To which I say what a crap scientist he must be. One works and the other doesn’t? Therefore there is some difference between the two. His failure to immediately be able to even hypothesize what those differences that are key to the process might be is his lack as a scientist. Just because something is not obviously discernible does not mean it does not exist.
It’s something of a stretch to call them sf (they’re more alt-reality), but the basic premise behind Randall Garrett’s Lord Darcy stories is that one of the consequences of Richard the Lionheart surviving the wound that killed him in our timeline is the discovery and codification of the Laws of Magic. In Garret’s contemporary world — for the most part, the stories take place in the year he wrote them — Darcy is Chief Criminal Investigator for the Duke of Normandy (btw, the Planagenets still rule England and were never kicked out of France), and his forensic assistant is Master Sorcerer Sean O Lochlainn.
Yeah, that’s the point - if you get different outcomes, there must be some difference in the inputs. But in this case, there isn’t, which is what pisses off the scientist in McCoy, because science doesn’t work like that.
But magic does.
You are missing my point I think. It would be a crappy scientist who would not go immediately to “what is the difference that I am not immediately discerning?” Is it something from the surface of the hand, the interstitial tissues, that capillary predominant blood has some different mix … “magic” really just means the characters in that world are ignorant of the mechanisms and unable to accept that ignorance or that their current model might be incorrect: without an easy obvious explanation that fits in their current scientific models an observed phenomenon must be magic.
A photon goes through both slits? No need to revise our models. It’s magic!
No, you’re missing mine.
Then I still miss it I guess. Ah well. 
Yes, great series, and published in Analog. But they surely would have been published in Unknown if it was around. It’s a perfect example of what I was thinking of, thanks for reminding me of it.
The space station in 2001 is NOT taken from von Braun. It’s way bigger and is a double wheel. And people who were working with the concept were aghast at the fact that the wheel was incomplete. The partly-finished wheel may have looked photogenic, but would have been very out of balance, nd wouldn’t rotate smoothly on its axis.
Von braun’s original proposal was for a baloony-looking smooth and round relatively small wheel. It was made that way because its parts could be easily stowed inside a cylindrical rocket and assembled in orbit. (The one in 2001 would’ve required a HUGE number of rocket loads. Von Braun’s would only require a few). In addition, he never intended it to provide a full 1g gravity – I think he was going for 1/3 g. It would’ve been enough to give you enough gravity to easily cope with life on board, but wouldn’t require such a strain on the assembly or cause so much Coriolis dizziness. They pretty much kept from reporting on this in the news. I grew u thinking that the idea was to have a gull earth gravity on board. Von Braun’s concept was actually pretty faithfully depicted in a lot of 1950s shows and movies (Conquest of Space, Destination Moon, Disney’s trilogy on Man in Space, etc.) It had been popularized with the magazine articles on the topic.
Has any SF series ever mentioned their artificial gravity? Having it malfunction could have made a good plot point.
As far back as ST TOS, the background com chatter has, amongst other things, someone reporting “gravity is down to point 8”. That seems to happen a lot, if you listen. 
In STVI, the artificial gravity goes out as part of a planned assassination. Notable for the drops of purple Klingon blood floating around.
If you count “inertial dampers” as part of the artificial gravity system (and you simply must), then TNG mentions it all the time.
Every time the ship shakes and people fall out of their (non-seatbelt equipped) chairs, that could be considered a malfunction.
A serious malfunction can only happen once, and then everybody on board becomes a red (green? purple?) stain on the bulkhead.
(https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30400208-will-save-the-galaxy-for-food his series are akin to Firefly. Artificial Gravity and the lack of it are definitely plot points, but so are other mundane topics like human waste and the economic fallout for adventurous space pilots once cheap teleportation is invented.
A delightful novel, even if it is a bit simple.
IIRC, the Animated Series episode “The Practical Joker” included a momentary shut-off of gravity on the bridge.
That isn’t even the worst of it. Even if the second wheel was complete you’d still be left with the fact that the maximum moment of inertia* for the station would now be a diagonal from a point on one wheel to the opposite point on the second wheel. Any perturbation would result in the station wobbling trying to spin on that wider plane of rotation.
*that might not be the correct term but I hope you know what I mean.
ETA2: and the whole docking sequence, while extremely photogenic, would require the rotating shuttle to be absolutely perfectly balanced; even the slightest misalignment and the nose of the shuttle would start precessing.
Not exactly taken from them. Their space stations did not have a big docking bay in the center which required the entering ship to spin in synchrony. Not so good if it was damaged. I believe Clarke’s book had the PanAm ship dock at a non-rotating part of the station, much more reasonable - but not as good looking.
von Braun’s space station looked very 1950s, and so was not going to fit the style of the movie. But in 1968 the parentage of the space station was obvious.
Didn’t see this when I wrote my response. Yeah, this is a dumb design. If a shuttle’s thrusters start venting they are SOL. Any rescue crafts would have to be able to remove their spin when they leave the station. At least the pod bays in Discovery were on the non-rotating part of the ship.
As said, lots of them. Artificial gravity going out, going the wrong direction due to battle damage, used as a defense by amping it way up.
In terms of “science being magic” an interesting example is the novel Procyon’s Promise where in a mostly hard-science setting the people from Procyon showed up in a ship with the classic soft-sci-fi trimmings. Artificial gravity, tractor beams, inertial dampers, FTL drive and so on. What made it “magic” was that they got all that by translating an abandoned alien starship maintenance manual they’d discovered, which told them how to build those things - but nothing of the principles behind it all. So they could fly the ship, build more of them, repair it if damaged and knew what buttons to push, but had no idea how it worked.
Assuming there’s still a bulkhead.
They are made out of tri-titanium. Very strong!
Speaking of magic tech, and artificial gravity, was it ever stated specifically in Niven’s Known Space if they have artificial gravity? On “Neutron Star”, the ship doesn’t have it, and neither does the GP ship in “At The Core”. But I can’t remember if it is clear or not if the passenger liners as seen in “Grendel”, or the GP hull in “The Borderland of Sol”, or the Lying Bastard in “Ringworld” have gravity. Was it ever mentioned?
Yes, here and there. In Protector for example Brennan’s home base Kobold made heavy use of it. And there’s the Sleeping Plates that create zero g fields for people to float & sleep in.
There’s also the requirement that the shuttle dock as close to dead-center perfect of the station’s axis of rotation as possible; or that a previously stable station and a previously stable ship docking together could suddenly become prone to intermediate-axis instability, or… the more I think about it the more problems I come up with.
Right, the ‘gravity planar’.
Also the Kzin have ships that use it.
A lot of Known Space has technology indistinguishable from magic…
Nice universe to live in, though…