JREF forum bashing of Anthony Peratt's work...

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JREF forum bashing of Anthony Peratt's work...

Unread post by mharratsc » Wed Sep 22, 2010 10:27 am

I dunno if Siggy or someone else posted this dialogue or not, but... Nereid is at it again with his/her/it's little cronies on the JREF Forums...

Anthony Peratt's Plasma Model of Galaxy Formation

Oh yeah- Tim Thompson was chiming in too... get his pompousness:
"As far as I am concerned, any paper published on this topic in IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science should be ignored. They are not serious papers, for 2 reasons:
They are deliberately published in a venue where they are guaranteed to never be seen or read by anyone who actually does research in galaxy formation or any other field of astrophysics or cosmology.
They are deliberately published in a venue where they are guaranteed to receive sub standard peer review. IEEE Transactions is a journal on industrial plasma science and the peer reviewers are all experts in that field, but have zero knowledge or experience in topics relative to the astrophysics of galaxies.
The point is that Peratt does not want his papers to be considered seriously, which is why he deliberately publishes them where they will not be seen by the community of relevant astrophysicists.

Where you publish is as important as what you publish. That's a fact of life in the real world, whether anyone particularly likes it or not. Professional scientists rarely have a lot of time to explore journals outside their field, and generally hand pick the few in their field that they will pay attention to, time being highly limited. IEEE Transactions is where the plasma cosmology people publish because they know they will not have to defend their work from any criticism. This makes it look like they have lots of papers that nobody has ever refuted, and that becomes a clarion call to the fans of PC. If their papers are so bad, why has nobody ever "refuted" them? Well, the answer is that nobody has ever read them, at least nobody involved seriously in the galaxy business, and that is exactly what Peratt and others intend.

My last position at JPL before retiring was with the Evolution of Galaxies Group. Based on my experience with those astronomers & astrophysicists and their collaborators, I am quite certain that most of them do not even know that the IEEE journal exists at all (I have reviewed papers for the group from astronomy journals that were readily online in our library which they had never heard of, so IEEE is in another universe). Likewise, the European journal Astrophysics and Space Science is generally ignored by American astronomers because it has a peer review system which allows more speculative papers with a weak basis in theory or observation to be published. Papers in that journal are likely to be ignored by most of the American astronomers I know, and many of the foreign collaborators as well.

There are several journal well known to have higher quality peer review, for example ...
The Astrophysical Journal
The Astronomical Journal
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
The first 2 are American journals and the latter 2 are European. There are a number of other journals that are not as heavily read for various reasons, though they are not inferior; i.e., Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific does not publish much on theoretical topics, but covers instrumentation and data analysis, observational reports and historical perspectives.

in the Zeuzzz list, only Physical Review Letters is a journal likely to be high on the accepted list for astronomers. And one need only look at the paper (Evolution of Colliding Plasmas) to see that it is purely an industrial application paper (there is no mention of galaxies or astronomy or astrophysics or cosmology anywhere in the paper), so why would any astronomer read it anyway?

If Peratt actually intended to seriously introduce a serious plasma model for galaxy formation or morphology, he would never have published them in the venues he chose. He would have published them in a venue where the community of scientists in that field would see them and engage in a real discussion. I think that until he actually does that, then his version of plasma cosmology is nothing going nowhere, and by his own deliberate choice. Lerner has done that (i.e., Scarpa, Falomo & Lerner, 2007), and he is commonly refuted when he does (i.e., Overzier, et al., 2008). Evidently, plasma cosmologists prefer to avoid venues where they might actually be required to defend their ideas against competent colleagues or competent reviewers.
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The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it. -- Bertrand Russell"
Siggy was giving it heck trying to stand up their practiced defense, but... Nereid and Co are just too good at this game. The only people who could beat them don't care about them enough to fight, and everyone else just seems to bounce off their armor with no ability to make a chink the in the walls of their defenses. :(
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Re: JREF forum bashing of Anthony Peratt's work...

