Long ago I started a list of quotes about Hubbard's lies about being a nuclear physicist. This started back in 1997 when A. Milne, a Scientologist challenged several of us critics on the point Hubbard had made such claims. Milne lied that Hubbard never made such a claim and others had made the claims. I found a few citations by Jon Atack, added a few I had found. Chris Owen tossed in a whole bunch more. I just integrated these all together and added the now infamous Elron saves the world from the revolt of America's physicist tall tale from Tape #5 of the Radiation and Your Survival series.
Spiffy! New! Bigger! Improved!
**********************************************************
The Claims of Hubbard to be a Nuclear Physicist FAQ
W.C. Barwell October 22, 1997
Revised, 6-22-2005
**********************************************************
Thanks to Jon Atack and Chris Owen for citations
All though Hubbard was booted from George Washington
University for failing grades after only four semesters,
it did not stop him from repeatedly lying that he was
a nuclear physicist. He was proud of the fact that he
was supposedly a student in the alledgedly first class
in nuclear physics in an American University, although
he flunked all science and math courses he ever took.
Here is a collection of Hubbard's claims to have been a
nuclear physicist.
This listing is almost certainly not exhaustive.
**********************************************************
"Dianetics: The Modern Miracle".
February 6, 1952
As also found transcribed in the Research and Discovery series.
Old Tech volumes, Vol. 3 page 470
New Tech Volumes. Vol. 5 page 143
---------------
"I happen to be a nuclear physicist; I am not a
psychologist nor a psychiatrist nor a medical doctor."
..............
"To some degree, it was my responsibility that this
world got itself an atom bomb, because there were only a
handful of nuclear physicists in the thirties - only a handful.
And we were all beating the desk and saying "How wonderful it
will be if we discover atomic fission," because we decided that
the thing to do with atomic fission was to go out and discover
the stars, to make big passenger liners that would go ten times
around the world on the same fuel. This was what we endeavoured
to do with atomic fission. The government stepped in and
gave us three billion dollars. I had nothing to do with that
program; I would *not* have had anything to do with the program.
Three billion dollars to destroy all of man."
********************************************************
OEC volume 6, April 14, 1961
Hubbard claims to be a nuclear physicist.
----------
"WHAT IS SCIENTOLOGY?
"For hundreds of years physical scientists have been seeking
to apply the exact knowledge of the physical universe they had
gained to Man and his problems.
"Newton, Sir James Jeans, Einstein, have all sought to find the
exact laws of human behavior in order to help mankind.
"Developed by L. Ron Hubbard, C.E., Ph.D., a nuclear physicist,
Scientology has demonstrably achieved this long-sought goal.
Doctor Hubbard, educated in advanced physics and higher mathematics
and also a student of Sigmund Freud and others, began his present
researches thirty years ago at George Washington University. The
dramatic result has been Scientology... It is the science of the Man,
the Woman, and the Child in the street. It belongs to us, the people,
not to any vested interest on earth.
*******
L. Ron Hubbard - HCO Information Letter 14 April 1961
OEC Vol 6, p. 196
Under the Signature appears the following statement:
"(Please note: The article 'What is Scientology?' has been entirely
re-written by Ron, and this one should be used in preference to
the original one which was written in Johannesburg and issued from
there - HCO Sec WW)"
********************************************************************
L. Ron Hubbard
Creating A New Civilization Tape Series
Tape A Postulate Out Of A Gloden Age
December 6 1956
-----
We are in such a period today. A period artificially imposed.
I don't suppose there is any individual any place who wants
actively to impose a tyrany on the United States.
These boys, who do this today merely want gain for themselves.
They say it would be very nice and I would be very safe, if.
You now. If I could supress certain opinions being spoken.
If I could do this... They nibble away just a little bit you
see, and then one fine day you find a whole sphere of knowledge
partioned off for some good adequate reasonable reason. What is
this sphere of knowledge? Well it's science. But you say, we're
supposed to have science, that's progress. All of a sudden they
see an electronics engineer, and they say, 'you know, you're
supposed to be over there, behind that barbed wire over there.
Well the electronic engineers of the country have not yet noticed
They are inside barbed wire. They are! But they go backwards
and forwards past armed guards to get to and from work.
I wouldn't work under these conditions!
A fellow offered me a job one time. He said, all you have to do
walk in here, leave your gun at the gate, walk in here, and you're
supposed to walk around for eight hours a day, and do so and so and
so and so. And I said where, and he said in that enclosure over there.
And I said what's the difference between that and a prison camp?
Ohh! He said, that's nonsense. You get paid in there.
