 07:25, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Rife claimed very high magnifications and his contemporaries believed him to have broken the Abbe limit. Until recently, that was considered a scientific impossibility. My point is that it is no longer a scientific impossibility. Whether Rife succeeded or not is now moot, with neither sufficient evidence to prove that he did nor a scientific impossibility to prove that he didn't. The Popular Science photomicrographs put him at the Abbe limit for UV (see below), whereas those in the Smithsonian report appear to show him below it. Without the original negatives we cannot be sure. AJRG (talk) 08:02, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Again, what relevance does this have to the article? or better put, what do you want to change in the article using the fact that the Abbe limit may no longer be a scientific impossibility? --Ludwigs2 14:12, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Popular Science Magazine article on an earlier Rife Microscope with pictures

And the article says that motion pictures of pathogens were taken and after being developed were played back... These missing films would have been kept by Rife, but were obviously removed from his lab by someone knowing what they were.

http://books.google.com/books?id=9CcDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA27&lpg=PA27&dq=lockjaw+spore+hatching&source=bl&ots=GM-QW8nEeh&sig=qn7xCWlwmY48o7SxpaVnrzoiVqk&hl=en&ei=xXshTOauKoKB8gb71bmDAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=lockjaw%20spore%20hatching&f=false

One of the pictures claims to be at a magnification of 12,000x. If the size of the given spore is known, then maybe the claim can be validated that the physics limit was broken, maybe the staining with light claim was true, and maybe the description of operation by Rife of his own microscopes were accurate. Oldspammer (talk) 03:33, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

The identification as typhus (Rickettsia prowazekii) surprises me - typhoid (Salmonella typhi) seems more likely. Without knowing the exact strain or the variety of hookworm, it's hard to judge size accurately. The Abbe limit is typically 200 nm for visible light and Rickettsia are 300-500 nm wide and 800-2,000 nm long whereas Salmonella are 700-1,500 nm wide and 2,000-5,000 nm long. This article does, though, support Rife's personal notability in 1931. AJRG (talk) 07:33, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

A quick check of the "typhus" image suggests that the largest bacteria are about 30pixels long and 6 pixels wide, which would be close to the Abbe limit for UV light if they're Salmonella typhi. AJRG (talk) 07:55, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Please clarify "pixels"--what DPI are you assuming? Do you know the size of the original image prior to the magazine publishing it? If you are using the Google books viewing software, did you use the zoom function? Was your screen size set to be huge? Did you use alt-print-screen, and then examine the copied image from the application into an image editor to count the span of pixels? The magnification of the bacteria image, did it have the magnification specified--I thought that one didn't? I'm looking at the spore image and the fine detail available of the egg shell edge, and the new-born worm's cell wall thickness, etc. That looks pretty good... Oldspammer (talk) 10:03, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm referring to the highest resolution I could obtain from the source provided. When the "typhus" picture was first published (and more plausibly identified as typhoid bacilli) in the San Diego Union of Nov 3, 1929, the magnification was stated to be 16,000 diameters. The Popular Science article doesn't appear to have a picture of a spore in it - were you referring to the Franklin Institute / Smithsonian paper? AJRG (talk) 10:41, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Changes to the lede

In view of the Popular Science article and the piece in the New York Times (both from 1931) the lede should probably start with something like:

Royal Raymond Rife (May 16, 1888 – August 5, 1971) was the American inventor of a specially designed optical microscope with which he became a pioneer of high magnification time-lapse photomicroscopy.'

(appropriately referenced). His beliefs and the subsequent controversy would follow. What do people think? AJRG (talk) 13:39, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

"pioneer" is a value-judgement word that does not strike me as appropriate or accurate. 'pioneers' are generally people (or groups) who are among the first to do something that a lot of people later imitate - e.g. Walt Disney, who was a pioneer of animation because the tools, techniques and style he used influenced generations of animators. I don't believe the same can be said for Rife. --Ludwigs2 14:20, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

The Popular Science article starts with the time-lapse film, so they apparently considered it unusual enough to be noteworthy. What words would you use to describe that? AJRG (talk) 14:32, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

The novelty of the films is underlined by this newspaper report. AJRG (talk) 15:01, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Popular Science is (and always has been) largely a science hobbyists' magazine - not a criticism, just a note that they usually lead with cool toys, because that's what their readership is into. however, the point I'm trying to get across is that I don't get the sense that Rife's techniques spawned a cottage industry of people building Rife devices (that didn't happen until decades later, and those devices were pure charlatan garbage, with no relationship to anything Rife might actually have done). If you go somewhere but no one follows, you're not a pioneer. an explorer, maybe, but not a pioneer.

