PLoS ONE Publishes Cosmology "Breakthrough"

[L'Emmerdeur]

A geneticist has attempted to eliminate the question of dark energy with a reinterpretation of the data.

"Study finds possible alternative explanation for dark energy" | Phys.Org

A new study by University of Georgia professor Edward Kipreos suggests that changes in how people think about time dilation—the slowing of time predicted by Albert Einstein—can provide an alternate explanation of dark energy.

. . .

The new paper makes the case that instead of being reciprocal, time dilation in response to movement is directional, with only the moving object undergoing time dilation.

[Continues . . .]

Physicists don't seem to be buying what Kipreos is selling.

"Don’t bet on the failure of relativity" | Galileo's Pendulum

As you can tell, this isn’t a modest proposal at all, but (to use the unkind phrasing usually attributed to unkind physicist Wolfgang Pauli) it isn’t even wrong. His modification to the laws of physics are too large, with implications he avoids by not dealing with them. Instead, he focuses on a few small aspects of relativity: the loss of simultaneity between moving frames of reference and the time-dilation effect measured by two observers moving rapidly with respect to each other. These are connected phenomena, but they are both consequences of the larger theory, which is not only well-tested in its own right, but the foundation of the two best-tested theories we have: general relativity and quantum electrodynamics.

[Continues . . .]

"Pay to Play" | One Universe at a Time

There’s new research being touted in the press about a possible solution to the dark energy mystery. The results, published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS ONE argues that a radical modification of relativity can account for dark energy. The work is so abysmally awful that it makes you wonder just how such a paper got accepted for publication.

The central claim of the paper is that our understanding special relativity is wrong. Instead of all motion being relative, which causes time dilation between objects and means that there is no absolute cosmic time frame, the author argues that all motion is measured relative to some absolute time frame. This means that motion can be measured relative to this absolute frame, and things like time dilation only occurs relative to that absolute cosmic frame.

Those familiar with relativity might point out that we’ve long known that the speed of light is a universal constant in all frames of reference, and experiments such as the Michelson-Morley experiment showed that there is no absolute reference frame. Even things like GPS satellites show that relativity works, so how does one argue that there’s an absolute reference frame? As the author points out, to agree with observation, you just have to assume that the absolute frame of the universe is centered on the Earth and rotating with it.

You heard that right. The author argues that in terms of this cosmic reference frame, the Earth doesn’t move.

[Continues . . .]

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Sounds like typical geocentric special pleading. Meh.

[L'Emmerdeur]

I think it's considerably more sophisticated than geocentrism, but almost certainly just as incorrect. Still, I expect some at Answers in Genesis and similar dens of willful ignorance to find Kipreos's ideas very encouraging.

[JimC]

Cobblers should stick to their last...

[hackenslash]

A geneticist has attempted to eliminate the question of dark energy with a reinterpretation of the data.

In other news, an educator has attempted to eliminate the question of fuckwittery with a redefinition of fuckwittery.

Did I mention that he's talking shit?

The linked nonsense seems to make the point that we're short of explanations for dark energy, despite the fact that, among several others, General Relativity provides a potential solution (because gravity can be repulsive). It isn't models we lack, it's the potentially falsifying observations.

[mistermack]

While I have no idea on the merits of this proposal, I do admit that I've argued a similar thing on various occasions.
Not that it explains the dark energy bit. Just the preferred frame bit.

The thing with the preferred frame business is that people ALWAYS try to twist it, to portray you as denying relativity. Relativity works. All the known laws of physics apply in any inertial frame.
But that doesn't mean that there ISN'T a preferred frame. Just that there is no need to restrict yourself to one frame for your observations and measurements.

By definition, if ALL frames are valid, then the hypothetical preferred frame is valid too.
To try to depict this as fuckwittery or denying general relativity is just silly.

One other thing. This paper has passed peer review by people who are far better qualified than anyone on this site. And almost certainly better qualified than the critics who are linked.

And unlike the linked critics, their reputations are on the line, when they peer-review something.
Unlike someone shooting their mouth off in a blog. They have to put work in, to peer review it. Not just skim it and dash off some bollocks for their blog site.

That's not to say that it's right. Peer review doesn't mean that. But it does mean that it's very unlikely to contain howling errors of fact, or fanciful speculative conclusions, or any kind of fuckwittery.
Peer reviewers who let that sort of stuff through risk destroying their OWN reputations.

