How did crackpot Electric Universe papers get published in a peer-reviewed journal?

[DeiRenDopa]

The Open Astronomy Journal, part of Bentham OPEN, has laudable aims:

Aims & Scope

The Open Astronomy Journal is an Open Access online journal, which publishes research articles, reviews, letters and guest edited single topic issues in all areas of astronomy and astrophysics.

The Open Astronomy Journal, a peer-reviewed journal, aims to provide the most complete and reliable source of information on current developments in the field. The emphasis will be on publishing quality papers rapidly and freely available to researchers worldwide.

Yet Special Issue #002, in Volume 4 (2011), entitled "Some Initial Thoughts on Plasma Cosmology", is pure, distilled Electric Universe crackpot anti-science!

None of the five papers in that special issue shows any sign of having been reviewed by anyone who is familiar with contemporary astronomy, let alone plasma astrophysics.

The journal itself seems reputable - it has some heavyweights in charge of the Editorial Board, and the other papers and Special Issues it's published are not the least bit cranky (so it seems to me).

So how did the journal screw up so badly?

 

[BenBurch]

Pathetically low standards. A real shame that such ignorant and mendacious nonsense gets any notice.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Did you read the editorial?

These short notes, although capable of standing alone, are meant to act as an introduction to the following articles devoted to an introduction to the ideas of plasma cosmology or, as it referred to by some, the electric universe. The first article by Dave Smith is meant to be a general overall view of the field and its general ideas. The other articles by Donald Scott, C. J. Ransom, and Wallace Thornhill give much more detail of some specific topics. It might be noted that, to some, the terms ‘plasma cosmology’ and ‘electric universe’ refer to somewhat different topics but here the terms are being used almost interchangeably and the whole purpose of this collection of articles is to draw the attention of a wider audience to the possible importance of electromagnetic effects in cosmology.

It explains why the articles were published.

 

[sol invictus]

if I were on the editorial board of that journal, I would resign immediately over that.

the other papers and Special Issues it's published are not the least bit cranky (so it seems to me).

Some of them are, actually. Nowhere near the same level of course, but there's quite a bit of garbage.

 

[phunk]

The Open Astronomy Journal, part of Bentham OPEN, has laudable aims:


Yet Special Issue #002, in Volume 4 (2011), entitled "Some Initial Thoughts on Plasma Cosmology", is pure, distilled Electric Universe crackpot anti-science!

None of the five papers in that special issue shows any sign of having been reviewed by anyone who is familiar with contemporary astronomy, let alone plasma astrophysics.

The journal itself seems reputable - it has some heavyweights in charge of the Editorial Board, and the other papers and Special Issues it's published are not the least bit cranky (so it seems to me).

So how did the journal screw up so badly?

I wouldn't call Bentham reputable.

 

[sol invictus]

The journal itself seems reputable - it has some heavyweights in charge of the Editorial Board

Do you mean Ellis? He's listed as "Honourable Editor", which could mean anything. I've never heard of Corda, but his most highly cited papers have fewer than 30 citations.

 

[DeiRenDopa]

Did you read the editorial?

These short notes, although capable of standing alone, are meant to act as an introduction to the following articles devoted to an introduction to the ideas of plasma cosmology or, as it referred to by some, the electric universe. The first article by Dave Smith is meant to be a general overall view of the field and its general ideas. The other articles by Donald Scott, C. J. Ransom, and Wallace Thornhill give much more detail of some specific topics. It might be noted that, to some, the terms ‘plasma cosmology’ and ‘electric universe’ refer to somewhat different topics but here the terms are being used almost interchangeably and the whole purpose of this collection of articles is to draw the attention of a wider audience to the possible importance of electromagnetic effects in cosmology.

It explains why the articles were published.

I'm not sure how familiar you are with the subject matter/topic, Skeptic Ginger, but the editorial itself is appallingly bad, when viewed from the perspective of basic historical accuracy.

For example, consider this: "The work on plasmas and other electromagnetic phenomena has inspired some people to examine astronomical phenomena in these terms and this has resulted in the so-called Electric Universe idea as expounded, " Taken in context, this strongly implies that Hannes Alfvén did not do any work on plasma cosmology. If nothing else, this is revisionism of the worst possible kind.

Equally appalling is the total censorship - by omission - of the entire field of plasma astrophysics. At the very least, an editorial on this topic, in a journal with the aims as stated, should include mention of the sort of research covered in WOPA 2010, especially as Dunning-Davies writes "However, after those early years of the century, the emphasis seems to have shifted to explanations of phenomena purely in terms of gravitational effects as far as most mainline research has been concerned." (this sentence is about as close to academic libel - or slander, I get the two confused - as never mind).

