This is my last post on the 21-page PDF document (ElectricComet.pdf), its role as the definitive document presenting the 'EU theory'-based 'electric comet model' (ECM), and the broader context.

In previous posts, I examined nine specific, physical mechanisms in the ECM presented in that document, and found them all meaningless (as presented, even within the context of all references therein), examined the so-called six-to-15 predictions about the Deep Impact mission (and found them equally meaningless), and considered how someone with a BSc in physics and an admitted admirer of Hannes Alfvén could write a poster for an international conference in plasma physics* so contrary to the spirit of Alfvén's work, and his lecturers' teaching (not to mention having allegedly spent 30 years on that model).

This final post concerns form vs substance, or content - why take Thornhill to task for not publishing a paper in a relevant peer-reviewed journal? Why examine the "two flash" prediction in terms of quantitative parameters? And so on.

Note that this comment will glide over questions concerning just how well the assertions on the "two flash" prediction match the actual prediction (HINT: they do so only if your brain is so open it falls out).

At one level form matters a great deal: without it all kinds of hanky panky could become OK, from plagiarism, to revisionism, to an inability to independently check published assertions, and beyond. Of course, such pedantry matters not one jot if the relevant Electric Comet ideas get published in relevant peer-reviewed journals ... but no EU proponent, here in the ATM section of BAUT, has been able to tell us where we can read such papers, despite their apparent deep familiarity with 'EU theory'.

At another level, form defines substance: a necessary condition for science (and its penumbra) as dialogue to have meaning (substance) is that all participants implicitly accept (agree on) conventions (forms).

Or saying this another way: if you can't do 'form', whatever you think you're doing, it sure isn't science.

* Should it turn out that the PDF is fraudulent, in the sense that it was not an ICOPS 2006 poster (for example), then I think we enter completely new territory, in terms of questioning and challenging ATM ideas that rely - even only indirectly - on material purportedly by Thornhill, Talbott, or any of their colleagues.