October 23, 2004:   Several years passed and LaViolette's paper still was not posted to the archive.  Then in October 2004, he made a renewed effort to attempt to post his papers to the Cornell archive having become registered to upload to the archive using his California State University Fresno email address; see history2 web page.  By this time his paper was nearing the end of its journal review cycle and in a few more months was to be accepted for publication.  During the intervening years, arxiv.org had instituted a new automated endorsement procedure.  Anyone could determine whether an existing archive user was qualified to endorse to a particular archive section by going to the title page of a posted paper and clicking on the link "Is qualified to endorse?".  So at the end of December he began his search for an endorser, which actually was to be his fourth endorser.  

   Over a period of five weeks he contacted eleven people, looking for someone who felt they understood his paper and who would agreed to endorse it to the general relativity/quantum cosmology section (gr-qc).  It turned out that one of the physicists I had contacted had himself recently been blocked from the arxiv.    Dr. Shen who was a professor at a university in China wrote:

Sent Saturday, January 8, 2005 1:55 am
To Paul Laviolette <plaviolette@csufresno.edu>
Subject Re: Endorsement request for arXiv.org

Dear Prof. Paul Laviolette,
Thanks for your email.
I would like to help you, but unfortunately, my arxiv ID is now no longer valid, because several months ago, I let some other reserchers use my arxiv ID (so theny can upload their papers), and the administraotor of arxiv abrogated my arxiv ID.

You say you are studying the problem of Pioneer effect. It is truly of much interest to me. Would you please send your paper to me? I hope we could have chances to discuss some problems.

Best Regards!

Sincerely,

Jian Qi Shen

Jan. 08, 2005, China

Finally, the eleventh physicist he contacted agreed to endorse his paper.  This was Dr. Jean-Paul -----, a physicist in the department, Service d'Astrophysique, at C.E.A. Saclay, which is a very well-known science research center in France.  Jean-Paul had posted 10 papers to the gr-qc section in the previous five years of which two were on the Pioneer Effect, the topic my paper was addressing.  So he was eminently qualified to serve as an endorser.

February 11, 2005:  After Jean-Paul submitted to Arxiv.org his endorsement to allow LaViolette post to the gr-qc section, LaViolette received the following automated email instructing him to upload his paper:

From  www-admin@arxiv.org 
Sent  Friday, February 11, 2005 12:49 pm
To  plaviolette@csufresno.edu 
 
Subject  You now can submit to gr-qc
You've just been endorsed to submit papers to the arXiv archive gr-qc
(General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology). Visit http://arxiv.org/submit/

But when he attempted to upload, he discovered that arxiv.org continued to block him.  Their system gave back an error message.  He then wrote to the moderator:

Dear moderator,
I would like to upload to the gr-qc section, but when I attempt to access the upload page I get the following result:

<<
arXiv.org Error
The following error has occurred:
Internal error: Invalid category id [gr-qc.H?v`H?vR°?¶$y-?oreFiles]
on page:
/auth/need-endorsement.php?category_id=gr-qc.H?v`H?vR°?¶$y-?oreFiles
The operators of arXiv.org have been notified.
>>

I don't understand what is the problem. I have been endorsed for gr-qc and received an email that I could upload to the gr-qc category:

<<
From  www-admin@arxiv.org 
Sent  Friday, February 11, 2005 12:49 pm
To  plaviolette@csufresno.edu 
Subject  You now can submit to gr-qc

You've just been endorsed to submit papers to the arXiv archive gr-qc
(General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology). Visit
http://arxiv.org/submit/
>>

Can you please fix whatever is not working.

Paul LaViolette

February 14, 2005:  Arxiv moderators continue to play their games

   The automated response he had received back as a reply was quite confusing since this message is usually sent out when a person is asked to seek endorsement for the first time:

From  www-admin@arxiv.org 
Sent  Monday, February 14, 2005 12:46 pm
To  plaviolette@csufresno.edu 
Subject  arXiv endorsement request from Paul LaViolette

(Paul LaViolette should forward this e-mail to someone who's registered
as an endorser for the gr-qc (General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology)
archive of arXiv.)

Paul LaViolette requests your endorsement to submit an article to the
gr-qc section of arXiv. To tell us that you would (or would not) like to
endorse this person, please visit the following URL:...

