gentleman scientist

LOL. Nice symbolism. What needs carrying out from this forum in buckets is the piles and piles of excreta that has built up.

 

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I'm not resentful and would continue a discussion if he would answer the questions in http://www.sciforums.com/threads/si...gws-are-impossible.157012/page-2#post-3392161 This is all I can offer. But it does not look like he is interested.

 

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Yes but I think you have come this far just hang in there.
Just stay relaxed it may take time, well it will, so chip away.
Alex

 

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That is very decent of you.
He has had a lot to handle probably needs a rest.
Alex

 

I'll re-state: what makes the "established mainstream" established and mainstream is that it has been well proven to work. A non-mainstream theory has a high bar not due to an unfair orthodoxy but due to the mountain of evidence it has to re-interpret or toss in the trash in order to go down a different path. That's a feature, not a bug and the "conflict" you see is limited to people such as yourself who are bitter about the implications of that for your ideas. That "conflict" doesn't really exist in a meaningful way. Unlike "publish or perish" and "follow the funding", and moral laws, which are real concerns/limitations to scientific inquiry.

 

No. GUTs, supersymmetry and string theory are established mainstream, but it has never been proven to work.

To restate myself - institutional science works nicely in normal, non-revolutionary periods, where we have a well-established paradigm and what is necessary is the evolutionary development following this paradigm. It may appear problematic in revolutionary situations, where the paradigm has to be changed.

Sorry, but I see no reason for bitterness. First of all, my theories meet the high bar, else I would not have been able to publish them in mainstream journals. Then, I recognize very well that this problem of actual institutional science was a presupposition of my own success. Without this, there would have always been some few hundreds of professional scientists developing the ether direction of research, and I would have, at best, been able to add a few epsilons to the progress of ether theory.

Sorry, but "publish or perish" and "follow the funding" are the expression of this conflict.

 

No, they are mainstream, but they are most decidedly not established. They are tentative and I doubt any serious proponent would claim otherwise. You're trying to create a double standard where none exists.

Any examples?

Your word was "frustrated". They are synonyms:
http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/frustrated

Theories (hypotheses) don't have to be accepted as correct (established, mainstream) to be published. The bar for publication is much lower and your source of "frustration" as you said was more about being an island despite being in an affiliated institution and not being supported but only "tolerated".

Oh, those sorry fools don't know how pushing you away will ultimately result in your martyrdom when you are proven correct!

They're different. "Publish or perish" is about needing to publish in order to validate your employment. But it doesn't have to do with what is published. Any pressure on what you research is a separate issue.

Similarly, "follow the funding" is selling-out to whomever is willing to fund you. That's closer but it often is not the scientific community dictating the funding so it can't be blamed on some scientific orthodoxy when, for example, stem cell research doesn't get funded.

 

Ok, formally yes. But read a little bit Lubos Motl.

Much more than half a century of failure to find a quantum theory of gravity, which is, essentially, not even a problem if one uses an ether approach to gravity?

And so I have used it. "In fact, it is not very frustrating to be part of a small minority. I'm alone, but not really frustrated. A little bit, ok, but not very much." What is the difference to "Sorry, but I see no reason for bitterness"?

Except that imho frustration is more superficial and less serious than bitterness. Maybe I'm wrong, I'm not a native speaker, this may be the influence of German "false friends" (Frust, Bitterkeit).

You have misunderstood something. I actually do not even want to be in an affiliated institution. I just explained that if there would be an institution, much more could be done. For myself, I'm quite satisfied about what I have already done myself. And my interest for established science is more of a sociological character. How long can string theory claim that there is no competition, if the competition has been published already several years ago, with already much better results than what string theory can dream about, and silence and ignorance as the only counter-argument?

Nobody pushes me away. All what is done is simply ignorance. And I'm quite comfortable.

That you have to "validate" your employment means there is no freedom of science, no independence of scientists. Imagine a law system where the courts would have to "validate" their employment with their decisions. Would you like such a system? The resulting pressure on what research you have to publish is essentially an almost unavoidable by-product. There are simply more journals to publish mainstream research. And it is a hard job to evaluate those of the research direction you favor yourself with the same rigor as outsiders. And you can publish conference proceedings only if there are conferences.

So "publish or perish" almost automatically supports a few mainstream directions and is highly problematic for lone researchers or small groups who try something completely different.