Do Scientific Cranks Even Know They Are Cranks?

One indispensable character trait needed by any serious research scientist, especially in physics, is immense patience. Why? Because as one's name and background get circulated, including at public sites like All Experts, one is certain to be bombarded with new "theories" or hypotheses - often on how the universe actually works, or what really constitutes stellar matter or how solar flares get their energy.

How many cockeyed theories have I had to dismiss over some thirty years? Probably more than I can count. It seems very manjack  - at least who fancies himself an iconoclast  and has some minimal level of education- thinks he has a new theory or physical  insight. But when you get down to it, even after wasting time (hours) plowing through their nonsense it ends up being just the codswallop you thought it was at first glance.

What is it about certain sciences (like astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology) that draws the nuts and cranks out of the woodwork? In the past  4 years, no fewer than five individuals who've no astronomy background, not even taking a single college course, have proffered five different theories for my reaction, consideration and assessment. In no case did any of these meet even basic requirements, including articulating a testable hypothesis, and making predictions based on it.

Often when you wade through their questions (often posed as a challenge) the one significant attribute all of them lack is tests for falsification.   I don't give a damn if you've had your I.Q. tested and it comes out at the Poetic Genius or Triple Nine Society level, if your precious "theory" lacks tests for its own falsification it isn't worth an ounce of doggie lickspittle.  Which brings up the question of why these cranks can't even see that this is the cornerstone criterion of what passes for a genuine scientific hypothesis as opposed to gibberish.

For example, Ronald Satz, in a veritable waste of 19 -pages in an article in the Nov./Dec. 2015 issue of Intertel's  Integra - under the fulsome header: 'The Case Against Modern Physics' , never once produced a single test of falsification for his "reciprocal theory" bollocks. He invests plenty of time trying to tear down  assorted aspects of modern physics (which I have responded to in the latest - February- issue of Integra) but never delivers the goods to show his theory has any worth.

This reminded me of my 1980s debates with an Einstein iconoclast named Dr. Stephan Gift who expended dozens of pages in the Journal of the Trinidad And Tobago Astronomical Society trying to disprove Einstein's special theory of relativity. Despite my showing that his use of inertial reference frames wasn't faithful to Einstein's usage, he kept on keeping on and even - when I asked why his theory wasn't published in a peer-reviewed physics journal - insisted their reviewers "lacked the I.Q. to be able to parse my claims".  Well, I did and found them wanting and exposed their prime deficiency in: a) not being able to account for the energy difference in fission reactions (while Einstein did with the mass-energy equation, E  = m c² ) and b) omitting any test for their own falsification.

Again, we see two hallmarks of the classical crank: 1) My theory is so profound, so rarefied and abstract that few men of even Mensa level (or Intertel level) I.Q. will be able to judge its merits.  (I.e. one actual reciprocal theory respondent in a recent comment (which shall remain unpublished until he meets the specifications set out in this post), claimed "I have the same I.Q. as Einstein so I don't have to take any crap" i.e. from these reviewers of pedestrian intellect). 

And (2) I don't have to provide any tests for falsification because I KNOW it's true! Nah, nah, nah! (Or "My genius is of such stratospheric heights that falsification tests are manifestly redundant in my wondrously sublime intellectual cosmos!")

Alas, this doesn't work. You can come up with all the clever databases you want to try to dispose of modern physics or modern astronomy but lacking tests for your own model's falsification they aren't worth diddly squat.

Which brings us to a third attribute for crank theories and models: their own "proofiness", or the use of data and numbers  to blind people to actual principles or physical laws. Charles Seife referenced this in his book, Proofiness: How You're Being Fooled by the Numbers.  Seife decries the tactic of using numbers not just to lie but to baffle the susceptible with bullshit.  He refers to a common failing of most people unversed in math to be hoodwinked merely because some form of math or numbers are interjected into arguments.  Not just using numbers to bolster one's argument. In Seife's words, to use fake numbers to prove falsehoods and to seek to prove something is true - even when it's not- is one of the most egregious forms of  intellectual  fraud.

http://members.shaw.ca/warmbeach/FAQ.htm

A much more subtle example (and would be readers at the outset are warned they need to be "degreed", sic) is this site containing supposed "databases" to support Satz' Reciprocal theory.

