The most recent example of this complaint that I’ve come across is in cosmologist Peter Coles’ blog, In the Dark. In a post entitled “Why the Big Bang is Wrong” he says:
I suspect that I’m not the only physicist who has a filing cabinet filled
with unsolicited correspondence from people with wacky views on everything from
UFOs to Dark Matter. Being a cosmologist, I probably get more of this stuff
than those working in less speculative branches of physics. Because I’ve
written a few things that appeared in the public domain (and even appeared on
TV and radio a few times), I probably even get more than most cosmologists
(except the really famous ones of course).
I would estimate that I get two or three items of correspondence of this
kind per week. Many “alternative” cosmologists have now discovered email, but
there are still a lot who send their ideas through regular post. In fact,
whenever I get a envelope with an address on it that has been typed by an
old-fashioned typewriter it’s usually a dead giveaway that it’s going to be one
of those. Sometimes they are just
letters (typed or handwritten), but sometimes they are complete manuscripts
often with wonderfully batty illustrations. I have one in front of me now
called Dark Matter, The Great Pyramid and the
Theory of Crystal Healing. I might even go so far as to call that
one bogus.
I have an entire filing cabinet in my office at work filled with things like
it. I could make a fortune if I set up a journal for these people. Alarmingly,
electrical engineers figure prominently in my files. They seem particularly
keen to explain why Einstein was wrong…
I never reply, of course. I don’t have time, for one thing. I’m also
doubtful whether there’s anything useful to be gained by trying to engage in a
scientific argument with people whose grip on the basic concepts is so tenuous
(as perhaps it is on reality). Even if they have some scientific training,
their knowledge and understanding of physics is usually pretty poor.
I should explain that, whenever I can, if someone writes or emails with a
genuine question about physics or astronomy – which often happens – I always
reply. I think that’s a responsibility for anyone who gets taxpayers’ money.
However, I don’t reply to letters that are confrontational or aggressive or
which imply that modern science is some sort of conspiracy to conceal the real
truth.
A few years ago I submitted my metaphysics paper to the Journal of Consciousness Studies. In his response, the editor expresses the same problem with retired engineers, although not specifically electrical.
It will not surprise you to know
that I regularly receive communications from people who believe they have
solved the question of the nature of consciousness, or of the universe, or of
both. And it is noteworthy that these correspondents are nearly always retired,
and in a high proportion of cases retired engineers. You will appreciate that
dealing with these proposals is one of the hardest thing I do as an editor
because I know that I am handling ideas on which the author has worked for
decades and invested a huge amount of time and energy.
My starting point when looking at
these proposals is always the same: one of them could be right, and this could
be the one. But if one is right then all the rest are wrong and the odds are
strongly in favour of this being one of the many that are wrong and against its
being the one that is right.
Needless to say, my paper was rejected.
Now, my work has been rejected plenty of times on its own merit, thank you very much, by people who didn’t know I was a retired electrical engineer. But being rejected because of what you used to do for a living seems very much like being turned down for a job because of the color of your skin. Not fair at all. I hope this doesn’t become a common practice.
One hears it said that there have been such “tremendous
advances“ in QFT that it’s impossible that anyone but a trained physicist of the
highest level will be able to make the breakthrough that finally leads to a
resumption of progress. However, these advances seem to add up to more and more
complex mathematics and a multitude of unsuccessful theories and models, but
few answers. It seems likely now that the highly trained physicist may be
locked into a paradigm that has become stale and unproductive. It may be time to take the crackpot—excuse
me, the self-trained independent researcher—more seriously. Perhaps the needed
breakthrough is incomprehensible to the trained mind because it looks like
nonsense, in which case it will never be found except by someone who isn’t
locked into the current paradigm.
How to find such a person? As a retired electrical engineer,
I humbly suggest that such a background would be ideal for solving the puzzle
of the universe. Engineers are trained and experienced in building models of
systems to exhibit any desired behavior. Do we need a model? You bet we do.
Space and time are fundamental to our existence and we don’t know what they
are, really. We don’t have a good spacetime model. Without that, we’ll be stuck
forever.
Not everybody will agree that the way forward lies in
research collaborations between engineers and physicists. Yet, our great
research universities are increasingly setting up interdisciplinary teams to
attack the most difficult problems. I suggest that physicists might consider
joining forces with engineers instead of insisting that only a top physicist
can do the job. Engineers who have a
deep interest in the universe and in physics may be just the right prescription
for what ails physics these days, such as a lack of progress in explaining such
things as dark matter and dark energy and in unifying quantum theory and
general relativity. In my humble opinion, physicists have come to rely too
heavily on the mathematics that has led to spectacular progress in the past.
Now they need a breakthrough idea, but the same mathematics won’t provide it
because it isn’t capable of describing the next level of reality. Physicists
need to get back to physics, creating pictures in their heads, building models
of how nature might work, and only when they have a promising model, then
asking what new mathematics we need to develop so make the model predictive. People
who are good at conceiving such models aren’t always good at mathematics.
Engineers are good at this kind of conceptual modeling. Unfortunately, many
don’t have a very good grasp of modern physics. But sooner or later, against
all odds, one of us may be right.
My stuff is very predictive, so much so that I don’t see how it can be wrong. You’ll find all of it here, and I’ll import parts of it to this blog as appropriate.
