Dear Editor:

In Gwynne Dyer's Jan. 3 column, 1997 Was a Bumper Year for
Discoveries in Science World, he reports, with a straight
face, the supposed "anti-gravity" device of Eugene Podkletnov.

However, Dyer does not mention the following facts:

Podkletnov's supposed anti-gravity experiments were done in 1992.

The results, however, were not announced until September 1996.
Podkletnov's research, then, cannot be assigned to the calendar
year 1997.

Podkletnov submitted a paper regarding the device
for publication to Journal of Physics D, but later requested
that the paper be withdrawn from publication.

Petri Vuorinen, listed as a co-author on the paper
discussing the device, has denied any involvement in the
work.  Later, Podkletnov gave inconsistent explanations of this
discrepancy.

NASA scientists attempted to replicate Podkletnov's results,
but were unsuccessful.

What actually transpired in 1997 was a much weaker claim by
Japanese scientists unaffiliated with Podkletnov.
Even if true, the effect they discovered is far too weak 
to be of any practical value.

At present, the most generous assessment is that there are
very serious questions about the correctness of Podkletnov's
claims.

It is, unfortunately, symptomatic of the Record's
poor science coverage that such dubious claims would be
reported as fact.

Jeffrey Shallit