Hi all,
I had no idea my departure from the forum would create such a stir! A forum participant has asked me for clarification.
My involvement began when Tashja asked if could comment on Rajesh's paper. I joined the forum to make posting easier; I had no intention of remaining in the forum after the issue of Rajesh's paper was resolved. I enjoyed answering some questions for a week, but I'm just not a forum person. Forums are huge time sinks, and I need to actually do the research that I am delighted to see you folks talking about. Nobody drove me away.
I read Rajesh's paper, and by the fourth line of the abstract I knew that it was wrong. I posted a simple proof in post #183, though some basic knowledge of mathematics and physics is required. There are no holes in this proof. This proof, which has been known for about a century, demolishes Rajesh's paper. I felt that further discussion was unnecessary, but I remained to answer questions about the proof.
In normal scientific and logical discussion, if person A (Rajesh) presents an argument, and person B (me) presents a counter-argument, person A (Rajesh) must say what is wrong with the counter-argument before the discussion can continue. At the end of post #363, I insisted that Rajesh address my post #183. In post #400, Rajesh declined to address my post #183, and said he was unable to do so. I believe that Rajesh has almost no knowledge of GR, or he would see that post #183 invalidates his paper. Seeing that logical discussion was not going forward, I felt my job was done.
To Rajesh: when you propose an alternative theory, you must fully understand the theory you are trying to supersede. I have never said you are a crackpot or a pseudoscientist; I've only said that your paper is wrong. And if I might offer some unsolicited advice, you should relent and retract your paper from publication; otherwise your wrong paper will remain out there for posterity. Do you want that? Thanks to Tashja, your paper was reviewed by five experts and perhaps hundreds of forum participants. I've never seen work get subjected to such scrutiny; Tashja is better than most journal editors. You are lucky. You might not feel lucky, but you should.
For a more substantial forum with many contributing experts, many of you might prefer the Q/A-based quora.com. I am not a member, but it looks interesting from the wiki entry. It also looks like quora.com has a number measures in place to keep out crackpots and pseudoscientists.
I've had fun, and have absolutely no hard feelings.
Best wishes to you all,
Bennett Link