http://reciprocalsystem.guru/

But on scanning the ones posed (especially for astronomy), I found nothing to convince me. Just a bunch of numbers entered in barely legible-readable tables but devoid of coherence and internal logic. In other words, nothing to 'take to the bank'. Nor having any organization of thoughts and compelling arguments to tie this supposed data to end point conclusions or hypotheses. In other words, not too dissimilar from the numbers thrown together to try to overturn Einstein from the previous cited link.  If the author(s) want to convince me their  model has heft let them show me a reciprocal model substitute to account for quantum tunneling - which is essential to the working of our modern electronic devices from HDTVs, to smart phones to computers.  Or, let them present an alternative to the gravitational deflection of star light documented in respect of Einstein's theory of general relativity. Or ....let them account for the recent discovery of gravitational waves from two black holes.

Above, all - let them present me with a major test of falsification for their own model! Because until they do that, all their elaborate baloney to try to show alternatives to modern physics ends up as dumpster drivel.

Given they haven't been able to produce falsification tests (or even firm predictions from their models), it's no wonder that no genuine Physics journal of any repute would accept their papers and they can only get them published on their own Wordpress-based blogs.

Lastly, I issue this challenge: let one of these geniuses (since that's close to what they imagine themselves to be) provide me with one paper  (not just a bunch of meaningless tables) that  coherently meets ALL the criteria noted above and I will publish it on this blog with their name in neon lights.

I especially want to see their tests for falsification. Failing that, don't waste my time! I don't intend to publish any more comments, replies or other drivel until the Satz-Larson acolytes  can show me at least TWO tests for falsification of the reciprocal theory. I don't give a damn if your I.Q. is 200!

See also this takedown of Gift:

http://www.caribscape.com/baldeosingh/religion/sober/2004/gift.html

And we see from this exchange - from several years ago- Stephan Gift is still sticking to his "relativity is wrong" malarkey:

----

1. Stephan Gift | November 30, 2011 at 6:58 PM | Reply

   
   

   I wish to point out that while Galilean Relativity applies to mechanical systems, Einstein’s principle of relativity applies to all of physics including light, and not just mechanical systems. This is a major difference. While the former principle has been confirmed, the latter remains unconfirmed. A situation where the latter principle appears to fail is the following: Consider a light source stationary on the surface of the Earth and a stationary detector at some distance away from the source. If the detector moves toward the stationary source, a Doppler shift is immediately observed. If instead the source moves toward the stationary detector (at the same speed), a Doppler shift is only observed after a time delay which can be made arbitrarily large by increasing the initial distance between the source and the detector. However by Einstein’s principle of relativity the two situations are equivalent since only relative motion is important and therefore there should be no difference between them as is observed.
•     Matt Strassler | April 5, 2012 at 12:00 AM | Reply

  
  

  Stephan: this is incorrect. You are confusing the source of the photons with the photons themselves. It is a classic mistake.
• If you move the source, the photons you are affecting are the ones being emitted by the source *now*. The ones that were emitted long ago are not affected by this motion. The detector will not see the effect until the photons reach the detector, which takes a light-travel time.
• 
  If you move the detector, you are changing the detector relative to the photons that it is detecting — which were emitted by the source long ago.
• 
  This is a nice example of one of the many classic mistakes people make in misunderstanding relativity. You have to pay very close attention to what Einstein’s equations do and do not say — otherwise you will get yourself profoundly confused.
  What Einstein’s equations say is that if you have a source moving toward the detector FOREVER it is the same as a detector moving toward the source FOREVER. If the source and detector are initially stationary and you CHANGE the situation, then you have to calculate much more carefully what the effect is.
• 
  Incidentally particular mistake this has nothing to do with Einstein’s relativity. You can make the same mistake with Galilean relativity using sound waves.
• --------------------------------------
• 
  
• Clearly, you can take a crank to the scientific facts but you can't make him accept them. 

"At Its Heart Science Is Based On Faith?" -- Errr....No!

The issue of whether science is based on faith, like supernaturalist religion, is one that repeatedly occurs in debates - almost like the return of a bad penny. But in fact it is nonsense.

