This is a recent news/views article from www.holoscience.com

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Origin: http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=zj49j0u7

"Impossible"? That's a little strong...I would have said "difficult" or even just "more difficult."

Nature rejected the last letter I sent to them so? If this was an unsolicitad piece of course they are going to they do have their own editors that they maintain for some reason, unless it gets published in the little tiny mail section and it is beyond the word limit for that section. If it was intended for letters to nature it lacks any data to base a conclusion on so it would obviously be bounced. So what is your point?

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Light is faster than sound. "That's why some people appear bright until they speak"

WWGD (What Would GLP Do)

Inspected by #13

[sarcasm]Ohh wait here is a better idea lets let the astrologers decide the founding instead of the study sections! Genuis plan get people who know nothing about the subject to decide on what has a chance at discovering something and should be funded. Maybe next we can let politicians decide, even better.[/sarcasm]

Seriously this has got to be the worst idea for changing funding ever. You don't actual advocate this? Can you imagine what would have happened to the funding behind some really great discoveries if clueless people where making the financnial decisions?

"Any proposal that could not be explained simply to such an audience would demonstrate that the author did not understand it either."

That is totally incorrect no matter how simple I made the work I am doing sound there are people who would still be clueless and the work could save there life. Not to mention take hours if not days to scratch the surface of the work previous that lead to this work. The point of having educated people of the field decide is to be the BS detectors. Good god these people should be ashamed for putting their name on a piece of garbage like this. Actually I think i will email a few for their opnion.

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Light is faster than sound. "That's why some people appear bright until they speak"

WWGD (What Would GLP Do)

Inspected by #13

Well, assuming this isn't a gross copyright violation (which will have to wait to be determined; the linked website is down), I'll comment that I recognize some of the names on that list.

Narlikar has been trying to tear down the BB for some time. However, according to cosmologist Ned Wright,Narlikar is not only wrong, but perhaps purposely deceptive.

Eric Lerner has also been shown wrong by Ned Wright.

Gold is famous for making outrageous claims. He has been right enough times in the past that people don't simply dismiss his claims... but he has been spectacularly wrong as well. These can be found easily enough using google.

My point is that a big list of people writing a letter does not give it much credence in my mind. An argument must stand or fall on its merits.

This group of scientists might be "concerned," but labeling this as "a leading group" of scientists is debatable if not misleading.
So your letter was not published by Nature. To call that "censorship" is ludicrous.

Very catchy rhetoric. Obviously someone has a bone to pick. You having trouble getting your "Electric Universe" ideas published in mainstream journals?

A pretty sweeping statement. Wrong, I might add.

Oh, boy, here we go again. What a bunch of bull.
Another sweeping statement that is simply false. When repeated observations verified that the universal expansion was accelerating, views changed quite quickly. Scientists followed the evidence, not any "beliefs".

If you claim there's "little or no evidence" supporting the big bang theory, you haven't been paying attention!

And now for the "Open Letter to the Scientific Community"....

Oh, I see. You want to do "anti-mainstream" research, but you want the mainstream to pay for it. Rather cheeky, wouldn't you say?

Besides, do you expect funding for any alternative research, regardless of reason or rationality? How do you determine what is a ridiculous idea and what just sounds ridiculous but might have some possibility of success?

Well, now you're sounding like George Bush: You don't like this scientist's conclusions? Just fire him and insert someone who will kowtow to your political agenda.

Such an approach is certainly not appreciated.

The fact that YOU have had trouble getting your particular position published does not mean that the above type of funding is not going on all the time, and it certainly does not mean that the scientific process is not continuing to determine the most valid model of the history of the universe.

You are proposing that funding agencies and the scientific process continue doing what they are already doing. Bravo.

Hello? This is wrong. The nature of the redshift in the spectrum of extragalactic objects was and continues to be confirmed by observing Cepheid Variables as well as other observational techniques. This is not an assumption.

Oh, please. When did Hubble write that? Has nothing been discovered since then?
Simply calling something "illogical and nonsensical" does not make it so.
You've obviously read Arp's book Seeing Red once too often.

Well, there may have been a bottleneck in our evolutionary past, but the conclusion you reach from this possibility would seem to be without empirical support, and I imagine you'd have considerable trouble getting such a "theory" published, particularly since publications typically require evidence of some kind.... Could this be a common problem of yours?

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Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

I'm going to take a whack at that Dark Matter myth.

It isn't invoked entirely for the purpose of the Big Bang.

Sure, BB theory's predictions of the end are determined by the amount of matter and energy floating around. And Astronomers have often gone looking for matter that isn't easily detected to help fill in the gap.

