Sunday, May 31, 2015

Science Truthers

I looked into the "scientific" theories believed by various "Science Truthers," i.e., people who believe that only they know "the truth" about some scientific subject.  My 13 years of research into the anthrax attacks of 2001 had shown that each Anthrax Truther seems to have his own theory explaining who was behind those attacks. The only thing they have in common with other Anthrax Truthers is that they all disagree with the "established authority" (in that case it is the FBI).  So, I wanted to see if the same holds true with Science Truthers.  They clearly all disagree with the established scientific authorities (in this case it is Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Edwin Hubble, Stephen Hawking, etc., etc.).  But, does that mean they also all have their own unique scientific theories?  Apparently so.

The first Science Truther I had researched was Bill Gaede, who did presentations of his theories at the 2rd annual "Rational Physics Conference" in Salzburg, Austria, in April 2014.  In one of the videos of the presentations, he explains his theory that the moon held in orbit by invisible "ropes" instead of by gravity.

The next Science Truther I researched was "Mr. W," who sent me an email to make me aware of his theories and his blog.  One of his theories is that the earth is a "dead sun" that was wandering through the universe and just happened to join together with other "dead suns" to form the solar system.  According to Mr. W's theory, the Sun was the last or one of the last objects to join the solar system, which is evidenced by the fact that it is still glowing and is not yet "dead."

Then I researched Dr. Srinivasa Rao Gonuguntla, who I had come across when I was doing research for my web page about Time Dilation.  He has his own web page on the subject.  Like most Science Truthers, Dr. Srinivasa rants on and on about how all the "mainstream scientists" who accept Albert Einstein's theories are "stupid."  But, I never tried to figure out what theory Dr. Srinivasa promotes that is not accepted by those "mainstream scientists."  One of his theories is that the long-abandoned theory that space is not empty, but is filled with a medium known as the "ether" (or "aether").  Dr. Srinivasa believes that ancient theory is totally valid and should be resurrected. 

Another Science Truther whose name I'd come across when researching Time Dilation is Mr. Bernard Burchell.  I discovered he believes in something he calls "Propellantless Propulsion."  It seems a little like "perpetual motion," but my purpose wasn't to debunk his theory, it was only to figure out what unique theory he is promoting.

Another Science Truther whose name I'd come across while researching Time Dilation is Dr. Thomas Smid.  His web site is very difficult to wade through, and he doesn't seem to have any specific page where he explains some primary and unique theory that conflicts with "the establishment's" theories, but he writes a lot about an "intergalactic plasma," which, among other effects, causes the "red shift" that the "establishment" says is caused by galaxies moving away from one another (the original discovery behind the Big Bang Theory).  I found a web page about "Alternative Cosmology" which says:
 
Plasma Redshift Theory
The Plasma Redshift Theory has been advocated by a number of independent researchers. It is most notably supported by Ari Brynjolfsson in a number of papers in fringe physics journals describing his theory (see here and here). Thomas Smid has a variant of the theory based on the activity of plasma fields. Robin Whittle also has a website describing the theory. The theory should not be confused as a "tired light" interpretation of the redshift. The plasma redshift theories deny the need for black holes, dark matter and dark energy. The only supporters of these theories seem to be Electric Universe theorists, such ideas are considered fringe physics by the scientific community.
Stephen J. Crothers was another speaker at the 2nd Rational Physics Conference in Salzburg.  A little more research found that he doesn't believe that black holes exist.  That belief might not be totally unique, but it's short enough to fit one of the "talk balloons," so I used it.

Dr. Hartwig Wolfgang Thim was another speaker at the conference in Salzburg.  His unique theory is that Albert Einstein's light speed postulate is illogical.  In a video HERE, he explains that Time Dilation is also not logical.  His reasoning is a strange misunderstanding of Einstein's Theory of Relativity that seems to be shared by many Science Truthers.  (I created a blog page about it.)  He incorrectly argues that, according to Einstein, either twin in the "Twin Paradox" could be moving, so it is not logical that one can end up older than the other.

That left one last "talk balloon" to fill in my cartoon.  So, I researched Alexander Unzicker, another person who gave a talk at the conference in Salzburg.  His big unique belief appears to be that String Theory is nonsense, and all the scientists who believe in it have been "brainwashed."  At the conference in Salzburg, his talk was titled "The Higgs Fake – How Particle Physicists Fooled the Nobel Committee."  The belief that String Theory is fake fitted the space available in my cartoon, so I used it.


The resulting cartoon is shown at the top of this thread.

What my research showed me was that I could easily have added a couple dozen more unique theories to the cartoon, if there was room.  Judging by what I see on the Wiki page about "Alternative Cosmology," and on their page about "cranks," I could probably add a few hundred more theories to the cartoon.

