I missed Dr Brian Keating's first response to Lerner in my review of various *science communicators* who attacked Lerner’s article titled “The Big Bang Didn’t Happen”. So since Lerner mentioned him by name in his rebuttal video, maybe I should take a moment to comment on what he JUST said.
Turns out that about a day ago, he and a fellow communicator, professor Garret Lewis, put out an hour long podcast titled: "Errors in the Big Bang Never Happened." Here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPna7WUODuo . He was clearly motivated to do this podcast because he alluded to the “panic” that Lerner suggested exists in his field. He says that Lerner sent him an email asking him to look at his most recent video (presumably the one linked by Jackokie where Lerner challenged him and others to address one specific issue). He said since Lerner's video "claims to refute some of the claims that I made, that Dr Becky made, Dr Becky Smethurst, Anton Petrov made, Michael Siegel made", he's "compiled a list of those individuals and their criticism of Mr Lerner and his Big Bang Never Happened hypothesis.” In other words, he not confining his remarks to Lerner's challenge.
The podcast opens with Lewis seemingly complaining that Lerner hasn’t obeyed the “process” that he and his colleagues think should be followed to overturn the existing Big Bang paradigm. Then, Keating implies that Lerner might just but saying what he’s saying to promote his fusion work.
Keating then proceeds to put up a slide he says is about the “classical motivations for the Big Bang”, after stating that he’s not engaging in a “debate” with Lerner. He says he didn’t invite Lerner on his channel because(?) Lerner didn’t invite him on his channel. (Mind you, Lerner doesn’t have a podcast show). Keating says he's going to reply with a powerpoint presentation since Lerner replied with a powerpoint presentation this criticism of him.
His first slide is from Ethan Siegel, who I’ve noted is a very slick mainstream propagandist. Now we’ve all seen and heard the case that Big Bang proponents make ... probably a thousand times. Dr Keating makes it again, but then he has an hour long podcast to fill to keep all his “subscribers” happy. But rather than talk about the chart on the screen, he Instead mentions that Peebles, calling him an“eminent Nobel Laurette and all around wonderful individual”) recently said “an empirical cosmology, which is what we’re trying to do here, there should be a goal not to explain every single observation, but instead to explain the most number of things with the fewest number of input assumptions” in a book title “Anomalies In Cosmology”. Then he says Lerner is wrong to claim no one is taking the anomalies serious. I just find Peebles' quote hilarious, coming from the mouth of a supporter of a cosmology that has been divorced from empirical for some time and whose theory is laden with all sorts of assumptions supporters gloss over.
Keating then quotes Peebles saying “an anomaly might prove to give us a better appreciation of the predictions of the theory we already have.” Maybe, but all of this is nothing but obfuscation. Lerner issued ONE very specific challenge in his video to try and move the debate forward and bring some clarity and we are now 10 minutes into Keating’s pod cast and he hasn’t even begun to address the questions that learner asked.
He then quotes Peebles asking “What is the value of criticism?”, then says “being obstinate, ignoring evidence to the contrary, practicing confirmation bias”, etc, is not a useful or expected process to get to the quote unquote truth.” What he’s doing is subtly trying to suggest that Lerner is doing all those things. Yet earlier in the video this guy made a point of saying he doesn’t like adhominens. Right.
Then it’s on to more obfuscation.with Keating mentioning Lewis' “checklist” for Big Bang alternatives and giving him the floor to discuss that. Keating snidely remarks that it will be a “teachable moment for people like Mr Lerner”. How condescending can he be? Garrett then discusses his list of things that a Big Bang challenger must do and explain, acting as if Lerner has never even touched on any of the topics in his writing and videos.
But that’s completely untrue. Lerner has over the years addressed every one, many times … CMB, the Lyman alpha forest, Albert’s paradox, Redshift, the elemental composition of the UNIVERSITY, etc etc etc. The most ironic item on the list is # ... one is apparently supposed to have a “precisely formulated” theory before criticizing Big Bang. It's a Catch 22, given that the mainstream has been deliberately starving alternative theories of funding and debate for decades and decades. Item #2 also mentions “prediction” which is ironic given that Lerner’s video was a challenge regarding the ability of Big Bang to predict what JWST found, while showing that he (and an associate) had predicted what JWST found.
Buy the time Lewis finishes presenting his list, they’ve wasted another 3 minutes without responding to Lerner’s SINGLE, narrowly focus challenge. Next, Keating says “people” (not him, because he’s above it, right?) have accused Lerner of “cherry picking, where you take a flaw … a foible, if you will … in previously accepted theory or thought … then you assail that as being completely dispositive towards the conjecture in which everything else is built upon.” To that I would respond that if Lerner can show that the universe is not expanding … and that’s the point of the video challenge he issued … then labeling it cherry picking doesn’t change the fact that it would indeed be completely dispositive of the Big Bang. It would settle this debate once and for all and put all the Big Bang communicators, like him, out of business.
