Remember my earlier rants about Null Physics, the revolutionary “text book” that rewrites everything we know about how the universe works? It was written by a wealthy guy (Terrence Witt) who doesn’t have a physics degree, and has come up with a simplistic model of the universe that doesn’t have gads of knowledgeable scientists lining up behind him to endorse it. At this point, it isn’t anything validated or worth teaching in a basic science classroom. Yet, he keeps spending all his fucking money to advertise it, as if enough spin and marketing will “convince” the world that his brand of science is revolutionary.
Does this remind anyone of any other annoying group? Maybe the Intelligent Design supporters? Yep. He is behaving exactly like them, because he doesn’t want to wait in line to have his theory tested and proven in the lab. Several well known physicists who have reviewed his book, actually tear it apart. BUT, the point is, he has a ton of money and he keeps advertising it in non-refereed magazines, in order to give an air of legitimacy to his self-published textbook. For TWO YEARS he has been taking out two-page spreads in Scientific American, Science News, Discover and other popular magazines. This isn’t how science works. I am sorry that your theory might not be good enough to gain popularity during your lifetime, and maybe it never will be if it is a totally WRONG as it appears. You can’t buy your way into science mainstream. Just because you have a lot of money to throw away, doesn’t mean you can take cuts in line. If (example) cold fusion doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, no matter how much marketing you put behind it.
These well-liked popular science magazines should be embarrassed for allowing this kind of advertising. It goes against our methods of science. Science should be bias-free and you shouldn’t gain an upper hand because you have money to spend. If others test your theory and it holds water, it will gain support as a leading theory. As opposed to running for student council president, you can’t just put up a ton of posters promising things and win – science isn’t a popularity contest. Get a physics degree. Get a BUNCH of real scientists to support your theory. Get some results that prove your theory is better than Einstein’s, before claiming he was wrong. And, please stop advertising in my magazines – it just makes you look like a big, rich, spoiled joke.
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2 responses so far ↓
1
zooeyhall
// Aug 29, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Sir: Thank you for your EXCELLENT commentary on “null physics”. I am an Astronomy magazine subscriber, and also an “educated layman” when it comes to science. I have noticed the last few months that Astronomy has had this ad not only on their back cover but also at the same time on a full color spread inside the magazine. Now I know a magazine is a business and advertising is the life blood, but magazines like Astronomy and Discover need to rise above other rags like Time and People. They should have had their BS alarm go off rather than just trying to sell advertising space.
Too often purveyers of this sort of thing i.e the extraordinary claims the author makes in his book– when faced with criticism or hard questions, immediately go into “persecution” mode. “Sure, they laughed at Einstein, Galileo, etc. etc…”. This is the very tactics the Creationists use–”if you can’t impress them with knowledge, baffle ‘em with bullshit” or in this case, a lot of scientific-sounding noise.
Issac Asimov wrote in his book “The Stars in Their Courses” about how “theories” in science aren’t worth a hill of beans. He said that “theories” are merely intelligent guesses and need to be submitted to the rigors of the scientific method. He also said that anyone can come out with a “theory” of something, but until it is rigorously and thoroughly tested by the rest of the scientific community it is just an intellectual game.
Carl Sagan once remarked (in reference to UFOs) that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof”. “Our Undiscovered Universe” makes some extradordinary claims: the Big Bang is a myth, Einstein was wrong, quantum physics is a lark, etc. Now these are some pretty breathtaking assertions for Mr. Witt to make, but I won’t shell out sixty bucks (plus shipping) for his book until I see some pretty breathtaking proofs from the rest of the science community about his claims.
2
Reality Check
// Nov 6, 2008 at 5:44 am
See this review of “Our Undiscovered Universe� by Terence Witt from a professional physicist:
http://web.mit.edu/~bmonreal/www/Null_Physics_Review.html
Also see my review at http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~fiski/ouu_review.html
The flaws of this crackpot book are many and include:
Redefining the concept of infinity as a length with magnitude.
Defining a line as a series of points written as zeros, treating them as numbers so that they add up to zero and then treating the number zero as a point again!
A really bad atomic model “proving” that a electron orbiting a proton has a ground state that it cannot decay from by creating a new physical law.
Using the high school description of a neutron as a proton plus an electron and not realizing that this is just his atomic model!
Postulating that galaxies have “galactic cores” which are super massive objects that are not quite black holes and not realizing that the centre of the Milky Way is well observed. These recycle stars into hydrogen. Oddly enough astronomers have not noticed dozens of stars vanishing from the galactic centre in the many images that they have taken over the last few decades.
Conclusion: Bad mathematics and even worse physics.
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