Schiff has claimed that the full general-relativity bending of light round a mass point can be derived from purely radial “free-fall” thought experiments by appeal to Newtonian mechanics and the equivalence principle. Schiff's process is shown to lead to absurdities when applied to a parallel gravitational field. It is valid for time, but not for space. Only the Newtonian free paths and, of course, the gravitational Doppler shift can be validly reobtained by this method.

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