Albert Einstein Institute: "One of the three classical tests for general relativity is the gravitational redshift of light or other forms of electromagnetic radiation. However, in contrast to the other two tests - the gravitational deflection of light and the relativistic perihelion shift -, you do not need general relativity to derive the correct prediction for the gravitational redshift. A combination of Newtonian gravity, a particle theory of light, and the weak equivalence principle (gravitating mass equals inertial mass) suffices. [...] The gravitational redshift was first measured on earth in 1960-65 by Pound, Rebka, and Snider..." http://www.einstein-online.info/spot...t_white_dwarfs

It is totally unreasonable to believe that Newton's particle theory of light correctly describes radial fall of photons but gives an incorrect prediction for the gravitational deflection of light. The two motions are identical - the gravitational deflection of light is, essentially, a temporary fall of light towards some massive object. Soldner cannot have been incorrect as far as his method is concerned:

"Soldner is now mostly remembered for having concluded - based on Newton's Corpuscular theory of light - that light would be diverted by heavenly bodies. In a paper written in 1801 and published in 1804, he calculated the amount of deflection of a light ray by a star... [...] Albert Einstein calculated and published a value for the amount of gravitational light-bending in light skimming the Sun in 1911, leading Phillip Lenard to accuse Einstein of plagiarising Soldner's result. Lenard's accusation against Einstein is usually considered to have been at least partly motivated by Lenard's Nazi sympathies and his enthusiasm for the Deutsche Physik movement. At the time, Einstein may well have been genuinely unaware of Soldner's work, or he may have considered his own calculations to be independent and free-standing, requiring no references to earlier research. Einstein's 1911 calculation was based on the idea of gravitational time dilation. In any case, Einstein's subsequent 1915 general theory of relativity argued that all these calculations had been incomplete, and that the "classic" Newtonian arguments, combined with light-bending effects due to gravitational time dilation, gave a combined prediction that was twice as high as the earlier predictions." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Georg_von_Soldner

Soldner's result could still be wrong, due to using wrong parameters. Perhaps no calculation using as parameter the mass of the Sun is reliable:

"After He Said Einstein Was Wrong, Physicist Henry Hill Learned That Fame's Benefits Are Relative [...] A major proof of Einstein's theory involved a peculiarity in the planet Mercury's orbit, which he attributed to the distortion of space created by the great mass of the sun. Central to the proof was an assumption that the sun is perfectly spherical. But Hill's observations showed that the sun is not perfectly round, a discrepancy that Hill has said may be "Achilles tendon of the general theory."
http://people.com/archive/after-he-s...e-vol-18-no-10

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