Okay but, haven’t there been numerous examples of Scientists coming up with theories and not being able to produce tangible results for decades if not centuries? (Not trying to argue. Just trying to understand)
I clicked a couple of links and got a modal window that popped up directing me to click a button to “Update my Flash installation” (hello 2009!), and then another link that redirected me to some scammy supervitamin advert. Maybe it is just a bad choice of host, but given the word salad technobabble in the titles of their ‘papers’ and general lack of apparent connection with a legitimate academic research institution, I find it pretty likely that it is bunkum.
We’ll need to back that train up a little. In regular English, a “theory” is just “a vague idea”. In scientific terms, it’s more like, “a description of observable events that best fits the data we have”.
So you have to be able to come up with a tangible explanation that has properties you can “observe” (ie: measure, or substantiate in some way). Generally, you have to be able to back up what you’re saying. If things are inherently unprovable, the general scientific response is to shrug, say the equivalent of, “That’s nice,” and ignore it as faff.
So when I went to look at that site, the first two links were:
[Physicist: Universe May Be a “Strange Loop” of Self-Simulating Consciousness]
and
[New hypothesis argues the universe simulates itself into existence]
So these guys are offshoots of the “Whoah man, the universe is just a computer simulation!” branch of nonsense, which is inherently unverifiable, which is basically a really wordy take on weekend potsmoke nonsense.
There is an entire subfield of physics (“M-theory” or “superstring theory”) which has produced models that we have no real hope of producing falsifiable experimental tests, and there are a number of prominent physicists who consider the efforts to be non-scientific. And there are, of course, celebrated scientists who have gone on to pursue ascientific or badly flawed hypotheses, such as astronomer Fred Hoyle and his unfounded belief in panspermia, dual Nobel Prize and Priestly Medal winner quantum chemist Linus Pauling and his obsession with Vitamin C megadosing, David Bohm and his holonomic model of the brain, and Lynn Margulis and her HIV/AIDS denial and 9/11 trutherism.
But in general, legitimate scientists endeavor to develop hypotheses and create models that can be tested because that is the essential process that distinguishes “science” from “fictioneering”. Cosmologists and high energy physicists tend to ride the narrow line of that distinction by dint of working on the bleeding edge of what it is even possible for us to measure, but they generally base their hypotheses on data that can at least be inferred from observation, and do so within the framework of academia because it is hard to make a living as a freelance quantum mechanic, as very few people are looking to get their waveforms tuned up, and those that are seem to get drawn into predatory death cults like Scientology and QAnon.
I’d like to give you a bit more of a tangible example of what I’m saying. The most popular image of the “crackpot scientist” (using the term loosely) is Albert Einstein, and he wrote some pretty crazy notions, including, “Things slow down in time the faster they go!”
But he also included an equation, which I’m too lazy to type out here. It relates the time dilation of the object against its velocity.
And scientists, over time, were able to eventually devise experiments to test this theory, and some modern technology relies on it. It was pretty out there, but it was provable.
I think it’s good to keep an open mind and read up on things, but anybody making bold claims without any way of proving it is, as they might say, writing checques their asses can’t cash.
It looks like the site itself is safe, but links on that site are not. As you note, it could just be a poor hosting choice. I have added a notice to the post indicating that clicking on links from that site may not be a safe thing to do.
I have left the OP’s link intact so that those who wish to view the context for the OP may do so. Just click carefully if you do.
Actually, special relativity was pretty quickly accepted into mainstream physics. Of course, it has the benefit of immediately resolving a number of problems with observations and produced other predictions that were readily tested and repeatedly failed to be falsified, and there were also multiple other physicists working along similar lines. General relativity took a bit more effort, in part because observations involving gravitational effects require much more precision, and because it took a big bite out of the universally accepted Newtonian “Law of Gravitation”, but certainly by Einstein’s death it has become widely accepted as a fundamental theory that was taught at the graduate level, and by the early ‘Sixties it was being used to explain or predict phenomena such as pulsars, black holes, and the cosmic microwave background.
Quantum mechanics has become a fertile ground for pseudoscienticians and scammers because it is clearly not a complete theory and makes predictions that are mathematically consistent but fundamentally incompatible with what we’d like to believe about the world, such as that actions are due to cause and effect and stuff doesn’t just come from and disappear back into nothing for no reason. That there are literally dozens of apparently legitimate “interpretations” if quantum mechanics, each of them essentially as valid in terms of falsification as the others (i.e. none of them can be experimentally disproven) which span the gamut of “real, but non-local” or “a figment of your imagination until you observe it” to “due to pilot waves going forward and backward in time to rectify all actions” and “the result of a superposition of infinite worlds” means that it is hard for the layperson to distinguish between harmless scientific noodling and genuine bullshit intended to separate a mark from his wallet.
Thankfully, they give some helpful cites, such as this one from New Scientist:
Supplemental papers
KLEE IRWIN is a man who made a small fortune selling health supplements such as “Colon Clear”, although not as much as he would have were it not for a 2011 lawsuit that fined his company $2.65 million for false and misleading advertising, plus the small matter of selling a supplement that contained 14 times the legal limit of lead.
A rehabilitated Irwin has now pivoted into theoretical physics, a field in which fantastical claims with scant supporting evidence can still boast a degree of respectability. His Quantum Gravity Research group is seeking to build a new, first-principles unified theory of everything they call Emergence Theory, “to unify, through mathematical and scientific rigor, the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics… and consciousness.”
Presumably frozen out by mainstream research funders, Irwin is calling for donations via the Quantum Gravity Group’s web page – after all, particle colliders don’t build themselves. But does the world need a new theory of everything? The letters inbox at New Scientist receives at least one a week – perhaps it could do with a dose Colon Clear.
It’s an accurate quote, but from reading a biography of the Wright Brothers I’m not sure how many people who knew anything laughed at them.
And they were right to laugh at Columbus. People thought he was stupid not because they thought the earth was flat, but because they knew how big it was, which he got wrong.
To be fair, the ‘science’ of the day was confusing, and although Eratosthenes has correctly calculated the circumference of the Earth to a good approximation there was not independent confirmation. Columbus was actually an excellent nautical navigator given the information available to him, but also an execrable human being even by the mores of the period for his treatment of natives who he took by force and essentially enslaved and brutalized in ways that shocked even his contemporaries.