Not understanding their response, he wrote back:

From Paul Laviolette <plaviolette@csufresno.edu> 
Sent  Monday, February 14, 2005 1:12 pm
To  moderation@arXiv.org 
Cc  www-admin@arxiv.org 
Subject  Re: arXiv endorsement request from Paul LaViolette

Dear moderator:
I don't understand why you are sending me these automated replies to seek endorsement. I have already been endorsed. Dr. ------ [Jean-Paul] who is a qualified endorser endorsed me on February 11th to upload my paper to the gr-qc section. I received back from arXiv.org the following reply:
From  www-admin@arxiv.org 
Sent  Friday, February 11, 2005 12:49 pm
To  plaviolette@csufresno.edu 

Subject  You now can submit to gr-qc

You've just been endorsed to submit papers to the arXiv archive gr-qc
(General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology). Visit http://arxiv.org/submit/

So, why now am I told to find an endorser? Dr. ------ [Jean-Paul] is fully qualified as an endorser having submitted 10 papers in the last 5 years. So I don't understand why I am not allowed to now upload my paper to gr-qc.
Is there a flaw in your system?

Paul LaViolette

Again, they didn't answer his question.  They simply added to the confusion by sending the same automated reply as before which advised him to seek endorsement.

Sent: 2/15/05

Why do you keep sending me the same message suggesting that I should get endorsed?  I have already been endorsed for gr-qc, as I have previously explained.  Please answer my question about why I am being blocked from uploading.

Paul LaViolette

He received no response.  Two weeks went by and still no response, so he wrote to them again.

From  Paul Laviolette <plaviolette@csufresno.edu> 
Sent  Thursday, February 24, 2005 8:53 am
To  moderation@arXiv.org 
Subject  Waiting for a response to my previous emails to you

Dear moderator,
It has been almost two weeks since my earliest emails to you and
I have not had a response.  These concern my being blocked from
uploading to astro-ph and gr-qc, and cross listing to astro-ph even
though I have been endorsed to upload to both of these sections.
Why have you not responded?

Paul LaViolette

Three weeks went by, and then on March 16th after trying again to post his paper, he received the same enigmatic automated response requesting that he seek endorsement.  Two weeks later he again attempted to upload his paper to the gr-qc section and again was sent the same automated reply:

From  www-admin@arxiv.org 
Sent  Thursday, March 31, 2005 11:08 pm
To  plaviolette@csufresno.edu 
Subject  arXiv endorsement request from Paul LaViolette

(Paul LaViolette should forward this e-mail to someone who's registered
as an endorser for the gr-qc (General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology)
archive of arXiv.)...

   He attempted once again on April 11th and again was sent the same automated reply.   All this time would have been better spent constructively in writing papers ,but it seems that the arXiv moderators didn't care.  There was no alternative since they were the only "game in town," being the central electronic preprint repository that researchers regularly consult.  The Cornell cartel had extended its monopoly to include "mirror sites" such as the CERN archive and Los Alamos arxiv which were required to abide by their rules and maintain a unified front against the hard working physicists, astronomers, and mathematicians whom they wished to shut out.

April 13, 2005: Discovery that Arxiv.org had revoked Jean-Paul's endorsement privileges

    On March 30th LaViolette had contacted Dr. Jack Lightbody, the liaison at NSF who oversaw funding to Cornell, including funding to Dr. Ginsparg for research into development of the preprint archive.  He explained the trouble he was having with arxiv, of being blocked even after having been endorsed to post his paper.  Lightbody was disturbed by what he heard and sent an email about it to the arxiv administration.  His email was ignored.

   On April 13th, LaViolette was beginning to think that perhaps the problem could be solved if his endorser, Jean-Paul, were to resubmit his endorsement.  But, to be on the safe side, he decided to check his endorsement status. So, he visited the title page of one of Jean-Paul's papers to check the endorsement status link.  What he found, shocked him.  The arxiv administrators had revoked his sponsor's endorsement privileges!  This must have been done at the time that Jean-Paul had endorsed LaViolette and was the reason that arxiv.org had kept sending automated responses instructing LaViolette to get endorsed.  Apparently  the arxiv administrators were so determined to maintain their blacklisting of LaViolette that they were willing to bend their own rules and cancel the endorsement privileges of one of their most prolific physicists.  In this way they were able to make sure that LaViolette would continue to be blocked from posting his paper.