Unread post by nick c » Wed Sep 22, 2010 2:46 pm

hi Mike,
Nereid and Co are just too good at this game.
It is easy to win the game when you make the rules. It is big time professional wrestling as opposed to the Olympic variety.
Nick

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Re: JREF forum bashing of Anthony Peratt's work...

Unread post by starbiter » Wed Sep 22, 2010 3:33 pm

Tim Thompson is clearly explaining the ignorance of mainstream cosmologists concerning Plasma Physics. They don't bother to read articles by industry, academic, and government plasma experts. People who use plasma for all sorts of reasons on a daily basis. This leaves mainstream with gravity and black holes. And Thompson brags about his ill informed colleagues. If they learned from IEEE Transactions, or other plasma literature, maybe we would be spared the rats nest of mainstream cosmology.

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Re: JREF forum bashing of Anthony Peratt's work...

Unread post by MrAmsterdam » Wed Sep 22, 2010 4:31 pm

Oh really? Just ask them if they know what empiricism is.
They are deliberately published in a venue where they are guaranteed to receive sub standard peer review. IEEE Transactions is a journal on industrial plasma science and the peer reviewers are all experts in that field, but have zero knowledge or experience in topics relative to the astrophysics of galaxies.
Yeah, next you are going to tell me you prooved your peer reviewed model with your model simulations on the computer.

First I like to know your criteria of sub standard peer reviews and second I like say 99 procent of the known universe is PLASMA and by default makes these "sub standard ?" plasma scientists the experts of that field of astrophysics.

And then rub this article in their noises and ask them what force wins here; gravity or magnetism?
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Re: JREF forum bashing of Anthony Peratt's work...

Unread post by StevenJay » Thu Sep 23, 2010 7:18 pm

starbiter wrote:If they learned from IEEE Transactions, or other plasma literature, maybe we would be spared the rats nest of mainstream cosmology.
Maybe - but I wouldn't hold my breath. I see the same rat's nest pattern in in all mainstream social structures; spiritual, political, pharmacological. . . It's systemic - part of the unraveling of an unworkable paradigm. :)
It's all about perception.

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Re: JREF forum bashing of Anthony Peratt's work...

Unread post by mharratsc » Sun Sep 26, 2010 11:00 am

This is what gets me:
The sun's global magnetic field, which is shaped like a bar magnet, guides the wayward CMEs back toward the sun's equator. When the clouds reach low latitudes, they get caught up in the solar wind and head out toward the planets—"like a cork bobbing along a river," says Gallagher.

Once a CME is embedded in the solar wind, it can experience significant acceleration. "This is a result of aerodynamic drag," says Byrne. "If the wind is blowing fast enough, it drags the CME along with it—something we actually observed in the STEREO data."
How?? How can they start out with physics in one paragraph, and end up with fallacy in the next??

It's so damned irritating! :x
Mike H.

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Re: JREF forum bashing of Anthony Peratt's work...

Unread post by neilwilkes » Mon Nov 08, 2010 7:00 am

How can you have aerodynamic effects when there ain't any air present to have them in?
You will never get a man to understand something his salary depends on him not understanding.

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Re: JREF forum bashing of Anthony Peratt's work...

Unread post by Osmosis » Mon Nov 08, 2010 9:21 am

Fear of loss of funding and tenure brings out the worst side of many..... :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll:

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Re: JREF forum bashing of Anthony Peratt's work...

Unread post by davesmith_au » Mon Nov 08, 2010 9:28 am

For the definition of "pseudoskeptics", look no further than the JREF forum...

:roll:

Cheers, Dave.
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Re: JREF forum bashing of Anthony Peratt's work...

Unread post by Nereid » Thu Nov 11, 2010 8:20 am

mharratsc wrote:I dunno if Siggy or someone else posted this dialogue or not, but... Nereid is at it again with his/her/it's little cronies on the JREF Forums...