[L'Emmerdeur]

This paper has passed peer review by people who are far better qualified than anyone on this site. And almost certainly better qualified than the critics who are linked.

Pure conjecture on your part. The first piece I linked was written by Dr. Matthew R. Francis:

Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey: Ph.D. in Physics and Astronomy

The second was written by Dr. Brian Koberlein:

Ph.D., astrophysics, University of Connecticut

I’m an astrophysicist with a background in general relativity and computational astrophysics. Most recently I’ve written a textbook on the subject with David Meisel, which is available through Amazon and Cambridge University Press.

I’m also a physics professor at Rochester Institute of Technology, where in addition to research I spend much of my time teaching undergraduate physics. [source]

Both of these people seem to be eminently qualified to address the ideas put forward by Kirpreos, which is why I linked to their articles. The reviewers of the paper on the other hand are anonymous, so they risk nothing, contrary to your assertion below. The "Academic Editor" assigned to this paper by PLoS ONE appears to be one Joseph Najbauer, University of Pécs Medical School, Hungary. He has a large list of subjects in "Expertise," one of which is physics, but it doesn't appear to be his specialty.

Joseph Najbauer
University of Pécs Medical School
HUNGARY
Expertise: Adult stem cells, Alzheimer disease, Antibody therapy, Astrocytoma, Biology and life sciences, Brain metastasis, Cancer treatment, Cancer vaccines, Cell motility, Cellular neuroscience, DNA modification, Demyelinating disorders, Embryonic stem cells, Epigenetic therapy, Epigenetics, Gene therapy, Glioblastoma multiforme, Glioma, Histone modification, Immune evasion, Immunotherapy, Induced pluripotent stem cells, Luminescence, Medicine and health sciences, Mesenchymal stem cells, Metastasis, Microtubules, Multiple sclerosis, Neural stem cells, Neurogenesis, Neuroglial development, Neuroimaging, Neuroimmunology, Neurological tumors, Nuclear fusion, Oncogenic signaling, Physics, RNA interference, STAT signaling, Signal transduction, Stem cell niche, Stem cells, Synaptic plasticity, Tumor immunology, Viral and bacterial causes of cancer

And unlike the linked critics, their reputations are on the line, when they peer-review something.
Unlike someone shooting their mouth off in a blog. They have to put work in, to peer review it. Not just skim it and dash off some bollocks for their blog site.

That's not to say that it's right. Peer review doesn't mean that. But it does mean that it's very unlikely to contain howling errors of fact, or fanciful speculative conclusions, or any kind of fuckwittery.
Peer reviewers who let that sort of stuff through risk destroying their OWN reputations.

Koberlein addressed that issue specifically:

Any physicist worth her salt would flag this work as seriously lacking. The author himself should have caught the glaring flaws in this work. But then the author is actually a cellular biologist with no publishing record in physics. Throwing all relativity out the window in order to create a “just-so” model of cosmology is what he does in his spare time. The editor of the journal should have flagged the work as well, but then his background is also biology. It’s not clear if any qualified physicist actually reviewed this work.

Then again, PLOS ONE is a different kind of journal, because it is open access. With traditional journals, libraries and individuals pay subscriptions for access to their articles. These subscriptions aren’t cheap, so the journals live or die based upon their quality. For this reason, the journals generally decide whether to publish not only on the accuracy of the paper, but on the potential impact the work may have. More prestigious journals can charge higher subscriptions, and are therefore more selective about what they publish. PLOS ONE makes all of their work freely available to the public. To cover costs, they charge a publishing fee. In the case of PLOS ONE, that’s about $1,400 per paper.

Because income is generated per paper rather than per subscription, PLOS ONE reviews submissions only for “technical accuracy,” regardless of the quality of the work. Because of this, the quality of articles varies widely. Some are quite good, while others (like this one) not so much. Open source journals have been controversial. On the one hand they get rid of the obscenely expensive paywall that limits access to research (much of which is publicly funded), but on the other hand they can be seen as “pay to play” paper mills where anyone with enough cash can have the prestige of peer-reviewed work. While there are predatory open source journals that will publish literally anything at a cost, PLOS ONE has been seen as one of the better open source journals. But it seems in physics at least, the bar is discouragingly low.

Of course once a paper is peer reviewed, it starts getting touted in the press. The author’s home university had a press release praising the work as a new breakthrough in cosmology, which then got picked up by science news sites and posted almost verbatim, because who has the time or money to actually do science journalism. By the time it’s brought to my attention I can either ignore it and hope it doesn’t get too popular, or try to debunk yet another over-hyped science claim.

