Electric Universe: has there ever been a scientific research program?

[Reality Check]

Is the Universe Static?[/URL]' and Crawford's accompanying paper, at least demonstrated his willingness to put pen-to-paper, and perform analysis on what he thought was raw SN data. That he showed no particular affiliations with the EU nonsense, also raised the credibility of his arguments, thereby warranting more attention than EU ramblings, (IMO).

To be more exact Crawford's paper did analyze raw SN data but in such a way that he got the results that he wanted!
The A problem with the analysis of type Ia supernovae paper is an attempt to debunk the several papers that show that the widths of type 1a supernova light curves are time dilated as predicted in an expanding universe. These papers use standard techniques to take the raw data and calibrate the light curves. Crawford takes a template from the SALT2 model

SALT (for Spectral Adaptive Lightcurve Template) is a package for Type Ia Supernovae light curve fitting

That file is available at salt2_template_0.dat Average spectral sequence.

Crawford's fatal error was to take raw SN data and fit it to that template, thus removing any possible trends! He plots width against redshift, gets a random looking scatter and declares the universe to be static. What he really has done is just show that the raw SN light curves vary from the template light curve.

David F. Crawford seems to have retired in 2003 and has spent his time writing about a static universe explained with his personal cosmology. No known association with EU, just yet another invalid tired light theory. ETA: An idea about cosmological redshift from "gravitational interactions" seems to stem from at least 1993.

 

[SelfSim]

To be more exact Crawford's paper did analyze raw SN data but in such a way that he got the results that he wanted!
....
Crawford's fatal error was to take raw SN data and fit it to that template, thus removing any possible trends! He plots width against redshift, gets a random looking scatter and declares the universe to be static. What he really has done is just show that the raw SN light curves vary from the template light curve.

Ok .. I think you may have been somewhat ahead of JT in the analysis of Crawford's paper, (and I didn't make it as far as either of you), so I'm happy to stand corrected.

Either way, the point is that at least Crawford made the effort to use the data (even though his analysis technique was flawed). This distinguishes him from the EU mindset .. and also in terms of the 'mirror' thread I was actively involved in at CFs, where you-know-who was just waiting poised to swoop on any morsels of road-kill, (from Crawford's thread), he could use to support his own nonsense agendas .. (which included incredible misconceptions about Olber's paradox (Static, Infinite Universes)). Evidently that nonsense agenda favours a non-banged, static, finite (yet somehow 'eternal') universe which starts out as some kind of 'fog' substance! (I kid you not .. )

ETA: An idea about cosmological redshift from "gravitational interactions" seems to stem from at least 1993.

Yep .. he's certainly cranked out a few papers leading up to the SN one ..

 

[JeanTate]

I did not finish this post yesterday...

Personally, I’m a by surprised that BK has kept the comments up for so long.

EU nonsense has been thoroughly shown to be, well, inconsistent, not science etc, and a rather large number of EU acolytes more interested in trivial arguments than in discussing science. So continuing to allow comments permits these ideas to be endlessly repeated, without anyone becoming any wiser.

These days it’s such a fringe activity perhaps it’s best to just ignore it.


I just dropped in to EU central ... same old, same old.

Same old, same old as in (varying degrees of): “looks like a duck” analyses, abhorrence of anything to do with mathematics beyond simple arithmetic, “mainstream is RONG! Therefore EU must be RITE!!!”, willingness to embrace “alternative” physics irrespective of how inconsistent it is with core EU ideas, reliance on YT vids and pop-sci articles as primary sources, and long-dead scientists having their work stolen and grotesquely misrepresented (e.g. Birkeland).

You no longer see any EU stuff being promoted here; even Sol88’s EC thread isn’t about EC ideas any more. Ditto on moderated sites seriously interested in discussing astronomy etc (e.g. CQ, PF, Starship Asterisk); plenty of nonsense on unmoderated sites of course. So EU ideas have suffered greatly ... they are simply ignored as irrelevant to anyone or anything.

 

[jonesdave116]

So EU ideas have suffered greatly ... they are simply ignored as irrelevant to anyone or anything.

