Null Physics anyone?

[sol invictus]

If it wasnt, the gravy train would grind to a halt and the physicists would be doing nothing instead of postulating nothing.

Crackpots are so entertaining.

Notice that computer you're reading this post on? Who do you think made that possible? Do you know how it works? Why it works? Because some people actually do know, and without those people we wouldn't be having this exchange, now would we?

As for the "gravy train"... do you have any idea how difficult it is to have a career in physics? How few jobs there are? How much more money any Ph.D. physicist can make in industry or finance than s/he can in academia?

Gravy train?? What a load of trollish and self-serving BS. Bye bye, Mr. Witt.

 

[Skwinty]

Sol,
You chose academia.Don't have a sense of humour failure because of it.
By the way, isn't denigrating other peoples qualifications and intelligence one of the signs of crankism.

Maybe its better that you say goodbye and go back to perfecting the Quantum computer so the we can spend some more of our hard earned cash on another piece of junk technology.

PS who needs journals? Perhaps Witt feels the same way.

 

[Tubbythin]

Okay, so let me see what I have learned here.

1.neutrons and protons consist of quarks. A different variety of flavours etc.

No, the same 2 flavours, just with the numbers of each reversed. This is where isospin symmetry comes from. You may want to look that up.

2.Quarks consist of nothing.

To the best of our knowledge, quarks are point like particles with no substructure.

3.So then it would be true to say that the neutron and proton after the free neutron decays have nothing in common.

No, they have rather a lot in common. Like the same quarks (just in reversed numbers).

Sounds like lots of null physics here.

Thats because the above statements are wrong.

Its a bit like saying "Last night my car was stolen, but thats okay because it was replaced by an exact duplicate before I woke up"

No it isn't. Its more like, if anything, saying my range rover was stolen but they replaced it with a supermini, a scooter and a pair of trainers.

I suppose that there is only one member of each of the particles in the particle zoo that are shared throughout the universe.
I believe it was Richard Feynman who suggested this about the electron.

You've lost me.

It's no wonder that Mark Twain had this to say about science.
"Wholesale returns of conjecture on such a trifling investment in fact"

Are you Jerome da Gnome?

He forgot about the financial investment here.

I suppose its a conspiracy and its just BIG Science doesn't want to admit its wrong.

It strikes me that particle physics is a self fulfilling prophecy.
Someone postulates a hypothetical particle to explain an effect in a billion dollar cloud chamber. Another few billion dollars are spent to prove the existence of this particle. Lo and behold the particle is discovered.

Utter rubbish. The need for the s quark came from observations made using cosmic rays made in cloud chambers and similar which cost, probably at most, a couple of hundred dollars. You could probably make one your self. The existence of the strange quark itself pretty much makes your neutron is proton plus electron theory wrong.

No one can peer review the discovery other than a citizen of Planet Erudite.
If it wasnt, the gravy train would grind to a halt and the physicists would be doing nothing instead of postulating nothing.

Yet more nonesense. Identical phenomena are regularly found at different accelerators. Just type J/psi in to your favourite search engine. So either it is correct, improbably coincidental, or there's a whole BIG Science conspiracy. Which is it?

I realise that this is a cynical view of things, but it explains why people write books like Null Physics and The Problem with Physics.
Yep, thats me digging a fallout shelter

Yep... because they don't understand the physics they think is wrong.

 

[Skwinty]

skwinty:I suppose that there is only one member of each of the particles in the particle zoo that are shared throughout the universe.
I believe it was Richard Feynman who suggested this about the electron.
Tubbythin:You've lost me.


You may want to look that up

You may also want to read between the lines of what i said in the post too




Tubbythin,
This is what I asked yesterday and this is what you answered

skwinty: What does a quark consist of?

Tubbythin: As far as we can measure, nothing.

skwinty: Now if the neutron consists of quarks of different flavours and protons consist of quarks of different flavours there is huge commonality between them. ie the same components with different characteristics. Therefore the assumption that the neutron has the building blocks of the proton electron and electron antineutrino is not unreasonable.

Tubbythin: Given the last hundred years of progress in science you are wrong. It is entirely unreasonable.


