Contrabang! #24 You Don't Deserve A Seat At The Table

Is The Universe Filled With Black Holes That Shouldn’t Exist? (link)

When it comes to the objects that are found all throughout the Universe, most of them align with our theoretical expectations.

Most of them except the 95% of the matter & energy that is alleged to be "dark." Or the quasars. Or neutron stars. Or primordial supermassive black holes. Or....

You get the idea. Most of the objects are not "theoretical expectations" so much as the theory has been stretched, warped, and retrofitted to observations. For instance, nothing about neutron stars was theoretically expected. They observed a blinking light. All the complexity with the multiple layers of proposed exotic states of matter follow from only the observations of blinking lights, which occasionally change frequencies.

Occasionally, however, scientists will find an object that seems to defy conventional wisdom. When this occurs, however, it’s usually not because there’s a flaw with our understanding of the rules that govern the Universe, but because we’ve modeled certain physical processes or environments too simplistically.

Here he has succinctly summarized a truth I have spent many paragraphs prattling on about. Whenever unexpected observations occur, the default response is to leave all previous assumptions unquestioned and add complexity wherever necessary to make the current problem go away.

There are two dominant flaws seen in astrophysics. The first is stacking unproven assumption on top of each other to build a comprehensive dogma of the universe, and then being unable to challenge those assumptions for fear of the whole structure collapsing. The second is the insistence that, if only a single explanation can be thought of, then that explanation is effectively proven - a logical blunder that this blog previously labeled as Sherlock's Folly. Both are present in this article.

For black holes, the overwhelming majority of them originate from a supernova explosion occurring in a massive star near the end of its life.

This is only theoretical. No black holes are actually proven to exist anywhere, let alone in supernovae. Because physicists don't how else to explain supernovae, the can claim with great confidence that they are are stars collapsing into black holes. This is in spite of evidence that should invalidate the whole premise, such as recurrent supernovae - which cannot occur in the collapsing star model. Despite the presence of invalidating evidence, the theories remain because they've not yet thought of anything to replace them with. The standing theories are simply too big to fail - above the scrutiny of mere evidence.

If you think the logical trainwreck of this article is bad, it actually still gets worse.

Whenever you have a large enough collection of mass, whether it’s in the form of a cloud of gas or a star or anywhere in between, there’s a chance that it can form a black hole directly: collapse due to insufficient pressure to hold it up against gravitation. For many years, simulations predicted that black holes should spontaneously arise through this process, but observations failed to see a confirmation. Then, a few years ago, one came in an unlikely place, as the Hubble Space Telescope saw a 25 solar mass star simply “disappear” without a supernova or other cataclysm. The only explanation? Direct collapse.

No matter what is observed - stars exploding, stars winking out - it can all be explained by black holes. It's a bit like the issues this blog has taken in the past with evolutionary biology. If two species share a trait and are related, it is proof of evolution. And if they are not related? Still proof of evolution? And if they do not share a trait? More proof of evolution. The issue is that there are no observations that are allowed to be called negative evidence, thus the theory is not practically falsifiable. Thus, astrophysics, as practiced by Ethan and those he advocates for, is actually not a science at all, but a pseudoscience.

The One Science Lesson Every American Adult Can Learn From Greta Thunberg (link)

I wish I could say this piece was satire, but it isn't.

She’s not a scientist, an expert, or even an adult. But she’s got one good lesson to teach us all.

Golly, I wonder what it could be. (Spoiler Alert: if you guessed "believe as you're told," then you were correct.)

Like most people on Earth, Greta Thunberg is not a climate scientist. She has no formal scientific training of any type, nor does she possess any expert-level knowledge or expert-level skills in this regime. She has never worked on the problems or puzzles facing environmental scientists, atmospheric scientists, geophysicists, solar physicists, climatologists, meteorologists, or Earth scientists.

Like most of us, she is an ordinary citizen of the world: with strong beliefs, opinions, and political inclinations. But unlike most of us, Greta has shown a willingness to do what most of us refuse to do. Her starting point for how to move forward in the world is to begin from a position of scientific consensus. While most of us prefer to be given the facts and trust that we, intelligent as we are, can figure it out for ourselves, Greta recognizes the unparalleled value that scientific expertise brings to our world.

Naturally Ethan, cheerleader for scientific consensus himself, is a big fan. What he fails to realize is that virtually everyone begins from a position of scientific consensus, because that's what we're all taught in school. I certainly did not begin in astrophysics with an inherent doubt of, say, neutron stars. But as I've learned more about them, I've realized that not only are they wrong, but their is sufficient evidence that physicists should throw the theory out, but have reasons for not doing so which have nothing to do with the scientific method.

