Merged Electric Sun Theory (Split from: CME's, active regions and high energy flares)

[iantresman]

It would seem, based on this, that you feel the word (pseudoscience) cannot be used, meaningfully, in this section of JREF. Is that so?

Correct.

Are there any circumstances/situations in which you feel this word can be used, in a meaningful exchange of words?

Not really. It tells me that someone does not consider something to be scientific, it doesn't tell me why. For example. Cosmology was once described as pseudoscience. I'm sure that you, just as much as me would want to know why. If I further disclosed that it was Stephen Hawking who once described Cosmology as pseudoscience, my interest in piqued, but I am still none the wiser.

To me, when a scientist uses the term "pseudoscience", they seem to be appealing to their own authority, rather than taking the time to explain scientifically why they don't consider something to be scientific.

[..] does MM's persistent, multitudinous use of incorrect terms (for standard things in physics, like 'pressure') mean that he's a non-scientist?

It just means that he is using the wrong words. My son "does science" at school, and continually mixes up scientific words. He doesn't mean to do so deliberately, it just hasn't clicked with him. My father is the same with computer, and after 20 years, still can't differentiate between files/folders, computer memory/disk space etc.

You don't have to be a scientist to do science, but it certainly helps, and shows!

 

[ben m]

To me, when a scientist uses the term "pseudoscience", they seem to be appealing to their own authority, rather than taking the time to explain scientifically why they don't consider something to be scientific.

In the case of Michael Mozina, we have explained this, literally hundreds of times. Recall that this board contains amateur scientists, professional scientists, engineers, teachers, and nonscientists, and Mozina is regarded as a pseudoscientist basically straight across the board---it's not just scientists defending their "authority", whatever that means.

There are even posters, yourself among them, with independent enthusiasm for plasma cosmology, and even they have a hard time finding points of agreement with the notorious MM.

 

[iantresman]

In the case of Michael Mozina, we have explained this, literally hundreds of times. Recall that this board contains amateur scientists, professional scientists, engineers, teachers, and nonscientists, and Mozina is regarded as a pseudoscientist basically straight across the board---it's not just scientists defending their "authority", whatever that means.

Perhaps, and I don't mean this negatively, no-one has explained it in a way that he can appreciate and understand. Or perhaps he is just not ready to appreciate the criticisms.

I'm sure we all recall "re-learning" a subject many years after first being taught it, and a light goes on, with a new deeper understanding.

 

[dasmiller]

Perhaps, and I don't mean this negatively, no-one has explained it in a way that he can appreciate and understand.

Well, we're over 3000 posts on this thread alone, and this is just one of several related threads. Many of us have tried at length to get Michael to consider some of the internal inconsistencies, conflicts with observations, or simple physical impossibilities of his claims, without success. We've tried with a variety of styles, from rude and confrontational (not naming any names . . . ) to tactful to Socratic to pedantic to condescending. For years. At some point, we have to conclude that the blame isn't entirely on us.

Or perhaps he is just not ready to appreciate the criticisms.

That's my guess.

I'm sure we all recall "re-learning" a subject many years after first being taught it, and a light goes on, with a new deeper understanding.

This isn't an example of someone simply exploring an area that he'd initially misunderstood and having to confront some erroneous preconceptions. It's someone who maintains a website (http://www.thesurfaceofthesun.com/), which explains that

this visible neon plasma layer that we call the photosphere, and a thicker, more dense atmospheric layer composed of silicon plasma, entirely covers the actual rocky, calcium ferrite surface layer of the sun.

Seriously, it's in the first paragraph.

And after all these thousands of posts and years of review, what's Michael's conclusion? As of last week:

I haven't even made any changes to the verbiage of the pages of my solar website other than the blog page in quite awhile. I'm quite happy with it now. In fact I just paid to renew my website hosting on thesurfaceofthesun.com a few months ago. I'm not embarrassed in the least. IMO it's still the "best" solar theory in terms of matching solar satellite observations.

 

[ben m]

Perhaps, and I don't mean this negatively, no-one has explained it in a way that he can appreciate and understand. Or perhaps he is just not ready to appreciate the criticisms.

I'm sure we all recall "re-learning" a subject many years after first being taught it, and a light goes on, with a new deeper understanding.

You are welcome to read the 500 pages of threads that have been wasted on him. He was heading in similar directions on physicsforums and BAUT before he got banned.

In my opinion, Michael is an unteachable crackpot whose only science-description-reading-reactions are (a) "Since I define myself as anti-LCDM and pro-Alfven, do I feel in-group solidarity with this statement?", followed by (b) "What part of this should I randomly attack?".

If it's possible to get through to him at all, not one poster on any science forum has found it in Mozina's entire Internet career.

 

[dasmiller]

You are welcome to read the 500 pages of threads that have been wasted on him.