I don't see any real reason to change the first line, which strikes me as reasonably factual. If you really wanted to, we could add in part of your suggestion: "Royal Raymond Rife (May 16, 1888 – August 5, 1971) was an American inventor, working on optical microscope and time-lapse photomicroscopy, best known for his belief that he could observe and render inert a number of viruses which he thought were causal factors in cancer and several other diseases." --Ludwigs2 15:36, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

You've just proved that you can't be bothered to read the references. This is a quote from the Popular Science article (emphasis mine):

We were in the laboratory of R. R. Rife at San Diego, Calif. He is a pioneer in the art of making motion pictures of the microscopically small.

He was notable for his photomiscroscopy movies before he was ever notable for anything else - the Smithsonian has an archive of these newspaper reports from 1931 (his example was followed by John Ott). If you'd read the article you would also have found this quote at the very end:

In no way, however, Rife makes clear, does this idea uphold the claims of medical fakers that they can cure disease by applying electrical "vibrations" to the body of a patient.

Perhaps we should include that... AJRG (talk) 16:11, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

who's stopping you? though I'll tell you in advance, if you do it, I will modify it so it says "according to Popular Science Magazine". that is, unless you can find a number of other sources that make the same claim. --Ludwigs2 04:13, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

How about early exponent of high magnification time-lapse cine-micrography then? A news item in Science reporting the California and Western Medicine paper has this to say (emphasis mine):

In the forthcoming article only meager details of the new microscope itself are given. It is made known, however, that all the optical parts are of quartz instead of the usual glass, that attachments make possible spectroscopic examinations and motion pictures of the material under the lens, and that magnifications up to seven thousand diameters are possible. The work on Dr. Kendall's filterable typhoid germs was done at a magnification of five thousand diameters.

"Filterable Bodies Seen with the Rife Microscope" Science Magazine - Vol. 74, December 11, 1931 AJRG (talk) 09:13, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Science doesn't say he was an "early exponent"; science said he could do it. see the difference?

You have a logical fallacy running here, AJRG. I'm fine if you want to say "Source X stated that Rife was A, B and C", assuming that source X is reliable and what they said about Rife was relevant. However, if you want to say "Rife was A, B and C because source X says so" then I have to object. The first statement is attributional - it says what a particular source thought about Rife and attributes it correctly, which is non-contentious. the second phrase, however, is dispositional - it tries to assert that Rife was something in and of himself, based on the report of a source which may not be qualified to make that assessment. "Popular Science thought Rife was a pioneer" - true; "Rife was a pioneer because Popular Science thought so" - false (or at least, not demonstrable). --Ludwigs2 16:30, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Ludwigs2, the microscopes were hand made, and cost a huge sum of money just for the quartz optics, and so few if anyone could afford to buy them so the market and markup were not worth the effort of them being mass produced by every microscope manufacturer around the world--although that might have been nice. Also, very few people were able to "patiently" make both the staining with light, and the optical focusing in order to examine samples--this is stated by the Museum in England guy's write-up when he says something to the effect that English Dr. so and so was unable to get his microscopes to work satisfactorily possibly because that Dr. would have to waste his valuable time tinkering with the adjustments for hours at a time just to get a nice image to appear, and since that Dr. did not want to set aside such large amounts of time to dink around fiddling with the thing, he complained that the first microscope sent to him had something wrong with it, later he received the number 5 microscope in its stead, but still had the same dilemmas with that one. The popular science article mentions in paragraph #4 that the equipment in the room cost about $50,000 in 1931 dollars (a large sum except for a millionaire / billionaire back when that meant something more than it means today) and that was describing the earlier Rife #1 or #2 scope, and not the more complicated #3 microscope of a couple of years later. To estimate the inflation of today's dollar value, the price of Gold was between $17 to $20 per Troy ounce in 1931, but today it is around $1240--you do the math--making the equipment cost more than $3 million in today's dollars. Rife also was supposedly the inventor of a special sample cutting / shaving slice machine--the name of which escapes me--that could shave off a very thin tissue sample piece for use with his powerful set of microscopes. Anyone buying Rife microscope equipment would need a similar slicer for examining tissue samples?--also at considerable custom made costs. It is understandable that everyone was not scrambling to buy all of this stuff--perhaps another reason why the English Dr. so and so was unable to view samples properly--because they were not sliced thin enough? Oldspammer (talk) 10:48, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