'Twas ever thus, and 'twill always be thus. The first time I visited that place was in the early days of the Rosetta mission. If you go back in that thread until late 2014, you'll see a lot of users in there that are no longer there. I suspect that mission was a killer for quite a few. Then, of course, there were the GW detections. Particularly the last one, where we can actually observe the progenitor. Then we had Thornhill's gravity lunacy.
If it wasn't for MM, that place might as well shut down. Only the hardcore cranks left, for the most part. There is only MM defending Scott and Thornhill's solar models, which he doesn't even believe! Nobody else can be bothered.

 

[JeanTate]

'Twas ever thus, and 'twill always be thus. The first time I visited that place was in the early days of the Rosetta mission. If you go back in that thread until late 2014, you'll see a lot of users in there that are no longer there. I suspect that mission was a killer for quite a few. Then, of course, there were the GW detections. Particularly the last one, where we can actually observe the progenitor. Then we had Thornhill's gravity lunacy.
If it wasn't for MM, that place might as well shut down. Only the hardcore cranks left, for the most part. There is only MM defending Scott and Thornhill's solar models, which he doesn't even believe! Nobody else can be bothered.

Ah yes, so much irony!

Certainly a lot of new stuff was learned from Rosetta, but as tusenfem never tires of saying, a huge treasure trove of comet data existed long before Rosetta arrived, but no EU acolyte ever availed themselves of it. Opportunity to avoid a lot of red faces, squandered.

Thornhill’s, um, gravity idea is a nice segue to “EU/PC theory”. Many have pointed out, BK among them, that there is no such thing. It’s a shorthand often invoked, but no EU acolyte bothers with trying to explain what it is, complete with reliable references. At its purest - i.e. what the leading “electrical theorists” wrote in published books - no one can take it seriously ... stars powered by giant currents, General Relativity is nonsense, and so on. And the argument gets really lame when Alfven, Arp, Peratt, and even Birkeland get roped in, with nonsensical claims about them buying fully into the EU of Scott and Thornhill. Does anyone, even MM, even try to pull together a consistent framework? One that is more than a “Just So” story?

 

[JeanTate]

To close the circle ...

Safire aside (that’s covered extensively above), there is no ongoing experimental or observational work on whatever EU theory is. Not even ~zero cost projects in the style of the Zooniverse’s Galaxy Zoo or Radio Galaxy Zoo.

What, then, do EU acolytes spend their time on? Certainly not writing new EU papers; by their own admission, very few have the ability to do such a thing.

Instead, it seems they spend their time, outside EU central, arguing with all the lyin’ liar mainstream folk, whether professional or amateur. And within EU central, a lot of whining about how unfair those lyin’ liar mainstream folks are, forever banning honest EU folk for constantly breaking the clearly published rules!

But no time at all on even thinking about how to test EU ideas. Proof positive that whatever the EU is, it certainly isn’t science.

 

[JeanTate]

I conducted an unofficial, not very scientific, experiment. After my initial post, a few days ago, I noticed that someone in EU central was not only reading this thread, but actually responding to parts of some of the posts here.

Yes, some of those responses are funny, some reflect what we wrote here remarkably well, but there’s a meta I find most interesting: no posts except by MM. Maybe there’ll be some later?

Anyway, a key take-away: exceedingly few acolytes who hang out at EU central care about critiques of the EU, posted here or elsewhere. And ~none have any interest in engaging in a science-based discussion of the EU; likewise none have any interest in testing the EU.

And unless you are concerned about the feelings of just one acolyte, there’s no reason to shed any tears over BK removing comments from his blog. Nor any reason to continue to even mention the EU, here in the ISF.

An ignominious end? Death by being totally ignored, due to complete irrelevance!

 

[jonesdave116]

An ignominious end? Death by being totally ignored, due to complete irrelevance!

