CLIMATE-GATE, RELATIVITY-GATE, ENTROPY-GATE
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From: Pentcho Valev on 13 Apr 2010 02:22 http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,686697,00.html "Plagued by reports of sloppy work, falsifications and exaggerations, climate research is facing a crisis of confidence. How reliable are the predictions about global warming and its consequences? (...) On balance, the entire profession has been seriously harmed by the scandal. "We are currently suffering a massive erosion of trust," concludes German climatologist Hans von Storch. "Climate research has been corrupted by politicization, just as nuclear physics was in the pre-Chernobyl days, when we were led to believe that nuclear power plants were completely safe." (...) An Entire Branch of Science in Crisis (...) No other branch of science is as politically charged. A religious war is raging between alarmists and skeptics, and it threatens to consume levelheaded climatologists. But it is a critical conflict, because it revolves around something as massive as the total restructuring of industrial society, a venture that will cost trillions of euros. Powerful economic interests and unshakeable fundamental beliefs come into play." Compare with this: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a909857880 Peter Hayes "The Ideology of Relativity: The Case of the Clock Paradox" : Social Epistemology, Volume 23, Issue 1 January 2009, pages 57-78 "In the interwar period there was a significant school of thought that repudiated Einstein's theory of relativity on the grounds that it contained elementary inconsistencies. Some of these critics held extreme right-wing and anti-Semitic views, and this has tended to discredit their technical objections to relativity as being scientifically shallow. This paper investigates an alternative possibility: that the critics were right and that the success of Einstein's theory in overcoming them was due to its strengths as an ideology rather than as a science. The clock paradox illustrates how relativity theory does indeed contain inconsistencies that make it scientifically problematic. These same inconsistencies, however, make the theory ideologically powerful. The implications of this argument are examined with respect to Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper's accounts of the philosophy of science. (...) The gatekeepers of professional physics in the universities and research institutes are disinclined to support or employ anyone who raises problems over the elementary inconsistencies of relativity. A winnowing out process has made it very difficult for critics of Einstein to achieve or maintain professional status. Relativists are then able to use the argument of authority to discredit these critics. Were relativists to admit that Einstein may have made a series of elementary logical errors, they would be faced with the embarrassing question of why this had not been noticed earlier. Under these circumstances the marginalisation of antirelativists, unjustified on scientific grounds, is eminently justifiable on grounds of realpolitik. Supporters of relativity theory have protected both the theory and their own reputations by shutting their opponents out of professional discourse. (...) If relativity theory is an ideology, then its illusory explanatory power enhances the real power and authority of theoretical physicists. Precisely because Einstein's theory is inconsistent, its exponents can draw on contradictory principles in a way that greatly extends the apparent explanatory scope of the theory. Inconsistency may be a disadvantage in a scientific theory but it can be a decisive advantage in an ideology. The inconsistency of relativity theory - to borrow the language of the early Marx - gives relativity its apparent universal content. This seeming power of explanation functions to enhance the status of the group, giving them power over others through the enhanced control over resources, and a greater power to direct research and to exclude and marginalise dissent. (...) The argument that Einstein fomented an ideological rather than a scientific revolution helps to explain of one of the features of this revolution that puzzled Kuhn: despite the apparent scope of the general theory, very little has come out of it. Viewing relativity theory as an ideology also helps to account for Popper's doubts over whether special theory can be retained, given experimental results in quantum mechanics and Einstein's questionable approach to defining simultaneity. Both Kuhn and Popper have looked to the other branch of the theory - Popper to the general and Kuhn to the special - to try and retain their view of Einstein as a revolutionary scientist. According to the view proposed here, this only indicates how special and general theories function together as an ideology, as when one side of the theory is called into question, the other can be called upon to rescue it. The triumph of relativity theory represents the triumph of ideology not only in the profession of physics bur also in the philosophy of science. These conclusions are of considerable interest to both theoretical physics and to social epistemology. It would, however, be naïve to think that theoretical physicists will take the slightest notice of them." Pentcho Valev pvalev(a)yahoo.com |