 

[DeiRenDopa]

Do you mean Ellis? He's listed as "Honourable Editor", which could mean anything. I've never heard of Corda, but his most highly cited papers have fewer than 30 citations.

I did mean Ellis, but also Lorenzo Iorio. The Editorial Advisory Board contains some heavyweights, e.g. Niel Brandt.

From phunk's link, it would seem that the gulf between aims and implementation, at Bentham, is not limited to just one journal.

Oh, I just noticed: Jeremy Dunning-Davies is also on the Editorial Advisory Board!

 

[sol invictus]

I did mean Ellis, but also Lorenzo Iorio. The Editorial Advisory Board contains some heavyweights, e.g. Niel Brandt.

From phunk's link, it would seem that the gulf between aims and implementation, at Bentham, is not limited to just one journal.

Oh, I just noticed: Jeremy Dunning-Davies is also on the Editorial Advisory Board!

Based on phunk's link, perhaps you should contact Iorio and make sure he's aware of this.

 

[Ocelot]

Here's Jeremy Bentham's dead body spinning away. Perhaps he's heard what use his name is being put to.

Sadly when Bentham (the open access journal not the philosopher) claim that work has been peer reviewed that doesn't mean that it's been peer reviewed. http://classic.the-scientist.com/blog/display/55756/

 

[Almo]

Did you read the editorial? It explains why the articles were published.

All you have to do is dip into the Electric Sun thread to see what the Electric Universe proponents are like.

 

[DeiRenDopa]

the other papers and Special Issues it's published are not the least bit cranky (so it seems to me).

Some of them are, actually. Nowhere near the same level of course, but there's quite a bit of garbage.

Thanks for this. Could you name one or two please?

In light of what's been posted so far, I guess - concerning these somewhat cranky papers - the question is whether it's likely they were actually reviewed? And if reviewed, is it likely what was actually published likely incorporated the changes the reviewers suggested/demanded?

It's one thing to have a sloppy review process; quite another to have none at all (but advertise, aggressively it seems, that you do).

 

[dafydd]

Was it published on the first of April?

 

[DeiRenDopa]

Was it published on the first of April?

No.

 

[MG1962]

I wouldn't call Bentham reputable.

Yeah that was my reaction as well

 

[W.D.Clinger]

How did this happen?

Bentham Open uses a pay-for-publication model. Although I understand that some Bentham Open journals are well-regarded, we have already seen several incidents in which that model has led to embarrassing results. After one such incident, The Open Chemical Physics Journal's editor-in-chief resigned because a paper by Niels Harrit et al., 'Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe', was published without her knowledge. (It later came out that both of the reviewers for that paper were hard-core 9/11 truthers.)

Jeremy Dunning-Davies, who edited the 27 August 2011 issue of The Open Astronomy Journal, is a contributor to the Thunderbolts.info web site and a supporter of Stephen Crothers (who failed to complete his PhD at the University of New South Wales because he made essentially the same kinds of mistakes that Farsight has been promoting in this forum, and then refused to listen to reason).

Dunning-Davies is also the current President of the Telesio Galilei Association. In 2008, both Dunning-Davies and Stephen Crothers received Gold Medal Awards from that organization.

Dunning-Davies has written an entire book, Exploding a Myth: Conventional Wisdom or Scientific Truth?, in which he complains that the big bad scientific establishment isn't paying enough attention to him, to Stephen Crothers, or to the Electric Universe.

The question of how these articles got published probably reduces to the question of how Jeremy Dunning-Davies became the editor of this issue. Given its publication model and the history of some other Bentham Open journals, I wonder whether Dunning-Davies, Smith, and Scott might have just paid for it.

 

[sol invictus]

Thanks for this. Could you name one or two please?

I'll send you a PM.

 

[ben m]

Bentham OPEN are a series of brand-new spam journals. Bentham is trying to make money off of the journal-running business---and that doesn't come from subscriptions, it comes from author-fees. They're launching new "titles" as fast as they can and sending out spam email begging for "editors". I've gotten these myself, complete with "based on your distinguished record, we would be honored" boilerplate.

So, short answer: Jeremy Dunning-Davies responded to a spam email from Bentham; now he's an "editor". He sends an email to his boss saying "Hey, I've got four buddies that would like to pay your huge page chargessubmit manuscripts"; since its a special issue he gets to run the "peer review" himself. Done.

Also, look at the rest of this journal's work. (Not hard: we have only about ten articles a year---there are 3x as many people on the "editorial board" as there are authors in the table of contents.) I see an article by Ruggerio Santilli, an outsider who's known to (a) file lawsuits against people who fail to cite his theory-that-overturns-quantum-mechanics-and-nuclei and (b) send spam to academic physicists announcing that his foundation has nominated him for the Nobel Prize. Oy. I see a dark-energy "theory" by Leong Ying (no academic affiliation) which is claimed to follow from Santilli's theory. Oy oy. I see something that looks like a modified-gravity paper from someone named Worsley (no other papers, may be a KCL grad student or something?) which, in the acknowledgements, thanks John Duffield AKA Farsight who has a reputation here already. Oy oy oy.