Can something that never really started actually end? Not sure about that At the end of the day it comes down to two people who have a bizarre belief that Velikovsky was right. By definition, that disqualifies it from being remotely related to anything scientific.
Even the adoption of certain ideas from the likes of Alfven, Peratt, Juergens et al, can be traced back to the loon Velikovsky, and his "Cosmos without Gravitation" nonsense. Thornhill wants to force fit everything into a Velikovskian worldview, with Venus doing handbrake turns around the solar system a couple of weeks ago last Tuesday. Hence his risible attempts to describe gravity as an EM effect. It can't possibly be that the loon Velikovsky was wrong, and the laws of physics are correct - nope, V was right, therefore we need to rewrite everything we know about physics. The fact that his acolytes can't see through this is sad.
All of their electric sun ideas are laughably bad. Juergens was, I'm afraid, clueless. As is Scott, when it comes to astrophysics. Talbott has never studied science, and Thornhill has a bachelors degree. Whoopee.
They don't even manage to understand what their heroes, such as Alfven, were actually saying. They learn, by rote, passages from papers or speeches. They don't actually understand any of the science.
Magnetic reconnection is a prime example. They can't figure out that Alfven said that it could be possible under certain circumstances. Or that his mate, Falthammar, fully accepted it having been a PI on the Cluster mission, and seen the data with his own eyes.
They'll still believe in lunatic electric cratering, even though they have no viable mechanism.
They'll still believe that Io's volcanoes are some sort of electric woo, even though another hero, Peratt, would (and did) tell them that it is due to tidal heating.
They'll still believe that comets are rock, and all the stuff we see is due to some sort of unexplained electrical woo. Despite a complete lack of a valid hypothesis nor any evidence.
All because of Velikovsky's rubbish. Now, I'm sure that they have followers who will say that they don't take Velikovsky seriously. Well, here's some news guys; that is precisely what the EU is built upon. It wouldn't exist otherwise. The laws of physics, and an awful lot of well established science needs to be thrown out, just so that Wal and Dave can continue to peddle their unscientific idiocy to the faithful.
Very, very sad.

 

[jonesdave116]

No EU solar theory predicts "no neutrinos", but for four years not a single EU/PC hater set lyin' Brian Koberlein strait (sic).

Talking about unscientific idiocy, the above is another quote from MM. It doesn't seem to have registered with him that it doesn't matter what Thornhill or Scott have said about neutrinos in their models. The models are crap, and scientifically impossible. And if the neutrinos were from heavy element fusion, as stated by Thornhill, then the detections would not match theory. The fact that they do match theory shows that the standard model is correct, and Thornhill et al are wrong. As usual.
Fusion at, or anywhere near the surface, would lead to an obvious gamma ray signal. Detections show that the standard model is correct in that the vast majority of the energy to power the Sun is from the first step in the p-p chain. And the detections match theory for the amount of fusion happening to power the Sun. Ergo, there is no need for idiotic, unscientific woo about electric power, because it isn't required. All the power comes from fusion, as has been demonstrated. None of it comes from electric woo. For which there is no viable model, nor evidence. Which is why nobody takes it seriously.

It might also be worth Thornhill, or one of the other wooists, doing a calculation for how much fusion they are going to get, based on the temperatures and pressures encountered in the photosphere. Hint: it is nowhere near hot and dense enough.

 

[Reality Check]

Talking about unscientific idiocy, the above is another quote from MM. ....

What has also never registered with MM is that A Beginner’s View of Our Electric Universe by Tom Findlay exists and that was the e-book that Brian Koberlein cited with the PDF link. This is an e-book reviewed by Wallace Thornhill, Dr Donald E Scott, etc. who know about the EU !

Anyone who reads Testing the Electric Universe will understand that the article is based on that PDF which explicitly states that stars are not fusion powered at all
Page 79

We will be returning to the idea of nuclear fusion-powered stars later to delve into why this, in fact, is not the way the Sun works and to take a close look at how all stars actually do work, electrically of course.

The Sun is mentioned as the source or powered by electric currents or with Birkleand currents (page 106). And then we get on page 169:

Our star, the Sun, does not operate through the action of a gravity-moderated nuclear explosion. It works instead as a concentrated ball of electrically excited plasma, where its visible glowing surface is maintained in arc mode by a drift of electrons flowing inward from the distant cathode region of our solar system, the heliopause, and by positive currents flowing into its poles from the interstellar circuit of which our star is a single component. The Sun is, in fact, an enormous fluorescent light that glows around a smaller, solid and much cooler anode core.