That was the first and only time the goverment offered me a post as
nuclear physicist. That was the end of that.
The uh, government offered that post. They tried to kidnap me
on another one by the way. They said, you're still in the reserves,
and we can call you back to active duty on research in the field of
mind. You are still in the service, the admiral said, ha ha!
WCB
**********************************************************
THE MAN WHO INVENTED SCIENTOLOGY
HCOB 26 May 1959
"The HASI and all its concerns is founded on the work
of one man, L. Ron Hubbard, engineer, explorer, nuclear
physicist and writer. Holding in his mind a knowledge
of Eastern thought gained in his travels, his instruction
in psychology from a medical doctor who has studied
personally under Sigmund Freud, and his training in
mathematics and nuclear physics, L. Ron Hubbard found
himself convalescing in hospital towards the end of the
second world war, after a distinguished career in the
United States Navy."
-------
The Man Who Invented Scientology HCOB 26 May 1959
The Bulletin is signed and copyrighted 'L.Ron Hubbard' and dated
26 May 1959. It is headed: "The following article appeared recently
in the London City Press. It may be used by City Offices and Area
Offices for information to papers."
The title is 'The Man Who Invented Scientology' and the extract (bear
in mind that Hubbard having authorised its use as a PR handout, then
claims copyright...) reads "The HASI [Hubbard Association of
Scientologists International] and all its concerns is [sic] founded on
the work of one man, L. Ron Hubbard, engineer, explorer, nuclear
physicist and writer'.
John Atack
************************************************************
UNIVERSES (5th ACC) file 8/30 (tape 8):
Transcript of Taped Lecture by L. Ron Hubbard
5ACC-7 - 5404C07
Number 8 of "Universes and the War between
Theta and Mest" cassettes.
UNIVERSE: BASIC DEFINITIONS
A lecture give on 7 April 1954
"Therefore, I am a little bit angry with psychology because
I walked onto the stage as a nuclear physicist in 1932
wanting to know something about the mind."
"And here were
some of the largest and best endowed departments of the
greatest universities of the world, pretending they knew
something about the mind, knowing nothing. Knowing nothing
but their own shallow pomposity, to be very, very brutal.
Little men with big heads. They caused me more trouble than
I care to be caused. Simply because I asked this single
solitary problem: "What is the smallest energy unit?"
Well, this was remarkable. What business does a nuclear
physicist have, in the first place, investigating in the
field of psychology? Obviously that should be investigated.
Somebody should have observed something. And he sits down
at a laboratory bench and he looks over the problem and he
says, "Well, now, let's see. Pictures? Let's see if these
fellows around here... Say Joe, when you think of
something, do you see a picture?""
WCB
***************************************************************
From the tape series "Raidation and Your Survival".
Tape # 5
"The Revolt of American Nuclear Physicists".
"Right at the end of WWII, to bring up a bit more history here,
on the subject, if you'd be interested in it? Right at the end
of WWII, a friend of mine, named Johnny Arwine, Lt. Commander of the
Coast Guard and myself went to the California Institute of Technology
(Cal Tech) to meet with a great many old time atomic physicists who
had been at the projects that dropped the original atomic bomb -
the people from Los Alamogordos. And it was our intention to organize
these people so that some sort of sensible control could be monitored
across the bomb. (sic)
Nobody had thought about it at this date, and Johnny Arwine
and I were still in uniform. We both of us had been in the world of
engineering, and then in the world of arts and then finally in the service.
(Hubbard flunked out of George Washington University after
4 semesters in 1932. He never had anything to do with engineering
whatsoever. He wrote pulp fiction a few free lance articles, not much
'art' One novel Buck Skin Brigades. He joined the Navy in July 1941.
He was released from active duty December, 1945.)
Neither of us had a thing to do with atomic fission in it's
development, by our own choice. Both of us hasd refused this.
And we were both shot up, and feeling rather grim. And we were
still in uniform when we went down to Cal-Tech, and we got these
atomic physicists together. We said we were going to have a meeting.
And they remembered us, and they were very happy to talk to us,
and the next thing you know, we did.
We had a very vast number of atomic physicists there, and
and I took the chair, and Arwine adrressed them, and
we spoke of using a propaganda weapon against anyone who would use
atomic fission further against the human race, of using any means
we had to educate the people of the world concerning this.
The nuclear physicists was already so mad, he was already so furious,
that Arwine and I could not control that meeting, even vaguely.
We could keep them in their place, we could tell the next fellow to
talk, but we couldn't get across any thought to them that was
rationally workable. (sic)
And these men said one thing: "We wish to overthrow the government of the
United States by force."