For what it's worth, you may take some consolation (I do) that while it may be wasted on him, the threads aren't wasted on everyone else. I've learned a lot from them, and I suspect that a lot of lurkers have, too.

If you were to counter it's has been a terribly inefficient way to deliver any such benefit, I'd . . . umm . . probably look embarrassed and try to change the subject.

 

[Reality Check]

If I further disclosed that it was Stephen Hawking who once described Cosmology as pseudoscience, my interest in piqued, but I am still none the wiser.

Then you would be definitely still none the wiser !
It was Stephen Hawking who once described Cosmology as used to be pseudoscience ("In my third lecture I will turn to cosmology. Cosmology used to be considered a psuedoscience and the preserve of physicists who might have done useful work in their earlier years but who had gone mystic in their dotage.").
Past tense.

He then goes on to state that cosmology now has an observational basis (as science should have) but that there remains the problem of the initial singularity. He uses this problem as an argument for quantum cosmology.

 

[iantresman]

Past tense.

No dispute there.

 

[Almo]

Anything that assumes a non-fusion source for the suns energy would be very difficult to argue.

The helium which we handle must have been put together at some time and some place. We do not argue with the critic who urges that the stars are not hot enough for this process; we tell him to go and find a hotter place. - Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington.

 

[DeiRenDopa]

Correct.



Not really. It tells me that someone does not consider something to be scientific, it doesn't tell me why. For example. Cosmology was once described as pseudoscience. I'm sure that you, just as much as me would want to know why. If I further disclosed that it was Stephen Hawking who once described Cosmology as pseudoscience, my interest in piqued, but I am still none the wiser.

To me, when a scientist uses the term "pseudoscience", they seem to be appealing to their own authority, rather than taking the time to explain scientifically why they don't consider something to be scientific.



It just means that he is using the wrong words. My son "does science" at school, and continually mixes up scientific words. He doesn't mean to do so deliberately, it just hasn't clicked with him. My father is the same with computer, and after 20 years, still can't differentiate between files/folders, computer memory/disk space etc.

You don't have to be a scientist to do science, but it certainly helps, and shows!

Thanks.

So we understand your perspective (I hope!).

Do you appreciate that everyone else who's been active in this thread (and who has commented, so far) disagrees with you? If so, here's an interesting question: in order to communicate (i.e. engage in a meaningful exchange), should you change your views on what 'pseudoscience' means (at least to the audience which is the active members of this thread), or should they change theirs?

This might seem pedantic, obscure, even irrelevant, but I submit that it isn't. In fact, to a very real extent, it goes to the heart of what I think this section of JREF should be founded on (or at least the parts which involve physics, and related parts of science); namely, a crystal-clear, totally unambiguous demarcation: 'science' requires the acceptance a minimal package, absent that acceptance the best you can say is that it's 'pseudoscience'.

A good discussion to have is, of course, what are the critical components of that package?

(FWIW, MM has made it abundantly clear that that package does NOT include a part that has been central to physics, since at least the time of Galileo and Newton, namely, 'math'. In that sense, everything MM has written, in this thread and all others here, is pseudoscience, at best.)

 

[iantresman]

Do you appreciate that everyone else who's been active in this thread (and who has commented, so far) disagrees with you? If so, here's an interesting question: in order to communicate (i.e. engage in a meaningful exchange), should you change your views on what 'pseudoscience' means (at least to the audience which is the active members of this thread), or should they change theirs?

Everyone is free to disagree with everyone else. I don't need to change any my views on pseudoscience, any more than you do. I think we just have to agree that we have different views on the subject.

Going back to Hawking's view that he considered that Cosmology used to be a pseudoscience, I am sure that if many scientists were not aware the attribution, they would have disagreed. And the attribution were then made known, at least people would have paused for thought.

A slight digression. This reminds me of a story concerning Hannes Alfven when he was trying to show the "Existence Electromagnetic-Hydrodynamic Waves", when only a few people believe his new theory:

"A breakthrough came in 1948, when Alfvén gave a seminar at the University of Chicago with Enrico Fermi in the audience. After the seminar, Fermi nodded his head and said, “Of course such waves could exist.”According to Alfvén’s account, the prestige of Enrico Fermi was such that “the next day every physicist nodded his head and said, ‘Oh, of course.’” " -- C.G. Fälthammar, Alex Dessler, "Hannes Alfvén" (PDF) in Proceedings American Philosophical Society Vol. 150, 4 (December 2006)

Sometimes it is OK to have a different opinion! Sometimes.

 

[ben m]

Going back to Hawking's view that he considered that Cosmology used to be a pseudoscience, I am sure that if many scientists were not aware the attribution, they would have disagreed. And the attribution were then made known, at least people would have paused for thought.