But Dark Matter has some strong support. We see galaxies rotating to fast to stick together, if the only source of gravity is the luminous matter we see. So maybe there's some dark matter there, that we can't see.

Unfortunately all the normal types of non-radiating matter, while a good portion of whats needed, doesn't fit the bill. There just isn't enough.

So people are looking for other types of matter, that don't radiate, and would explain what we see.

People are also looking at gravity itself, to see if it behaves differently than we think (MOND theory comes to mind).

The evidence for Dark Energy is relatively new, and really hasn't had much time to be mulled over in the collective mind of astronomers A lot are looking hard for what it might be, a lot are looking hard for whats wrong (i.e. checking the results). Whether its here to stay or not, will require a bit more time.

While they may, or may not be right, I do think they have a point. Many people get too involved in their field and blind to alternatives, rather they would just keep modifying and patching their little theorm until it sort of crumbles on them. It's surprising how many times a huge new advancement in science has come through a layperson or amature in the field rather than a professional. Unfortunately they generally find it harder to get their ideas recognised too. This seems even more potent today and I can't help but wonder whether a number of ideas are simply blocked or discredited because if they were allowed to be researched many people might find their funding suddenly dry up. Perhaps as Scientists we do need to check our assumptions when the evidence doesn't fit the theory, rather then just patching it once more. Being open to new ways of looking at things isn't a bad thing at all, and best of all, if the new way of viewing it proves to be wrong then it can be dimissed and something better found, after all, isn't that what Science is supposed to be all about?

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

This sounds an awful lot like two other "paradigm-shifts" of recent years. One is the constant anti-evolution petitionizing of the right-wing think tank The Discovery Institute. The other is the "HIV-does-not-cause-AIDS" movement, which likewise engages in science-by-press-conference. Both movements claim censorship whenever their data-free manifestos get rejected by scientific journals. And strangely enough, many of the same names appear on the petitions from both sources.

I'd be interested in seeing how much overlap there is between the names on those petitions and the names on this one.

Ok pony up. When, where? I can't think of any in my fields.

Ahhh the NASA is hiding ET to save their funding arguement. Well it is still wrong, new innovations bring more money to a field not less.

A theory is a coherent body of interrelated statements based on evidence that explains a range of observations about an event or system. The concept of theory is important for any scientific field because of the fact that it is based on a group of statements. This web means that a theory does not pass or fail based on one test. If it fails to predict the result of a test it can amended from the new data in order to be better model of how the system works, as such a theory and science in general are a continual learning process. That being said a theory can be thrown out wholesale if there is a new theory that explains the data better and makes more accurate predictions. Until a new theory explains ALL of theold observations AND predicts better than the old theory it DOES NOT get accepted. Therefore a theory is a mechanistic view that explains how a fact comes to be.


See above. And I still have an open seat for you at FWIS.

__________________
Light is faster than sound. "That's why some people appear bright until they speak"

WWGD (What Would GLP Do)

Inspected by #13

And isn't it a bit sleazy to open the letter with a photo of Martin Rees, who didn't sign the petition?

Sort of implies tht he supports it, doesn't it?

John Dalton (1766-1844)

Started out as a teacher in mathematics and natural philosophy (Phyiscs) at New College in Manchester, later when on to teach Chemistry for six years, but never recieved any formal research training.

His early studies on gases led to development of the law of partial pressures and he went on to propose an "atomic theory" with spherical solid atoms based upon measurable properties of mass.

Henry G. J. Moseley (1887-1915)

Discovered that the main positive charge was located in the nuceli. While he was a Physicist and a very good one, Moresly's work was done at a young age (just 24-26) and he'd hardly started on the road to being a fully professional researcher. Unfortunately he was killed at Gallipoli in 1915, or who knows what else he might have done.

Paul A.M. Dirac (1902-1984)

A Mathematician and Electrical Engineer. Proposed Anti-matter.

Louis de Broglie (1892-1987)

Started out with an Arts degree, but become interested in mathematics and Theoritical Physics, more so during WW1. Finally studied the subject and posulated the Theory of Electons as Waves for his doctorate.



Here are a handful. None of them were researchers with many years under their belts, most started out in other fileds that where they ended up. There are many others in the Chemistry and Physics fields, often now forgotten because their ideas have been surpassed or they were not entirely correct, but did give others a huge thrust in the right direction.

These guys weren't the Einsteins, the Rutherfords, or the Bhors who often grew up with it and dedicated their lives to researching, they were just interested in the topics and so got involved, then found something out that others hadn't seen. Now their names go in the same book as the Great Chemists and Physicists.