This is what I state today and this is what you answer


skwinty:2.Quarks consist of nothing.

Tubbythin:To the best of our knowledge, quarks are point like particles with no substructure.



Skwinty: So then it would be true to say that the neutron and proton after the free neutron decays have nothing in common.


Tiubbythin:No, they have rather a lot in common. Like the same quarks (just in reversed numbers).

Now you cant have it both ways

 

[Tubbythin]

Ok. I don't know whether this was a genuine misunderstanding or not but you should really give the full extent of your quote. Here goes...

Your quote I responded to was

What does a quark consist of?
We know that a quark is a hypothetical particle but what makes a quark.
And then when you know that particle you can ask what makes that particle ad infinitum.

In this context, you seem to me to be asking what substructure does a quark have. To which the answer is none that we know of. We have no evidence to suggest it is made of any more fundamental particle. That does not mean they do not have propeties, eg. mass, spin, charge.

 

[zosima]

Crackpots are so entertaining.

Notice that computer you're reading this post on? Who do you think made that possible? Do you know how it works? Why it works? Because some people actually do know, and without those people we wouldn't be having this exchange, now would we?

As for the "gravy train"... do you have any idea how difficult it is to have a career in physics? How few jobs there are? How much more money any Ph.D. physicist can make in industry or finance than s/he can in academia?

Gravy train?? What a load of trollish and self-serving BS.

Agreed

Bye bye, Mr. Witt.

Reality Check and I have actually been picking holes in Witt's theory on the new board he set up just recently. If you want to criticize his theory(and there is ample room for criticism), he's been more than willing to talk about it in that venue. I mentioned how to find it in an earlier post in this thread. I'm not going to repeat it.

To his credit he has been polite under his own name. Although he still frustratingly refuses to describe a lot of details(making frequent reference to his book). Speaking of which, they must be piling up because he's offering to give them away. So anyone who wants a free copy can probably just ask him on his forum. I think Reality is even getting one mailed out, so soon Witt'll no longer be able to resort to the 'well you haven't read the book excuse'. Personally, I'm waiting for Reality's review before I decide if I want to get a free a copy.


@Swinty
I think the big reason that people don't feel the need to investigate Witt's theory are. (excluding the topical objections already mentioned)
#1 Too large a scope. There are a number of different things that need to be proven to make the theory useful and consistent. Proof, evidence, or theory suggesting any single one of these things would be sufficient to make a career in physics and for some of them to earn a Nobel prize.

#2 Lack of mathematical formalism. Modern physics has abstracted many of the notions that are common in less advanced physics. It gives a level of power and flexibility that you cannot get without that level of formalism. When someone claims they have intuited their way past the droves of incredibly smart physicists working on these problems it screams crackpot.

#3 Unwilling to clarify. Generally, rather than explaining the most important details, Witt refers people to his book. If he truly has the answer to these questions, there should be no reason to avoid clarification. As mentioned above, if he proved any one of his claims, I think everyone on the forum would be quite wowed. For example. I still have no idea what this 'underlying geometry' is that somehow elegantly ties together what appears to be a series of ad-hoc rules. He's never explained the details of the "Cosmic fusion cycle" which apparently simultaneously prevents the heat death of an infinite static universe and scatters the CMB in such a way that it emulates the anisotropies of the WMAP data with as good or better precision as the explanation by the big bang. I've asked him directly about how he explains the apparent correlation between frequency and distance of quasars, he tells me to read the book. I've asked him how he prevents the apparent contradiction that his conception of quantum physics makes with bell's theorem. He tells me to read the book. I can't imagine any rational reason why he would want not to tell me if he had an adequate answer. It seems he has plenty of time to dedicate to posting on forums, but doesn't have the time to answer any of the questions sufficiently.

#4 As has already been mentioned. Lack of peer review. I can remember one instance where he claimed an astrophysical organization in Canada had "given him the nod". These vague statements do not help his case. As far as I'm concerned 'giving him the nod' would be giving him a cover publication, given the claims that he is making. Peer review is how science works. Even the most talented physicist alive today is only an expert in his(her) particular area of study, for everything else (s)he has to rely on the opinions of the experts in their particular field of study. In other words, modern physics has no renaissance (wo)men.

