8 ms·

Scientists Protest Censorship in Cosmology

32 points by marchupfield 4y ago

IceMetalPunk 4y ago
Editors of arxiv: "We aren't the place to publish insubstantial discussions. There are other places for that." Guys who wrote the paper: "But it's substantial!" Like... obviously the guys who wrote the paper think it's substantial, or they wouldn't have submitted it. The very idea of "we think it's good, so we want to publish this without anyone telling us it's not" is... silly. As a developer, this is like someone opening a PR, then getting mad if the PR is rejected upon a quick code review because "Well, I think it's good code!" Of course you do, that's why you opened the PR, but the whole point of review is to get others' opinions in case you're wrong. Get a disinterested expert third party to review the work and say it's worth publishing, then you can complain to arxiv.
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  Or, taking the other approach, sure, you can publish it. Just not on arxiv. Arxiv's editors decide what arxiv publishes. That's what editors are supposed to do.
  - IceMetalPunk 4y ago
    Yep, which is literally what the editors told them according to their own account.
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      And, that is the problem.
      - IceMetalPunk 4y ago
        "We have standards which your paper doesn't reach" is a problem? Is your ideal someone that publishes any and all papers submitted to them regardless of quality?
  - pdonis 4y ago
    > Arxiv's editors decide what arxiv publishes. Yes, and arxiv's editors apparently have no problem publishing lots of other papers that are at least as "out of mainstream" as these. So whatever criteria they are using don't appear to be being applied consistently.
  - eshch 4y ago
    bc I say so is a poor argument and you know it
- datavirtue 4y ago
  I open PRs to facilitate discussion and get feedback.
- willis936 4y ago
  Do not misquote. The direct quote is right there. "There are many journals which would be interested in publishing a well-argued synthesis of existing evidence against the standard hot big bang interpretation. But MNRAS, with its focus on publication of significant new astronomical results, is not one of them." This isn't rejection of a PR based on merit, it's selectively refusing to review a PR.
rotolop 4y ago
Is this cranks?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- AdamH12113 4y ago
  LPP Fusion is run by Eric Lerner, who (based on his Wikipedia article[1]) seems to be a long-time crank who's been pushing plasma cosmology since 1991. He's using his nuclear fusion development company as a megaphone for this. (I'll let someone else try to figure out if the fusion company is legit.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Lerner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Lerner
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Maybe Lerner is to some degree cranky, but really almost all cosmologists are, too. So it is a matter of degree. If you have a print publication where every page printed has to be paid for, you are obliged to be picky about what goes on those pages. For a purely online medium, that goes out the window. Then, all you should be filtering for is relevance.
docmechanic 4y ago
I'm curious if the authors of the paper are taking advantage of the well-known current problems with our standard cosmology. I'm also curious if the other commenters are even aware of this as an issue independent of whether the article was published. The analogy to a failed pull request is typically developer-centric and grossly off the mark. Reiterating the function of an editor ignores the context of this particular article, which I've taken the time to reiterate myself.
UIUC_06 4y ago
At first blush, this reminds me of the phenomena where, every time some problem with evolution comes up (a missing piece in the fossil record, say), the creationists pop up with "See! Darwin was wrong!" arxiv would be completely right to refuse those "take that, Darwin!" articles. On the other hand, maybe there are serious problems with standard cosmology, and other models besides the Big Bang are worth considering. Are there? On a different topic: I would hope that a paper questioning the existence of dark matter would be admissible, since there are pretty clearly some real problems with that.
- misja111 4y ago
  This isn't comparable to evolution theory where we have mountains of evidence of other species that were predecessors of the current ones. Or where we even have evidence of evolution happening during our lifetimes (e.g. Covid). The Big Bang theory is extremely speculative. Empirical Science is about building theories based on observations. We have no observations that provide any kind of evidence that there was a big bang. Yes, we now that the universe is expanding, and has been for quite a while. So reasoning backwards, there must have been a time that the universe was a lot smaller than now. But that's it. We don't know how small it was before it started expanding. Maybe our universe started from a single point or even from nothing. Or maybe it bounced back after having contracted to a small but definite size. We just don't know. And actually, with the recent JWST observations, hints that support a big bounce or something similar are building up.
  - pfdietz 4y ago
    > The Big Bang theory is extremely speculative. There is no other plausible explanation of the cosmic microwave background radiation.
    - eshch 4y ago
      This doesn't make it less speculative. What would is to incorporate less assumptions or to prove some its assumptions with practice. I like speculativity very much, it's just a note on it.
willis936 4y ago
This is a topic that really frustrates me. Both sides make valid (non-technical, character-based) attacks on the other. On one extreme there is the textbook fringe pseudoscientist who calls out groupthink but constantly falls into fallacies rather than focusing on explaining empirical observations with the simplest and most accurate way possible. On the other extreme there is the career pseudoscientist who calls out the poor form of the fringe while not bothering to apply the appropriate level of scientific rigor to them either. It's unfortunate simply how much ego is involved in this area. I'm not a plasma physicist. I'm not a cosmologist. I can just see when the idyllic scientific method is being short circuited. For a quick toe-dipping in to Alfvein cosmology: check out the sci-hub for the 1986 IEEE Peratt paper "Evolution of the Plasma Universe: II. The Formation of Systems of Galaxies". I'm not saying all elements of one model should be thrown out. Let's go one mystery at a time. How does galaxy evolution sound? Forget even trying to be certain of the Big Bang or alternatives until that's nailed down.
al2o3cr 4y ago
"I am CLEARLY being CENSORED because my ideas are SO RADICAL!" Here we see the signaling call of the Physics Crank, which has been passed down from crank to crank over the centuries.
pdonis 4y ago
Considering how many speculative or opinion-based papers are available on arxiv with no problem whatsoever, the fact that arxiv rejected these particular three papers seems very...odd.
- guerrilla 4y ago
  Considering how they host papers "refuting" Cantor and Gödel... seems like a weird time to get standards. https://arxiv.org/abs/1002.4433 https://arxiv.org/abs/1002.4433
  - willis936 4y ago
    Perhaps they're too close to having valid points and might have to be taken seriously.
- Barrin92 4y ago
  I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if whatever editors are responsible for cosmology papers are a little bit more on the stringent side compared to some other disciplines.
mensetmanusman 4y ago
Editors refusing to publish your work in their journal is censorship? Nature and Science have censored me a few times then (got one through though!)
- ncmncm 4y ago
  It is not "their journal".
  - mensetmanusman 4y ago
    If someone can prevent publishing they are de facto editors, even if they might not do grammatical editing. E.g. Bezos is probably an editor at his paper.
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      Just like busybody keepers of Wikipedia pages can keep out current information, just by assiduously reverting every change.
andrewflnr 4y ago
Does someone have a reasonably impartial source on what the hell is actually going on with the JWST findings?
gavinray 4y ago
To anyone in the field: How plausible is Loop Quantum Cosmology/Loop Quantum Gravity as a Big Bang alternative? It seems more reasonable to me, but this is like a blind man saying one painting looks nicer than another.
- Keysh 4y ago
  It’s not really a Big Bang “alternative” at all. It is possibly an explanation of how the early Big Bang got going.
stefantalpalaru 4y ago