Now that is an astonishing little chapter in the field of nuclear phsyics
that only a few of us know about. There was a revolt and later
on, you saw offices in the United States being opened to propagandize the
public, and a movement led by Albert Einstein.
And that was the outgrowth of that meeting.
But all Arwine and I could manage to do at that meeting was say, "Guys,
please! You people are talking in terms of mutiny. Revolution."
And teh only answer we would get to it was, "We will develop an bomb
so every atomic physcists can have one, (Hubbard laughs at this point)
and nobody can arrest him, and we'll put this governemnt in it's
place!" The idea of using this stuff on women and children!
These fellows were mad!
We withdrew our support and did what we could to knock the
rough edges off the movement. We reported the findings
of it to the Navy Department and the President.
We said we could not associate our names with this organization.
And it all fell to nothing.
But the atomic physicist did try. That was his push.
It took place late in the year of 1945 in the United States.
And he's not going to do anything else.
Why? Because his leaders are dead.
Einstein is dead.
And the other day I read the list of atomic scientists who are now
amongst the graveyard. And it's practically the whole roster.
Dead of what? Dead of leukemia, cancer and the very things that the
radiation sickness breeds. They died to a marked degree of radiation,
mostly I suppose mentally because they had exerted a tremendous
overt act against the world (overt act, Scientology lingo for an
intentionally harmful act) and have been unable to repair it in any way.
Now what I tell you is clear fact and not propaganda. I have
no propaganda at all. I am just telling you
that there was a backround where the nuclear physicist did
attempt to revolt.
The punishment taken against him was severe. None of the information
given here is not even vaguely confidential and I am not
in the possession of any confidential information of any kind."
WCB
****************************************************************
"In All About Radiation, we have the sane and sober views of a medical
doctor on the physical facts and consequences of the actual atomic blast
and the diseases resulting from it.
L. Ron Hubbard, who was one of the first nuclear physicists in the
United States, has interpreted these facts and related them to human
livingness, governments and the control of populaces.
These facts when presented at the Congress on Nuclear Radiation and
Health at the Royal Empire Society Hall, London, in April 1957, so
impressed Parliamentary figures that they requested immediate
transcription of these lectures."
[Promotional leaflet, Church of Scientology, 1970s]
COwens
****************************************************************
"... because I was educated in the field of atomic physics - which
doesn't mean a thing, by the way ... I wasn't really supposed to be
there, I was a writer, and I had to go to school just like anybody else.
They said that was what I was taking and so I obediently sat there and
took it, but not very deeply... It was very hard for a young man like
myself to absorb it."
[L. Ron Hubbard, March of the Atom, lecture of 8 October 1956]
COwens
******************************************************************
"Nearly all nuclear physicists - atomic and molecular phenomena boys -
'Buck Rogers Boys', we were known as ... Like so many physicists I wrote
science fiction for years, and that was the only remunerative use I made
of this material."
[L. Ron Hubbard, Radiation and the Scientologist, lecture of 13 April
1957]
(In the same lecture he claimed that he was listed in "the record books"
as "this fellow, Hubbard - nuclear physicist" and had been pressed
during the war by the US Government to "manufacture bombs to kill women
and children and destroy cities". Hubbard, however, declared that he had
refused with the following words: "I'll kill any man in a fair fight
(and have killed many in the heights of battle), but when it comes to
slaughtering women and children and destroying the human race, you'd
better find another boy.")
COwens
*******************************************************************
"L. Ron Hubbard, the originator and founder of Dianetics, is a
product of the atomic age. In the early 1930's, at George
Washington University, one of the first classes in "atomic and
molecular phenomena" (now called nuclear physics) was
inaugurated.
Hubbard, as a member of that class thus became one of the
first students of "nuclear physics" in America.
It was the dream of his classmates to unlock the energy of
the atom with their knowledge of basic energy. It was the
dream of L. Ron Hubbard to utilize this knowledge to discover
the basic equations of life force, simply, to him, another kind of
energy ... To Hubbard, grounded in nuclear physics and mathematics,
the world, Man and Life itself seemed the best laboratory one
could wish."
[Hubbard, "Child Dianetics", 1968 edition]
COwens
****************************************************************
"And because they avoided this responsibility we have to pitch in here
and discover and develop Scientology -- not to work in the field of
physics, however, but to work in the field of the Humanities. But it so
happened that I discovered very, very early while I was studying nuclear
physics at George Washington University that physics did not have a
definition for space, time and energy. It defined energy in terms of
space and time. It defined space in terms of time and energy, and it
defined time in terms of energy and space ... the point is here that
without a definition for space, physics was and is adrift.
