Nobel Prize for Relativity

Discussion in 'Pseudoscience Archive' started by Uno Hoo, Mar 20, 2010.

  1. Uno Hoo Registered Senior Member

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    Much has been written, from time to time, in this site, about how dissenters against Special Relativity are cajoled to write a paper and win a Nobel Prize rather than bothering the serious inhabitants hereabouts.

    It would serve everyone reading these pages if some adequately erudite pundit explained, in complete and unambiguous detail, the procedure for a theorist to become nominated for the Nobel.

    Be made fully knowledgeable that this question is intended in the most broad and generic sense, not narrowly limited to concerns about Special Relativity.

    Although, it probably would be education to any academic especially sensitive to Relativity.

    Noone who has invested countless time and energy in their formal schooling would want to a bystander in the race for acclaim of the highest sort.

    How does anyone get to be nominated for the Nobel? In any field?
     
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  3. oozish Banned Banned

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    Nobel Committee picks the candidates by themselves and sends qualifying forms to those individuals. Than the committee reviews those forms and picks the candidates they think are worthy of the prize. They than go to the fields of research scientists involved in their picked candidates' research and ask them for advice on the validity of the research or analysis. The prize awarding institutions like Swedish academy than vote a majority for a select 1,2,3 to win the prize. The winners are than announced.
     
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  5. Uno Hoo Registered Senior Member

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    Do you mean that noone gives nominations to the Committee as a first step in the procedure?
     
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  7. AlphaNumeric Fully ionized Registered Senior Member

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    You write your paper, send it to a journal, it is put through peer review, it passes, it is published, it is read by others, it is considered ground breaking, it revolutionises physics, in a secret nomination process your name comes up more than anyone elses, the Nobel committee examine your work and its impact and you are awarded the prize.

    If its a theoretical prediction you have to wait till its experimentally validated. That can take decades. If its an experimental result, it may only be a few years. If its the destruction of a major pillar it'll be quickest of all.

    But no matter what you still have to pass peer review and get your work published in a reputable journal. It has to stand on its scientific merits and withstand scrutiny. I've yet to see anything put forth by any anti-relativity person here (or anyone else) which stood up to even casual examination.
     
  8. Jack_ Banned Banned

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    twins thread
     
  9. rpenner Fully Wired Valued Senior Member

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    4,833
    Gnats have never demolished a pillar of science. When a pillar of science is discarded, it is usually because it is replaced by something universally better.

    Assumption of Design in Biology -> Evolution by Natural Selection -> Evolutionary Genetics -> Modern Biochemical Evolution Mechanisms and Evolutional Development Studies
    Assumption of Aristotelean (Wile E. Coyote) Mechanics -> Newtonian Mechanics -> Maxwell's Laws -> Special Relativity -> Quantum Electrodynamics
    Assumption of Separate Laws for Terrestrial and Celestial Motion -> Universal Gravitation -> General Relativity
    Assumption of 4 Elements -> Atomic Definition of Element -> Identification of Isotopes -> Theories of Nuclear Stability and Quantum Chemistry
    Assumption of 4 Humors -> Germ Theory of Disease -> Modern Evidence-based Medicine and Biochemical basis for disease
    Assumption of an Electric Fluid -> Measurement of the charge-mass ratio of the electron -> Measurement of the Mass of the Electron -> Measurement of the spin of the electron

    The pattern is always
    Willingness to hide ignorance behind useless story-making -> Less ignorance, and attempts to summarize everything that is observed by useful model making

    And so science is fundamentally progressive: the provisional frontiers of science are moving only in the direction of less ignorance.

    So to get to the frontiers, you have to first set on a campaign to be as well-informed as possible and then find a gap in human knowledge and then do (possibly quite hard) work to fill that gap. But ignorant arguments that a piece of human knowledge is ugly or personally hard to understand are just nit-picking -- possibly only pointing out that science education is flawed, not the science in question. Even if you find a majority of those that actually work in the field agree with you that a bit of theory is ugly, that does not diminish the fact that it is up-until-now the best summary of experiment that we have. And when you don't even point in a direction of improvement, you haven't contributed to science.
     
  10. Jack_ Banned Banned

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    1,383
    Ahh, finally.

    Come to the twins thread and let's play.

    You made assertions above and I assume you will back these up.

    I have a few more toys as well.

    When we are done, I will clearly have established our ordinality.


    I would assume proof is part of your nature.
     
  11. Jack_ Banned Banned

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    1,383
    Let's see,

    http://www.physforum.com/index.php?showtopic=26946&st=0

    You wrote the following:

    [Moderator: Suspended 30 days for misappropriating the language but not the methods of mathematics. Would anyone care to take a stab at setting up the problem correctly and identifying specifically where poster went wrong?]


    I know you are very intelligent. So, I am quite sure you can explain this.

    Now, my integral was in the accelerating frame. You seem to claim this is wrong. But, this is the standard method.
    http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0411233


    However, I corrected Trout on trying to integrate in the stationary frame. I will do it to you as well.

    So, exactly where is the math problem?
     
  12. Pete It's not rocket surgery Registered Senior Member

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    Yes, that's a good example.
     
  13. AlphaNumeric Fully ionized Registered Senior Member

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    Which simply proves my point. If you have something valid you'd write it up and send it to a journal.