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

I'll give you a good reason why Nature won't publish their paper. It's because of an article they once published called, "The Memory of Water". That was the day Nature got suckered into the belief that Homeopathy was real. Anyone remember that? I can understand why they're weary of more hokus pokus science.

Drawing a line between Creationism and the Big Bang theory won't get you very far. For one thing it shows a certain level of ignorance of the theory. Not to mention it's a slap in the face to those scientists who continue to find evidence that supports (or at the very least fails to contradict) the theory.

And this demonstrates a lack of patience for science which is ironic considering the alternative being suggested. What a hilarious contradiction! Ha ha.

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"Patriotism is supporting your country all of the time... and your government when it deserves it." - Mark Twain

Small problem we are comparing vastly different educational systems here.

Ohhh big goose egg here he was a professional. He was educated and was trained by Rutherford.

Also educated and trained.

Ohh come on you are so off here. He had a doctorate says right there. He was educated and trained. The work came from his doctoral research he was a professional.

Did you even read anything about these people? Just becasue they are getting their degree or have recently gottentheir degree does not mean they are not professionals they are researchers getting a degree hence they are professionals!

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Light is faster than sound. "That's why some people appear bright until they speak"

WWGD (What Would GLP Do)

Inspected by #13

I think you misunderstood me. Consider it this way, suppose you have just spent 10 years reseaching a certain set of genes, working out what they do, etc, and then someone else writes up a paper about an assumption that would make your work, and your any work in the previous direction worthless if it was true. This paper basical contradicts everything you know and have been taught. Would you be willing to give it a chance? In that decision would you consider the fact that should it be right and become accepted, that you would either have redo your last 10 years work on a new assumption or lose the funding for your reseach because no one would want it in its current form? I'm not talking about funding becoming less, just moving from one place to another.

If we take the example above, say we tossed out the "Big Bang" for a "Big Ripple" theory where matter is being made at the event horizon of a white hole ripple that moves at the speed of light through the Universe. With that single thing, all researchers dealing with "Big Bang" theory are left with three choices. 1) Jump on the band-wagon, 2) Struggle along on the old theory being "left-behind" with everyone and struggling for funding or 3) become unemployed.

Now consider the same for something that could change the very base of science.

Before saying it couldn't happen, look at the past. Many times people have brought forward revelations in science, even before the time of Galileo, and the mainstream has attempted to stop the tide. Usually they have failed and the idea has gained acceptance, but usually there are casualties. It is something to note.

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

Well their work is an ASSUMPTION not a theory with supporting evidence so of course noone would pay attention, there is no evidence. Science works on evidence not grandstanding and research by press release. Remember the cold fusion incident? This is why science is done by peer review and NOT by press release.

Couple of notes. Mostly addressed above, but if your work was so far off for 10 years it sould have been caught. Second, if you right a research grant with only one aim and one hypothesis to test than you don't kknow how to write a grant. You always plan to have something not go right and have new directions and aims so you can keep working. SO this shouldn't be an issue.


You know this really is a simplistic approach. The CHURCH did not agree with Galileo, the church is far different from educated people. This is why again going back to the topic you don't let people who have no clue sit in on research funding panels.

As for people clinging to dying ideas they are a funny lot and there are some around here.

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Light is faster than sound. "That's why some people appear bright until they speak"

WWGD (What Would GLP Do)

Inspected by #13

True, it was better in those day, it doesn't change that he was never trained in the field. Also the teaching he did was not even University level for the time.

Actually he worked with Rutherford on a short time, then left because he couldn't stand him (Rutherford being a Colonialist and all) and went and did his own work by himself. As to being a Professional Researcher, at 24 he would have been just out of University at the most and probably not even that. I don't consider students to be "Professional Researchers." Until you get a Doctorate if you are working in a University, you publish under the professer's name. So the Universities obviously don't consider it so either.

But trained in what? He wasn't a Physicist, he was a Electrical Engineer.

Again, His major theory was done as his doctorate, and was the result of years of thought before he even started into the field on a academic level. He wasn't a researcher that has been doing it for years as a Professer.

