Professional Publications - T R C Boyde

A plain language introduction for the layman: the first and truly obvious thing to grasp is that, if the sun is in the sky, light can be redirected to where you want it. The tricky bit is doing it with a single, curved, static mirror.

This truly innovative yet very simple technology can play a significant role in the world’s economic and social recovery from the pandemic.

The large literature on research misconduct is itself for the most part unscientific, so that proposals for action based upon it are unlikely to help and indeed may stifle research. Once the real problems and failings are understood better solutions become apparent, viz: recognise the provisional nature of all science; make all authors responsible for the whole content of their published work; make each original paper explicitly subject to review by external assessors should concerns be raised about it in retrospect; and following that, if necessary, annotate the published work in a manner that allows every enquirer to learn its current status. In this way the scientific record would be updated and corrected where needed and made publicly available in its corrected state. These four simple rules and procedures would strongly discourage many of the bad practices which actually do exist, expose malefactors to consequences matched to their wrongdoing, without time limit, protect the rights of the oppressed, enhance accuracy of the scientific record and render unnecessary any other methods of quality assurance.

New buildings overshadowed my house, so I invented a deceptively-simple curved mirror to catch what light there was and redirect it downwards to my garden. That mirror became the patented Sundownloader. Here's the story.