Is the Big Bang Theory Suppressing Alternative Cosmological Ideas?

[wolram]

http://www.cosmology statement.org/
Supporters of the big bang theory may retort that these theories do not explain every cosmological observation. But that is scarcely surprising, as their development has been severely hampered by a complete lack of funding. Indeed, such questions and alternatives cannot even now be freely discussed and examined. An open exchange of ideas is lacking in most mainstream conferences. Whereas Richard Feynman could say that "science is the culture of doubt", in cosmology today doubt and dissent are not tolerated, and young scientists learn to remain silent if they have something negative to say about the standard big bang model. Those who doubt the big bang fear that saying so will cost them their funding.
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Do scientists have to fall in step in order to gain funding,
are some views being suppressed.

 

[marcus]

http://www.cosmology statement.org/

http://www.cosmologystatement.org/


if the fall-in-step-or-lose-funding thing were true across the board
it would discredit the scientific enterprise

this is a specific highly contentious criticism that is leveled at
specific areas of research from time to time

government funds are allocated, to a large extent, by committees of scientists themselves and influential scientist-insiders
these people are the stewards of the scientific establishment
they must be able to spread their bets
and they must be alert to recognize true merit in the novel proposal
even as they winnow out the merely eccentric
and the repetitious chaff

to say that the Scientific establishment is merely an old-boy network that looks after its own is like saying
that politicians are all corrupt all the time
it is a simplification and not (entirely) true
there are excellent people with principles and courage and vision
sitting on the committees that review funding proposals and
exercising influence in the back rooms
if there were not things would be a lot worse

personally I don't put much weight on the "statement"
but that is a subjective judgement
(the presence of Arp on the list is, for me, a danger signal)

 

[turbo]

I don't know about cosmologists, but it's pretty apparent that astronomers like Halton Arp can be denied observing time for something as simple as suggesting that redshift might be caused by something other than recession and that not all redshifted objects are as distant as their redshifts suggest. He and others cite many examples of apparent physical relationships between objects with discordant redshifts. If even one of these association is real, the redhsift/distance must be rethought, and that would require a real overhaul of cosmology. Since he started pursuing that line of inquiry (possibly threatening the one-size-fits-all application of the Hubble constant) he has been denied observing time and his ideas have been ridiculed. The conservatives point to statistical flaws in his work and decry the selectivity of his data-set, but in a classic Catch-22, his ostracism has made it impossible to perform an adequate survey and expand the data set. Whether or not anybody agrees or disagrees with his line of inquiry, it is decidedly unhealthy for science to demand orhtodoxy and conformity. Mavericks can come up with some pretty exciting results, even serendipitously.

When I asked below if anybody was researching the possibility that redshift might be a function of differences in reference frames rather than expansion of the universe, I hoped that somebody would come forward with some interesting links on current research. I guess there is little going on in that regard.

 

[wolram]

I think in the next few years some scientists are in for a shock
when results come in from new experiments, and maybe people
like arp will be vindicated, some of todays theories are
unintuitive rather like an elephant balancing on a pencil, dark
energy has sparked a gold rush of papers, hawkings has put
his theories to to the forefront all with little possibility for
testing in the near future, how can one predict who is correct
without results