“Hand Waving” the Physics of 9/11 -David L Griscom

[stannrodd]

Physicists with international reputations hate to be caught making mistakes. Even Albert
Einstein was chagrined by what he regarded as his “biggest blunder,” that is, adding a
“cosmological constant” to his general theory of relativity in order to stabilize the
universe against gravitational collapse. Einstein threw in the towel after the astronomers
determined that the more distant galaxies have greater “red shifts,” thus proving that the
universe is actually expanding. Only after his death was it found out from studies of the
cosmic microwave background radiation that, “yes, Virginia,” there really is a
cosmological constant!
But there was only one Einstein. The rest of us have little hope that history will look
kindly on our blunders.
Mercifully, we normally publish in refereed journals, where some of our inevitable
mistakes are caught by anonymous peer reviewers prior to publication. Nevertheless,
referees tend to be too busy to catch every error, so mistakes can still leak into print. I
have made a horrendous number of mistakes in the process of publishing the 108 papers
that I wrote fully myself. I know this because I’ve caught virtually all of them myself by
double-, triple-, and quadruple-checking my data, logic, and mathematics before allowing
my manuscripts to go to press. My published works are highly respected by my peers
according to my score (h=39) on the recently devised Hirsch index [J.E. Hirsch, Proc.
Nat. Acad. Sci. 0507655102 (2005)]. This means that 39 of the 185 total papers of which
I am the principal author or a coauthor have each been cited at least 39 times in other
refereed publications.
By contrast, informal publications on the internet are not subject to such checks and
balances, and no one’s reputation is likely to be badly tarnished if mistakes are made
here. So even scientists may be tempted to “shoot from the hip” in a blog. This situation
reminds me of my undergraduate and grad-school days when everyone made mistakes –
harmlessly.
There were times when a physics professor would forget important steps in deriving a
theorem on the blackboard and get away with not admitting it. Thanks to one of my
physics instructors with a sense of humor, I learned a term for a credentialed person’s
bamboozling of the uninitiated. It’s called “proof by intimidation.”

:eek:

Stann

[bryan]

:eek:


Tesla's peers must have been too busy to review his work.


Nikola Tesla

Tesla is often described as the most important scientist and inventor of the modern age, a man who "shed light over the face of Earth". He is best known for many revolutionary contributions in the field of electricity and magnetism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Tesla's patents and theoretical work formed the basis of modern alternating current electric power (AC) systems, including the polyphase power distribution systems and the AC motor, with which he helped usher in the Second Industrial Revolution. Contemporary biographers of Tesla have regarded him as "The Father of Physics", "The man who invented the twentieth century" and "the patron saint of modern electricity."



Tesla was ultimately ostracized and regarded as a mad scientist



Or maybe he just didn't fit in with the other scientists.


Tesla believed that war could not be avoided until the cause for its recurrence was removed, but was opposed to wars in general. He sought to reduce distance, such as in communication for better understanding, transportation, and transmission of energy, as a means to ensure friendly international relations.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla

[tannah]

:eek:

Stann


The peer review process, at its heart depends on the peers that are reviewing something.

Mummy and daddy send kiddie off to university, and the textbooks teach kiddie, and kiddie hopes to get a job at the end of it all. The competition will be for grants and other forms of support. A way of protecting one's job is to shoo away any challenges to mainstream science as cranky and psuedoscience. But:

A SYSTEM OF KNOWLEDGE DEFINING UNKNOWNS AS UNTRUE IS ITSELF FALSE

And science is 99% in the blind:

http://www.perceptions.couk.com/blinded.html

Should a valid theory of gravity, for example, ever be found, it will naturally be suppressed by the establisment that is doing very nicely from all the billions of dollars being invested in finding the answer. One can apply that rule for all energy benefits to mankind, and the likelihood of it being termed psuedoscience.

My point is that a shock to the system always tends to come from outside. The system itself tends to become self serving, lazy and unimaginative.

Was the NIST report peer reviewed? Or are we saying we can't question the authority of the scientists that wrote the report? Shades of corruption always begin with an appeal to authority, and not the TRUTH..