So: it's not "plasma cosmology gets published in a peer-reviewed journal". It's "plasma cosmologists and Ruggero Santilli find a friendly pay-to-play spam journal"

 

[Moss]

I wish some publishers would understand that the pay to publish Open Access model does not mean "vanity publishing in science".

 

[ben m]

I'd like to point out some other oddities in the editorial board.

Let's look at the board of directors of a company called "Steriwave":
Jeremy Dunning-Davies, Francesco Fucilla, Waldyr Rodriguez, Franco Selleri ...

Let's look at the board of staff of a company called "Yellow Energy PLC":
Waldyr Rodriguez, Francesco Fucilla, Franco Selleri, Christian Corda ...

Let's look at the editorial board of Ruggero Santilli's personal crackpot journal "Hadronic Mechanics":
Ruggero Santilli, Christian Corda (editor in chief), Jeremy Dunning-Davies ...

Let's look at the board of directors of the crackpot-award-giving "Telesio Galilei Academy of Sciences":

Waldyr Rodriguez, Franco Selleri, Jeremy Dunning-Davies. In the membership list we see Christian Corda, Wallace Thornhill. Let's keep reading: there's Reginald Cahill, Florentin Smarandache, and (for crying out loud) Wladimir Guglinski.

Who has WON the Telesio Galilei awards? Why, look! It's Jeremy Dunning-Davies, Wallace Thornhill, Stephen Crothers, Wladimir Guglinski, Franco Selleri, Florentin Smarandache. (Keep reading: Myron Evans!!)

Draw your own conclusions. My conclusion is that the Santilli-ites and the plasma cosmologists have built a "walled garden". They found institutes to give one another awards, they take over journals and give one another special issues, and every so often their fake-prestige is enough to get a government grant or two. Bentham got roped in.

 

[Zeuzzz]

Amazing. ~20 posts and (apart from DRD quoting two sentences and questioning their inferences) not a single bit of science has been brought up about why this paper is wrong. We get a detailed series of Ad Homs directed at the board, the journal and various other things. I haven't even read it, but can pretty much guarantee it has glaring errors just from a quoted sentence above. Anything claiming synonymity between plasma cosmology and "the electric universe" is going to likely be an odd mix of speculative non peer reviewed EU ideas that are grounded in the more scientifically and mathematically competent PC models.

Please people, this is the science and technology section. Not the attack the messenger and assassinate all characters involved without addressing the whole point section. < Thats called the 9/11 conspiracy forum.

What is so scientifically wrong and annoying about this paper that has elicited such unscientific behaviour from every poster so far?

 

[BenBurch]

If I publish a paper advocating phlogiston theory, I should not expect any discussion of the science whatsoever.

 

[Moss]

Funny: http://www.iitpm.org/board.html shows Corda in cahoots with Dunning Davies and Iorio and Santilli again.
I find it somewhat curious that the first names of most of the editorial advisors are not listed. For example H. Kleinert might be Hagen Kleinert, but who knows?

 

[Zeuzzz]

Do you mean Ellis? He's listed as "Honourable Editor", which could mean anything. I've never heard of Corda, but his most highly cited papers have fewer than 30 citations.

Highly amusing how DRD said they were heavyweights then, because in that case Peratts "The physics of the plasma universe" which has received nearly 100 citations alone, and not a single paper refuting anything within it, makes him instantly more 'heavyweight' just by one book than any of the people involved in this that DRD considers respectable heavyweights.

Count citations to his other papers and he's practically a nobel laureate in comparison

Equally appalling is the total censorship - by omission - of the entire field of plasma astrophysics. At the very least, an editorial on this topic, in a journal with the aims as stated, should include mention of the sort of research covered in WOPA 2010, especially as Dunning-Davies writes "However, after those early years of the century, the emphasis seems to have shifted to explanations of phenomena purely in terms of gravitational effects as far as most mainline research has been concerned." (this sentence is about as close to academic libel - or slander, I get the two confused - as never mind).

Incorrect, they reference Peratts Physics of the plasma universe (AL Peratt - Physics of the Plasma Universe, XII, 372 pp. 208 …, 1992 - adsabs.harvard.edu), which is still in my university library and still used as a reference by many plasma physicists. http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar...verse&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1,5&as_sdtp=on Yes a bit dated now, but the age of a paper does not effect its veracity, especially if no issues have been brought up by any of the near hundred citations it's received since.

