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Since the discovery of quantum mechanical math in the 1920's, the physics community has strived mightily to explain away, in materialist, determinist terms, that aspect of the fundamental math quaintly called "the observer". Einstein was bothered by it for the remainder of his life, so much so that came up with a thought experiment called the E-P-R Paradox. The difficulty was, and is, that quantum mechanical math provides only a probability distribution that an event will occur, not that event's outcome. A mathematician, John Bell, came up with a way to test non-locality, a key aspect of quantum mechanics, believing that qm would be shown to be inconsistent in favor of classical mechanics. Elegant experimentation was subsequently undertaken and it established that non-locality is a reality and that quantum mechanical math is thus wholly consistent. There are no hidden variables of a classical nature. Alain Aspect is the best-known of these experimenters.

Alamo-Girl, please correct me if any of the substance of this story is incomplete or incorrect.

After all this time, the physics community cannot get its mind around intangibility, real though it has proved to be. I am thus not surprised that Walker could be considered "fringe" within a group where timidity reigns. A paradigm shift is not required. Quantum mechanics IS a major paradim shift.

Walker covers all this and much more in his clear, eloquent, incisive book. It is a fine and beautiful work and I recommend it unreservedly.

Evan Harris Walker, founder and director of the Walker Cancer Institute, has made major scientific contributions in astronomy, astrophysics, physics, neurophysiology, psychology, and medicine. Since he received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Maryland in 1964, he has published more than a hundred papers in scientific journals and popular magazines and holds a dozen patents."

OK, so I did a Sci Finder search. Since his 1977 paper in Int. J. Quantum. Chem., where he put forward his quantum synapse hypothesis (he was at Aberdeen Proving Ground at the time, BTW), he wrote a 1980 cancer review (a review is a summary of published work, not original research ). An Evan H Walker filed a patent in 1990 on a binary munition system; this could have been the same guy, given where he worked. There is one natural products isolation with Evan H. Walker as a senior author, and the Walker Cancer Inst. as an address, in 2002.

And we have "Cancer as a mechanism of hypermutation". Walker E H U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD 21005 ACTA BIOTHEORETICA (1992 Mar), 40(1), 31-40. Looks like he's also got novel thoughts to share about cancer, as well as consciousness. Acta biotheoretica is not a journal I'm familiar with; BTW. But here' a quote for ya, from the abstract:

It is proposed that cancer exists as a phylogenetic mechanism serving to promote "hyperevolution", albeit at the expense of the ontogeny, that is similar to a process recently discovered in bacterial mutations. Cell-surface-associated nucleic acid in tumorigenic cells and sperm cell vectorization of foreign DNA indicate the existence of essential mechanisms necessary to the occurrence of cancer mediated hyperevolution. An analysis of the proposed mechanism indicates that for mutagenesis of chemical cytology, stress induced neoplasticity confers an evolutionary advantage of more than two orders of magnitude.

Horror of horrors, he's an evolutionist!

There are a few E.H. Walker and E.H. Walker, Jr. papers from Tulane, UCLA and Oklahoma State, and the MRC in England. The MRC guy is Edward H. Walker. The OSU guy looks like a grad. student. Since Walker's address in 1992 was still Aberdeen Proving Ground, we can rule out papers in the 1980s with a different address.

So, since 1977, we have not one but two, ahem, highly original theories suggesting the biophysical or biomedical community has gotten it all wrong; one review, one natural producs isolation, and one patent. I can't find much before 1977 either, but abstracting systems are generally less efficient the further you go back, so I don't put so much faith in that. He might well have 100 publications; scientific search engines, though good, are not perfect, but gosh, I'm having a hard time finding ten I can positively assign to him. And, God bless him, he does publish his ideas and subject them to the snide comments of a$$holes like me, so he has some courage.

I don't normally hang my hat on arguments from authority, but when someone else claims authority or credentials, I examine the claim.

Maybe you should try to be just a little skeptical here, Phaedrus?