One of our auditors was recently talking to an engineer in an Atomic
Energy Commission plant, and happened to remark, "Well, we have a
definition for space." This engineer said, "Uh, you do?" and got
instantly interested. Of course we didn't make this definition for
nuclear physics, but they could certainly use one. The engineer asked,
"What is the definition of space?" and the auditor said, "Space -
viewpoint of dimension." This fellow just sat there for a moment, and he
sat there, and then all of a sudden he rushed to the phone and dialed a
number and he said, "Close down number five!" He had suddenly realized
that an experiment in progress was about to explode and one of the
reasons he knew it was about to explode is that he had found out what
space was."
[Hubbard, "The Phoenix Lectures," pp. 149-50, 1968 ed.]
Compare this to the following:
"Chap came down here the other day, Wing Angell, and he said he was up
at one of the big atomic plants talking to some of the engineers. And he
talked to this nuclear physicist for a little while, and the fellow
says, "Well," - very reservedly - "if you do have something you'd have a
definition for space." And Wing said very promptly, "Yes. Yes, we do. We
have a definition for space. Space is a viewpoint of dimension." And the
nuclear physicist sat there for a moment. And all of a sudden a kind of
a stunned look came in his eye, and he rushed out and he grabbed the
phone and he said, "Shut down the experiment in number seven!" They were
about to blow the plant apart."
[Hubbard, "Elements of Auditing," lecture of 21 April 1954]
COwens
****************************************************************
"L. Ron Hubbard was one of the first students of nuclear physics in the
United States.
In 1932 he believed that Life and its behavior obeyed natural laws of
the same order as electrons and other particles of motion. He began a
study and search which led him through many fields of science and across
many continents."
[Hubbard, "Scientology 8-80", p. 8, 1976 ed.]
COwens
****************************************************************
"THE work contained in this book is the result of 25 years'
investigation of electronics as they apply to knowledge and human
thinking by L. Ron Hubbard.
His studies of the subject were extremely broad and varied. They
included such thing as expeditions to investigate the ethnology of
twelve widely-separated primitive cultures, an intensive survey of the
endocrine system, the study of early writers and philosophers on the
subject of mankind and epistemology, also the direct study of his forte,
nuclear physics, as it might be found to apply to the human intellect."
[Hubbard, "Scientology 8-8008", p. vii, 1976 ed.]
COwens
****************************************************************
"Scientology is the science of human ability and intelligence. It
was developed over a third of a century by Doctor Hubbard, American
nuclear physicist and leading world authority on the subject of
life sources and mental energies and structures."
[Hubbard, "What is Scientology", HCO Bulletin of 23 June 1959
COwens
****************************************************************
"My father, a naval officer, decreed that I would study engineering
and mathematics and so I found myself obediently studying the physical
sciences at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. A course
called "Atomic and Molecular phenomena" had been instituted there. Today
we call it Nuclear physics. I was fortunate enough to be an early
student of that subject in what I believe was the first course in
nuclear physics formally taught in the United States."
[Hubbard, introduction to volume 1 of the "Technical Volumes of
Dianetics & Scientology",
COwens
****************************************************************
"Scientology is the science of knowing how to know. It has taught
us that a Man IS his own immortal soul. And it gives us little
choice but to announce to a world, no matter how it receives it,
that nuclear physics and religion have joined hands and that we in
Scientology perform those miracles for which Man through all his
search has hoped."
[Hubbard, "Man's Search for his Soul", Journal of Scientology, Issue
23-G, 12 Jan 1954]
COwens
****************************************************************
"WHO INVENTED SCIENTOLOGY? Scientology was discovered (found), not
invented (created). It was organized by L. Ron Hubbard, an
American, who has many degrees and is very skilled by reason of
study. Sometimes Wundtian psychologists defend themselves by saying
Hubbard is insane; actually the Chicago Psychological Institute, a
Wundtian organization gave Hubbard many tests at his own request in
January of 1951 and found him unusually bright and extremely sane.
Hubbard was trained in nuclear physics at George Washington
University in Washington, D.C. before he started his studies about
the mind. This explains the mathematical precision of Scientology.
Doctor Hubbard has been given many honors for his work in the field
of the mind."
[Hubbard, "Scientology - Translator's Edition", Professional Auditor's
Bulletin no. 82, 1 May 1956]
(This one is signed by "L. Ron Hubbard, Ph.D., C.E.")