(my emphasis added)

Back on page 18 there is an implied ignorance of

If the Sun really does have a continuous nuclear explosion going on inside it, why then do we see only a small level of a particular ‘nuclear action tell-tale’ type of radiation being emitted where this should actually be at a very much higher level?

Vague but may be referring to solar neutrinos all of which have been detected.

Brian Koberlein pointed out that the neutrinos have been detected and that an "electrically excited plasma" produces a spectrum that is not observed.

ETA: That EU guide also has a section on Velikovsky as if he were a credible scientist rather than a dubious historian denying much of physics.

 

[SelfSim]

.. As is Scott, when it comes to astrophysics.

More lies. Let's see you find any error in his recent Birkeland current paper hotshot. Watch how fast you run and hide from that request.

And here we have yet another example of the gross dishonesty of Mozina (which is the real reason he gets banned everywhere .. and nothing to do with his claims that he is 'mainstream-persecuted' .. eg: by some perceived 'Spanish Inquisition' at CQ)..

Even though I raised the matter of Scott's misconceptions about Birkeland Currents in this thread, and linked to another thread I raised in 2014 at CFs about it, Mozina completely ignores this past history and then puts the matter directly back to jonesdave. Talk about deceitful!

Regardless of Mozina's lies, Scott has the basic physics of Birkeland Currents demonstrably dead-flat wrong in his paper. Scott plagiarised, without formal references to Lundquist's original solution in his first paper on the topic, and then allowed it to be widely dispersed across the public webspace domain. Scott's paper about Birkeland Currents is fundamentally flawed in mulitple ways, and then his paper on Olber's Paradox is blatantly outright incorrect for reasons described here. He also recently continued to propagate the same rubbish in this thread at acolyte HQ, (post is dated Feb 2, 2018).

In spite of JT's lead of suggesting that EU is completely irrelevant, and jonesdave stating it more succinctly, as always being a non-starter, (both ideas with which I completely concur), unfortunately, formal publications such as Scott's cannot be dismissed quite so easily as they require much deeper conceptual understanding .. specifically on the contexts of science's physical definitions. Scott seems determined to 're-wire' those contexts in a very under-handed manner, perhaps to give EU rantings some semblance of theoretical credibility .. and acolytes like Mozina are too deficient in their knowledge of Physics and Math to see though it.

'Debating' with the likes of Mozina is a complete waste of time .. but publishing, technically savvy authors such as Scott are culpable, (making Mozina's trivial criticisms of folks such as Koberlein also pale, by way of comparison, into utter insignificance).

 

[jonesdave116]

@SelfSim,

Scott has the basic physics of Birkeland Currents demonstrably dead-flat wrong in his paper.

This wasn't the paper where he tries to equate the Butterfly Nebula with a z-pinch, is it? That in itself should be enough to show his incompetence. He could have checked the Doppler data!

 

[JeanTate]

<snip>

In spite of JT's lead of suggesting that EU is completely irrelevant, and jonesdave stating it more succinctly, as always being a non-starter, (both ideas with which I completely concur), unfortunately, formal publications such as Scott's cannot be dismissed quite so easily as they require much deeper conceptual understanding .. specifically on the contexts of science's physical definitions. Scott seems determined to 're-wire' those contexts in a very under-handed manner, perhaps to give EU rantings some semblance of theoretical credibility .. and acolytes like Mozina are too deficient in their knowledge of Physics and Math to see though it.

'Debating' with the likes of Mozina is a complete waste of time .. but publishing, technically savvy authors such as Scott are culpable, (making Mozina's trivial criticisms of folks such as Koberlein also pale, by way of comparison, into utter insignificance).

Thanks SS, that's a good point.

