Breaking News: Theory of Relativity Upheld

Experienced litigators are all too familiar with the problem of scholarly publications that call for further research. You hire your expert, he writes what you think will be a bulletproof report, and it cites 42 articles from peer-reviewed literature. But then you go to the deposition, and the adversary quotes from each article's concluding paragraph -- the one that invariably says that additional research is warranted. And make no mistake. The concluding paragraph of the article will say that, even if the hypothesis under consideration is that leaves turn color in autumn.

It is sometimes helpful, therefore, to have examples of widely accepted scientific theories that are still the subject of experimental investigation. Yesterday's Washington Post (registration required) supplies just such an example. Apparently, there may be something to this whole relativity idea. Further experiments are planned.