    You have called me 'too primitive' to discuss things with you yet you continue to post your 'work' on these forums and not just go direct to a journal. You try to pretend all the people you discuss relativity with are below your level of understanding but you engage us in discussion. If we're so thick and you're so right send it to a journal.

    Instead of doing that you just say "twins thread". Are you afraid of sending your work to a journal? I've told you before that I'm so confident you'll fail peer review that I'll help you type set your work for the appropriate reputable journal so that your work is evaluated only on its scientific merit. I have absolutely zero fear about your work. Put up or shut up.
     
  14. tsmid Registered Senior Member

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    368

    Those suggestions to win a Nobel Prize for proving Relativity (or other 'pillars' of science) wrong are surely only meant ironically. Just think about it: the Nobel Prize committee has been instrumental in helping to erect those pillars, and they would surely lose their face if they issue another prize for their destruction. In fact, it is more likely that this would be the end of the institution of the Nobel prize, and indeed the peer review system as we know it.

    Anyway, a serious scientist should not need the incentives of fame and fortune to do outstanding science. If you are not passionate enough about your profession to do it without these materialistic rewards, you should ask yourself whether you are in the right job.

    Thomas
     
  15. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    Hardly: if the subject of the prize advances science it wouldn't matter that a previous theory (or even recipient) had been shown to to be wrong.
    If relativity can be shown to be wrong (and of course, ideally, why and how it's wrong) won't that ADD to our knowledge?

    I have vague memories of a guy being awarded a prize (possibly the Nobel) for showing that light is a wave and a few years later his son won the same award for demonstrating that it is a particle.
    Did that destroy either science or the award institution?

    Edit: this is not an endorsement of any of the crackpots that show up here to display their misunderstanding of relativity.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  16. tsmid Registered Senior Member

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    You are missing the point: if you have to admit that your incentives have helped to develop a certain scientific subject into a wrong direction for 100 years (or whatever), you can not really argue that they have advanced science, rather on the contrary.

    Thomas
     
  17. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    19,252
    Isn't the history of science a history of false starts and false leads?
    Admittedly mostly short-lived (but then the short-lived ones weren't as deep as relativity).
    Relativity works - like Newton's work did: if it's wrong (IF) then whatever is wrong about it won't invalidate it any more than Einstein invalidated Newton.
     
  18. tsmid Registered Senior Member

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    Yes it is in many cases, but the false leads are eventually abandoned, and the institution of the Nobel prize would in this case be part of the false lead.

    Thomas
     
  19. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    A false lead? So you contend that the award of a Nobel somehow validates the science as science, rather than recognition of the worth of the work at the time?
    For my part (if I were on the Nobel committee) I'd be prepared to give a prize for something that overturned a previous theory, because it advances our knowledge.
     
  20. AlphaNumeric Fully ionized Registered Senior Member

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    This is nonsense. Part of science is being able to admit you're wrong and improve your understanding. When a paper passes peer review it doesn't mean the scientific community is saying "This is absolutely correct, the universe definitely works in this way". Instead it means "Given all the evidence this is a consistent model which explained the relevant phenomena to the best of our ability to test it".

    When our ability to test things becomes better or someone discovers a new phenomenon it may well turn out that the model in the paper is wrong. Admitting that doesn't mean the scientific community losses face, only hacks who are trying to give themselves reasons as to why they have been rejected by the scientific community would think that. You obviously have absolutely no clue what the scientific method is and what the point of peer review is.

    People have been given Nobel prizes for things like quantum mechanics because at the time the models were a huge success and demonstrated insight and understanding beyond that normally expected of a scientist. If someone comes up with a better model or a falsifying experiment tomorrow that doesn't mean that the scientists who developed quantum mechanics weren't insightful and creative for their work.

    By your logic Newton wasn't a great physicist because we've found small (or large) flaws in pretty much all his models of nature. That's obviously nonsense. Peer review is to weed out things we know to be wrong now. It is not a method of endorsing models as perfect.
     
  21. tsmid Registered Senior Member

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    But you are not on the Nobel committee, and presumably you haven't much of a face to lose in science (although I don't know who you are in reality).

    Just assume Stephen Hawking (or any other famous cosmologist) would be on the Nobel committee. Could you see him giving the Nobel prize to somebody who proved that there never was a Big Bang?

    Thomas
     
  22. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    Absolutely.
    Like AlphaNumeric said: "Part of science is being able to admit you're wrong and improve your understanding. When a paper passes peer review it doesn't mean the scientific community is saying "This is absolutely correct, the universe definitely works in this way". Instead it means "Given all the evidence this is a consistent model which explained the relevant phenomena to the best of our ability to test it"."
    Anything that is shown to be "more true" than current theories (even if it completely invalidates what was "known" before) is an advance.
     
  23. tsmid Registered Senior Member

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    Your argument is typical of somebody who is not prepared to take responsibility for their actions and decisions. This might have been acceptable 100 or 200 years ago where the scientific community was still a kind of 'gentlemen's club' without any real social responsibility. In today's times it really could only be applied to unimportant and 'soft' issues, but not as far as 'pillars of science' are concerned.
    Today you simply don't get away with many (or severe) errors in your judgement (even if you are lastly personally not to blame). Trying to excuse them as a result of an 'improved understanding' is just hypocritical.
    And I know what I am talking about, as personally I have yet to meet the scientist who would admit any kind of mistake to me (and I had contacts and worked together with quite a few during my degree course, Ph.D. course, as well as Postdoc periods).

    Thomas
     

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