 

[Skwinty]

Hi Zosima
Yes you are correct in what you say about Witt.
The truth of the matter is that I am not qualified to judge him or his theory or any other physicist's theory for that matter.
What my point was that he did not ,I believe, get a fair treatment on this forum and I was responding to that.

I also took exception to the implication that I was his smelly sock puppet and the intractible and uncompromising views of some of the posters.

Also some of the posters views are confusing and contradict themselves from day to day. I also have signed on to his forum as I am interested in the views from both sides and playing devils advocate can sometimes bring out the best and worst in people.

All in all I thank everyone who has responded to my posts including Sol Invictus. I dont mean to upset him but he should be able to take what he dishes out.

I wont hassle you folk any more on this subject. Thanks once again for your views and opinions.

PS I will ask Witt for a free copy and if any of you wish to donate a decent physics textbook in the spirit of free science please send me a pm and I will give you my address and deposit some money in your account to cover postage. Thanks again.

 

[DeiRenDopa]

DRD, This is a bad example of your point. The "current paradigm" needed dark energy to make the paradigm work.

Rather than being criticized, they were looked on rather as heroes.

It did?

I'll check, but I recall the 1998 (?) papers as being rather a surprise ...

In any case, there is no shortage of examples of a "theory" "not consistent with the current paradigm" being presented for publication in a relevant peer-reviewed journal ... and being published (you'll notice that Skwinty chose to not comment on my Arp-Narlikar VMH example ...)

 

[Skwinty]

Correction. This was Witts statement not mine.
How can you say that Dark Energy is not consistent with the cosmological constant. Surely they are different interpretations of the same set of observations.

PS These individuals who wrote these papers were well known in Astronomy, they were not unknowns.

Hi Deirendopa

I made a general comment about the people and papers you quoted

 

[ObjectiveResponse]

By the way, isn't denigrating other peoples qualifications and intelligence one of the signs of crankism.

I don't think it the best scientific approach to discrediting the questionable individuals theories or assumptions. It's a bit of a slippery slope that could lead an isolated community to GroupThink.

Lets Explore this.
According to Wikipedia's definition the following are symptoms of Group Think:

1. Illusions of invulnerability creating excessive optimism and encouraging risk taking.
2. Rationalising warnings that might challenge the group's assumptions.
3. Unquestioned belief in the morality of the group, causing members to ignore the consequences of their actions.
4. Stereotyping those who are opposed to the group as weak, evil, disfigured, impotent, or stupid.
5. Direct pressure to conform placed on any member who questions the group, couched in terms of "disloyalty".
6. Self censorship of ideas that deviate from the apparent group consensus.
7. Illusions of unanimity among group members, silence is viewed as agreement.
8. Mindguards — self-appointed members who shield the group from dissenting information.

This is going to turn into a long post but lets check each point versus the community response here. I have emphasized parts of the quotes that I think fit the Symptom.


1) Illusions of invulnerability creating excessive optimism and encouraging risk taking.
Page 1

No, I have determined from the excerpts published above that your ideas conflict with the SM, and since the SM is strongly based on experimental results, that means that your ideas conflict with reality.

Page 2

The unsolved problems, like large nuclei, are limited not by SM failures but by computational power.

page 6

The Standard Model goes way beyond the descriptive stage. Any idea that intends to replace it must be quantitative and very precise. If it isn't it is worthless.

page 6

It is totally impossible that general relativity and quantum mechanics are wrong. They are simply inexact - but at a level that's undectable right now, and may well remain so for the forseeable future of the human race.

page 7

As for QM, it's by far the best-tested and most predictive theory in the history of science. I repeat - it is utterly impossible that it is flat-out wrong.

page 4

On the topic of modern physics: Moebus, we've seen thousands of theories come and go. We've noticed some patterns among these theories; in many cases, we've found general proofs validating those patterns. With those patterns in mind, we're actually really quick at deciding whether a theory is workable or not.

page 3 (on the concept of a possible simpler alternate to SM)

There is no antipathy to such; if it were possible in such a simplistic manner, however, it would already exist.