What he says is, to an extent, true. Go back more than 10-20 years and you would primarily get explanations for how various interstellar phenomenon are created in relation to the effects of mass and gravity on particles, such as gravitational collapse, angular momentum etc. The consideration of more complex interstellar currents and EM forces on ions/plasma/gasses is certainly not totally ignored today, but often possible hierarchical EM current systems are overlooked, maybe due to their low energy values and very hard to detect spectra.

 

[Zeuzzz]

^ Nice to see those two posts just as logically fallacious as the first lot. Wouldn't want to break a trend.

 

[DeiRenDopa]

Amazing. ~20 posts and (apart from DRD quoting two sentences and questioning their inferences) not a single bit of science has been brought up about why this paper is wrong. We get a detailed series of Ad Homs directed at the board, the journal and various other things. I haven't even read it, but can pretty much guarantee it has glaring errors just from a quoted sentence above. Anything claiming synonymity between plasma cosmology and "the electric universe" is going to likely be an odd mix of speculative non peer reviewed EU ideas that are grounded in the more scientifically and mathematically competent PC models.

Please people, this is the science and technology section. Not the attack the messenger and assassinate all characters involved without addressing the whole point section. < Thats called the 9/11 conspiracy forum.

What is so scientifically wrong and annoying about this paper that has elicited such unscientific behaviour from every poster so far?

Nice to see you again Z.

Nice to see that you acknowledged a key part of my post.

If I haven't made it clear so far, let me try again: I think it's screamingly obvious that all five papers in that Special Issue ("#002, in Volume 4 (2011)") were not reviewed by people with a good grasp of contemporary astrophysics (or at least that part of it relevant to the explicitly stated content of that issue)*. And this stands in direct contradiction with the stated aims of the journal.

I've already mentioned a couple of things a competent reviewer would have picked up in a heartbeat, concerning the editorial (do you dispute my observations, by the way?).

Here are a couple of things that jumped out at me, in each of the other four papers; they are all things a competent reviewer should have redlined, and demanded be fixed before recommending - to the editor - that the paper be published:

The Smith paper 1): "One of the problems with CMB theory is that IF it is the most distant thing we can see, (a remnant of the Big Bang) then we should observe the silhouettes of galaxy clusters and other major cosmic structures imposed on this image, which we do not [5]." - this is a grotesque mis-characterization of the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect, and it even mis-states the conclusions of the paper it cites.

The Smith paper 2): "Another example (Fig. 2) shows a highly redshifted quasar which is observed to be in front of low redshift and visually opaque galaxy NGC 7319 [12]." - the patent absurdity of this should be obvious to you Z: "visually opaque galaxy"?!? We're inside a galaxy, yet we can clearly see external galaxies (hence ours cannot be 'visually opaque'); NGC 7319 is no different in this regard; and the source cited doesn't arrive at the conclusion Smith states.

The Scott paper 1): "An example of an appalling lack of knowledge about how magnetic fields originate is the following extract from an article in New Scientist [4]:" - whatever New Scientist is, it cannot be accepted as a primary source, in an astrophysics paper (there are several other examples of just this).

The Scott paper 2): "mainstream astronomers have not yet begun to acknowledge the importance of electric currents – neither on the Sun, or anywhere else for that matter." - the simplest of literature searches shows this to be false.

The Ransom paper: (see later post)

The Thornhill paper 1): "For instance, consider the invention of ‘dark matter’ that responds to gravity but is electromagnetically undetectable. Matter is an electromagnetic phenomenon, so how is this possible?" - Thornhill may never have heard of neutrinos, but his reviewer certainly should have!

The Thornhill paper 2): "It remains to be established whether that radiation [the CMB] is cosmic or local. The shadowing effect expected from concentrations of nearby galaxies has not been found." - two for the price of one sentence: in addition to the howler over the Sunyaev-Zel'doich effect, Thornhill seems to have done no literature search on observational tests of the non-local nature of the CMB (if he had, he would have had to re-write that part of the sentence).

* OK, caveat: they may have been reviewed, but if they were, the reviewer(s)' suggestions/etc were ignored

 

[DeiRenDopa]

Highly amusing how DRD said they were heavyweights then, because in that case Peratts "The physics of the plasma universe" which has received nearly 100 citations alone, and not a single paper refuting anything within it, makes him instantly more 'heavyweight' just by one book than any of the people involved in this that DRD considers respectable heavyweights.

Up to your usual tricks, eh Z?

I said "some heavyweights", I did not say that every one was a heavyweight.

Shall I remind you of your strange ideas concerning numbers? In this case, two out of four is "some" ...