understandable, yes. but how (and to what) is it relevant? --Ludwigs2 16:30, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

"Walt Disney ... influenced generations of animators. I don't believe the same can be said for Rife." Notable and popular are different things, and it is because Rife was not developing things for the masses that his technology was not more wide-spread / widely used / in daily use by more people than just two or three people including Rife himself. Isn't comparing Rife to Disney ridiculous? Is it even fair? If Rife was able to produce and sell his microscope technology for 10 cents (the price of cartoon theater tickets), then every kid in the world could be using these things now?

• The WP article should probably mention the prohibitive costs of construction and therefore selling prices in terms of our current day inflationary dollar values even if just to apprise the reader (and some contributors) of a key reason for the lack of Rife's mass appeal / notoriety (or whatever adjective is appropriate). Oldspammer (talk) 01:04, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Cine-micrography / micro-cinematography

The earliest example I can find is J Comandon's collaboration with Pathé in 1909:

"Cinematographie a l'ultra-microscope, de microbes vivants et des particules mobiles"("Ultra-microscope cinematography of living microbes and moving particles"), J Comandon, Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des sciences, 1909

which is mentioned in FA Talbot's 1912 book "Moving Pictures". Other attempts were made before the First World War, for example by F. Percy Smith, but a Popular Science article in May 1923 (How Movie Screen Shows Heart Throb Of Embryo Chick, p58) displays little progress.

Interest seems to have revived in 1928 with:

"Cinematograph demonstration of living tissue cells growing in vitro", RG Canti, Arch. Exp. Zellforsch. (Archiv für Experimentelle Zellforschung), 1928

which is widely cited and Rife could have seen, followed by

"A Standard Microcinematographic Apparatus" H Rosenberger, Science, Volume 69, Issue 1800, pp. 672-674. June 1929

which may have triggered the press attention. AJRG (talk) 10:18, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

An even earlier example: F.Martin Duncan's 1903 film series The Unseen World produced by Charles Urban. AJRG (talk) 16:36, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

A useful survey by Rosenberger:

"Micro-Cinematography in Medical Research", H Rosenberger, Journal of Dental Research, Volume 9, Page 343, 1929

which gives an overview of the state of micro-cinematography in 1929. Rife's film would have stunned his contemporaries, and perhaps explains the newspaper excitement. AJRG (talk) 16:57, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Edit

I've done a onceover here. I'm ok with rife.de being used as a source if they are hosting PDFs of articles in reliable sources, such as the Rosenow article, but barely-intelligible nonsense by this John Crane nobody certainly does not make the grade, and has been cut. Angio (talk) 05:52, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

At the same time as you (per your edit summary) fixed a variety of poorly-worded and misleading sentences, you also added a couple of poorly-worded, misleading and unsourced sentences. I have no problem with about half your edits, and the Crane reference can happily go. However, the required technology would not have been available during Rife's time is unsourced and (rather surprisingly) untrue, and there is no evidence that Rife's devices were capable of doing so, or had any other therapeutic effect is contrary to reliable sources. Applying a modern standard of medical proof to the past is an example of recentism and should be avoided. His contemporaries believed that his devices did these things on the basis of the evidence available to them, whereas later attempts to replicate his work failed, for reasons unknown - both of these we can reliably report. Several modern attempts have been exposed as fraud, but that doesn't tell us anything about Rife. I've reverted your edit for now so that we can discuss it. AJRG (talk) 08:22, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

The relevance of Maria Goeppert-Mayer to an appreciation of what Rife was claiming to do is apparent here:

Multi-photon excitation (MPE) microscopy plays a growing role among microscopical techniques utilized for studying biological matter. In conjunction with confocal microscopy it can be considered the imaging workhorse of life science laboratories. Its roots can be found in a fundamental work written by Maria Goeppert Mayer more than 70 years ago.