To spell it out a bit, if someone at EU central claims that there's no experimental evidence of neutrino oscillation (say), or that no one has replicated or extended Birkeland's terralla experiments, make a wry smile at the ignorance and finish drinking your morning coffee by doing a cross-word puzzle. However, if some claim like this is made in a relevant moderated forum, then respond robustly, even if very succinctly (e.g. re the first claim, https://arxiv.org/abs/1210.1778).

MM was a member here, and was banned for violating the (clearly stated) membership agreement. There is no reason to repeat, or even paraphrase, what he posts in EU central.

 

[SelfSim]

... This wasn't the paper where he tries to equate the Butterfly Nebula with a z-pinch, is it? That in itself should be enough to show his incompetence. He could have checked the Doppler data!

Yes .. it is the same one... Although he produced two versions of the same paper. The first is widely circulated (and didn't accredit Lundquist with the vector calculus derived solution for a force-free field aligned current in space), and the second version was published in the shonky 'Progress in Physics' journal, in which he eventually confessed the origin of the solution as not being his own! In fact, all both papers did, was to completely screw up the context of the original Lundquist solution!

Whilst your highly valid point homes in on his utter malarkey about the M2-9 twin jet (butterfly) nebula, the theoretical errors tend to be far more concerning because they have wider-reaching impacts .. these being that:

- his claim that a force free field, (where the magnetic field and the direction of current density are parallel), is at its minimum, and therefore at its most stable energy state, is grossly nonsensical and;

- the inability of his model as stated, to produce synchrotron radiation, completely contradicts the observed basis underpinning the fundamental definition of a 'Birkeland Current' (BC). Are we now supposed to now go forward blindly accepting that BCs don't have to generate synchrotron radiation signatures and thus, there is not even any need to look for any? What sort of misleading, negligent garbage is this?

The paper, (and Scott's subsequent dog and pony shows), have appeared everywhere, (and unopposed from what I can see), across the web, since. (Eg: presentation slides, YouTubes etc). Scott needs to hang his head in shame, and also own up to the responsibility of the net result of his blatant, unprofessional, errored-in-Physics blunders!

But wait .. there's more .. he then goes on pushing more of this crap out .. this time, in the form of his brain-dead 'Olber's Paradox' blundering fiasco paper!

I tell ya matey, this dude is nothing but bad news .. and he keeps on doing it, virtually unopposed!

 

[jonesdave116]

I don't know if SS has seen the latest offering from Don Scott. I had a visit to his site to get the paper mentioned above, and saw that he has a 2018 paper on "Birkeland Currents and Dark Matter", http://www.ptep-online.com/2018/PP-53-01.PDF. This is to appear in the April edition of the crank journal Progress in Physics.
What I can make of it so far, is that he's basically trying to resurrect Peratt's failed model, and not doing a very good job of it. This relies on the observed filamentary structure of space, and the streamers of gas connecting galaxies. Looking at references [32] & [33] in Scott's paper shows that, despite Scott's claims, these appear to be talking about cold, neutral flows, detected in Lyman alpha. Ref [35] does see ionised gas, but that is as the gas approaches the QSO.
Ref [32] is paywalled, but I have the paper. Scott hasn't, as he referenced a pop-sci article about it on phys.org! Amazed the peer reviewers let that go! (not really ).

The ironic thing here is that ref [33] is to a paper where the authors use various model parameters to try to simulate the filamentary structure we see. All of their models use dark matter to achieve the results! The very thing that Scott is trying to replace, is necessary to observe the filaments. Irony, much?

ref [32] is;
A giant protogalactic disk linked to the cosmic web
Martin, C. D. et al.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14616 (paywalled)

ref [33] is;
The Network Behind the Cosmic Web
Coutinho, B. C. et al.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1604.03236.pdf

 

[SelfSim]

I don't know if SS has seen the latest offering from Don Scott ...

Groan ... No I hadn't ... and see what I mean .. this dude didn't even get the basics of Birkeland Currents sorted .. so what does he do? He continues blundering along with more rubbish and non-sense!