   Upon discovering this, LaViolette wrote the following letter to Jack Lightbody which was also copied to Dr. Dehmer head of the NSF physics grant section:

Subj: strange tactics of ArXiv.org, punishing endorsers for attempting to endorse me
Date: Wednesday, April 13, 2005 3:31:54 PM
From:     plaviolette@csufresno.edu
To: jwlightb@nsf.gov, jdehmer@nsf.gov

Dear Jack,

Today I have discovered that the ArXiv.org moderators have revoked the endorsement privileges of Professor ------- [Jean-Paul], the gentleman who endorsed me to the general relativity/quantum cosmology section two months ago. I think that this should make people very concerned about the tactics these people use to administer their archive. Here are the sequence of events in chronological order:

1) Dr. ------- [Jean-Paul] is listed as an endorser for the gr-qc section of arXiv.org. He is very qualified since he has posted 10 papers to this section in the past 5 years (11 in the past 6 years) of which two were on the Pioneer Effect, which is the topic my paper was addressing. I don't know of many physicists who could have been more qualified to act as an endorser.

2) February 11, 2005: Dr. ------- [Jean-Paul] agrees to endorse my paper and sends his endorsement to ArXiv.org. ArXiv.org in turn accepts his endorsement and sends me an email with a password instructing me that I can now upload my paper to the gr-qc section.

3) February 11, 2005: I attempt to upload my paper to the gr-qc section, but am blocked. I get an error message instead. I write to the moderators to correct the problem.

4) February 14, 2005: The moderator responds with an auto response giving me a password to use for getting endorsement. Presumably at this point ArXiv.org had revoked Prof. ------- [Jean-Paul's] endorsement status (without good reason) and did not inform me that they had done so. I am puzzled by their response with no explanation and repeatedly write to them. They respond four more times with this same automated response (on February 15th, March 16th, March 31st, and April 11th).

5) April 13, 2005: Two months have gone by without an explanation from the moderators in spite of requests from NSF (yourself). At this point I begin thinking that perhaps I should ask Prof. ------- [Jean-Paul] to resubmit his endorsement to ArXiv.org. To make sure that they have not changed his endorsement status, I check his endorsement status on the ArXiv.org website. I discover that his endorsement status has been revoked. I conclude that this revocation must have begun just after Dr. ------- [Jean-Paul] endorsed my paper in February and that this would explain why the moderators repeatedly responded with a request that I seek endorsement.

6) From this, it seems quite obvious that the reason why Dr. ------- [Jean-Paul's] endorsement status was revoked was because he endorsed my paper. As I have written before, it is my belief that Ginsparg and ArXiv.org have placed me on a blacklist. It appears that the revocation of Prof. ------- [Jean-Paul's] endorsement status is to punish him for endorsing my paper. My paper has now been accepted for publication in a refereed journal and still ArXiv.org blocks it from being uploaded. This is the same paper that Nobel laureate Hans Bethe sought to endorse prior to his recent passing, but Ginsparg ignored his phone calls. I would not like to believe that ArXiv.org has stooped to such low tactics. But they have given no explanation and there appears to be no other conclusion to be drawn here. Neither have they given NSF a reasonable explanation for their behavior?

7) I can ask another qualified endorser to endorse me to gr-qc, but I fear that to do so will result in suspension of their endorsement privileges as well. Let us pinch ourselves here to wake up. Are we living now in the Middle Ages? Or is this the twenty first century?

Please let me know what NSF can do to cut off funding to Cornell until the ArXiv.org management removes the archive from Ginsparg's control and puts it in the hands of more competent management.

Paul LaViolette

   To be certain, Dr. LaViolette later contacted Jean-Paul to find out whether he himself had requested that his endorsement privileges to be revoked or whether it was a spontaneous action taken by arxiv.  Jean-Paul assured him that it had been the latter.

April 14, 2005:  Arxiv blocks LaViolette's attempt to communicate with the science community about needed LISA project modifications.  