I suppose by this logic anyone that does any research into a topic at any level of education can be considered a Professional Researcher, from High School Students to Doctorate Students. Sorry, I disagree. A Professional Reasearcher is someone that is being funded to do research not someone that is still studying and working towards a degree. I never claimed that they were "Uneducated" just that for most of them, the theories they come up with either weren't totally in their fields (An Electrical Engineer posulating Antimatter) Or that they weren't Professional Researchers in the field (They were still working towards it)

__________________
Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

Actually if you do some research you'll find that the Church was used. Galileo's theories didn't threaten the chuch at all and they wouldn't have become involved but a number of the prominent Geocentric followers claimed that Galileo was speaking against the Church, the Bible and God. They manipluated the Church into acting through that and by using verses incorrectly. Most of those in positions in the Church wouldn't have had a clue about the difference between heliocentric or geocentric, they just went by what they were told, that Galileo was claiming things that were anti-God. Their problem was that they weren't in touch with what was happening and so a number of people were able to very cleverly manoever them into something that should never have happened.

__________________
Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

Bite my tongue bite my tongue.

Not true at all. Come on you can't have worked in research and just said that. The last author on a paper is always the PI. SO by your logic post docs aren't professionals. I know plenty of grad students supported on their own NIH and NSF grants, so the NIH and NSF consider them professionals. I am going to take the NSF and NIH's word forit over yours.

SO I worked for a chemist. I didn't tell her she wasn't a professional because she was working in a genetics lab.

Again same thing as above.

By your definition the researcher in our lab who has a masters degree and a half dozen major papers under his belt is an amatuer I am sure he would be fascinated to find that out. To be a professional you do not have to have a doctorate and your work can lead to your doctorate. You don't get to ding people as being nonprofessionals becasue they make a big discovery during their PhD. That is absurd in the highest regard that someone who is educated and being trained in a discipline is not considered a professional because of timing of their work not being 10 years 4 months and 3 days after receiving tenure. Bah!

__________________
Light is faster than sound. "That's why some people appear bright until they speak"

WWGD (What Would GLP Do)

Inspected by #13

Regardless of what their degrees were in, Dirac and deBroglie would have to be considered professional physicists. They, almost certainly, would have described themselves as such. At the turn of the century EE and physics were almost identical fields and mathematics has always been a strong requirement for theoriticians. In any case, the two were certainly were not "voices in the wilderness" railing against some scientific orthodoxy. They rank among the fathers of QM having worked along with more "traditionally" trained physicists such as Schroedinger, Heisenberg, Pauli, Bohr, et al. in develping that theory during the 20's and 30's.

As to timing, I can think of several people who won Nobels for the Ph.D. dissertations. John Schrieffer comes to mind. He was Bardeen's grad student when they (and Cooper) developed the first theory that explained superconductivity.

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"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." - William Thompson, 1st Baron Lord Kelvin

"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli

I guess this must be the difference between our University Systems. Over here you have to pay for all courses, and are -VERY- lucky if you get any funding or help. If you do it's via your Professor and when it comes to papers, your name is last, if you are lucky.


I'd quite happily tell her that she's not a Professional Geneticist, she's a Professional Chemist.

I could go work in a Physics lab and get paided for it, but I wouldn't be a Professional Physicist because my degrees are in Chemistry and Computing.

In the same way, one of Chemistry's early discoverers was a Vet, would you claim him as a Professional Chemist? He was certainly a Professional, but he was working outside his field.

Same response as above.

That depends, are they still at Uni working towards their degrees, or are they being paid to work in your Lab? There's the difference from what I see. Going from My experiences, it is very different from working in a Lab at a Varsity as a Student (Pre or Post Grad), and working in a Research Lab outside of a Varsity.

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Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

I am going to be as nice about this as possible.

Here goes. Either way you look at it you are incorrect.

1. If you consider graduate students to not be professionals then your contention that it is hard for nonprofessionals to get published is entirely incorrect as all research graduate students have to get published to graduate.
Most publish more than once, and in my field there are at least 40 to 50% ofthe papers with authors that where grad students when the paper was published. Grad students are the great paper mill.

2. Grad students ARE professionals. When I go to meetings grad students work is treated no different than post docs or PI's. Be it meetings in Norway, France, Italy, US, or Uruguay.

Grad students are professionals because they get paid or recieve compensation for their time and it is their main job. That is what defines a professional from an amature. An amature does it for no money in their free time.

__________________
Light is faster than sound. "That's why some people appear bright until they speak"

WWGD (What Would GLP Do)

Inspected by #13

As noted above, our fee structure is slightly different here. Our loverly Gubermint seems to think that everyone has to pay their own way, and post-grad students don't get paid, they have to pay to do it (Even our Student Allowance which is pretty hard to get only lasts 3 years max.) I guess we are talking cross purposes because our systems are different. As to them gettting published, all the Post Grad (Honours, and Masters) Students that published had to do it under their Professor's name, if that's not the same elsewhere, well I guess our system just just plain sucks because I always thought it unfair, but that's how it was.