2. Rationalising warnings that might challenge the group's assumptions.
page 6

When someone comes along with a proposal that throws almost that entire structure away, and offers only vague qualitative assurances that it will work, how seriously should we take it? Such a thing has never before happened in the history of science.

page 7 (Rationalising contradictions in the standard model)

In other words the contradiction that we might imagine is completely unscientific insofar as we are unable to test it. When we/if we are able to test it, the results themselves should make it possible to generate a theory.

page 4 (Rationalising dismissing alternatives without full investigation)

And bear in mind that there are hundreds of such crackpot (I use that term in a technical and specific sense) theories proposed every year - it would be a full time job for a significant fraction of all the physicists in the world to carefully check each of them. Instead, those physicists use their rather well-informed judgment to decide what to study.

page 7 (Rationalizing SM's lack consistency)

As to your point about logical consistency, I think that your point is generally valid, but...
1. Logical consistency is really a very tricky thing. <...> So I think a 21st century standard of logic encourages us to be very skeptical.
2. The type of consistency you are talking about, however, goes well beyond logical consistency or even mathematical consistency, but is in fact physical consistency which deals with a lot of complications that make derivations of truths very subject to interpretation, as least in absence of hard evidence.

page 3 (justification as to why the harsh treatment of Witt)

Perhaps you're not familiar with the sheer number of people who have done exactly the same thing as Witt:
* [#]Decide they don't like modern physics
[#]Spend years in isolation writing up their own theory
[#]Make the theory qualitatively agree with reality in a few thought-experiments
[#]Submit these early sketches to physics journals, and get rejected
[#]Become very facile at claiming "agreement" with real experiments---by describing, in words ("well, the nucleus recoils leftwards, then stops, and the braking-radiation must be what you mistook in your detector") without actually making concrete predictions.
[#]Self-publish a book or web page and start advertising it.

3. Unquestioned belief in the morality of the group, causing members to ignore the consequences of their actions.
page 7

You seem to be making quite a few unverifiable absolutist statements. That's usually a bad sign.

Usually, yes. But in this case it's because I know exactly what I'm talking about.

page 3

We don't have a great deal of patience with posers here, in case you hadn't noticed it so far.

page 2

There are several people who participate on this forum who are either gifted amateur or professional physicists. I pay attention to what they have to say. I also have a functioning woodar (and gaydar) and have learned to pay attention when it chirps.

page 6

I disagree with that completely. And yes, I know very well what I'm talking about.

page 4

Yet based on not reading this book, and having read the opinions of people qualified to comment, you feel justified in rushing to Witt's defence.

page 4

Don't mind us if we're a bit snappish sometimes. I assume, from the tone of your post, that you're (a) unfamiliar with what's expected of a modern physics theory and (b) unfamiliar with the vast number of 'physics crackpots' out there.

page 4

If you had read the thread, instead of just posting to tell us how rich your friend is, you would know that qualified individuals have already responded.

page 6

It throws away nearly everything we have learned, and therefore it must contend with all the vast quantities of experimental data the old theory explained perfectly. The odds that it could succeed at that are very close to zero, so nobody is going to waste their time checking.

4. Stereotyping those who are opposed to the group as weak, evil, disfigured, impotent, or stupid.
page 1

Just looked at the web page at nullphysics.com. Crackpot crackpot crackpot.

page 1

"Deliberate misinterpretation" is another of those subtle little digs that woos like you use when you get exposed. Perhaps if your ideas didn't have so many holes, you wouldn't have so much trouble.

page 3

What crackpots forget is that scientific revolutions rarely (if ever) happen by showing that the current theory is wrong. ... Crackpots try to throw out everything that came before (often because they don't know what it was) and replace it all with something brand new

page 4

However, Witt posted enough of his book online to prove he is a crackpot using those concepts he included.

page 4

On other boards I've dealt with or witnessed threads with many a crank who self-published a book of their nonsense. Witt is not special with the exception that he spent a lot more money on it.

page 4

I suspect there is a specific psychological illness (one which can be present in varying degrees) that leads to this. Megalomania isn't a bad word for it, but it's rather more specific than that.

