> Epistemics > Verification and Provenance > arghXiv:2602.11360
On the Reported Isolation of the Torsion Balance from Electrostatic Influence
Abstract: A recent re-examination reports that earthing the case of a torsion balance leaves the observed deflection unchanged, and treats this as excluding an electrostatic account of it. This note does not dispute the measurement. It observes that the test was conducted by the party advancing the received account, on apparatus of their own construction, and reported without an independent observer present. That is the ordinary condition of experimental work and is not, by itself, an objection. It becomes one where the result is offered to settle a question on which the reporting party has a stated position, which is the case here and is stated in the paper's own opening section. I ask only what a party without that position would have to do to obtain the same result, and I have not been able to establish it.