Equally appalling is the total censorship - by omission - of the entire field of plasma astrophysics. At the very least, an editorial on this topic, in a journal with the aims as stated, should include mention of the sort of research covered in WOPA 2010, especially as Dunning-Davies writes "However, after those early years of the century, the emphasis seems to have shifted to explanations of phenomena purely in terms of gravitational effects as far as most mainline research has been concerned." (this sentence is about as close to academic libel - or slander, I get the two confused - as never mind).

Incorrect, they reference Peratts Physics of the plasma universe (AL Peratt - Physics of the Plasma Universe, XII, 372 pp. 208 …, 1992 - adsabs.harvard.edu), which is still in my university library and still used as a reference by many plasma physicists. http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar...verse&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1,5&as_sdtp=on Yes a bit dated now, but the age of a paper does not effect its veracity, especially if no issues have been brought up by any of the near hundred citations it's received since.

"They"? You mean the (sole, single) author, right?

Sorry Z, I think that the alternate universe in which you live works differently than this one.

There are hundreds if not thousands of papers on plasma astrophysics, published in peer-reviewed journals. A great many of those have been published since 1992.

In your alternate universe, it may be perfectly acceptable for the vast majority of published research in the field that your special issue is focused on
to be totally ignored; however, in this universe, such an omission is blatant intellectual dishonesty, especially when committed by the editor himself.

What he says is, to an extent, true. Go back more than 10-20 years and you would primarily get explanations for how various interstellar phenomenon are created in relation to the effects of mass and gravity on particles, such as gravitational collapse, angular momentum etc. The consideration of more complex interstellar currents and EM forces on ions/plasma/gasses is certainly not totally ignored today, but often possible hierarchical EM current systems are overlooked, maybe due to their low energy values and very hard to detect spectra.

(bold added)

Nice try.

Z, we're not talking about some hand-waving piece of fluff published on the Thunderdolts website; this is - let me remind you - the editorial of a special issue of a journal which "aims to provide the most complete and reliable source of information on current developments in the field. The emphasis will be on publishing quality papers ..."

 

[Moss]

^ Nice to see those two posts just as logically fallacious as the first lot. Wouldn't want to break a trend.

You mean to imply there might not be something curious going on when exactly the same scientists give each other medals and crop up together in companies and institutions that have not many connections to other scientific institutions? Why would someone think that might be a bit problematic when it comes to peer review?

 

[DeiRenDopa]

^ Nice to see those two posts just as logically fallacious as the first lot. Wouldn't want to break a trend.

Dude, I hate to break this to you, but many of the posts in this thread have gone a long way to answering the question I posed.

Shall I remind you of it?

Here you are: "How did crackpot Electric Universe papers get published in a peer-reviewed journal?"

Part of the answer seems to be: "that journal is one of several; other journals in the stable have published papers that were not peer-reviewed; clearly the journals have not lived up to their aims". Another part seems to be: "Jeremy Dunning-Davies is editor of that Special Issue; he is also a member of the Editorial Advisory Board, whatever reviewing was done was likely done by him". If that's so, then a close look at his affiliations and associations is germane to understanding why he (apparently) failed so blatantly in his duty (as editor, and, perhaps, as reviewer).

Shall I go on?

 

[Moss]

See this article re: Open Access, vanity publishing and low standards. Especially this quote:

On the other hand, Bentham Science Publishers journals are apparently willing to publish most anything, including the occasional computer-generated article.

 

[Zeuzzz]

Your first post was quite good DRD, shame about the second. I didn't even know there were four papers, I will have to read them now I guess.

Your second post is rather amuzing. Not only is the Ad Hom aimed directly at me without even trying to hide its purpose, but entire paragraphs are dismissed because I used a plural and not a singular, followed by you doing the same again but this time a singular as a plural. Couple more Ad-homs. And avoiding addressing my point made with the last paragraph by bolding two words you seem to take aversion to, ending in a strawman, tied up with a reference to thunder-woo.

You mean to imply there might not be something curious going on when exactly the same scientists give each other medals and crop up together in companies and institutions that have not many connections to other scientific institutions? Why would someone think that might be a bit problematic when it comes to peer review?

So you are alleging academic misconduct of some sort?

Thats a pretty serious allegation to make. I suggest either backing it up with evidence or retracting it.

Since either is unlikely (I may be wrong, not seen you post in these sort of threads yet) I guess that if you are correct I can expect: To not find many respectable scientists who have referenced his work, that they belong to institutions that have not many connections to other institutions and that the journals the citations are published in are not prestigous or well regarded by the astronomical community, yes?

 

[Zeuzzz]

See this article re: Open Access, vanity publishing and low standards. Especially this quote:

Yes the journal is probably crap, im not backing it, and neither the papers. They are probably crap too, especially if its EU slanted. I'm just biting on some comments that are clearly wrong or highly misrepresentative.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I'm not sure how familiar you are with the subject matter/topic, Skeptic Ginger, but the editorial itself is appallingly bad, when viewed from the perspective of basic historical accuracy.