COwens
****************************************************************
"Therefore, I am a little bit angry with psychology because I walked
onto the stage as a nuclear physicist in 1932 wanting to know something
about the mind. And here were some of the largest and best endowed
departments of the greatest universities of the world, pretending they
knew something about the mind, knowing nothing. Knowing nothing but
their own shallow pomposity, to be very, very brutal. Little men with
big heads. They caused me more trouble than I care to be caused. Simply
because I asked this single solitary problem: "What is the smallest
energy unit?" "
[Hubbard, "Universes: Basic Definitions", lecture of 7 April 1954]
COwens
****************************************************************
"Why do all nuclear physicists eventually go into communism? Well,
here's Oppenheimer - the other day was suspended by the government for
appointing communists to atomic energy posts. I know these boys; I know
them rather well. I never cared to follow on the same track, I wasn't
that - that concerned with what is it - "What is this molecule?" I was
much better concerned with "Who are these men?" "
[Hubbard, "Restimulation of Engrams, Experiences," lecture of 26 Oct
1953]
COwens
****************************************************************
"A fellow offered me a job one time. He said, "All you have to do is
walk in here, leave your gun at the gate, walk in here and you're
supposed to walk around for eight hours a day, and do so-and-so and so-
and-so."
And I said, "In where?"
He said, "In that enclosure there."
And I said, "What's the difference between that and a prison camp?"
"Oh," he says, "you're nonsense. You get paid in there."
That was the first and only time the government offered me a post as a
nuclear physicist. That was the end of that. The government offered me
that post. They tried to kidnap me on another one, by the way."
[Hubbard, "A Postulate Out Of A Golden Age," lecture of 6 Dec 1956]
COwens
****************************************************************
"And Scientology as quickly embraces and advances the science of physics
as it embraces mysticism and advances it. Now, if you study Scientology,
you can become a very good nuclear physicist. You really could if you
had the knowledge in Scientology and you went along from there, and you
combined it with the routine knowledge of nuclear physics, you'd become
a terrific physicist. There is no doubt about this whatsoever. It's very
funny, but very true."
[Hubbard, "Educational System, How To Group Process (part 1)", lecture
of 10 Jan 1953]
COwens
****************************************************************
"Western culture I took up, and was forced into engineering,
mathematics, majoring in nuclear physics - very antipathetic to me, but
there was order and there was discipline ..."
[Hubbard, "Mechanics of the Mind", lecture of 10 Jan 1953]
COwens
****************************************************************
"It was my privilege to take one of the earliest courses given at an
American university in atomic and molecular phenomena. My purpose was
not however, the same as that of some of the other students in the
course, who went on to make atomic fission practical and give us the
atom bomb. I was trying to find life force as an energy."
[Hubbard, "Science of Survival", book 2 p. 105, 1975 ed.]
COwens
****************************************************************
(This one puts all the above in perspective...)
"It sounds completely mad, doesn't it? But actually energy is full
of things called atoms, and I'm not prepared to tell you anything
about an atom at all. The difference between myself and the
greatest authority on nuclear physics in the world today is
simply this: is I know I don't know what I'm talking about when I
talk about atoms! Heh-heh!"
[Hubbard, "SOP #5 Long Form Step II", lecture of 16 Jan 1953]
COwens
****************************************************************
Despite all of the above, his wife Mary Sue was later to deny that he
had ever claimed to be a nuclear physicist:
"I don't know who promoted ["All About Radiation"] or who wrote the
promotion for the book. I presume the organization did, but in that my
husband -- in lots of lectures that he gave [he] would laugh and talk
about the course of nuclear physics and how he had one theory about them
and his professor had another theory, and I know that he was not in his
lectures holding himself out to be a nuclear physicist."
[Church of Scientology of California v. Gerald Armstrong, 7 May 1984, p.
1083]
COwens
*********************************************************************
From: nobody@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous)
[1] LIES BROUGHT TO LIGHT
Date: Mon Dec 15 19:21:30 CST 1997
"Good News - A Scientology Newspaper" came with today's $cijunk
$nailmail. An LRH article appears on the front page, headed: "The lies
are brought to light. So what are YOU going to do about it?" In this
article Flubbard claims he lectured a group of nuclear physicists in
1942: " - when they were telling me they were working on a secret project
and they were just about to blow up Earth. They were happily thinking
about it even then. And I said, 'You know, you boys better be careful.
I'm very careful that I don't practice in the field of nuclear physics
because someday you will be hunted down in the streets and shot - '."
**********************************************************************
(END)
--
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