The Hafele-Keating Experiment Supports Special Relativity

My opponent made the following argument: P1: If the Hafele-Keating experiment affirms the predictive power of special relativity (i.e. its consistency with experiment), then the Hafele-Keating experiment supports special relativity. P2: The Hafele-Keating experiment affirms the predictive power of special relativity. C: The Hafele-Keating experiment supports special relativity. I accept his first premise but deny his second.The Hafele-Keating experiment does not affirm the predictive power of Special Relativity. 4 clocks were taken on 2 trips; an Eastward trip, and a Westward trip. For the Eastward trip, they predicted that the clocks would lose 59 nanoseconds relative to the ground clock (plus or minus 10). For the Westward trip, they predicted a gain of 275 nanoseconds (plus or minus 21). Here is the source for their predictions: http://ivanik3.narod.ru...Let's compare the predictions with the actual results, and see how blatantly they contradict Special Relativity.Clock 408Eastward prediction: Loss of 59 nanosecondsActual result: Gain of 165 nanoseconds Clock 408 was losing 1.78ns per hour relative to the ground clock when the trip began, so it should have lost 114.67ns by the end of the 65.43hr trip. Instead, it gained 50ns (it was behind ground clock by 20ns before trip, but ahead of ground clock by 30ns after trip). This proves it actually gained 165ns on the Eastward flight. Source: http://handle.dtic.mil... Westward prediction: Gain of 275 nanosecondsActual result: Gain of 101 nanoseconds Clock 408 was gaining 4.84ns per hour relative to the ground clock when the trip began, so it should have gained 389ns by the end of the 80.33hr trip. Instead, it gained 490ns (it was ahead of ground clock by 490ns before trip, but ahead of ground clock by 980ns after trip). This proves it actually gained 101ns on the Westward flight. Source: Same as previous. Clock 361Eastward prediction: Loss of 59ns Actual result: Loss of 54nsWestward prediction: Gain of 275nsActual result: Loss of 44ns Source: Same type of analysis and source as previous. Clock 120Eastward prediction: Loss of 59nsActual result: Loss of 196nsWestward prediction: Gain of 275nsActual result: Gain of 413nsClock 447Eastward prediction: Loss of 59nsActual result: Loss of 96.6nsWestward prediction: Gain of 275nsActual result: Gain of 26nsHere is a graph of this data, derived from overlaying the prediction graph upon the results graph provided by Hafele in the 1971 report: These results cannot be called evidence of time-dilation nor support for Special Relativity; in fact, Hafele said in 1971 that "the difference between theory and measurement[...] is disturbing". On both trips, one of the four clocks changed time in the opposite direction predicted; Clock 408 gained when predicted to lose going East, and Clock 361 lost when predicted to gain going West. That means 2 of the 8 changes (25%) were of the wrong numerical sign!Of the remaining 6 changes which were of the correct sign, 4 were of the wrong quantity. Some were wildly out of agreement; for instance, Clock 447 gained only 1/10 the amount of time predicted for the Westward trip, while Clock 120 lost three times the amount predicted for the Eastward trip!Thus, only 2 out of 8 data points are in agreement with Special Relativity. Clearly, a 25% success rate cannot be considered support of the theory. As Hafele himself admitted in 1971: "Most people (myself included) would be reluctant to agree that the time gained by any one of these clocks is indicative of anything" I disagree; I think they are indicative of something, but it's not time-dilation; it's how unreliable the clocks were. Ironically, this unreliability was known to the experimenters beforehand, but they proceeded anyway. Quoting from the 1972 paper: "[No] clocks keep precisely the same time, even when located together in the laboratory, but generally show[...] differences which in extreme cases may amount to time differences as large as 1 usec per day. [T]he relativistic time offsets expected in our experiments are only of the order of 0.1 usec per day" Both trips lasted several days. The predicted effect was ten times smaller than the amount by which each clock could randomly vary under stable laboratory conditions. On the flights, the instability was even worse! Quoting Hafele: "[C]locks[...] cannot be expected to perform as well under traveling conditions as they do in the laboratory." How Hafele & Keating expected to obtain a statistically significant result from 4 such extremely erratic clocks, is baffling.There is one more important fact to be noted. Although all 4 clocks demonstrated instability (they kept randomly alternating between gaining and losing time before, during, and after flights), one of the clocks was very stable compared to the others. This was Clock 447: "[R]ate changes that are noticeably larger than those typical in the laboratory occurred for each clock during at least one of the trips, except for clock 447." It is no coincidence that this clock also demonstrated the least alleged time-dilation. Here is a graph taken from the 1972 report illustrating this; I've highlighted Clock 447's data in green. Note how straight each of the three segments for Clock 447 are compared to the other clocks; this illustrates the stability of this particular clock. All three segments are roughly parallel to each other, meaning it's drift rate was roughly constant during the entire experiment, and one can draw an imaginary line from beginning to end connecting the three segments, and see how their is no abrupt step up or down, contrary to what would be expected had time-dilation actually occured. The other clocks drifted very erratically, and by quantities that dwarfed the expected relativistic effect.Premise 2 of my opponent's argument is thusly falsified. The Hafele & Keating Experiment is not evidence of Special Relativity. All it demonstrates is that the clocks used were so unreliable as to render them useless for the purposes of the experiment.Thanks to A.G. Kelly, PhD, whose paper brought this issue to my attention and saved me the trouble of having to do all of the math myself: http://www.cartesio-episteme.net...