I haven't had a chance to look more closely at this paper, but the following words in section '12 Results and Comments' give insight to the real basis of his analysis:

... Since the beginning of space research, most astrophysicists have asserted that electric fields, and currents, are not important in space phenomena [13]. Because of this rejection of electrical science and experimental plasma engineering, all efforts to explain why the outer stars in galaxies revolve around their galactic centers with velocities that, according to Newtonian dynamics, are too high have failed. This fruitless search has lasted for decades [14].

And then, this unsupported outburst:

An observation that is ’anomalous’ is one that is inconsistent with accepted hypotheses. In real science this requires the replacement of the falsified hypothesis, not an eighty-five year hunt for invisible entities that will preserve it. The work being presented here demonstrates that the root cause of the now vast collection of observed ’anomalous’ galactic stellar rotation profiles is the electrical nature of the Birkeland Currents on which those galaxies have been or are being formed.

.. and that's coming from someone who completely confused himself in his un peer-reviewed inaugural 'Magnetic Fields of Birkeland Currents' publication (referred to in my previous post).

 

[JeanTate]

I don't know if SS has seen the latest offering from Don Scott. I had a visit to his site to get the paper mentioned above, and saw that he has a 2018 paper on "Birkeland Currents and Dark Matter", http://www.ptep-online.com/2018/PP-53-01.PDF. This is to appear in the April edition of the crank journal Progress in Physics.
What I can make of it so far, is that he's basically trying to resurrect Peratt's failed model, and not doing a very good job of it. This relies on the observed filamentary structure of space, and the streamers of gas connecting galaxies. Looking at references [32] & [33] in Scott's paper shows that, despite Scott's claims, these appear to be talking about cold, neutral flows, detected in Lyman alpha. Ref [35] does see ionised gas, but that is as the gas approaches the QSO.
Ref [32] is paywalled, but I have the paper. Scott hasn't, as he referenced a pop-sci article about it on phys.org! Amazed the peer reviewers let that go! (not really ).

The ironic thing here is that ref [33] is to a paper where the authors use various model parameters to try to simulate the filamentary structure we see. All of their models use dark matter to achieve the results! The very thing that Scott is trying to replace, is necessary to observe the filaments. Irony, much?

ref [32] is;
A giant protogalactic disk linked to the cosmic web
Martin, C. D. et al.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14616 (paywalled)

ref [33] is;
The Network Behind the Cosmic Web
Coutinho, B. C. et al.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1604.03236.pdf

How does this make Scott any different from the thousands of other fringe/crackpot authors, who publish in obscure or totally dodgy journals (e.g. PIP), viXra, on their own websites, or even occasionally in arXiv?

There are, historically, many a thread on ideas by such authors, here, in CQ, even in PF; for example, there’s a long-running thread here in ISF on Mills and his “hydrino”. And we even had Lerner start a thread here, on his own BB never happened ideas.

Addressing all this fringe/crackpot stuff would take far more time than one person has, so prioritization is essential. That’s one reason why I like to focus on tests ... so in this case, did Scott propose some concrete, feasible tests of his musings? Has he posted to a relevant, moderated forum? If not, why does he deserve any of us taking time away from our own research?

 

[SelfSim]

After perusing this latest paper by Scott, it looks as though its a 'lets see if we can make the data fit the model' exercise. Thus far, I've attempted to follow two of his reference links, and both have turned out to be 'dud' links.
The first came from this section:

6 Estimating the velocity profile of a FAC
It has been suggested [8] that galaxies form on and along cosmic Birkeland currents.

Reference [8] failed, so I chased up the proper link here. Almost needless to say, there is nothing about galaxies forming 'on and along Birkeland currents' in it.

The crux of his argument apparently relies on using the
'Observed (measured) velocity profile of a typical galaxy. NGC 1620. [9]' (his words used here). Reference [9], (of course), also turns out to be blind although I guess we might be able to give him the benefit of the doubt on this(?) (Well, at least for the time being, maybe).

Overall, given that just about all of the references we've, (JD, myself), checked thus far, either don't support his statements in the paper, or are blind links, I'd say this paper amounts to prime test material for testing out the quality of the so-called 'peer-reviewers' in the crank journal he intends to publish it in.

