The Opposite Of Science
A rant and apology.
Yesterday, I went off on a fellow commenter on a different substack. That was unkind, impolite, and unprofessional of me. After being chastised, I deleted my comment and apologized.
What caused me to go off on this poor schlub? He is a scientist, with a PhD in physics, and he never misses an opportunity to brag about his repeatedly published research claiming that light travels infinitely quickly in the near field. He also argues that this proves gravity propagates instantaneously in the near field.
Mind you, he can’t come up with a coherent definition of what “near field” means to him. Like Humpty Dumpty, it means whatever he wants it to mean at the time. He also uses the “speed of light” with various meanings. Sometimes he means the total propagation speed of a signal (the usual meaning). Sometimes he means the phase speed of a waveform (which has no practical limit).
What really raises my hackles is that I, personally, have read his published research, evaluated his experimental set-ups, and debunked his experiment. Quite thoroughly. Twice.
To summarize his experiment, he sets up a 50+ kilovolt spark generator on the left, a spark receiver on the right about a meter away, and runs leads from both to a digital oscilloscope between them to evaluate the timing of the signals. To give him full credit, he does publish the actual oscilloscope patterns as raw data (pictures).
There are several major problems with this experiment.
The received signal shows no relationship whatsoever with the transmitted signal. They are completely different waveforms, and thus unrelated.
The received signal shows up after, simultaneous with, or before the transmitted signal.
The unshielded oscilloscope is situated directly between the transmitter and receiver, about a foot from a 50 kilovolt spark generator.
I understand that nobody likes having their baby called ugly. However, I would expect a scientist, an actual physicist with a PhD, to accept a well reasoned argument about why his results don’t prove his conjecture. I even offered a list of suggestions as to how he could reconfigure his experiment to generate valid results.
So at this point, he is either deliberately lying, or he’s not intelligent enough to understand that the three objections listed above each invalidate his experiment. Or more probably both. This scientist appears immune to facts and logic. He’s emotionally convinced and has his ego tied up in this thing. (Sabine Hossenfelder has quite a bit to say on this topic.)
I understand people being incorrect. I get things wrong all the time. But I am searching for the truth, and when somebody points it out to me in a way that I can understand, I adjust my list of facts and opinions accordingly. Occasionally I even remember to thank them for their criticism and enlightenment. This appears to be an unpopular and somewhat rare habit of thought.
Even on my best days, I don’t suffer fools or liars lightly, and despise lying fools. Especially those who persist in their knowing lies after having reality quite clearly pointed out to them. I admit, sometimes my temper gets the best of me, and I speak the truth as I see it without consideration of the feelings of others. This is a social failure of character that I recognize and try to work around, with mixed results.
So, to the host of that other substack, I once again apologize. It was impolite and rude of me to verbally abuse another guest in your house, and a violation of your hospitality. It shall not happen again.
I will simply grit my teeth and allow the fool to continue to yammer on, convincing the uninformed with his arguments from authority, without further comment of my own to help guide the impressionable away from his willfully idiotic lies.
But I don’t have to like it.