fando

Only among known scientists. Would you like to spend your precious time refuting every crackpot that stops at your door? A demonstrated knowledge of the basics is prerequisite to consideration of a claim by its merits. It's nice to be principled and idealist towards everything, but at some point you have to filter the noise from the signal using more pragmatic and possibly flawed methods.

Mageth

No, actually, I've never had a physics or math professor tell me I should read claims written by psychopaths!

I didn't ask you that. I said that I'd hope you were taught "a claim stands on its own merit, not on the source of the claim." I doubt if any of your professors would disagree with that statement. Why don't you ask them?

The sciences are cumulative and aggregate. When you demonstrate that you can't do basic physics, then you *can't* do advanced physics. You can't do math when you can't add. This site clearly demonstrated that they did not know basic physics. QED.

Then it seems you could have pointed out where the author screwed up basic physics, even in one place, in the article I posted (other articles on the site have no bearing on the article in question). Your task of discrediting the claims would have been done, and you wouldn't have to revert to ad hom. QED.

And also, I don't have the time or care enough to go through an insane paper that makes clearly false conclusions and point out the errors to people who likely won't understand them, thus "this paper is crap."

If you didn't have the time or care enough to refute the article, then you could have either said something like "the author makes several errors in basic physics, and the conclusion is flawed. I don't have the time or inclination to point those out, but perhaps there's a refutation of the article on the web somewhere", or not bothered to reply at all. Either would be preferable to non-argument "the site is crap, therefore the paper is crap."

I consider it a resposibility of scientists in general to point out to laymen the errors in scientific claims that reach false conclusions, though I understand if you don't have the time or care to do so. And I can't speak for anyone else, but I can generally understand cogent explanations of physics, and if not I do a little research or talk to my physicist friend until I do. Further, if a reputable scientist says "this conclusion X is faulty because of Y and Z", and Y and Z appear to be serious flaws, I can accept the refutation without fully understanding all the underlying physics.

And yes, I agree, the paper is crap. I came to that conclusion after reviewing the website posted by Fr. Bellows.

eh

Apparently the burst of inflation comes from a scalar field, which doesn't last long and decays quickly. When the field has decayed, it converts it's energy into the elementary particles we find today, and the inflation epoch is over. This means that there is nothing driving the hyper expansion anymore, so the universe goes back to expanding at a normal rate. Even though it is expanding, gravity can still pull regions together for galaxy formation.

The big bang is not the same as inflation. The theory holds that a small region in a pre existing spacetime inflated faster the speed of light, and laid the seeds for galaxy formation. We can't see anything outside the hubble sphere, though it is expected the universe is much larger than this sphere we can observe.

The field driving inflation decays, and the universe expands at a normal rate. The energy from this decay is converted into quarks and radiation. If inflation never ended, no stars would be possible. The force driving the current acceleration of the universe is much weaker, and only seems to have become dominant very recently.

fando

I sense that the problem here is really about respect of the public. Among my friends, all trained in one science or another, it's perfectly fine to denounce a particular person or study as crackpottery and crap. We can get away with it because we trust each other's assessments. However, in a public forum, it is probably a bad idea to ridicule a claim in the same manner. For one thing, the lay public doesn't see things as clearly, as Mageth pointed out. For another, the scientific speaker hasn't yet earned the respect of the public. And so I agree with Mageth's argument that scientists have a responsibility to explain what's incorrect about a claim. To dismiss a claim by ridicule in a public forum is elitism.

Mageth

Well said, fando.

cfgauss

Exactly.

fando

Geez, I seem to have said two contradictory things. I understand my position, and it's consistent, but I'll let you guys sort it out.

Mageth

I have no problem reconciling your two statements. Anyway, I'm out of here for the weekend, so that's all the "sorting out" I've got time for. I think we've beaten that poor dead horse enough, anyway.

cfgauss

I don't agree with your second statement. It assumes that I care about what you think of my credibility. I don't, because I've found that credibility doesn't mean anything to other people. All having it does is change the argument to a more insulting one .

fando

Well, if you don't care about your credibility, then what is your purpose here? To provoke a flamewar? I'd rather convince and educate people through reasoned arguments than make a reputation for myself as a petulant poster.