For example, consider this: "The work on plasmas and other electromagnetic phenomena has inspired some people to examine astronomical phenomena in these terms and this has resulted in the so-called Electric Universe idea as expounded, " Taken in context, this strongly implies that Hannes Alfvén did not do any work on plasma cosmology. If nothing else, this is revisionism of the worst possible kind.

Equally appalling is the total censorship - by omission - of the entire field of plasma astrophysics. At the very least, an editorial on this topic, in a journal with the aims as stated, should include mention of the sort of research covered in WOPA 2010, especially as Dunning-Davies writes "However, after those early years of the century, the emphasis seems to have shifted to explanations of phenomena purely in terms of gravitational effects as far as most mainline research has been concerned." (this sentence is about as close to academic libel - or slander, I get the two confused - as never mind).

I'm not at all familiar with the topic. I did, however, think the editorial was thorough in discussing the reason fo publishing the papers.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

What is so scientifically wrong and annoying about this paper that has elicited such unscientific behaviour from every poster so far?

For those who can't be bothered to look at the papers themselves, here's a scratch-the-surface sample of what's scientifically wrong with the editorial by Dunning-Davies and with the four single-author articles by Smith, Scott, Ransom, and Thornhill.

Starting with the editorial by Jeremy Dunning-Davies:

• After citing The Electric Universe by Wallace Thornhill and David Talbott, and The Electric Sky by Donald Scott, he avers that these "ideas are supported by much computer modelling".
• He promotes the looks-like-a-bunny approach to astronomy: "However, at least visually, some of the phenomena observed in the laboratory are very like what is observed by some of the most powerful of telescopes....Examples such as these prove nothing but should awaken people to the possibility of alternative explanations for astronomical phenomena."
• He complains about routine use of "powerful mathematics".
• He speculates that electromagnetic forces may be responsible for the anomalies that have driven the search for dark matter.
• He says astrophysics should treat gravity as "secondary" because "the electric force is so much more powerful."
• He repeats the canard about "the strength of a magnetic field produced by an electric current is inversely proportional to the distance from the current but the gravitational force between stars is inversely proportional to the square of the distance." (Both fields, gravity and electromagnetic, obey the same inverse-square law. He's comparing the force produced by an infinitely long generator of the field to the force produced by a point source.)
• He then says "this well-known difference between the two forces" (which doesn't even exist) "could lie at the heart of the problem of the galactic rotation curves".

According to Dunning-Davies, "The first article by Dave Smith is meant to be a general overall view of the field and its general ideas." That article is chock full of bad science. Here, again, are just a few samples:

• Smith writes "It is a fact that major "theories" of popular cosmology and its Standard Model have not been tested because they cannot be" (with emphasis as in the original). In reality, the standard model makes many testable predictions, including the cosmic background radiation and its character, the correlation between red-shift and distance, the existence of black holes, gravitational lensing, all the standard tests of general relativity, and many other tests that others here are more qualified than I to list.
• Smith agrees with Fred Hoyle's assertion that "Big Bang cosmology...has not produced one single successful prediction."
• Smith repeats the line about electrical force being 39 orders of magnitude greater than the gravitational force. That's true for two charged particles. In astrophysics, however, the charge balance is nearly perfect.
• "Most plasma theorists see the big bang as both unnecessary and unsupported by empirical evidence." That's an insult to plasma theorists. Smith's talking about advocates of the electric/plasma universe, of whom his statement may be true.
• Smith plainly states that his crowd does not offer any "counter theory to the big bang", and takes that as a plus for his side.
• Smith says several ridiculous things about the cosmic microwave background (CMB), and suggests it "could well be a type of local 'radio fog'." Sorry, but that doesn't explain its black-body spectrum.
• Smith's section 2.4 tries to cast doubt on the correlation between red-shift and distance. He's throwing a couple of anomalies against a mountain of evidence.
• Smith cites Stephen J Crothers as proof that "a proper mathematical treatment of Schwartzchild's solution renders a singularity impossible." That's a purely mathematical argument, and it's wrong. For more detail on why it's wrong, see the current thread on "Black Holes".
• Smith writes: "LeMaítre established in 1933 that Eddington's earlier results yielded only a “fictitious singularity”." That's the 1933 paper I cited in the "Black Holes" thread. The "fictitious singularity" is the coordinate singularity at the event horizon. That's the fictitious singularity at the heart of the argument given by Crothers (and Farsight). Smith debunked his own source.
• Smith devotes several pages to looks-like-a-bunny arguments, whose scientific credibility you can assess by reading the interminable "Electric Sun" thread in this subforum.
• Smith argues that comets don't contain water. He thinks they're "(mostly) rocky bodies with little differentiating them from asteroids".