They don't seem to believe in any conspiracies, and they don't seem to think there is any kind of sinister organized plot to try to convince the world to believe what the Truthers see is nonsense.  The Science Truthers just think all the mainstream scientists in the world are stupid.  And they probably believe their fellow Truthers are screwed-up about some things, too.   Each Truther apparently sees himself as the lone exception, the only truly gifted person with a unique and brilliant theory that the "mainstream scientists" stupidly refuse to accept as the gospel truth. 

Ed

6 comments:

  1. True, all the 'science truthers' agree that the mainstream scientific theories are wrong but all of them differ in the explanations they put forward.

    But your science believers also suffer from the same problem: All the science believers agree that Relativity, Quantum theory, Big bang etc of their science religion are true but they all give their own explanations for why their religious theories are true and hence must be believed by others.

    It isn't difficult to explain that.
    While the science believers argue why the Nude Emperor's costume is marvelous, the science truthers argue that 'because the Emperor is nude, the question of why His costume is marvelous is rather stupid'. It is understandable why the science believers differ in their descriptions of the marvelous costume and also why the science truthers differ in their arguments against the science folk.

    https://debunkingrelativity.com/2013/05/09/relativity-and-the-nude-emperor/

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dr. Srinivas,

    Not true. Science Truthers claim to KNOW what is happening. Real scientists are trying to figure out what is happening. Real scientists can only report what has been learned SO FAR.

    They report what they have learned, and they and others use the information to change the world. Meanwhile, the Science Truthers just argue that it is all wrong, but they cannot intelligently explain why it is wrong.

    Real scientists EXPLAIN.
    Science Truthers CANNOT explain anything.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Problems are severer. 'Real Scientists' actually claim to know what they actually do not know. They claim to 'know' what happened exactly after 10^-32 seconds of Big Bang. Fact is that they cannot even prove that Universe or Space is Expanding. They also claim to 'know' what happened after 20 minutes of Big Bang.

    Then these 'real' scientists have only a metric theory of gravity. Only task of metric theory of gravity is to describe 'paths' or 'geodesics' or 'curvatures' that a test particle must follow in its movement. But by only figured out 'paths' these 'real' scientists always pretend as if they have solved every thing of gravity. Essentially they had figured out 'paths' in dynamics of Solar system only. But they pretend as if they have figured out paths of whole galaxies and even whole Universe. When galaxies do not follow paths as suggested by their equations, they start telling as if there is extra dark matter in galaxies. They are so much confident on their faulty equations that they claim to 'know' what happened right after 20 minutes of Big Bang or just after 10^-32 seconds of Big Bang.

    It is mainstream 'scientists' who claim to 'know' more than what they actually know.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You make claims without evidence. WHICH scientists do you believe make these claims that they "know" things that they cannot possibly know?

      If you read what they actually say, you will find that they talk about what calculations show - BASED UPON WHAT IS CURRENTLY KNOWN. They show the EVIDENCE that the universe is expanding (red-shift data) and explain how no known alternative explanations fits all the evidence.

      Dark matter is a POSSIBLE explanation for certain observed effects. It's the best explanation they can come up with.

      Dark energy is a POSSIBLE explanation for certain observed effects.

      When a scientist does not know all the answers, what is he supposed to do? Just give up? They propose an answer and look for other scientists to challenge that answer with solid facts. That's the "scientific method."

      "Mainstream scientists" are the ones who will always tell you that they do not "KNOW" much at all. They just try to figure things out, and they'll tell you what they THINK they have figured out so far. But, they will always also say that it's possible that some new finding could change nearly everything.

      They'll also give you "levels of certainty" based upon how much data they have to support a finding and how likely it is that something unknown could show that the finding is an error.

      No mainstream scientist will claim he "knows" for certain any of the things you mention. Yet you CLAIM you KNOW they claim to KNOW everything.

      It is YOU who claims to know things he does not know. It is not the "mainstream scientists."

      Ed

      Delete
  4. "The scientific method is a process for experimentation that is used to explore observations and answer questions. Does this mean all scientists follow exactly this process? No. Some areas of science can be more easily tested than others. For example, scientists studying how stars change as they age or how dinosaurs digested their food cannot fast-forward a star's life by a million years or run medical exams on feeding dinosaurs to test their hypotheses."-https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/science-fair/steps-of-the-scientific-method
    I believe gentleman, you may have both suffer from a misunderstanding of the others "method" or lack thereof. Anyway bickering is of little help without proof, or source, to back up. I do applaud the efforts but if this hadn't degenerated into ego driven dribble it might have actually yielded some good dialog. Anyway I appreciate a need for truth in life and thank you for the article, and refuting responses. Since science requires questioning it might one day be helpful for more open dialog to be a norm someday.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This argument was going on in early 2015, more than 4 years ago. Today, I have a theory that is disputed by many physicists. (Actually, it is Einstein's Theory, I'm just interpreting his theory in a different way than is done in most college textbooks.) I'm planning an experiment to confirm the theory. For details, check my paper here: http://vixra.org/pdf/1806.0027v4.pdf

      Ed

      Delete