 As Asimov notes in "Before the Golden Age", cosmic rays do indeed play a part in causing mutations, but they cause evolutionary changes in large populations rather than individual organisms.Though Pollard claims to have done "something no physicist has been able to do, to concentrate the cosmic rays and yet remove from them their harmful properties", this is merely handwaving.Subjecting oneself to a concentrated blast of cosmic rays would, as Asimov notes, simply result in one's death, something that was known perfectly well even in the early 1930s.