It goes on, but that's enough.

Donald E Scott's paper may be the least bad of the lot. For the most part, it repeats formulas from undergraduate physics while pretending mainstream physicists ignore those formulas. In the second paragraph of his section III, Scott constructs a caricature of magnetic reconnection and then attacks that strawman. As I proved in the "Electric Sun" thread, magnetic reconnection is a simple consequence of Maxwell's equations. Scott discredits himself whenever he pretends otherwise.

Ransom's paper is more looks-like-a-bunny pseudoscience. If Michael Mozina's running difference images convinced you that the sun has a semi-solid iron crust, then you might be impressed by Ransom's argument.

Thornhill's abstract begins thusly:

A real cosmology must be a broad and coherent natural philosophy. It may always be incomplete, based on our limitations, but to be valid there can be no exceptions in our experience. In particular, cosmology must address issues of life and the human condition.

For Thornhill, cosmology is one of the humanities. He attacks mathematics and mainstream cosmology as though it were an opposing religion:

....Specialized mathematical theorists have usurped cosmology....The dominant belief in immutable, universal mathematical laws keeps us in the dark....Mathematics may describe observed behavior but it cannot explain it....the Big Bang hypothesis requires a miracle of creation....Our Big Bang cosmology is merely another creation myth, a miraculous story with a beginning, middle and a predicted end. It is attractive because it is familiar, having been based on biblical tradition, and doesn’t take much thought.

However, the Big Bang is ideology and not science....Big Bang cosmology has not yet evolved beyond a belief system....it is only from investigating all human experience, particularly the meaning of capricious, battling celestial ‘gods’ hurling thunderbolts in the heavens, that a panorama opens on the human situation on this fragile blue planet and we comprehend our ‘doomsday’ fear and religious longing for the reestablishment of ‘paradise on Earth.’ From such an understanding a real cosmology must begin if it is to have any relevance for us.

Thornhill really and truly wrote those highlighted sentences. That's his approach to science. If you want to read 15 more pages of that stuff, read his paper.

 

[Zeuzzz]

^ thanks.

For Thornhill, cosmology is one of the humanities. He attacks mathematics and mainstream cosmology as though it were an opposing religion:

And every time he does so a woo-woo somewhere dies of shame on his behalf, and I cringe a little. I've yet to see Thornhill do more maths than division or multiplication. At least some of the other EU proponents can do the more advanced maths; I find it weird that they get along with Thornhill at all though. You either shun maths and thus are left with a non science, or you include maths and can start to develop a science. EU proponents seem to flip flop routinely from one side of that argument to another.

Thornhill really and truly wrote those highlighted sentences. That's his approach to science. If you want to read 15 more pages of that stuff, read his paper.

No it's almost pointless. I know what it will be like.

... I will try to get round to it at some point, but I'd much rather just read scotts paper and maybe one more.

I just don't like the older more respectable plasma cosmology material being misrepresented as synonymous with electric universe 'theories'.

 

[DeiRenDopa]

Your first post was quite good DRD, shame about the second. I didn't even know there were four papers, I will have to read them now I guess.

I guess.

Shame that you didn't the first time.

Your second post is rather amuzing. Not only is the Ad Hom aimed directly at me without even trying to hide its purpose, but entire paragraphs are dismissed because I used a plural and not a singular, followed by you doing the same again but this time a singular as a plural. Couple more Ad-homs. And avoiding addressing my point made with the last paragraph by bolding two words you seem to take aversion to, ending in a strawman, tied up with a reference to thunder-woo.

Fair enough, perhaps I didn't make my point as clearly as I should have.

Start with the clearly stated aims of OAJ (you can look them up, they're in the OP).

Assume the publishers are not cynical or incompetent.

Is the Dunning-Davies editorial, in that Special Issue, consistent with those aims?

Clearly, it is not.

Specifically, would it be acceptable for the editor of a special issue, one which has the stated scope of this one, to completely ignore everything published - in relevant, peer-reviewed journals - in the field of plasma astrophysics, in the last 20 or so years?

No, it would not be acceptable.

You seem to think - based on what you posted - that it would be acceptable.

Now, if I - here - now call you ignorant, am I dishing out an ad hom? Or am I stating a fact? One that is both objective, and independently verifiable ...

Since I know that is unlikely (I may be wrong, not seen you post in these sort of threads yet) I guess that if you are correct I can expect to not find many respectable scientists who have referenced his work, that they belong to institutions that have not many connections to other institutions and that the journals the citations are published in are not prestigous or well regarded by the astronomical community?