page 4

Perhaps one key to the apparent megalomania is that these are (often) reasonably smart people who have had reasonable success in other fields---engineering, or entrepreneurship, or medicine.

page 4

So, we are left with
'Witt good, write big book, lots of words. Me not understand words, me not read book, but people say bad things about book, they wrong. Big book, lots of words, big book good.'

page 4

On the topic of crackpots, I might suggest that you visit ... and .... The latter page lists ... what, 400 crackpots? Each one with a different, homegrown, idiosyncratic theory of physics. I would guess that 2/3rds of them have written books. Mr. Witt's general idea---"Hey, I may be an outside, but I'm smart and my thought-experiments are as valid as Einstein's"---is extraordinarily common.

page 6

And bear in mind that there are hundreds of such crackpot (I use that term in a technical and specific sense) theories proposed every year

page 7

When you really think about it this guy really is much more menacing than the run-of-the-mill crackpot that just has a cable modem and a prescription to thorazine.

page 9

As I've said before: Null Physics is a crackpot theory with a multi-million-dollar ad budget.

page 9

What really worries me is the Florida Institute of Technology. Do they accept any crackpot as a Visiting Scientist?

5. Direct pressure to conform placed on any member who questions the group, couched in terms of "disloyalty".
(There seemed to be pressure to only offer comments counter to Witt and to not read at all what he has to say. A somewhat "you're with us or against us" mentality)
page 4

You suggest that I'm defending Witt? Nonsense, I am neither defending Witt, nor debunking anyone else here.

You are taking a de facto position in favour of Witt by berating those in opposition and praising his dedication and hard work.

page 4

For myself, I trust NO MAN who can make a conclusion based on excerpts!

Yet based on not reading this book, and having read the opinions of people qualified to comment, you feel justified in rushing to Witt's defence.

page 5

I was told to stop wasting time, and put on a black-list of potential sock puppets.

... gave you good advice: there are plenty of good books on physics at all leves of difficulty. You would make a better use of your time reading them. Remember: new physics are never first exposed in a several hudred pages long book. People write papers, which are peer reviewd and read by the physical community.

Dissenters that do not conform are accused of being on the payroll of Mr Witt or Mr Witt himself anonymously (IE a sock puppet):
page 10

How interesting - a new poster suddenly appears and starts promoting Witt's book. Oddly, our new friend uses an unusually quoting style, strangely reminiscent of the one used by Mr. Witt himself....
Anyone smell dirty socks?

page 6

Since my post, ... has defended a concept, a pigeon hole of argument into which perhaps Witt would like to fit himself, with sufficent vigor (and with arguments sufficiently well-stated) as to make it reasonable to wonder, at least, if he (...) might potentially be a sock puppet.

page 4

Prediction: ... is a sock of Witt. (Can I have the $1,000,000 now?)

page 4

What, we got little kids coming on here with opinions about 400 page physics books now?
<sniff sniff> I thinks I smells a sock-puppet.

page 5

Nobody else finds damm curious the amount of people who have registered in this forum just to post in this thread and who haven't posted anywhere else?"

page 7

The fact that he is irked enough to edit responses to jref into his website lends credence to the supposition that there have been a few sock puppets here.

6. Self censorship of ideas that deviate from the apparent group consensus.
Page 1

I have some rather unconventional ideas myself, but I don't go so far as to reject the Standard Model or relativity.

7. Illusions of unanimity among group members, silence is viewed as agreement.
I couldn't find any really good examples of this either.


8. Mindguards — self-appointed members who shield the group from dissenting information.
page 5

My advice - stop trying to make sense of nonsense written by insane crackpots. Buy a real book on cosmology and/or fundamental physics if you're interested.

page 10

How typical of you ... .
Trash any opposition. You are the epitomy of an arrogant ,chauvinistic and self hailed expert.

When someone comes here with garbage, it gets put right where it belongs - in the trash. That's just as it should be. If you can't take it, leave.