Then it on to more obfuscations (for example, talking for minutes about the origin of the moon). I find this all rather tiresome and by now some of his viewers probably left and will only remember the title of his podcast, “Errors in the Big Bang Never Happened”. Maybe that’s what he intended?
Anyway, it’s 19 minutes into his podcast before he finally shows the first page from Lerner’s response video presentation. But rather than immediately address the specific question(s) Lerner asked about Toleman Test, he spends minutes taking umbrage at Lerner for suggesting that the JWST results contained some “not necessarily pleasant” surprises. It’s more of the same word games rather than substance that characterized the previously discussed criticisms of Lerner's written article.
Keating also declares that Lerner “has been making the exact same arguments since 1991, since his book by the same name, “the Big Bang Never Happened", and that was thoroughly debunked, if you will, by Professor Ned Wright [blah blah blah about Wright’s credentials]’. That’s a matter of opinion. That was another instance where Lerner TRIED to engage in debate with his critics and failed. Sure, Wright wrote a webpage/article that all the Big Bangers now cite as definitive on the issue and Lerner. What they don’t mention is that Lerner rebutted Wright’s criticisms in his own article/webpage, which then Wright and the Big Bang Communicators seem to have ignored. So they ended up past one another with no real resolution.
Note that Keating also says Wright addressed the Toleman Test, “which HOPEFULLY we’ll get to in minute.” It surprising that Keating would even contemplate not getting to that, since that was the heart of the challenge Lerner issued. But, right after that, 24 minutes into their podcast, they do get to it. Mr Lewis starts by telling the audience that we don’t really know how far away the galaxies that JWST images show are yet. He says the distances were only inferred based on their color, not their redshift. And since the sizes of the galaxies are determined from their angular size and redshift, “we just have to be very careful with just the raw images we have, about working out exactly what the size of these objects are.”
But then he admits that “we do know that for a lot of the objects we see, if the expanding model is right and these objects are in the redshift range that we’re inferring, they were relatively small and relatively bright” and claims that is what they (the Big Bangers) expected for decades. But the truth is that if the objects are in the redshift range now inferred, it’s a huge understatement to just call them “relatively” small and bright. As Lerner’s article showed, they’d have to be EXTREMELY small and bright .. and that was not expected.
He then assures the viewer that those small galaxies will get bigger and bigger, just like Big Bang theorists said. By way of explanation, he says “we know” the rate of star formation hasn’t been the same over the 14 billion years. The universe “was much more vigorous when it was younger, driven by the mergers that”, almost chocking on it, “Eric was against …sort of.”
Sorry, but Lerner is not “sort of” against the mergers that Big Bangers postulated were going on in the early universe. He says the smoothness and lack of chaos in the JWST images … which the JWST scientists have apparently admitted is the case … hence their surprise … means the scenario postulated by Lewis wouldn’t happen. Lewis is simply ignored this and is regurgitating a BELIEF that the galaxies would “grow and grow” from their “relatively” small beginnings. This is not at all convincing even if Keating is nodding his head in agreement.
Then over over for many more minutes, they go after Lerner for simplifications he made in his analysis, even though they don’t do the analysis themselves to show his conclusions are wrong. They mock Lerner for his formula that sets redshift (Z) equal to the ratio of the distance of a galaxy now and the distance the galaxy was when the light seen now was emitted. They say it’s “unprofessional” and smirk. But they don’t actually say it’s wrong for the purposes to which it was used by Lerner. They attack him for using 1 arsec = 3 light years in his analysis with a highly convoluted criticism, when the fact 1 parsec does equal about 3 light years for most purposes. They seem to be trying to make mountains out of every single molehill rather than do the calculations themselves, their way, and show that Lerner's conclusions are wrong.
And it goes on and on. Even I didn't want to spend a whole hour plus listening. Clearly, this response is not going to satisfy Big Bang detractors. They may make some good points here and there, but they do seem to ignore or handwave away a lot of the concerns that Lerner and the rest of us express. That's odd, since to entirely discredit Lerner all they really needed to do, if their case is strong, was provide a direct, clear answer to his questions in his latest video. They didn’t really do that. Instead they spent by far most of the times defending themselves from things Lerner didn’t even ask, misrepresenting what Lerner believes, attacking him for making claims that they claim were already debunked (which is at the very least debatable), making snide remarks about Lerner, going off on strange tangents, and smugly congratulating themselves or their Big Bang associates.
Anyway, rather than say more and get stuck on the weeds, I think I'll just wait to see how Lerner responds this this.
), Lee McIntyre, who wrote a book “How to Talk to a Science Denier” in 2021. He’s a darling of the mainstream media, being used to attack the opponents of their propaganda right and left. What Cooper doesn’t mention to his readers is that McIntyre wrote the book to attack in particular, Climate Deniers. He even lumps them right next to Flat Earthers, which tells you lot about McIntyre’s own inability to understand science, facts or logic. By the way, I’d be happy to debate McIntyre on the Climate topic any day of the week to show him how little he understands that science or logic.