Freedom of Science

Medical doctors have their Hippocratic Oath. Let’s draft one for Doctors of Philosophy:

Newtonic Oath

I swear by Newton the first Newtonian and his Einsteinian limit and Maxwell equations and Lorentz transformations and Planck units and all the gods and goddesses and constants of physics, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfill according to my ability and judgment this oath and this covenant:

1. I will not call myself or any particle God (Newton is the only God)

2. I will not claim to read God’s mind

3. I will not call other doctors crackpots

4. I will not divide infinity by infinity

5. If I divide infinity by infinity I will not cover up by calling it renormalization

6. I will not cite automatically without reading what I am citing

7. I will not put in the title what is not in the paper

8. I will not pimp physics to the media

9. . . .

10. . . .

If I fulfill this oath and do not violate it, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and art, being honored with fame among all men for all time to come; if I transgress it and swear falsely, may the opposite of all this be my lot.

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Please help physicists help themselves by contributing to this historic initiative to add some law and order to the profession. Use the comments or better yet go to the Newtonic Oath wiki and edit. Password for the wiki is newton.

Thank you for your contribution.

• Newtonic oath in Wikipedia.
• The article has been marked for deletion on the grounds that it is non-notable. Please help improve the oath so that it becomes notable. Nov. 13, 2007
• The article is no longer marked for deletion. And an editor put it a nice format and added a “physcis stub” tag. Nov. 17, 2007
• The Newtonic oath article in Wikipedia is now deleted. I salvaged the latest version of the page before it was deleted. You can see it here.
• Chris Oakley made good suggestions in Tommaso Dorigo’s blog. Nov.13, 2007
• Discussion at Physics Forums
• I started a new blog dedicated to Newtonic Oath. Nov. 16, 2007

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