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Howard Brazee <howard.RemoveThis@brazee.net> wrote:

> (Peter Ceresole) wrote:
>
> >'All this other stuff' is aspects of the Big Bang hypothesis and its
> >alternatives that are testable. So they are being tested. Considerable
> >funds are going into these tests. Scientists applying to do these tests,
> >such as the background radiation temperature studies, don't have to sign
> >up to a belief in the Big Bang; some of them are specifically designed
> >to potentially falsify the Big Bang hypothesis. That's the way people do
> >science.
>
> And the scientists who get famous are the ones who find something new
> in the tests.

Look again. The tests these days are almost all done by big teams to
test models produced by big teams.

Individual credit isn't often sensible under those circumstances.

And before we had that situation, we didn't have this awful bureaucratic
funding system.

> They have no desire to simply confirm old assumptions.

No serious scientist has any interest in confirming old assumptions -
they're interested only in developing models (theoreticians) or testing
models (experimentalists) or sometimes telling those idiots to pay
attention to reality and stop pratting about with nonsense
(experimentalists bollocking theoreticians who have gone off into cloud
cuckoo land - again).

> No glory in that.
>
> But a test that shows anomalies to established theories can be a
> career maker.

Or a career breaker, if it turns out that your test results can't be
repeated. Heard of Fleischmann and Pons recently?

It's very rare for an experimentalist to come up with a replacement
theory even if he does demonstrate a hole in an existing model. The
people who get the glory - such as there is - tend to be the
theoreticians.

Rowland.


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Peter Ceresole <peter.DeleteThis@cara.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig.DeleteThis@flur.bltigibbet> wrote:
>
> > You've all gone completely insane. I'm talking about the political
> > problems with getting funding into cosmological research unless you
> > accept the Big Bang hypothesis (not theory) as `more or less proven'.
> >
> > I don't have a clue where all this other stuff comes from.
>
> Oh lord, here we go again.

Here we go again, the same old misunderstandings, the same old blinkered
ignorance, the same failure to understand what's really going on, and
not to mention the same old patronising sneering which is what's really
got my goat.

Peter, admit it, you haven't a clue about any of this stuff yourself -
not really. So where do you get your ideas from? What is the source?

> 'All this other stuff' is aspects of the Big Bang hypothesis and its
> alternatives that are testable. So they are being tested.

But they're not being tested in the same ways or to the same extent.
The non-Big Bang hypothesis are not given the attention they need. AThe
big money is going into stuff looking at the Big Bang model only.

> Considerable
> funds are going into these tests.

See above.

> Scientists applying to do these tests,
> such as the background radiation temperature studies, don't have to sign
> up to a belief in the Big Bang;

But it turns out to be rather hard to get funding for your work unless
you accept the idea that the Big Bang hypothesis is the only serious
contender at the moment.

> some of them are specifically designed
> to potentially falsify the Big Bang hypothesis.

<pained> A test of the Big Bang hypothesis must be designed to falsify
the hypothesis - doing that sort of test is exactly what you'd expect a
Big Bang supporter, someone fully paid up in the cult (so to speak), to
be doing.

The people who don't hold with the Big Bang hypothesis will mostly be
working on trying to falsify their own pet hypotheses and not bothering
with the Big Bang version of events.

>That's the way people do
> science.

I know - but the thing is that the tests are all testing `what is
expected to be seen after the Big Bang has occurred'.

I'm not the person to go into the details because I don't understand
them and nor do you.

But rather than you just sighing and sneering, how about you address the
point that Fred Hoyle's steady state alternative to the Big Bang
hypothesis has been developed and is still being developed - although
they had to fight tooth and claw to keep the research alive.

Note that last point.

> The reason that those experiments are based *around* aspects of the Big
> Bang is that so far it's the hypothesis that best explains the nature of
> a lot of the observed universe.

So you claim, but I know I can't make a comparison between the models
and I know you know a damned sight less about the details than I do. So
the fact that you are offering an opinion on this subject is frankly a
little grotesque.