AJRG (talk) 09:00, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

AJRG: as a matter of Wikipedia convention, full reverts are discouraged except in extreme cases. If you truly "have no problem with about half of those edits" then I suggest that you self-revert your revert and go back in to surgically remove the material you disagree with. try to preserve good content as much as you can - that way the article consistently improves, rather than just yoyoing betwen versions. don't be lazy. --Ludwigs2 15:26, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Comment on content, not on the contributor AJRG (talk) 16:20, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

If your behavior is inappropriate with respect to content, then I will comment on your behavior. be warned, people who habitually revert without consideration for content almost always get themselves blocked in the long run. --Ludwigs2 18:16, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

AJRG, I have gone through the talk page logs. I'm afraid I'm going to say little that Ludwigs hasn't already covered, but it seems to bear repeating. First of all, you have not shown one iota of proof that Rife's gadget had anything to do with any of the modern non-diffraction limited microscopy techniques. I am familiar with Goeppert-Mayer and the theory of two-photon microscopy. If you care to read about these subjects a bit, you will find that a.) two-photon excitation was not shown experimentally until the advent of the laser in the 1960s, and b.) two-photon microscopy is diffraction-limited, and wouldn't have helped Rife even if he had miraculously managed to stumble upon it. Whether the theoretical underpinnings of a particular technology existed at the time is irrelevant if there is no evidence that the technology itself existed. And just because it is now possible to break the diffraction limit does not mean that we should accept, without evidence, all previous claims to have broken it. To suggest otherwise is to commit a logical error. By analogy, since the 1960s, it has been technically possible to go to the moon. If we hear that Snoyal Snife claimed in 1930 to have visited that satellite, we should be skeptical even though the feat has since been accomplished, because the fact that the feat has been accomplished in modern times lends no support to the earlier claim.

It's very disingenuous of you to accuse me of "recentism." We are not discussing the social sciences or philosophy. You and I both know that Rife's microscope either accomplished its stated goals, or it didn't accomplish them. At this point, the preponderance of the evidence suggests the latter, and there is little convincing evidence for the former. Why is there so little discussion of how the microscope actually worked, other than some woo-woo handwaving about "optical heterodyning" and other such misapplied technical-sounding words? And if Rife's microscope was capable of 8,000x magnification as the article suggests, how come he never was able to describe the shape of a virus or any other sub-light resolution microstructure? Don't you think it is suspicious that the photographic evidence resulting from Rife's work is so slim? If Rife had simply described a few of the objects he saw, let alone took pictures of them, we would be a long way towards showing that his technology really worked. As it is, all he has to show for it, in the Rosenow article, are some "purple bodies" that are sparsely described and could be anything, including artifact or trickery. Moreover, the fact that Rosenow uses the word "virus" and "coccus" interchangeably should give you some idea about the state the art at that time. If anybody is engaged in "recentism," it is you, as you are co-opting modern technology to rationalize specious claims by investigators who were laboring in an age when medicine had little advanced from the work of Galen.

I have enough background in the sciences to determine that Rife's claims are most likely malarkey. But not all Wikipedia readers do, and I do not want people coming to this page and getting the idea that Rife's claims are reasonable. Any statement of the claims need to be leavened with a dose of reality, or the page will inappropriately lend the implicit backing of Wikipedia to pseudoscientific claims. If you can think of an alternatively-worded way to do this, please be my guest. Angio (talk) 17:46, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Now that you've reverted my edit again, I've gone and deleted the mention of modern exceptions to the diffraction limit. You can't have it both ways; if you want to mention modern advances (which are irrelevant) then there needs to be a statement that Rife's microscope has nothing to do with these advances. Ok? Angio (talk) 17:49, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