Chow.

__________________
Howling from the Shadows

It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. --- JayUtah

You can't reason an irrational person out of an irrational belief. --- Noclevername

Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

I'm sorry, but none of the persons you list later (Dalton, Moseley, Dirac, de Broglie) can really be considered an amateur or a layperson. They were all professionally trained and at the most merely changed fields. The only amateurs I can think of that made notable contributions to their fields are the many amateur astronomers such as William Herschel, Charles Messier, and the various comet and asteroid hunters of the nineteenth centuries who did the "grunt work" of finding objects that we now study. But it is a bit of a stretch to call this a "huge" advance, I must admit.

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Microsoft is over if you want it.

The bar has been lowered for the promotion of ATM ideas; the bar for the acceptance of ATM ideas must remain high.

Ned Wright found three flaws [strikes] in Eric Lerner's alternative theory and declared it 'out', which is fair, Eric’s universe has its flaws, but this just begs the question: How many flaws are there in the Big Bang, and can they really be addressed within the constraints of the theory? The letter cites the basic problem: Add hoc parameters have been added whenever BB predictions have failed: The universe is too old, too much structure? Add inflation. Too light? Add dark matter and look for anisotropy. The anisotropy is too small? Add dark energy. Now the supernova researchers tell us the latest data points the universe in the other direction: No problem, make the cosmological constant a differential parameter that does whatever we need it to. If the Big Bang were the new theory on the block, Ned Wright would have given it a dozen strikes by now. That is the problem: A new theory is not going to have every thing right, the universe is too complicated. But if there is a fundamental flaw leading to all these new parameters, how would we ever know? I signed this letter because my intepretation of the cosmological principle requires physical causality for reasonable interpretations of observations.
The universe is operating outside of Big Bang constraints. Accepting this fact is the first step towards truly understanding our universe.

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jwj

It's a big universe out there...is it really unwinding, really burning out?

That's a long list of names on the letter. I bet I can find more who disagree, all called Steve.

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It seems to me that whether or not these fellas were professionals or amateurs is nitpicking. Clearly, they all had education in the sciences.

Show me a writer with a liberal arts degree making some paradigm shift, or better yet, one of these nitwits that don't even have a college degree, can't do advanced math, but confidently announce they have a viable alternative to the Big Bang. Then, I'll be impressed.

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"The oxen are slow, but the earth is patient."

Maybe I'm missing the whole point here, I'll admit that....

But the jab about
Really? man I didn't know of the billion dollar projects that basically everyone in astronomy was being umbrellad under the auspices of the big bang club... Did I miss that funding debate in congress, I remeber the supercollider (RIP), but were was the Research Big Bang for Billions project. I infered the jab as relating to you there, building a road from town a to town b, you are supporting the pave the planet project....

Oh well, I need more caffine....

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-- the only conspiracy I believe in is this damn monopoly on breathing air.

The debate about funding is of course the critical one. The funding agencies are political structures by definition and the minority viewpoints in science are often not at the table when the funds are doled out. What really is needed is some special mechanism to make sure that the better lines of research amongst the minority get at least some funding. This is a great failing of modern science, that no such mechanisms exist. And it's in the mainstream's interest to pay for this, because in the end the truth is neither mainstream nor against.

Not at all. Their point is a good one. Sometimes companies or police forces or even academic faculties bring in outside expertise to have an objective analysis of their activities. It is time I think for some of the sciences, especially astronomy, physics and geology, to bring in other points of view in their decision making. Things have sunk to such a low level that only lots of fresh input can make a difference. Think of what it must mean for these scientists to have to write such a letter. This is symptomatic of a very large problem.

They mean the assumptuion that it's a Doppler shift and not something else.

But everyone on this board should read it once!

This is digressing from the orginal thread on peer review, but it is worth pointing out others who have achieved success outside of their own field, that includes:

• Leonardo da Vinci (painter)
  Advances in architecture, hydraulics, mechanics, engineering, astronomy, geology and anatomy

• Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (tax collector)
  Overthrew the then-prevalent theory of phlogiston.

• William Herschel (musician and composer)
  Pioneered the study of binary stars and nebulae

• Michael Faraday (book-binder apprentice)
  Electronics whizz

• Gregor Johann Mendel (abbot)
  Founder of modern genetics

A fuller list, including many more indviduals, can be found here

Regards,
Ian Tresman
Webmaster, Science Frontiers (Digest of Anomalies)
www.science-frontiers.com