Further to The latest no-Big Bang theory relies on a quantum fluid of hypothetical massless particles (here), physicist Rob Sheldon kindly writes again to say,
The “study” goes through 3 pages of messy algebra and then introduces a simplification in the last 4 paragraphs to find the age of the universe. In the last paragraph, it makes a bad mathematical approximation to that simplified age, shows that this bad math turns a finite number into infinity, and then trumpets this conclusion as removal of the Big Bang.
In other words, there’s 3 pages of snow job before the sleight-of-hand in the last paragraph, just to throw the proletariat off the scent. This is as irresponsible as it gets, and if I were a reviewer, I would have rejected it outright for intentional obfuscation and misrepresentation. Very clearly the paper is a pretext for the title and abstract, which is the only part of the paper likely to be read by journos and the public.
My only consolation was that it wasn’t published in Phys Rev, but in a “second-tier” journal. But if this is the future of peer-reviewed physics, we are in deep trouble.
Maybe the solution is not to call it science.
Some of us aren’t sure that post-empiricism even works in science.
But what should we call this stuff?
See also: Big Bang exterminator wanted, will train
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