A lot of the quotes that fell into the first 5 may also cross into the last 3. I tried not to list a quote more than once. I initially had the names of who the made the quote but I decided to remove them. I think the behavior, NOT the individual, should be the focus. I keept the page number of where I got the quote so that the context was available if you wanted to search a little for it. However it is important to note that a few individuals are responsible for most the quotes above so this may not be a very accurate example of Group Think.

This seems a somewhat positive indicator of Group Think but hardly conclusive all on its own. There were a few other comments that ran counter to the norm:

page 7

I wouldn't mean to imply that this line of inquiry is not academic or even incredibly important to the faculty of human reasoning in general, but until we have some evidence to work with there really isn't any *scientific* problem. Moreover I think it is both common and dangerous to take discussion and dispute within the scientific community as evidence of scientific fact, despite the fact that that is pretty much the bread and butter of scientific news reporting.

There were also many detractors that attempted to halt this progression by pointing it out:
page 5

That being said, I feel as if the criticisms of Witt's null physics at various points in this thread are a bit overzealous, and almost seem "panicky". The critiques were pointed, persistent, and sometimes persnickety.

These types of critiques prove to Witt that he is hitting near the mark, and the "establishment" is beginning to worry about null physics. Of course, that couldn't be further from the truth.

I can't find a valid way of proving my objectivity but I will say (for what its worth) that I came to this thread looking for valid reasons NOT to trust what Witt had to say. I expected a critical response but one without the emotional defensiveness.

Objective

 

[Third Eye Open]

I don't think it the best scientific approach to discrediting the questionable individuals theories or assumptions......

*Long list of arbitrary labels placed on random quotes*

What is not the best scientific approach? Noticing that a hypothesis does not match up with observations and therefor disregarding it? That sounds like the definition of science to me.

 

[Tubbythin]

skwinty:I suppose that there is only one member of each of the particles in the particle zoo that are shared throughout the universe.
I believe it was Richard Feynman who suggested this about the electron.
Tubbythin:You've lost me.


You may want to look that up

I'm lost because I don't think your first sentence makes any grammatical sense.

While we're on the subject of Feynman, perhaps this might help.

 

[ben m]

All of the newcomers are criticizing my (and Sol's, and Zos's, and RC's, etc.) quick reaction to Witt; they're criticizing the Standard Model of particle physics. I'm curious that they're not reading Witt's book and saying, "Witt is right about X", nor "Witt's Y is a good description of the data", nor "Your criticism of Witt is misguided because equation Z is correct."

It's all, "Wow, you sure jumped on him and called him wrong awfully fast, isn't that inappropriate?" You're acting as though Witt's actual theory is immaterial to our response. It isn't.

Imagine for a second that someone came in and started making statements in your personal field of expertise---someone walked into a plumbers' discussion and said, "My theory says that shower drains clog up because of water, which spontaneously turns into a hairlike substance under pressure. Copper pipes melt in the summer and PVC isn't actually waterproof, it leaks like a sieve but the water turns invisible on the way out. I recommend using unsalted butter as a solder flux." Imagine that someone walked into a biology meeting and announced that amino acids didn't exist, that proteins are made of distorted nucleic acids.

Would you laugh them out of the room? Would you say, "Baloney, I've got fifteen different ways to prove that PVC is watertight; butter isn't a flux, butter is the sort of thing flux is meant to remove; defend yourself or go away, moron?" It wouldn't be parochial, defensive, or "groupthink" to say that. It'd be reasonable and correct. Witt's physics claims are just as stupid, from an experimental physicist's perspective, as the claim "amino acids don't exist" would be to a biochemist or "copper melts at 100F" would be to a plumber.

Thanks to Witt's wide advertising net, I suspect that some of his defenders haven't heard of the physics crackpot world in general. There is a whole subculture of ambitious-loner-amateur physicists out there. Every one of them has done more or less the same thing: 1) Read a few popular physics books (Hawking, Smolin, Greene, Weinberg) and thought something "felt wrong". 2) Came up with their own theory, working in isolation, without reading any experimental data beyond the sketches they got from Hawking or whatever. 3) Decided that their theory Had To Be Right, and wrote it up in book/webpage form. (Some submit to mainstream journals and get rejected.) The books get mailed to random physicists. 4) Gotten angry at "the mainstream" that tells them they're wrong.