Anthony Peratt's Plasma Model of Galaxy Formation

Oh yeah- Tim Thompson was chiming in too... get his pompousness:
"As far as I am concerned, any paper published on this topic in IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science should be ignored. They are not serious papers, for 2 reasons:
They are deliberately published in a venue where they are guaranteed to never be seen or read by anyone who actually does research in galaxy formation or any other field of astrophysics or cosmology.
They are deliberately published in a venue where they are guaranteed to receive sub standard peer review. IEEE Transactions is a journal on industrial plasma science and the peer reviewers are all experts in that field, but have zero knowledge or experience in topics relative to the astrophysics of galaxies.
The point is that Peratt does not want his papers to be considered seriously, which is why he deliberately publishes them where they will not be seen by the community of relevant astrophysicists.

Where you publish is as important as what you publish. That's a fact of life in the real world, whether anyone particularly likes it or not. Professional scientists rarely have a lot of time to explore journals outside their field, and generally hand pick the few in their field that they will pay attention to, time being highly limited. IEEE Transactions is where the plasma cosmology people publish because they know they will not have to defend their work from any criticism. This makes it look like they have lots of papers that nobody has ever refuted, and that becomes a clarion call to the fans of PC. If their papers are so bad, why has nobody ever "refuted" them? Well, the answer is that nobody has ever read them, at least nobody involved seriously in the galaxy business, and that is exactly what Peratt and others intend.

My last position at JPL before retiring was with the Evolution of Galaxies Group. Based on my experience with those astronomers & astrophysicists and their collaborators, I am quite certain that most of them do not even know that the IEEE journal exists at all (I have reviewed papers for the group from astronomy journals that were readily online in our library which they had never heard of, so IEEE is in another universe). Likewise, the European journal Astrophysics and Space Science is generally ignored by American astronomers because it has a peer review system which allows more speculative papers with a weak basis in theory or observation to be published. Papers in that journal are likely to be ignored by most of the American astronomers I know, and many of the foreign collaborators as well.

There are several journal well known to have higher quality peer review, for example ...
The Astrophysical Journal
The Astronomical Journal
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
The first 2 are American journals and the latter 2 are European. There are a number of other journals that are not as heavily read for various reasons, though they are not inferior; i.e., Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific does not publish much on theoretical topics, but covers instrumentation and data analysis, observational reports and historical perspectives.

in the Zeuzzz list, only Physical Review Letters is a journal likely to be high on the accepted list for astronomers. And one need only look at the paper (Evolution of Colliding Plasmas) to see that it is purely an industrial application paper (there is no mention of galaxies or astronomy or astrophysics or cosmology anywhere in the paper), so why would any astronomer read it anyway?

If Peratt actually intended to seriously introduce a serious plasma model for galaxy formation or morphology, he would never have published them in the venues he chose. He would have published them in a venue where the community of scientists in that field would see them and engage in a real discussion. I think that until he actually does that, then his version of plasma cosmology is nothing going nowhere, and by his own deliberate choice. Lerner has done that (i.e., Scarpa, Falomo & Lerner, 2007), and he is commonly refuted when he does (i.e., Overzier, et al., 2008). Evidently, plasma cosmologists prefer to avoid venues where they might actually be required to defend their ideas against competent colleagues or competent reviewers.
__________________
The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it. -- Bertrand Russell"
Siggy was giving it heck trying to stand up their practiced defense, but... Nereid and Co are just too good at this game. The only people who could beat them don't care about them enough to fight, and everyone else just seems to bounce off their armor with no ability to make a chink the in the walls of their defenses. :(
I see that my name has been mentioned in this post ("Nereid is at it again with his/her/it's little cronies on the JREF Forums...", and "Siggy was giving it heck trying to stand up their practiced defense, but... Nereid and Co are just too good at this game."), and in the second one in this thread (by nicK c):
Nereid and Co are just too good at this game.
It is easy to win the game when you make the rules. It is big time professional wrestling as opposed to the Olympic variety.
Nick
May I ask - mharratsc (and nick c) - what posts, by Nereid, in that JREF thread were the source of, or trigger for, your comments?