Look at your computer:  laptop, desktop or Ipad,  at which you're sitting and reading this post. Is the computer real?  Can you interact with it, i.e. scroll down, change pages, reduce scale ....etc....or is it merely a figment of your imagination in which you must invest faith that it really exists? I submit you know it is real and you need no "faith" to believe so or that you can interact with it.  In fact, the computer comprises  hard core evidence of the factuality of science - specifically quantum mechanics - because without the phenomenon of quantum tunneling computers could not exist, nor could video games, HDTVs, smart phones or dozens of other devices we take for granted.

My point here is that if  scientific knowledge is based merely  on an internal (subjective) faith in its methods of inquiry, there would be no hardware ever emerging from discovery of first principles. Nor would there be advances in the hardware. The reality of the hardware (such as working telescopes - like the one shown in the image accompanying this blog-  and computers,  scanners, GPS systems etc), implies that science must be based on something radically different from faith. In essence, there must be a substantial and objective dimension to scientific knowledge, i.e. that exists apart from the scientist's mind and personal beliefs.

For example, there is no disputing the reality of high-speed computers and micro-processors, medical imaging and diagnostic devices (e.g. MRIs), more efficient telecommunications systems -including fiber optics relays, and novel advances in gene mapping (such as to arrive at the human genome) and splicing techniques as applied to genetic engineering. Collectively, these show two things: 1) that science as a process cannot be "standing still" - since technology advances and technology is the offspring of applied or basic scientific research, and 2): these researches can generate real, physical counterparts in the objective world. (So they are in no ways the same as "souls", "demons" etc.)

Let's go one further and refer to the monumental achievements of celestial mechanics. The name conveys exactly what the subject embodies: Mechanics applied to the dynamics of celestial objects. A typical diagram from my own Celestial Mechanics notes when I took it at Univ. of South Florida, is shown below:














The diagram shows assorted "orbital elements" for a planet of mass m2 (the Sun is m1) and these could be used as a basis for orbital energy analysis and also to predict future positions.  By inclusion of Newtonian dynamics one could also map the trajectories of spacecraft to distant planets, as well as the Moon.

Is the wonderfully sophisticated mathematics of celestial mechanics and astrodynamics based on "faith"? Hardly! If it were indeed so then we'd never have been able to land men on the Moon- nor would we have trusted "faith" to get Apollo 11 there first, on July 20, 1969. Nor would we have used it to send the Mars Curiosity Rover to the Red Planet, e.g.

or indeed would we have been able to dispatch the NASA New Horizons spacecraft on its recent flyby of the planet Pluto to capture extraordinary images, e.g.
 
The fact we have been able to accomplish these space feats shows clearly celestial mechanics is not based on any "faith" but on precise physical and mathematical laws which remain invariable over appreciable lengths of time. (Hence, enabling me to predict the position of Jupiter 100 years from today's date.)

It was therefore disturbing to read a recent (Mar. 2) WSJ essay by Matt Emerson ('At Its Heart Science Is Faith -Based Too') that attempts to portray science in the same mold as religion - based on faith.  But mixing science and religion up like he does serves the interest of neither.

To attempt to validate his argument he quotes a passage from Paul Davies' book, 'The Mind Of God':

"Just because the Sun has risen every day of your life, there is no guarantee that it will tomorrow. The belief that it will, that there are indeed regularities of nature - is an act of faith, but one which is indispensable to the progress of science."

Emerson seems not to grasp that just as there is artistic license, there is a degree of "scientific license" in popular books written by serious physicists. This is the case here, because if the laws of celestial mechanics are indeed precise - and moreover apply at the macro level of space craft, planets and asteroids (so exist independent of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle) then indeed the Sun must rise tomorrow, meaning that the Earth will continue rotating on its axis so that the current night side will see the dawn. (The Sun itself does not move, of course.)

What we actually have then isn't faith, but a mathematically -based expectation that is repeatedly confirmed. In order for it not to be confirmed all the laws of physics and celestial mechanics would have to be suspended and as even Davies acknowledges on the same page (81) if this were to transpire science would become merely a "charade"  since all regularities would then be treated as belonging to the realm of the random.

In this case you'd never be able to trust that the Newtonian law of gravitation remains as it is, as opposed to being suspended,  with disastrous consequences. Instead of rain or snow falling to Earth then one fine day it might levitate up toward the sky, and your  cup of coffee would instantly disperse as if suddenly in a weightless environment. Hence, all laws of physics would then become quixotic and chaotic.