Seriously, I'm talking about (probably) a thousand really dedicated people. You can learn about some of them from www.crank.net. Some that I've encountered: Autodynamics, Gyron Aether Theory, Common Sense Science, Basic Particle Theory, GEM Unification Theory, Infinite Hierarchical Fractal Theory, Photon Structure, Theory of Elementary Waves (all on the Web); five or ten people at the APS April meeting every year; if I rack my brain I can probably come up with a few more. So please don't think that Witt qualifies as an especially brave and deep thinking individual simply because he's challenged Big Science by writing a whole book. It happens all the time. If there's anything different in Witt's deep thinking, it has to be in the detailed contents of his new theory, not simply the fact that he has one.

So: is Witt right about physics? We have a bunch of reasons to think NOT and no one rebutting them. Was our gut-reaction response to Witt---that he's a crackpot---correct? Again, all indicators point to Yes, and no one has suggested any contraindication. Were we rude and snappish at Mr. Witt when he showed up? Well, that's a matter of opinion---this tends to be a pretty snappish board---but think about it in the context, not of Terence Witt the first Gentle Soul to Innocently Question Physics, but of Witt being #997 in an endless parade of crackpots. They get kind of tiresome, especially the evasive ones.

 

[godless dave]

Sure you have the facts on your side, but you're so meeeeeeeeeeeean.

 

[Wangler]

It did?

I am pretty sure, yes.

Regardless, I think Witt would have been better served publishing his null physics ideas in peer-reviewed journals.

And, if they had merit, they would have been published had they been submitted.

 

[Wangler]

I'm curious that they're not reading Witt's book and saying, "Witt is right about X", nor "Witt's Y is a good description of the data", nor "Your criticism of Witt is misguided because equation Z is correct."

That's funny, because I'm curious why the folks on this thread aren't reading Witt's book and saying "Witt is wrong about X", or "Witt's Y in Chaper 12 is a poor description of the data", or "Equation Z on page 234 is incorrect, so null physics has a big problem."

Heck, Witt's now giving the book away, and some on this thread still won't look at it.

 

[ben m]

That's funny, because I'm curious why the folks on this thread aren't reading Witt's book and saying "Witt is wrong about X", or "Witt's Y in Chaper 12 is a poor description of the data", or "Equation Z on page 234 is incorrect, so null physics has a big problem."

Heck, Witt's now giving the book away, and some on this thread still won't look at it.

We've been reading excerpts from his book posted on his web page and saying Witt is wrong about X,Y,Z. Go back to the beginning of the thread and see. Hints: neutron composition nonsense; nuclear sizes numerically wrong; Witt's tired-light-like "redshift" fails Olber's test, and screws up both spectroscopy and the CMB; Witt doesn't understand units and dimension.

 

[godless dave]

That's funny, because I'm curious why the folks on this thread aren't reading Witt's book and saying "Witt is wrong about X", or "Witt's Y in Chaper 12 is a poor description of the data", or "Equation Z on page 234 is incorrect, so null physics has a big problem."

See the first few pages of the thread.

 

[DeiRenDopa]

I am pretty sure, yes.

I think you'll find that the findings published were somewhat surprising, and generated a flurry of new work (observations, analyses).

Of particular interest to this thread is that the discoveries announced in those two landmark papers have been subject to some pretty severe scrutiny, as well as a great deal of independent verification/validation ... and that they are now part of mainstream observational cosmology.

It could so easily have been otherwise, as quite a few examples from the last decade or several of astronomy will show ... (and no, the authors of the papers presenting something outside the then astronomy/astrophysics mainstream apparently had little difficulty getting them published in relevant peer-reviewed journals).

Regardless, I think Witt would have been better served publishing his null physics ideas in peer-reviewed journals.

And, if they had merit, they would have been published had they been submitted.

Aye ...

That's the key point which Skwinty, ObjectiveResponse, (and others?) don't seem to be interested in even acknowledging, much less discussing ...

 

[godless dave]

And they make the same excuses as intelligent design creationists - they don't bother submitting papers because the biased journal editors would reject them for not adhering to the current paradigm.