[Emphasis mine]

In view of the problems with Kipreos's paper that these astrophysicists have pointed out, I find your attempted defense (including calling their criticism "silly") thoroughly unconvincing.

[mistermack]

This paper has passed peer review by people who are far better qualified than anyone on this site. And almost certainly better qualified than the critics who are linked.

Pure conjecture on your part. The first piece I linked was written by Dr. Matthew R. Francis:

Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey: Ph.D. in Physics and Astronomy

Was it really?
So why does it say ''By Alan Flurry'' right at the top?

I'm not going through the rest of your post, if that's the standard.

[L'Emmerdeur]

This paper has passed peer review by people who are far better qualified than anyone on this site. And almost certainly better qualified than the critics who are linked.

Pure conjecture on your part. The first piece I linked was written by Dr. Matthew R. Francis:

Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey: Ph.D. in Physics and Astronomy

Was it really?
So why does it say ''By Alan Flurry'' right at the top?

I'm not going through the rest of your post, if that's the standard.

The Phys.Org article, while indeed the first one linked, was not a critical article. In fact it was the press release put out by the University of Georgia puffing Kipreos's paper. In the context of my post, which was a reply to your attempt to dismiss and denigrate the critical articles in the OP, it should have been clear that I was referring to the first of those critical articles. I'm sorry that I was not clear enough that you were able to understand that.

[mistermack]

The Phys.Org article, while indeed the first one linked, was not a critical article. In fact it was the press release put out by the University of Georgia puffing Kipreos's paper. In the context of my post, which was a reply to your attempt to dismiss and denigrate the critical articles in the OP, it should have been clear that I was referring to the first of those critical articles. I'm sorry that I was not clear enough that you were able to understand that.

I can't read your mind. You said the first one linked, and that's what I looked at.

The blog by Matthew Francis says this :

The most recent of these is a paper by University of Georgia molecular geneticist Edward T. Kipreos, published in the generally reputable journal PLOS ONE; the university also sent out a press release. I don’t have time to spent tearing the whole paper apart (I have deadlines to meet), but suffice to say that this paper isn’t fundamentally different than the deluge of “theories” I get on a weekly basis. (And yes: what follows does not constitute a thorough debunking.)

It's not worth a monkey's wank.

[L'Emmerdeur]

So, while Dr. Francis showed that the paper has serious problems, he didn't have time to debunk the whole thing. You dismiss his article because of that? That's a remarkably feeble reason.

I note that you've moved the goalposts. You first questioned the qualifications of the two people who wrote articles critical of the paper. Now that I've shown that they are indeed fully qualified to criticize it, you fall back on "Well, one of them didn't completely shred the paper, and admitted such, citing a lack of time." You aren't actually addressing his critique.

[mistermack]

It's not a critique. It's a blog. The guy is a dick.

He paraphrases what's in the paper, and then dismisses his own version of it.

A proper critique would quote the words that he's criticising.

The guy is a dick.

And I made the point in my post that the critics hadn't put the work in, whereas the reviewers did.
He then made the same point about his own offering.

He's just skimmed it and dashed off a load of tosh. It's not worth a wank.

[L'Emmerdeur]

There's no basis for saying that Francis "just skimmed" the paper; that's nothing but empty bluster. So far, the only defense of Kipreos's paper in this thread that has not been refuted is "mistermack thinks that one of those who criticized it is a dick." You're welcome to that ludicrous opinion, but you haven't presented anything of actual substance. I don't consider "I kinda think like the guy who wrote the paper" to be relevant.

[mistermack]

I skimmed his blog. Praphrased what he wrote, and rubbished my own summary of his effort.

Which is exactly what he did to the original paper. So it's just as valid.
I did quote his actual words though, so I was slightly more thorough than him.

He writes like a dick, so that's what I said.
To paraphrase his attitude, '' I'm far to much of a busy busy big shot to spend time on this. What with my important deadlines and all. But I'm willing to stoop down from on high to rubbish it anyway, without wasting much of my precious time on it ''.

Personally, I suspect, like him, that the piece is probably flawed. And like him, I can't be bothered to go through it in detail and find specific fault with it. But unlike him, I reserve judgement for that reason.

[Brian Peacock]

I smell a Templeton nomination in the air - or is it pig shit? So hard to tell the difference with the 'we can prove scientifically that science is wrong' brigade.