> The internal nomenclature of those working within a particular approach cannot restart the clock of an entire field? As bowsamic said, I'm telling you what t

> The internal nomenclature of those working within a particular approach cannot restart the clock of an entire field? As bowsamic said, I'm telling you what the field's nomenclature is, and then additionally explaining why it is used that way. > That certainly requires a reference. There were several teams around the world besides Weber pursuing the approach. They only pursued it after he published erroneous claims of discovery! https://physics.aps.org/story/v16/st19 https://physics.aps.org/story/v16/st19 Look, there are groups around the world doing lots of things the majority think are foolish. (The DAMA experiment comes to mind.) It's good and healthy that this is allowed, and indeed there is a smooth continuum between "very unlikely but I guess someone should be checking" and "lunacy". But we also shouldn't pretend all attempts are equally promising or reasonable. > Fyi, you may be confusing physicists with astronomers. The prevailing notion in astro circles was indeed that the known pathways to gravitational waves and with calculations made using GR would be too weak to be detected. I'm not confusing anything. The people who have the expertise to estimate limits on the strongest plausible gravitational waves are called "astrophysicists" for a reason. > In this respect Weber was simply unlucky. An extreme example to illustrate why this sort of lazy "it might have worked" thinking is wrong: If I argue that there is a heretofore unknown law of physics that causes black holes to form at low energies as long as it's in Wilmington NC and it's on the 17th Wednesday of the year, and if I build a special detector in my basement in Wilmington that looks for the black hole signature on such a day, and if I claim to see a positive signal, most people will not say that I "built the first generation of table-top black hole detectors". So saying "it might have worked, who knows?" just isn't enough. It's not a coincidence that Weber both (1) thought it was worthwhile to look for gravitational waves at a strength that was widely thought to be impossible and (2) deluded himself into thinking he had made a positive identification. If he had only done #1, and if he had been clear that he was looking under the lamp post just in case there was surprising new physics, a defense of Weber would be more plausible. (Not necessarily convincing, but at least plausible.) But the fact that he also did #2 strongly undermines arguments that he was clear-eyed about what he was doing.