32 points by marchupfield 4y ago

Editors of arxiv: "We aren't the place to publish insubstantial discussions. There are other places for that." Guys who wrote the paper: "But it's substantial!" Like... obviously the guys who wrote the paper think it's substantial, or they wouldn't have submitted it. The very idea of "we think it's good, so we want to publish this without anyone telling us it's not" is... silly. As a developer, this is like someone opening a PR, then getting mad if the PR is rejected upon a quick code review because "Well, I think it's good code!" Of course you do, that's why you opened the PR, but the whole point of review is to get others' opinions in case you're wrong. Get a disinterested expert third party to review the work and say it's worth publishing, then you can complain to arxiv.

AnimalMuppet 4y ago
Or, taking the other approach, sure, you can publish it. Just not on arxiv. Arxiv's editors decide what arxiv publishes. That's what editors are supposed to do.
- IceMetalPunk 4y ago
  Yep, which is literally what the editors told them according to their own account.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    And, that is the problem.
    - IceMetalPunk 4y ago
      "We have standards which your paper doesn't reach" is a problem? Is your ideal someone that publishes any and all papers submitted to them regardless of quality?
- pdonis 4y ago
  > Arxiv's editors decide what arxiv publishes. Yes, and arxiv's editors apparently have no problem publishing lots of other papers that are at least as "out of mainstream" as these. So whatever criteria they are using don't appear to be being applied consistently.
- eshch 4y ago
  bc I say so is a poor argument and you know it
datavirtue 4y ago
I open PRs to facilitate discussion and get feedback.
willis936 4y ago
Do not misquote. The direct quote is right there. "There are many journals which would be interested in publishing a well-argued synthesis of existing evidence against the standard hot big bang interpretation. But MNRAS, with its focus on publication of significant new astronomical results, is not one of them." This isn't rejection of a PR based on merit, it's selectively refusing to review a PR.

rotolop 4y ago

Is this cranks?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
AdamH12113 4y ago
LPP Fusion is run by Eric Lerner, who (based on his Wikipedia article[1]) seems to be a long-time crank who's been pushing plasma cosmology since 1991. He's using his nuclear fusion development company as a megaphone for this. (I'll let someone else try to figure out if the fusion company is legit.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Lerner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Lerner
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Maybe Lerner is to some degree cranky, but really almost all cosmologists are, too. So it is a matter of degree. If you have a print publication where every page printed has to be paid for, you are obliged to be picky about what goes on those pages. For a purely online medium, that goes out the window. Then, all you should be filtering for is relevance.

docmechanic 4y ago

I'm curious if the authors of the paper are taking advantage of the well-known current problems with our standard cosmology. I'm also curious if the other commenters are even aware of this as an issue independent of whether the article was published. The analogy to a failed pull request is typically developer-centric and grossly off the mark. Reiterating the function of an editor ignores the context of this particular article, which I've taken the time to reiterate myself.