Alas, Emerson misreads these fundamentals and hence misreads recent scientific discoveries such as the gravitational waves by LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory) when he writes:

"When the scientists searching for gravitational waves set up LIGO to detect the waves they did so believing that Einstein's mathematics would be reliable and deep space would respond as their calculations had forecast. And they  kept us this faith even when by 2010 they saw no confirmation.."

In fact, this sustaining of the LIGO project was not predicated on "faith" but on the realization that more time was simply needed to find the source object (in this case, 2 colliding black holes) which could generate the necessary magnitude of gravitational waves to meet the measurement threshold.. Einstein's tensor equations were already known to be more than up to the task once the required source object was found.

Of course, given his earlier missteps it was inevitable Emerson would reach his last bogus conclusion in the form of a plaintive (if pathetic) question:

"If the combination of faith and reason can deliver the sound of two black holes colliding over a billion light years away - confirming a theory first expressed in 1915- what is so unthinkable about the possibility that this same combination could yield the insight that God became Man?"


Well, a number of reasons.  For one thing there is no hard evidence for the localization of a purported infinite entity into the form of a human. Secondly,  real science must always explain the unknown in terms of the known, or the relatively more known. Supernaturalists, by contrast, inevitably invoke the more unknown to explain the unknown. How, for example, does Emerson account for his God at all? He doesn't! Classical logicians refer to this fallacy as:  ignotum per ignotius:  “explaining the unknown by means of the more unknown.”  This is the fallacy Emerson has committed, given any natural object - like a black hole  - will always be more known than a supernatural construction like a god-Man.

More to the point, the claim fails other tests that negate any remote comparison to the gravitational wave find.  Can it be set against original and actual scientific hypotheses? No, it cannot.  Can it admit the basis of numerous empirical tests- and moreover- can it be susceptible to any form of prediction? NO, again, it cannot.

 If the answer is ‘No’, then we cannot place it into any scientific context. It will then have to be admitted that “faith” be enjoined to embrace or accept it, since no scientific rationale will permit true scientific inquiry. Hence, an incarnated deity cannot be a genuine object of scientific inquiry.

We can, however, pursue gravitational waves, black holes, colliding galaxies, pulsars and other astrophysical objects knowing the a priori physical tests can be met.  It is this testing of reality which provides a coherent basis for scientific claims, and which bestows on science a legitimacy founded in reality rather than wish fulfillment fantasies.  This is a basis, moreover, for which theological claims have no counterpart, despite that fact that theologians have often tried to make their claims sound like proven theories. The most often used tactic is to present some sort of "evidence" or other for a theological fiction, thereby exposing themselves to scientific scrutiny and criticism.

The best policy for Emerson, to prevent subjecting religious claims to harsh scientific scrutiny, would be not to mix issues of faith and science in the future. No matter how much he may want it,  neither modern physics  nor any other branch of science  will validate the basis that a god-Man ever existed. And not to put too fine a point on it, but even many theologians (such as based in the Jesus Seminar) deny any credible basis for such a belief. 

 See also:
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/07/god-and-astronomy-what-bob-berman-gets.html

Detection Of Gravitational Waves From Colliding Black Holes Vindicates Existence For Both

Depiction of the gravitational disturbance from two colliding black holes dispersing gravitational waves

In 1915, in a remarkable achievement of theoretical physics, Albert Einstein used an abstruse form of math known as tensor calculus to show how gravity arises when mass and energy warp space time. The ground breaking Einstein field equations can be summarized in the tensor form:

G _mn   =  - ½ g _mn  G=  - 8 p T _mn   

Where the  T _mn    denotes the associated  “stress-energy” tensor which incorporates internal stresses, the density of matter and its component velocities (u, v, w or in some texts: u1, u2 and u3).   From this one can see that if no matter is present, one would have:  G _mn   =  0

If matter is present there must then be internal stresses and velocities so that:  G _mn   =  K _mn  where  (as seen from the field equations):  K _mn   = - 8 p T _mn   

 

We have then for the  T _mn  : analogous to the g’s in standard form

T ₁₁      T ₁₂      T ₁₃        T ₁₄
             T ₂₂     T ₂₃         T ₂₄                         
                         T ₃₃         T ₃₄
                                         T ₄₄