Also even if NGC 1620's rotation velocity profile data happens to fit into the Lunquist solution, (no error bars considered by him either in this exercise), his errored seminal arguments about the physics of force-free fields, (in his original paper), totally undermine the rationale in this paper.

I'd say this paper is not any more worthy of further consideration than any other crank paper. It is certainly lacking in quality, (thus far).

 

[Reality Check]

I had a visit to his site to get the paper mentioned above, and saw that he has a 2018 paper on "Birkeland Currents and Dark Matter", http://www.ptep-online.com/2018/PP-53-01.PDF. ...

That "paper" is basically a fantasy extending his already invalid Birkeland current analysis.
The main result could be an ignorant fantasy that stars and gas in a galaxy do not orbit under gravity at all (his figure 6). Instead they are driven only by Birkeland currents. But this is more a really bad case of circular reasoning and deep ignorance. He uses the observed velocity profile of NGC 1620 to derive a charge density that is ignorantly used to derive a velocity profile!

The deep ignorance (or denial) is of basic astronomy. Galaxy rotation curves are measured using visible stars and gas. Stars are not plasma clouds in Birkeland currents !

Scott hides this astronomy by a broken link to a figure supposedly within the paper: Ionized gas and stellar kinematics of seventeen nearby spiral galaxies

Ionized gas and stellar kinematics have been measured along the major axes of seventeen nearby spiral galaxies of intermediate to late morphological type. We discuss the properties of each sample galaxy, distinguishing between those characterized by regular or peculiar kinematics. In most of the observed galaxies, ionized gas rotates more rapidly than stars and has a lower velocity dispersion, as is to be expected if the gas is confined in the disc and supported by rotation while the stars are mostly supported by dynamical pressure. In a few objects, gas and stars show almost the same rotational velocity and low velocity dispersion, suggesting that their motion is dominated by rotation.

but the paper has a NGC 1620 figure (Fig 2) that is not his figure (the paper has a plot of ionized gas rotation curves from 3 papers).

ETA: Scott ignores that some galaxies have gas that rotate in the opposite direction to their stars

This allowed us to address the frequency of counter-rotation in spiral galaxies. It turns out that less than 12% and less than 8% (at the 95% confidence level) of the sample galaxies host a counter-rotating gaseous and stellar disc, respectively

How do Birkeland current make gas rotate one way and stars rotate the other way?

The persistent EU lie of most astrophysicists asserting that "electric fields, and current, are not important in space phenomena" (links to himself!) pops up.
Astrophysicists assert that electric fields and currents (like Birkeland currents!) are important for the appropriate space phenomena. A solar wind interacting with a planetary magnetic field (and atmosphere?) is the appropriate place to consider Birkeland currents to be important. Birkeland currents are unimportant at larger scales, especially galactic scales, because there is no evidence of "winds", definitely no planetary magnetic fields and a weak galactic magnetic field.

ETA: A Marklund convection lie.
Marklund convection is unrelated to Birkeland currents. Hannes Alfvén showed that plasma filaments will drive elements with the lowest ionization potential closer to the filament axis. Scott has figure 5 plotting ionization voltage of elements in a "target" form with hydrogen (and O and N) at 13 eV - actually 13.59844 eV - on the outside. He then cites an observation of counter-rotating NGC 4550 having a outer rim with a collection of hydrogen-rich stars.
The lie is omitting helium that has an ionization energy of 24.5 eV and should be the outermost ring from his figure. Also fluorine (17.4), argon (15.7), krypton (13.99) and nitrogen at 14.53414 eV could be in separate outer rings. His suggestion will have helium rich stars at the outer rim.

 

[jonesdave116]

Reference [8] failed, so I chased up the proper link here. Almost needless to say, there is nothing about galaxies forming 'on and along Birkeland currents' in it.

Just for completeness, here is the paper (free access!) that reports the findings:

Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA): fine filaments of galaxies detected within voids
Alpaslan, M. et al.
https://academic.oup.com/mnrasl/article/440/1/L106/1393805