UIUC_06 4y ago

At first blush, this reminds me of the phenomena where, every time some problem with evolution comes up (a missing piece in the fossil record, say), the creationists pop up with "See! Darwin was wrong!" arxiv would be completely right to refuse those "take that, Darwin!" articles. On the other hand, maybe there are serious problems with standard cosmology, and other models besides the Big Bang are worth considering. Are there? On a different topic: I would hope that a paper questioning the existence of dark matter would be admissible, since there are pretty clearly some real problems with that.

misja111 4y ago
This isn't comparable to evolution theory where we have mountains of evidence of other species that were predecessors of the current ones. Or where we even have evidence of evolution happening during our lifetimes (e.g. Covid). The Big Bang theory is extremely speculative. Empirical Science is about building theories based on observations. We have no observations that provide any kind of evidence that there was a big bang. Yes, we now that the universe is expanding, and has been for quite a while. So reasoning backwards, there must have been a time that the universe was a lot smaller than now. But that's it. We don't know how small it was before it started expanding. Maybe our universe started from a single point or even from nothing. Or maybe it bounced back after having contracted to a small but definite size. We just don't know. And actually, with the recent JWST observations, hints that support a big bounce or something similar are building up.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  > The Big Bang theory is extremely speculative. There is no other plausible explanation of the cosmic microwave background radiation.
  - eshch 4y ago
    This doesn't make it less speculative. What would is to incorporate less assumptions or to prove some its assumptions with practice. I like speculativity very much, it's just a note on it.

willis936 4y ago

This is a topic that really frustrates me. Both sides make valid (non-technical, character-based) attacks on the other. On one extreme there is the textbook fringe pseudoscientist who calls out groupthink but constantly falls into fallacies rather than focusing on explaining empirical observations with the simplest and most accurate way possible. On the other extreme there is the career pseudoscientist who calls out the poor form of the fringe while not bothering to apply the appropriate level of scientific rigor to them either. It's unfortunate simply how much ego is involved in this area. I'm not a plasma physicist. I'm not a cosmologist. I can just see when the idyllic scientific method is being short circuited. For a quick toe-dipping in to Alfvein cosmology: check out the sci-hub for the 1986 IEEE Peratt paper "Evolution of the Plasma Universe: II. The Formation of Systems of Galaxies". I'm not saying all elements of one model should be thrown out. Let's go one mystery at a time. How does galaxy evolution sound? Forget even trying to be certain of the Big Bang or alternatives until that's nailed down.

al2o3cr 4y ago

"I am CLEARLY being CENSORED because my ideas are SO RADICAL!" Here we see the signaling call of the Physics Crank, which has been passed down from crank to crank over the centuries.

pdonis 4y ago

Considering how many speculative or opinion-based papers are available on arxiv with no problem whatsoever, the fact that arxiv rejected these particular three papers seems very...odd.

guerrilla 4y ago
Considering how they host papers "refuting" Cantor and Gödel... seems like a weird time to get standards. https://arxiv.org/abs/1002.4433 https://arxiv.org/abs/1002.4433
- willis936 4y ago
  Perhaps they're too close to having valid points and might have to be taken seriously.
Barrin92 4y ago
I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if whatever editors are responsible for cosmology papers are a little bit more on the stringent side compared to some other disciplines.

mensetmanusman 4y ago

Editors refusing to publish your work in their journal is censorship? Nature and Science have censored me a few times then (got one through though!)

ncmncm 4y ago
It is not "their journal".
- mensetmanusman 4y ago
  If someone can prevent publishing they are de facto editors, even if they might not do grammatical editing. E.g. Bezos is probably an editor at his paper.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Just like busybody keepers of Wikipedia pages can keep out current information, just by assiduously reverting every change.

andrewflnr 4y ago

Does someone have a reasonably impartial source on what the hell is actually going on with the JWST findings?

gavinray 4y ago

To anyone in the field: How plausible is Loop Quantum Cosmology/Loop Quantum Gravity as a Big Bang alternative? It seems more reasonable to me, but this is like a blind man saying one painting looks nicer than another.

Keysh 4y ago
It’s not really a Big Bang “alternative” at all. It is possibly an explanation of how the early Big Bang got going.

stefantalpalaru 4y ago