- Fred Hoyle disagreed very strongly that the Big Bang provided the
best explanation of observations, and so do other less dead researchers.

FWIW, since gravity doesn't seem to work in the Einsteinian way at
galactic scales (hence the `dark matter' fudge - the astronomer royal,
president of the Royal Society, and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge
(Martin John Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow, OM, FRS[1]) agrees with my idea
that existing models of gravity are wrong rather than dark matter having
any reality - and unlike me, he's a cosmologist), there are competing
models of gravitation which beat relativity into a cocked hat as far as
matching observations go. And are any of them accepted as `best bet' by
`the scientific establishment'? Hell, no.

Science is nothing like as rational as you make out.

> But to find a better one, with less
> fudges,

[with most people, I'd not mention a thing about this. But Peter, you
know how to write! You *do* know grammar, probably better than me ('cos
I'm a bit fuzzy at the edges). But: /less/ fudges? Come on!]

> you have to find some alternative- something better than saying
> 'Gosh, isn't it pretty, I wonder how it works? Well, never mind..."

Erm, yes, and to do that, you need to have a lot of people.

> So these scientists are being quite well funded to find those
> alternative explanations.

Which ones?

> Which means that you are as wrong as wrong can be.

The problem of it being hard to get funding for reseach in certain
fields if you do not accept the prevailing orthodoxy is a problem that
has been raised in Physics World. I trust the Institute of Physics's
publications on this subject rather more than I trust you.

Do you have any reason at all for me to think that you're not just
living in cloud cuckoo land on this one?

Rowland.

[1] Do you *really* want to question his judgement on this? You know
that you're not qualified to do so - best to take my line (or similar),
which is: `Oh! Seems that I did hit on a valid objection - let's see
how this one plays out in the long term'.

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Howard Brazee <howard RemoveThis @brazee.net> wrote:

> (Rowland McDonnell) wrote:
>
> >> But you don't see the results you want, so obviously there's something
> >> wrong with the process.
> >
> >Umm. There's something wrong with your thinking here. I don't have any
> >preferred results.
> >
> >What I want to see is the freedom for people to follow up plausible
> >scientific leads in their research - and they do not have that freedom,
> >since in most fields, one can only get funding for following up the
> >/conventional/ leads.
>
> Then what is the source of your belief that this doesn't happen?

An unanswerable question, since I have no beliefs.

> >One problem is that unless you accept the orthodox view that the `Big
> >Bang' hypothesis (not even a theory, since it cannot be tested) is The
> >Truth, it's almost impossible to get research funding.
>
> It doesn't matter whether the test is to support conventional thinking
> or to show its flaws. The results will be the same either way, and
> results are what counts.

You misunderstand how science works. The supporters of the Big Bang
will do all they can to prove that it's false in order to prove that
it's `not yet falsified' - in other words, as robust as possible.

The supporters of other models will put their pet models under stress to
show that their pet ideas are more valid.

The idea is that if they find any problems, then they can tweak their
models better to fit measurements.

It's the supporters of an idea in science who are the ones who try to
disprove it on the whole.

> >> Your ultimate motives can be hidden without much problem.
> >
> >Like hell they can. My wife's a working academic scientist. Unless you
> >can predict what your results will be in advance, and unless you can
> >show that there is good reason to think that your predictions are
> >correct, it's hard to get research funding in the UK at least.
>
> You predict what convention says should happen,

What scientists really do is predict what their preferred model says
should happen - whatever it might be. They try to get money to do tests
to show that it works - which is bad science, but it's how you get
research funding in the UK.

The lucky (and horribly brainy) few who get to play around at CERN and
do other really fundamental work don't suffer from that constraint - but
their funding is allocated very differently.

What applies to the elite does not apply to the foot soldiers.

> but you test for what
> actually happens. If the test shows something different, then your
> career is made.

So you might think - but in reality, the general position is that if
your test fails to show what you predicted, you have trouble getting
your next research grant.

Trust me on this: my wife knows all about it.

Rowland.


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