=

p ₁₁  + r u², p ₁₂ + uv,    p ₁₃    +r uw,  - ru    

                    p ₂₂  + r v²,   p  ₂₃  +r vw,    - rv   

                                             p ₃₃ + r w² ,      - rw 

      
                                                                            r

 

Which again is still vastly oversimplified. A year later, based on these equations Einstein predicted that massive objects undergoing the right kind of oscillating disturbance should actually emit ripples in space time: gravitational waves that propagate at light speed. Of course, this prediction remained controversial for decades because the mathematics of general relativity  - a tiny bit of which is presented above - is so complicated. Besides, many theoretical physicists noted that even if the waves did exist, detecting them would test the very limits of our technological capability. This is given that most predictions included estimates for their wavelength as low as  10 ^-14 m. To fix ideas this is about the diameter of an atomic nucleus and is only an order of magnitude larger than the fermi (fm). (The LIGO design is such that it is capable of detecting a gravitational wave with a wavelength 1000 times less than the diameter of a proton.)

 

One of the earliest pioneers in gravitational wave detection was Joseph Weber of the University of Maryland. In 1969 Weber even claimed to have discovered them. He used a detector consisting of two massive aluminum cylinders 1.5 m long and 0.6 m wide, one of which was in Illinois, the other in College Park, Maryland.   Weber's contention was that a gravitational wave would stretch a bar and cause it to vibrate like a tuning fork and electrical sensors could then detect the stretching.

 

Weber's problem was that other physicists were unable to reproduce his published results, leading some - like IBM physicist Richard Garwin-  to argue that the universe would have had to have converted all its energy to gravitational radiation in 50 million years for Weber's claim to be valid.

 

While Weber's efforts were stillborn, he is still regarded as the father of gravitational wave detection and his research triggered the development of the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory). Now, we have learned that an international team using LIGO has detected a slight stretching and squeezing of space-time from one of the most violent events in astrophysics: two colliding black holes.

 

LIGO’s discovery, accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters,  see abstract e.g.
https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.061102

not only provides the first direct evidence for gravitational waves but also opens the door to using them to study the powerful cosmic events that create them.

 

Unlike Weber's aluminum drum detectors, LIGO features 2 L-shaped detectors (one in Hanford, WA, the other in Livingston, LA)  made up of two perpendicular arms totaling 2.5 miles long. Then a laser beam is split and travels along both arms, bouncing off respective mirrors to return to the L-intersection. Normally, the beams are aligned so they balance each other out and hence there's nothing to detect. But if a gravitational wave is intercepted it creates a tiny mismatch which is what LIGO detects. (One of the authors of the paper has referred to it as a "chirp".  The effect of this chirp or ripple changes the arms' lengths by a tiny amount, and that change can be detected by lasers.

 

Based on the paper cited in the above link, the two black holes are each roughly 30 times the mass of the Sun. They evidently merged some 1.3 billion light years from Earth. The  gravitational waves themselves were generated in the final moments before the black holes merged. The signal was brief but definitive and we on Earth have now received it.

The measurements are dramatic proof that gravitational waves do exist. The signal in the detector matches well with what's predicted by Einstein's original theory, according to Saul Teukolsky, of Cornell University, who was briefed on the results. It matches predictions of the ripples produced by two large black holes, in the final moments before they merge, swirling together at an enormous speed.

Another gratifying aspect is that this find puts the question of black holes existence to rest once and for all. It is in fact the most direct observation of black holes ever made. We acknowledge that black holes can't be seen with ordinary telescopes, so their existence has been inferred by the x-rays detected from binary systems.  Mathematically, the very brief periods of less than a millisecond betray an extremely compact volume. The x-rays indicate accretion to a large mass. Together, these can be matched to predictions given in the Einstein general relativity equations and Voila! the black hole emerges as an object consistent with the observations.

Unlike the x-rays signals from binary systems (stellar envelope mass accreting onto the hole's event horizon to generate them) the newly detected  gravitational signal comes directly from the holes, and it is virtually incontrovertible proof that the holes are out there.

As Teukolsky avers:

"If black holes didn't really exist, you couldn't explain these waves,"

We will now await other confirmations of this find, but certainly from the Physical Review Letters paper it looked very much like 'case closed'.