Your original post didn't even state Hawking's view correctly: that historically speaking cosmology was once, i.e. pre-1920, considered pseudoscience by people of the day. That's something I would agree with no matter who said it. Yes, Hawking is right, cosmology was pseudoscience.

Your actual words:

Cosmology was once described as pseudoscience

could just as well have meant "Alfven denounced cosmology entirely in a legendary rant at the 1985 AAS conference". No, (I would reply), Alfven is wrong, cosmology is not pseudoscience.

This has nothing to do with my respecting Hawking more than Alfven (though I do), it has to do with Hawking making correct judgement and putative-Alfven making an incorrect one ... and iantresman reporting them unclearly to try to make some sort of a point.

 

[ben m]

A slight digression. This reminds me of a story concerning Hannes Alfven when he was trying to show the "Existence Electromagnetic-Hydrodynamic Waves", when only a few people believe his new theory:

Ah, yes, another Galileo story. Don't forget Wegener and continental drift.

What did Alfven do when a limited number of people believe his theory? In the case of Alfven waves, he worked on it a little more, published several more MNRAS, Nature, and other papers, and because it was correct people who actually followed up on it tended to confirm it. Between the original publication and the Fermi story is about seven years.

(By the way, during those same seven years he also wrote several cosmology, solar-system origin, etc. papers which are indeed recognizably wrong.)

What have plasma cosmologists done in the 45 years since Alfven published "Worlds-Antiworlds"? Well, exactly nothing from this work has been developed into sensible physics that can be compared to data; the existing fragmentary, amateurish work which can be compared to data is all obviously and dramatically wrong; and a competing theory based on very straightforward (if modern-sounding) physics has been extremely successful in both explaining the old data and predicting the new data.

Is plasma cosmology perpetually stuck in Alfven's version of 1943, when (I might imagine) he was sitting around annoyed that people didn't like his obscure 1942 paper? When is plasma cosmology going to get to Alfven's version of 1944, when he stopped griping about it and did more work? Plasma cosmology's major output since 1965 seems to have been nursing its Galileo complex.

Or perhaps plasma cosmology is perpetually stuck in Alfven's version of 1941, when he had an idea for a theory which turned out to be wrong (the solar system formed when a magnetized Sun passed through a gas cloud) and it was quickly and correctly forgotten about, because that's what science is supposed to do with wrong theories.

 

[iantresman]

Your original post didn't even state Hawking's view correctly: [..] and iantresman reporting them unclearly to try to make some sort of a point.

Yes I agree, I stated Hawkins unclearly.

 

[iantresman]

What have plasma cosmologists done in the 45 years since Alfven published "Worlds-Antiworlds"?

As far as I am aware, Worlds-Antiworlds is about Klein-Alfvén Cosmology, the application of Alfvén's work on plasma astrophysics, to Oskar's Klein's work on Symmetric Cosmology, but I don't think this is relevant to this thread.

 

[DeiRenDopa]

Everyone is free to disagree with everyone else. I don't need to change any my views on pseudoscience, any more than you do. I think we just have to agree that we have different views on the subject.

As vanilla words on paper (or otherwise), no one but a curmudgeon could disagree.

Yet, and yet ...

If you and I (and, no doubt, at least ~a dozen others) cannot agree on what this particular word means, then how can we have a meaningful discussion, going forward?

I note that, in particular, you chose not comment on my key point, which concerns the centrality of 'math' in physics (etc), and the potential use of this as a means of demarcating science from everything else (pseudoscience included).

So, bluntly, do you consider that the foundational aspects of physics (etc) include 'math'? Equivalently, do you consider that a complete absence (never mind an explicit, and open, rejection) of 'math' to be a near certain indication of non-science (in the domain of physics)?

To be clear: if we can't agree on core components of the foundation (of physics, etc), then what's the point of talking about the details?

 

[iantresman]

If you and I (and, no doubt, at least ~a dozen others) cannot agree on what this particular word means, then how can we have a meaningful discussion, going forward?

There are two things here (a) the meaning of the word psuedoscience (b) the use of the word pseudoscience.

People in general do not agree on all the meanings, as is evident from the description of pseudoscience at Wikipedia.

And I've already said that I don't approve of the word's use, for the very reason that it is ill-defined. I'd go as far as to say, that because the word tries to give the impression that it is a scientific word, when it isn't science, then the use of the word pseudoscience is itself, pseudoscience.

An example is The Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience (2000), edited by Dr William F. Williams, which at first glance, looks like a useful reference for ascertaining the value of subjects such as homeopathy, velikovsky, UFOs, N-Rays, etc. The book has been used as a reference on Wikipedia. However, the book also includes entries for the Big Bang, Black Holes, Darwin and the Skeptics Society, without giving any reason why all these subjects appears side by side. People would regularly cite the first group of subjects as being pseudoscience only because they appeared in the book, and then made excuses when they discovered the second set of subjects.