   During this time, Dr. LaViolette had been in touch with the staff scientists at JPL working on the LISA project, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna project which is being funded by NSF and NASA for launch in 2010.  He pointed out that his theory's successful prediction of the Pioneer Effect could be checked by the LISA experiment if, first, minor modifications were to be made to the planned laser system to allow it to distinguish between Doppler and nonDoppler frequency shifts.  Dr. Prince, director of the project, suggested that LaViolette write a paper on the subject of the needed modifications and post it to the gr-qc section of arxiv.org so that the subject could be brought up for discussion among members of the scientific community.  He wrote:

Subj: Re: Your question re LISA
Date: Thursday, April 14, 2005 1:48:17 PM
From: prince@srl.caltech.edu
To: StarCode@aol.com
cc: prince@caltech.edu

Dear Dr. LaViolette,

Thank you for your message. I suggest that you
write your thoughts in the form of a paper and submit
it to one of the scientific journals or a web site
such as gr-qc. In this way, the science community can
read the ideas and comment. This is the standard form
in which new ideas are introduced and discussed in the
community.

Regards,

Tom Prince

   In the conclusion of his Pioneer Effect paper, LaViolette had included a section in which he proposed the need for making such modifications of LISA.  But as we have seen, the difficulty is that arxiv.org was continuing to block him from posting this paper.  In the past, the arxiv administration had prevented him from accessing the arxiv forum to communicate the fact that his theory had predicted the observed photon blueshifting effect decades before the Pioneer effect was discovered.  Now arxiv was also blocking him from sharing with the science community his ideas for modification of the LISA project, modifications which, if they were carried out, would allow further testing and possible confirmation of his subquantum kinetics theory.

May 6, 2005:  Another endorsement is submitted, but he is still blocked.  

  After discovering that he now needed to get a new endorser, after making further contacts he found another qualified endorser who was a physics professor at the University of Barcelona in Spain.  On May 6th this physicist endorsed him, bringing the total to five physicist to endorse his paper over the course of this three year saga.

   Paul is now given access to upload to the gr-qc section of arxiv.org, or so he thinks.  He receives no error messages or automated rejections this time.  However, after uploading his paper, he finds that it has been given an incorrect classification being automatically shuttled over to the physics section.

From  no-reply@arXiv.org (send mail ONLY to physics) 
Sent  Friday, May 6, 2005 10:54 am
To  plaviolette@csufresno.edu 
Subject  RE: hput Pioneer-10.pdf -> 0505048.pdf (physics/0505048, 156kb)

To verify abstract and pdf, use http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0505048
 PaperId: physics/0505048, PaperPassword: t2t4j (access still password restricted)
 Abstract will appear in mailing scheduled to begin at 20:00 Sunday
  US Eastern time (i.e., Mon  9 May 05 00:00:00 GMT).
Your title and abstract will appear in the next mailing exactly as below.

    Over 95% of the papers on the Pioneer Effect are posted in the gr-qc section, so this was not the correct forum for his paper to appear in if it was to have its ideas discussed by scientists discussing the Pioneer anomaly and the LISA project.   Later that day, he requested that his paper be withdrawn from the physics section since it had been misclassified.  The arxiv administrators withdrew his paper at his request.  He then asked them what could be done to remedy the situation so that when he uploads his paper it would go to the proper gr-qc section.   He received no reply.

    It is obvious, then, that this rerouting of his paper to the physics section was done intentionally by an automated routine purposely put in place by arxiv administrators.  Regardless of how many times LaViolette was endorsed to post in the gr-qc section, arxiv administrators had no intention of letting him post there.

May 2005:

  In May, LaViolette had contacted Dr. Dehmer complaining about the strange tactics of the arxiv.org administrators and the way they were managing the archive.  He tasked Pat Bautz to look into the matter.  She contacted LaViolette and took notes about the suppressive activities going on at the archive.  Weeks later, LaViolette called her to try to find out what she was able to accomplish.  She refused to return his calls.

   After further calls, all he got from her was this short email:

Subj: Response to Phone Call
Date: Wednesday, May 18, 2005 2:10:03 PM
From: lbautz@nsf.gov
To: StarCode@aol.com

Dear Dr. LaViolette,

Thank you for your recent phone inquiries about posting papers on the arXiv.
The administration of the arXiv is the responsibility of the Cornell
University library. NSF intends that they will implement appropriate
screening practices to assure that the arXiv conforms to Cornell University
academic standards.

Laura P. (Pat) Bautz
Physics Division
National Science Foundation
(703) 292-7211
lbautz@nsf.gov