 It’s true that there are many scientific conclusions that are only provisional, and that much of what we conclude is accurate today may be overturned by superior evidence in the future. The way science proceeds is by constantly re-evaluating your theories, ideas and hypotheses in the face of the ever-changing full suite of evidence. When the evidence contradicts the theory, the theory must be thrown out, modified, or otherwise revised.

It all sounds well and good, except that's not what they actually do. They ignore contradictory evidence or file it away as something that will be explained later. At this point, sending probes to asteroids and comets is a waste of funds because, despite a consistent return of surprising results, no major changes have been made to the relevant theories. Scientists just base their models on the subset of data for which their models work.

But when the evidence lines up with the theory’s predictions, it provides confirmation and validation that we’re at least on a thoroughly reasonable path. This is how scientists in all fields, whenever they’re doing good science, proceed. It applies to any issue you can imagine, from vaccinations to fluoridation to evolution to dark matter to the Big Bang and more. And yes, it also applies to global warming and, more generally, to the field of climate science.

Good grief, it's like he's giving us a short list of junk science. Why is he defending water fluoridation? Because some prestigious organization promotes it, I guess. If the scientific consensus was that you should jump off a bridge, this guy would be first in line. (Actually he wouldn't, which we'll see...)

What Greta Thunberg has to teach us, that most people (perhaps even most scientists) fail to grasp, is that the scientific expertise you learn in the process of becoming a scientist is what enables you to make informed judgments about the merits of various scientific assertions. And, if you care about achieving the most desirable outcome, you must accept the best science the world has to offer — the scientific consensus on an issue, where one exists — or you don’t deserve a seat at the table.

It's simple: you toe the line or you don't get a career. Most scientists actually know this too, which is why they pretend to believe such concoctions as neutron stars and dark matter. Only believers get tenure! It's why I - an amateur - am able to point out holes in their logic big enough to drive a snowplow through, week after week. The demand for conformity has resulted in an orthodoxy so unsound that the flaws have become low-hanging fruit for armchair critics.

A consensus will only arise when a theory is good enough to make predictions that are robust, verified by multiple lines of evidence, backed up by a statistically significant amount of data, and where definitive observations have been taken that discern one particular theory’s predictions from the others.

Of course, this is only practiced where convenient. The only evidence for neutron stars is blinking lights in the sky.

It’s why General Relativity is the consensus theory of gravity, but also why we continue to challenge it with new observations in regimes where it hasn’t yet been tested.

The consensus theory of gravity has major flaws, such as a failure to predict motions at scales larger than a solar system. They've had to invent dark matter to account for it, the only evidence of which is that the consensus theory of gravity isn't working.

It’s why evolution, via the mechanism of genetic mutation and natural selection, is the consensus theory on the origin of the species currently found on Earth.

As yet, there is zero evidence of evolution via genetic mutation. There is yet no evidence for the random evolution of a species, a chromosome, a gene...or even an allele of gene.

It’s why vaccination and fluoridation are overwhelmingly recommended by public health experts as near-universal goods, while vitamins are only recommended for those with nutritional deficiencies.

Interestingly, Ethan happens to live in Portland, Oregon, a city which has chosen to stop adding fluoride to its water supply. Does Ethan add the poison to his personal drinking water? Better still, does he use the reach of his platform - the largest independent science blog on the net - to advocate that his own town end a policy in that directly rejects the scientific consensus? Let's take a look.

Of course he doesn't. He is completely full of shit. Just a mindless hypocrite. You should poison your children because of the scientific consensus, but he won't.

There is an overwhelming scientific conclusion being ignored by the entire world. For decades, scientists have sounded the alarm, only to be met by a government that complains about the volume and tone of the alarm while ignoring the contents of the message. The time for arguing over whether this problem is real, severe, or our fault is long past.

I love it when they disprove themselves in their own zeal. For decades, scientists have sounded the alarm that the world will end in about a decade! For normal people, the longer climate doom predictions don't come true, the less seriously they are taken.

It’s time for real action, and long past time to vote out any impostors that can’t get on board with the scientific consensus. Every one of us has a voice and a vote, and we cannot let these obstructionist tactics obscure the truth any longer. There’s a real problem here, and while fixing it will be a long-term endeavor, we all know where to start: by accepting the truth and considering solutions that address the scientifically legitimate issue at stake. If we can’t at least take that step, we’re dooming future generations to the worst possible climate scenario. We’re capable of preventing that outcome. Whether we do or not depends entirely on what we do next.

I was too generous in the previous section when I described what Ethan is doing as pseudoscience, because this is just vanilla liberal political action. Whatever the domain, Ethan seeks out the official approved opinion and becomes its biggest cheerleader.