We explained elsewhere on the danger, such as confirmation bias, of following one's opinion, or what one can imagine -- that it is better, in research and life, to focus on questions than (supposed) facts or (outdated) quotes.
Facts can also change, quotes can fall out of fashion, but a good question remains. It is better to reject 10 truths than to accept 1 falsity, because a truth can always be accepted later while a falsity influences now. That is why fraud is frequently somehow urgent, to exploit fast a faulty acceptance. Misinformation will, eventually, destroy itself --- and this realization presents a real danger to fraudsters, that they cannot escape from, try as they may. They must, eventually, also change.
Here, we present practical cases [1-6] (including their own references) to give examples that may seem far removed, but harbor the same issue in our view, for further discussion.
Stanford Univ. also investigated why facts don't change people's minds, using a different method. It seems that most people value more to be right than to be on the right. See [7].
NOTE: As participant in RG, we follow, as a top university does, a free-speech policy, and we ask to please stay on topic. We are asserting that misinformation destroys itself.
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/post/Should_denying_Einstein_special_and_general_relativity_be_blocked2 and its reference
Preprint The Einstein Phenomenon and "fake news"
[2] https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_are_the_worse_yet_enduring_misconceptions_about_mass_and_energy_in_special_relativity
[3] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331464765_Acceptable_Risk_-_a_Euphemism_for_Selling_Fraud
[3] https://www.researchgate.net/post/On_CMB_or_Cosmic_Microwave_Background_and_special_reference_frames_in_relativity
[4] https://www.researchgate.net/post/On_the_fusion_of_time_and_space_in_special_and_general_relativity_and_cosmology with
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Are_geometric_algebras_Clifford_Cl3_1_Hestenes_insufficient_for_electromagnetism
and
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_a_spacetime_model_needed_to_understand_special_relativity_or_electromagnetism
[5] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329629829_Special_Relativity_Applied_to_Arbitrary_Motion
[6] Preprint On the experimental length contraction and time dilation in ...
[7] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds
Дорогой Ed Gerck,
Спасибо за четко сформулированную фразу :-" It is better to reject 10 truths than to accept 1 falsity, because a truth can always be accepted later while a falsity influences now." Если бы мы опирались на это в науке всегда?
С уважением
Владимир Куклин
Vladimir Kuklin: It reflects skepticism, good in science and life. That is why fraud is frequently somehow urgent, to exploit fast a faulty acceptance. Misinformation will, eventually, destroy itself --- and this realization presents a real danger to fraudsters, that they cannot escape from, try as they may. They must, eventually, also change.
Владимир Куклин and all: Let me expand a bit on that phrase.
A publication may be considered a valid academic work but, is it? It may be like a Chinese cake, it looks good outside but it is a "fake cake" inside --- only children like it. So, it does not advance science, it is like a "massless spring" -- useful to understand reality at high-school level, but not found in nature.
A Nobel Prize in Physics warned against wasting time in such fruitless trips. It seems like work, one satisfies the wolves, one gets cited, but science does not advance. It is what is wrong in the academic system we have, rewarding production --- as said in the US, "If you must publish, then publish rubbish." And, this may be a litmus test, and people may jeopardize their future by too much rubbish in their publication list. It signals that they can't do better, have poor judgement.
The physical meaning of "fake cakes", massless springs, that kind of academic work, is to not do it. If one is looking for a cat, one should not go with the first stray cat that passes. One may do better. The mass in a spring, for example, is easy to account for, and may change the result appreciably, such as its destruction frequency by resonance.
Approximations is a valid method to solve problems that we do not know how to solve. But not to stay with; one needs to face the difficult waters of the ocean, the ship can't be good only for the bay with easy waters --- but if the ship is the highest priority for the captain, staying in the bay is the best strategy.
On mathematical elegance, that is just human-defined. One should, rather concentrate on the primacy of physical laws.
BTW, some people "jump the shark" by suggesting that one can measure in Physics the square root of 2, and suggesting that one can measure in Physics the complex numbers. Please, let us not confuse measurement in Mathematics, with what is possible in Nature, in Physics, as https://arxiv.org/html/physics/0102047 did. And it is well-known that the Heine-Borel theorem contradicted Zeno's dichotomy "paradox". I suggest reading https://hbr.org/2019/05/how-to-overcome-the-bias-we-have-toward-our-own-ideas
Although almost all those points, and others not listed, are in my RG publications, I tend to see things through QM.
Reality is observer-dependent, in QM. Starting with the Heisenberg principle, observer and experiment cannot be dissociated. There is no objectivity in QM -- but there is a coherent abstract view one can pursue in QM.
Now, from that common, coherent, abstract view in QM, one can pursue instances of a subjective, intersubjective, and objective natures, and mixed, ordering them into a scale, even contradictory to themselves. It is a cornucopia of choices! All validated by the same common, coherent, abstract view that has the "seed thought" of the subject. It is like a manifold, connecting different domains to one another, although no connection is seen directly between them.
QM and SR are necessary for EM, so its easy to have RQM -- it is a "match made in heaven". Gravity is modeled by extrinsic curvature of spacetime in GR, when QM is utterly ignored, incompatibly, but more than that, it is of a different type, in HoTT and TCS terminology.
In this abstract view, one is concerned with testable relationships, one is focusing on the essence of a hypothesis in the Scientific Method. A hypothesis is not a guess, a hypothesis is a testable relationship, no more and no less.
Accordingly, SR is not a guess, but a testable relationship.
In that abstract sense, SR passed the QM test and the EM test, and yet it MUST be observer-dependent, which seems to contradict several old "principles", but actually extends them, it does NOT deny them. When I summarize, for example:
"Comoving observers NEVER measure time dilation or length contraction, whereas non-comoving ALWAYS do. It does not matter the acceleration, nor the velocity."
then goodbye to "relativistic speed" or "inertial observer", they are limited to a platonic model, a human-made domain, not Nature.
In Nature, an "inertial observer" can see different realities, whether comoving, or non-comoving; reality can be the same also, no matter the acceleration, nor the velocity.
What really distinguishes observers, is whether they are comoving or not. Here, as normal in Physics, comoving is a technical word, and means "same position and velocity", not necessarily identical objects; in cosmology comoving observers see the same wavefront, so it is coherent with other related fields.
Depending on the SR formulation as the stance that one uses, even no SR, more or less "paradoxes" will result. The less "paradoxes" the better. The same with EM, thus we want to eliminate what is not necessary. Can the Maxwell equations be excluded in EM? Other questions follow.
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