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Re: JREF forum bashing of Anthony Peratt's work...

Unread post by MGmirkin » Thu Nov 11, 2010 6:51 pm

Tim Thompson wrote:They are deliberately published in a venue where they are guaranteed to never be seen or read by anyone who actually does research in galaxy formation or any other field of astrophysics or cosmology.
[Peratt] deliberately publishes them where they will not be seen by the community of relevant astrophysicists.
Tim Thompson wrote:Well, the answer is that nobody has ever read them, at least nobody involved seriously in the galaxy business, and that is exactly what Peratt and others intend.
Now that's just a conspiratorial, borderline libelous nonsense rant. Wow, someone who works in the plasma science field publishes his work in journals dedicated to plasma science that happen to be familiar to him... Thompson is shocked by this? Why am I not surprised...

Tim Thompson wrote:Where you publish is as important as what you publish.

Elitist nonsense excuses, of course. Data are data regardless of where you publish. Thompson seems to be saying that that 5-10 journals have a "lock" on the entirety of scientific mindshare and peer review, furthermore that anything NOT published in those journals isn't worth the time of day? Pfft! Nonsense, yet again.

Tim Thompson wrote:Professional scientists rarely have a lot of time to explore journals outside their field, and generally hand pick the few in their field that they will pay attention to, time being highly limited.
Tim Thompson wrote:My last position at JPL before retiring was with the Evolution of Galaxies Group. Based on my experience with those astronomers & astrophysicists and their collaborators, I am quite certain that most of them do not even know that the IEEE journal exists at all (I have reviewed papers for the group from astronomy journals that were readily online in our library which they had never heard of, so IEEE is in another universe).
So, now we're simply to accept "ignorance" as a valid excuse to dismiss out of hand any paper someone simply doesn't feel like reading or reads but doesn't agree with?

"Ohh, well, I uhh, didn't know the journal existed, so, that, umm, that means it's automatically cr@p 'cause it was in an obscure journal and everyone should just ignore it. Phew! I don't have to read it or comment on it! That was a close one..."

By that logic, maybe everyone in the IEEE should get a free pass to ignore all the nonsense about Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Super-Massive Black Holes, Ultra-Luminous sources coming out of astrophysical journals, 'cause it's outside their field and they "weren't aware" of those specific journals. Yeah, that logic works, right? :roll:

I'm sure Thompson would probably have a problem with the "knife cutting both ways." God forbid we should ever use the same excuse when they refer us to one of their precious articles on Dark Matter, etc. "Sorry, it wasn't in the top 10 astrophysical journals, thus I've never heard of it, so it must be crap!" They'd clobber us in a microsecond for it... But, such is life.

As usual, he and others seem to prefer to discuss the "reputation of the IEEE journal within the astrophysical community" rather than the actual content of the paper(s). [Note: it's a journal of the IEEE plasma science community (as he himself says, people dealing with HARD SCIENCES relating to actual real-world applications of plasma science, such as industrial plasma processes), so the astrophysical community's opinion of it is effectively meaningless, as it's OBVIOUSLY not THEIR field to judge.]

Effectively, Thompson seems to employ an "ad hominem circumstantial" personal attack, as opposed to an actual refutation of any of the science included in the article(s) being referred to. Basically just refusing to look at the science and making up excuses ex post facto to justify his refusal. That and he apparently reads specious motives into anyone and everyone he disagrees with for publishing by way of the IEEE: Peratt, Lerner and 'others' unspecified (one assumes he implies Wal Thornhill / Don Scott, who I believe have both published there on occasion, though I'd hate to read anything specious into Thompson's statements).

It's the same nonsensical excuse(s) ScienceApologist tried to use to get IEEE TPS banned from Wikipedia in its entirety. When I refuted his claims handily (showing he was just vindictively politicking to exclude the entirety of the journal for publishing papers by 1-2 people he personally disagreed with; in restrospect it reminds me of Climategate researchers threatening to cold shoulder journals publishing dissenting papers), he rather immediately and arbitrarily closed the thread to further discussion and declared himself the winner (despite other users voicing dissent with his opinion).