This is an encyclopedia. You can't just say The limitations of light microscopes are such that even the best resolution of a conventional microscope (at roughly 200 nanometers) is inadequate to visualize most viruses because reliable sources contradict that. The technolologies required are Confocal Microscopy (a pinhole) and Two-photon excitation microscopy (a very bright single frequency coherent light source). The first was used by Isaac Newton and the second by Dennis Gabor in the development of Holography before the laser was invented. Rife patented a Mercury arc lamp for use in microscopy. As I keep saying, I'm not claiming that Rife did break the Abbe limit - I'm insisting that claims of impossibility should be given less weight in the light of recent scientific discoveries. AJRG (talk) 19:46, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Neither confocal microscopy nor two-photon excitation microscopy is a sub-diffraction limit technology. Confocal microscopy is a pinhole, and two-photon excitation microscopy a single coherent light source, in the same way that a car is a tire. Optical holography, while known to be possible, was not shown until after the advent of the laser; a mercury arc lamp is not a coherent light source.

But let's leave all that aside, shall we? The fact is that the sentence is correct, because it applies only to conventional light microscopes, i.e. the state of the art until the mid-20th century. Nobody is saying that it is impossible to image with sub-diffraction limit resolution; just that it is impossible with a vanilla microscope. There are a few technologies capable of doing it, but if you'd like us to believe that Rife's is one of them, you will have to show better evidence than you have thus far. Until then, this page will continue to reflect our understanding that Rife's inventions did not work as advertised. Angio (talk) 05:12, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Rife's first microscope worked well enough to produce films and photographs that attracted major news coverage between 1929 and 1932, and photographs from his third microscope were published by the Smithsonian. Claiming that they did not work as advertised is unconvincing. Dennis Gabor used a Mercury arc lamp to develop Holography - I'm not denying that lasers do holography better, but they're not formally necessary. If you want to discuss the history of microscopy, I recommend Milestones in Microscopy and this. Fraunhofer diffraction is a far-field phenomenon: both near-field observation and near-field illumination (such as fluorescence) potentially break the Abbe limit. AJRG (talk) 09:07, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

I'll give you that Gabor produced some rudimentary holograms using his mercury arc lamp, but you need to be careful throwing around technical terms like "far-field" when you don't fully understand them, as you will risk looking silly when you talk to somebody who knows what they mean. I don't doubt that Rife might have built nice light microscopes, but I haven't seen any convincing evidence that he achieved higher resolution than the diffraction limit. It is not sufficient to find news reports of people observing micrographs taken using his scope; lots of news organizations reported on Steorn's "Orbo" perpetual energy machine nonsense, but that doesn't mean that we have RS confirmation that the machine might have worked. If you can find some micrographs, and a modern RS verifying that they are valid, we might be onto something. Otherwise, I think you will find most editors of this page are uninterested in having it build a case for Rife's devices based on a web of circumstantial evidence, archaic sources, and hearsay. Angio (talk) 16:26, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't think any news organisations have shown the "Orbo" working. Rife's microscope clearly worked well enough to make the film he showed to journalists in 1929 and 1931. There are prints of Rife's micrographs in several newspapers, the Popular Science article and in "The New Microscopes", by R.E. Seidel, M.D. and M. Elizabeth Winter, Journal of The Franklin Institute, Vol. 237(2):103-130, Feb. 1944 (reprinted in the Annual Report of the Board of Regents of The Smithsonian Institution - 1944). AJRG (talk) 17:22, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Modern tech references

Most of your edits are ok, but I am not ok with the references to modern technology unless there is a clearer explanation as to how Rife's supposed advances relate to these modern technologies. As you have written it, the clear implication is that Rife's machines may have functioned in a similar fashion to modern devices, a claim which is both entirely unsupported and essentially impossible. The effect is to lend a degree of credibility to Rife which is frankly inappropriate given the paucity of the evidence. If you insist on their inclusion, please think of a wording that establishes that there is no evidence that Rife's devices worked along the same principles as modern devices. As you have correctly pointed out, the difficulty here is that there is unlikely to be RS confirmation of this fact. However, I feel that the burden is on you, since it is you who wish to include this possibly misleading information in the article. Ok? Angio (talk) 05:44, 7 July 2010 (UTC)