Thomson had discovered the electron and measured the ratio of its charge to mass (the e/m ratio) - an event which helped to usher in the electronic age.
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He had won the Nobel Prize in 1924, largely due to his important and innovative measurement, carried out around 1910, of the charge on the electron - one of the most central physical constants that scientists of that era had been seeking to determine. An acceptable practice, but one that is rarely followed, is to decide in advance what specific observed circumstances in a particular experimental situation would justify data rejection.
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In some cases statistical rules can be used as guidance, but in many situations it is left to the judgement of the experimental scientist to decide if a problem with the equipment or some other consideration justifies discarding a datum or a set of data. Scientists agree that there are circumstances when some of the data collected in an experiment can be rejected or disregarded. As those historians who have analyzed the record of Millikan's treatment of his experimental data, and other similar cases, have pointed out, it is not always easy to distinguish between the "right" thing to do, inappropriate but inadvertent manipulation, and intentional fudging. One can, however, set up simpler situations to illustrate the same points. But by itself, it is probably too complicated to use in helping students to navigate this issue. The Millikan case highlights a number of the important issues involved. What makes this an ethical issue, rather than just an issue of laboratory practice, is that the action that most promotes one's self-interest can be different from the "right" thing to do. It happens all the time: their instruments give one result - but they know that everybody else is getting some other result, or that something's wrong with the way they have done it, or that the result that people got last year is different, or that the result in the book is different.
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He has been the recipient of the Comstock Prize of the National Academy of Sciences, of the Edison Medal of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, of the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society of Great Britain, and of the Nobel Prize for Physics.
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