These are some of the reasons I generally don't discuss these things with pseudo-skeptics anymore. The games never change, and rarely does anything meaningful come out of it, unfortunately. It seems like their minds are made up before the conversation ever begins and they seems to rigidly refuse to even look at anything that might contradict their own worldview; not that I entirely blame them, we all do it to some degree...

I've got better things to do with my time these days... Not least of all working and some unrelated creative projects. :D

Just my opinion, of course.
~MG
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Re: JREF forum bashing of Anthony Peratt's work...

Unread post by Nereid » Sun Nov 14, 2010 8:54 am

In preparing a post in response to one in this forum by davesmith_au, I came across this one, by me.

In it I make reference to a thunderblog, by you.

In that thunderblog you say
The Electric Comet [1.8Mb PDF] is a poster presentation from the Electrical and Electronics Engineers 33rd International Conference on Plasma Sciences (ICOPS), presented in early June 2006.
Strangely, by the first of March, 2008 (the date of the thunderblog, I think) you already knew that this document was not presented as a poster presentation at that conference.

May I ask why you apparently wrote something which you knew to be untrue?

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Re: JREF forum bashing of Anthony Peratt's work...

Unread post by nick c » Sun Nov 14, 2010 10:08 am

Hi Nereid,
Nereid wrote:May I ask - mharratsc (and nick c) - what posts, by Nereid, in that JREF thread were the source of, or trigger for, your comments?
In response to:
It is easy to win the game when you make the rules. It is big time professional wrestling as opposed to the Olympic variety.
Nick
Sorry that you did not understand my metaphor, I thought that the analogy would be clear to most of the participants of this forum. My comment is not referring to any specific post, but rather to the set up of the JREF, in a general sense. It would apply to BAUT forum as well. It is a comment directed to paradigm change and the reliance on the peer review system.
In professional wrestling the outcomes are preordained by the system, whereas, Olypmic wrestling is competitive.
I like the metaphor, but I am not going to get into an over analysis of the validity of the metaphor. It is an opinion on my part, one which I still hold.

Nick

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Re: JREF forum bashing of Anthony Peratt's work...

Unread post by Nereid » Mon Nov 15, 2010 8:27 am

nick c wrote:Hi Nereid,
Nereid wrote:May I ask - mharratsc (and nick c) - what posts, by Nereid, in that JREF thread were the source of, or trigger for, your comments?
In response to:
It is easy to win the game when you make the rules. It is big time professional wrestling as opposed to the Olympic variety.
Nick
Sorry that you did not understand my metaphor, I thought that the analogy would be clear to most of the participants of this forum. My comment is not referring to any specific post, but rather to the set up of the JREF, in a general sense. It would apply to BAUT forum as well. It is a comment directed to paradigm change and the reliance on the peer review system.
In professional wrestling the outcomes are preordained by the system, whereas, Olypmic wrestling is competitive.
I like the metaphor, but I am not going to get into an over analysis of the validity of the metaphor. It is an opinion on my part, one which I still hold.

Nick
Thanks nick c.

My general question remains though, what posts, by Nereid, in the JREF forum triggered your comment?

I cannot find any posts by Nereid in the JREF thread cited here, and my quick search turned up no posts by Nereid in JREF at all.

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Re: JREF forum bashing of Anthony Peratt's work...

Unread post by davesmith_au » Mon Nov 15, 2010 9:37 am

Nick for the record, Nereid has stated categorically that she (he? :? ) is NOT DeiRenDopa from the JREF forums.

See: http://thunderbolts.info/wp/forum/phpBB3/v ... 279#p42279

Under the circumstances, there's probably a LOT of references to Nereid which are likely incorrect, and a few helpings of humble pie to be shared around. :oops:

Cheers, Dave.
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