Both of you, and Farsight, all seem to have variations of your interpretations of GR. The three of you, all claim validity of your own interpretation and are of the opinion that what is generally accepted by mainstream is wrong.
Of course, everybody who proposes an own theory or interpretation does this because he thinks it is better than the actually accepted one. Else, there would be no point proposing it.
So, this is a quite meaningless point. What makes sense is to compare how GR and its spacetime interpretation are criticized. The typical crank criticism of "logical errors of Einstien" is one thing, standard criticism accepted by the mainstream like incompatibility with QT, unaviodable singularities, conflict with realism because of the violation of Bell's inequalities, closed causal loops are a different thing.
The three of you all cannot be correct.
Big news. Have any of us made such a claim?
On that point itself, and which I did argue with Schmelzer on, many papers are purely hypothetically theoretical as opposed to scientifically theoretical as accepted by the definition of a scientific theory. I see a difference there and I hope that difference is clear.
Yes, it is clear, this difference is completely your own invention, not based on any sound scientific methodology, and, therefore, completely irrelevant.
Scientific theories are always hypothetical and theoretical. To become empirical theories, they have to make empirical predictions. This is known as Popper's criterion. The theories I have proposed make such predictions.
As a lay person interested in cosmology and just as interested in the best derived reality or model of present day cosmology, I am put in a rather difficult position.
Of course, this is indeed difficult.
I can imo claim that generally speaking, and on average, the majority is far more likely to be correct than individuals like yourselves. That of course leads me open to criticism that I'm a sheep and follow without understanding properly. But as a sheep, I also need to make a decision in my own mind and to the best of what I do understand.
You mingle here two things. It is one thing to simply follow the mainstream, as a layman. This is a decision you have to make for yourself. And I have exactly no problem with this decision. But it is another thing to participate in a discussion, and to take sides in such a discussion, and having your personal decision to follow the mainstream as the only argument.
In fact, modern physics is too complex to read and check everything, so even professionals are not much better than laymen in many questions outside their own specialization. And, essentially, they usually also have to make this choice for themself, to accept the mainstream position without carefully checking it. I have to do the same, and in fact I usually accept the mainstream, and even without much checking - the time for checking is my own lifetime. In particular, I have decided to ignore Yilmaz without checking all formulas in the disputes which have been considered here. I have seen the major arguments, made some expectations about the plausibility of these arguments, and made my decision.
But, you may note, I do not argue that Q-reeus is stupid or so if he likes Yilmaz. I have explained him my decision, that's all.
I don't hold onto conspiracies that mainstream science is tainted, or indulge in conspiracies to shut out independent thinking, and independent scientists as Schmelzer says he is. At least not on any scale to be really worried about. Nothing is perfect though. And If that were the case and was as widespread as both of you at times seem to insinuate, then we would certainly be in deep shit.
The scientific method and associated peer review is not perfect but again it is the best we have.
I also don't believe into any conspiracies.
What I criticize in actual science is not the scientific method in general, and not peer review (even if it is prejudiced against things outside the mainstream, but this is a general human weakness, where I also do not see a way to make it better). My main criticism is about a point which can be made better, even easily, and which has been made better in the past, and even in otherwise stupid communists states. It is about the organization of science, with young scientist being extremely insecure, much more insecure than everybody else, with the exception of maybe professional criminals. Give young scientists badly paid but secure jobs, and the problem disappears. Good scientists are in some sense fanatics, they do not care about how much they get paid - if they can do what they like to do, they are happy enough. But they need some basic security, enough to live a modest life and to have a family, even if they disagree with the mainstream. Today they know - if they disagree with the mainstream, they will be out of job after the actual grant is finished. So they have to follow the mainstream. This is simply stupid, and this is a stupidity one has to be worried about, and it is a stupidity which one could easily avoid.
And, again, it is not at all a conspiracy. It is an economic problem. You want independent judges? Give them a safe job, a job where they cannot be dismissed for unpopular decisions. You want independent scientists? Give them a safe job, where they cannot be dismissed for developing unpopular theories. You want to be able to control judges? Make the job of the judge unsafe. It does not even matter what is the procedure to get rid of a recalcitrant judge, it matters that his job is not safe. Even better is if they have only temporary jobs. They will care automatically about what the powers who decide about jobs want. Same for science. If you want a politically controllable science, which follows some mainstream without questioning it, give scientist only temporary jobs. Then they automatically will start to follow the mainstream, whatever it is. Not because they conspire, but because they want to get paid in future too.
Conspiracy can start only after this. Only
if you have an organization of science where they all automatically follow the mainstream, you can start to try to manipulate the mainstream, for example, by influencing the distribution of grants and so on. This is something one has to care about in sciences related with big money, like climate science or medicine. But it seems irrelevant for physics.