Here's a curious fact: Dunning-Davies lists his academic affiliation as "Department of Physics, University of Hull, England". However, he is not listed as a member of that department's academic staff.

Another: he seems to have published essentially nothing, in peer-reviewed journals, for at least a decade (according to ADS).

A third: an arXiv preprint of which he is co-author was "withdrawn by arXiv administrators due to excessive unattributed and verbatim text overlap with the pre-existing Wikipedia article on redshift".

 

[DeiRenDopa]

I'm not sure how familiar you are with the subject matter/topic, Skeptic Ginger, but the editorial itself is appallingly bad, when viewed from the perspective of basic historical accuracy.

For example, consider this: "The work on plasmas and other electromagnetic phenomena has inspired some people to examine astronomical phenomena in these terms and this has resulted in the so-called Electric Universe idea as expounded, " Taken in context, this strongly implies that Hannes Alfvén did not do any work on plasma cosmology. If nothing else, this is revisionism of the worst possible kind.

Equally appalling is the total censorship - by omission - of the entire field of plasma astrophysics. At the very least, an editorial on this topic, in a journal with the aims as stated, should include mention of the sort of research covered in WOPA 2010, especially as Dunning-Davies writes "However, after those early years of the century, the emphasis seems to have shifted to explanations of phenomena purely in terms of gravitational effects as far as most mainline research has been concerned." (this sentence is about as close to academic libel - or slander, I get the two confused - as never mind).

I'm not at all familiar with the topic. I did, however, think the editorial was thorough in discussing the reason fo publishing the papers.

OK, I see what you're saying.

Given that, I think there's even more reason to be very annoyed (at least).

Let me quote the last sentence, which is part of what you quoted in your earlier post (I added some bold):

It might be noted that, to some, the terms ‘plasma cosmology’ and ‘electric universe’ refer to somewhat different topics but here the terms are being used almost interchangeably and the whole purpose of this collection of articles is to draw the attention of a wider audience to the possible importance of electromagnetic effects in cosmology.

If that was, in fact, "the whole purpose", then by completely ignoring just about every paper published in the field in the last two decades or so, Dunning-Davies comes pretty close to academic fraud, wouldn't you say?

Oh, and to head of a possible objection: it's true he uses the term "cosmology" and not "astrophysics"; however, as the immediately preceding sentence is "The first article by Dave Smith is meant to be a general overall view of the field and its general ideas. The other articles by Donald Scott, C. J. Ransom, and Wallace Thornhill give much more detail of some specific topics", and as those four papers cover topics that overlap extensively with plasma astrophysics, include topics such planetary craters, the Sun, galaxies, quasars, ...

 

[DeiRenDopa]

Funny: http://www.iitpm.org/board.html shows Corda in cahoots with Dunning Davies and Iorio and Santilli again.
I find it somewhat curious that the first names of most of the editorial advisors are not listed. For example H. Kleinert might be Hagen Kleinert, but who knows?

Curious.

That webpage is dated 2010, and the list is entitled (my bold) Proposed Scientific Advisory Board Members.

Also on this list is Herman J. Mosquera Cuesta. That makes three (of four, George Ellis is the odd man out) members of the Editorial team (i.e. not counting the OAJ Editorial Advisory Board) on this list.

(not much effort on proof-reading the list either, "Professor Marco Morelli of the Fondazione Prato Ricerche" is listed twice!).

 

[Reality Check]

Incorrect, they reference Peratts Physics of the plasma universe (AL Peratt - Physics of the Plasma Universe, XII, 372 pp. 208 …, 1992 - adsabs.harvard.edu), which is still in my university library and still used as a reference by many plasma physicists.

Right - the editorial references Peratt - Physics of the Plasma Universe. This is a book on plasma physics.
This does not validate the crackpot physics in the articles.

 

[Zeuzzz]

If that was, in fact, "the whole purpose", then by completely ignoring just about every paper published in the field in the last two decades or so, Dunning-Davies comes pretty close to academic fraud, wouldn't you say?

DRD, there is nothing academically fraudulent at all about proposing new competing theories to existing ones. To an extent you have to ignore the existing theories if they are competing theories, yet the data that has lead to the theories does indeed have to be explained.

How would new discoveries ever be made or incorrect theories proved wrong if any new theory not based on previous models was considered academic fraud? Thats the totally opposite way that science should work.

I've actually scanned some of the papers now and I have to say they seem to be of a higher callibur than previous publications that fall under the EU bracket.

[I should add (as I can't edit my post) the only reason I brought up Peratt + Plasma Cosmology here is because his book 'physics of the plasma universe' is one of the few references in the opening paper, so is obviously considered by him one of the seminal publications in this area, even if its merging with eu theories is unfortunate due to EU theories previous record of sloppy work]