Eugene Podkletnov - Public Controversy

Public Controversy

Podkletnov's first peer-reviewed paper on the apparent gravity-modification effect, published in 1992, attracted little notice. In 1996, he submitted a longer paper, in which he claimed to have observed a larger effect (2% weight reduction as opposed to 0.3% in the 1992 paper) to the Journal of Physics D. According to science reporter Charles Platt, a member of the editorial staff, Ian Sample, leaked the submitted paper to Robert Matthews, the science correspondent for the British newspaper, the Sunday Telegraph.

On September 1, 1996, Matthews's story broke, leading with the startling statement: "Scientists in Finland are about to reveal details of the world's first antigravity device." In the ensuing furor, the director of the laboratory where Podkletnov was working issued a defensive statement that Podkletnov was working entirely on his own. Podkletnov's supposed coauthor disavowed prior knowledge of the paper, but some have found this disingenuous. Podkletnov himself complained that he had never claimed to block gravity, only reduced its effect.

By 1997, Podkletnov had withdrawn his second paper (after it had been initially accepted), was no longer allowed into his former lab in Tampere and had returned to Moscow, where he quietly took an engineering job. (In 1998 he was however reported to be working on superconductors at Tamglass engineering Oy in Tampere.)