I bought the book, and could not find one explanation as to why a particular subject was included, even though the author provides his own criteria. I suspect it would be difficult to get most people to agree on the inclusion of all the subjects in the book.

I note that, in particular, you chose not comment on my key point, which concerns the centrality of 'math' in physics (etc), and the potential use of this as a means of demarcating science from everything else (pseudoscience included).

Maths and physics are both very important, and yes, they both help distinguish science from other subjects, together with the other pillars of science, observation, theory and testing. I think we have to be careful here, because I suspect that some subjects do not rely so heavily on maths and physics, and here I am thinking, for example, of Mendel's pioneering work on the inheritance of certain traits in pea plants. I haven't looked at his papers, but I suspect that he has no maths as such in his papers, although an argument could be made that some of this charts are mathematical.

 

[DeiRenDopa]

There are two things here (a) the meaning of the word psuedoscience (b) the use of the word pseudoscience.

The title of this thread is "Electric Sun Theory" (EST), and that's what we're discussing.

In that context, everyone who's commented on the characterization of said theory, as presented in this thread, as pseudoscience is in agreement ... except you.

People in general do not agree on all the meanings, as is evident from the description of pseudoscience at Wikipedia.

That may be so.

However, there is essentially no discussion of the meaning of the word in general (at least, in this thread).

As applied to the EST, well, it's pseudoscience. Curiously, even you have not presented anything to the contrary.

And I've already said that I don't approve of the word's use, for the very reason that it is ill-defined. I'd go as far as to say, that because the word tries to give the impression that it is a scientific word, when it isn't science, then the use of the word pseudoscience is itself, pseudoscience.

I'm beginning to think you and I (at least) are talking past each other.

Have several people not presented definitions of the term? Definitions that are clearly defined, with respect to the EST?

[whole lot of irrelevant stuff skipped]

I note that, in particular, you chose not comment on my key point, which concerns the centrality of 'math' in physics (etc), and the potential use of this as a means of demarcating science from everything else (pseudoscience included).

Maths and physics are both very important, and yes, they both help distinguish science from other subjects, together with the other pillars of science, observation, theory and testing. I think we have to be careful here, because I suspect that some subjects do not rely so heavily on maths and physics, and here I am thinking, for example, of Mendel's pioneering work on the inheritance of certain traits in pea plants. I haven't looked at his papers, but I suspect that he has no maths as such in his papers, although an argument could be made that some of this charts are mathematical.

Now I'm sure we - you and I - are not engaged in a meaningful conversation.

Does the EST involve Mendellian experiments? pea plants?

No, it does not. So why introduce this?

What does the EST - as presented in this thread by MM - involve? Physics, and astronomy.

Perhaps this will clarify things: do you think you could make a credible case that the EST (as presented in this thread) is not pseudoscience? Do you think you could make a credible case that the EST (as presented in this thread) is astrophysics?

 

[iantresman]

The title of this thread is "Electric Sun Theory" (EST), and that's what we're discussing.

In that context, everyone who's commented on the characterization of said theory, as presented in this thread, as pseudoscience is in agreement ... except you.

We've also been discussing the use of the word "pseudoscience" in general terms, and as far as I am concerned, it is irrelevant as to which subject it is applied. We wouldn't expect the definition and use of the word to change on a subject by subject basis.

My views on the label "pseudoscience" apply to any subject. I am happy that you and others have your own views and descriptions, I just don't share the view that it is useful to use such a general and ill-defined term.

Perhaps if the word "pseudoscience" was better defined, and more generally agreed upon, we'd see the word used more often in scientific papers.

 

[tusenfem]

This discussion about "pseudoscience" is about as useful as discussing the definition of "discharge" with MM. Fortunately, these kind of discussions can keep our minds away from the junk science (I guess that is a clear enough term, or does that also need discussion) that is propagated by Mozina and other electric sunners from the thunderdolts website (= iantresman). (yes I lurk sometimes, once or twice per month, at thunderdolts, and no I have no need to join in that totalitarian community, where you first have to sign an acclamation that the electric universe is true and then you may or may not discuss/comment/critique it, least of all say it is wrong, as our friend N clearly noticed).

Fact is that the electric sun or the electic universe or whatever, does not get developed any furthere, often because "the math and/or physics does not exist yet to give a full description" so they just wait till mainstream comes up with something new, twist it into something unrecognizable and misapply it, eventhough Alfven is supposed to be the founder of this science starting at his early years, yes, even Birkeland knew the "Universe Electric." Strangely enough, non of the proponents (least of all Mozina) is willing to bring this supposedly correct model of the universe any further.

In real science and its papers, however, there is no need for the term pseudoscience. That is why you don't see it in real scientific papers, at least not since Alfven used it in 1984. So instead of wasting time on a useless discussion, it would be better put into a real effort of doing real science.