The Great Deception
Over at Pharyngula there is a link to a talk summary (not surprisingly, related to evolution) that says
Evolution is the “greatest deception in the history of science”.
Wait. I thought Anthropogenic Global Warming was the greatest deception in the history of science
But, whither physics? Surely physics has foisted deception upon mankind, somehow. Ah, relativity to the rescue. Even worse than the evolutionary deception of Piltdown man, apparently
By now, science seems to be
so heavily invested in Relativity and Einstein, that it will be very
hard to admit Relativity has been so obviously wrong. It would be
like admitting to a crime.Lies in science have happened before virtually on the level of
relativity. In England a claim was made that the origin lay in
Britain, perpetrated by leading experts in the field of paleontology.
What they did was to use a fairly modern skull, filed off key
evidence from an ape lower jaw (joints, teeth), put them together
and claimed they had found it like that. This deception has lasted
for a long time, but not as long as the Relativity deception has.
And in addition
It is simply incredible that a theory with so many deceptions has held the attention of so many of physicists and other scientists from the field of natural and technical sciences for so long, and has managed to retain acceptability and even enter the textbooks for secondary schools and universities.
Actually, relativity and evolution are deceptions that follow from the Copernican deception. Evolution was the followup, and relativity was the third blow.
Once the Copernican Revolution had conquered the physical sciences of Astronomy and Physics and put down deep roots in Universities and lower schools everywhere, it was only a matter of time until the Biological sciences launched the Darwinian Revolution.
And then, after the Michelson-Morley experiment
Einstein’s Relativity hypothesis rescued heliocentricity from the findings of over 200 experiments which showed that the earth was not moving.
I always enjoy the conspiracy angle. We have so much invested in the deception of relativity that we just can’t afford to abandon it at this point. It takes tremendous effort, covering up such a theory that doesn’t actually work. Good thing it’s just a blind alley of physics, and no science or technology actually uses it.
Interestingly, I couldn’t quickly find the same vitriol-induced confusion over quantum mechanics. Perhaps it’s just that QM is so openly bizarre that despite the fact that there are those out there that decry it, it’s not considered deceptive.
Comments
Comment from Atheist
Time: February 27, 2008, 10:31 pm
Abstract:
In this comment on an internet blog, we (note: We=I) will show why Tom had trouble finding nice statements why QM is wrong. Additionally, some implications for particle physics will be derived and no test scenario for any of the statements will be sketched.
Assumptions:
(1): QM/Relativity does not even stand a close inspection with school knowledge and everyday logic.
(2): QM/Relativity is publically advocated by most physicists.
(3): The keyword “Einstein” returns ~40*10⁶ hits on Google, way more than any other physicist.
(4): Einstein published Relativity.
(5): Einstein said “God doesn’t like Monte-Carlo simulations”, or something like that.
Deductions:
(1) => QM/Relativity cannot be right. (1a)
(1a) and (2) => The only reasonable conclusions are that either people agreed to a world-wide conspiracy with unknown purpose (although probably related to keeping their well-paid jobs) (A), or simply get brain-washed in their university courses (B).
(3) => Except for minor contributions by Steven Hawking, all physics is about Einstein. In the case of Einstein, being brain-washed in university cannot be the case as neither QM not Relativity was taught at this time. Therefore, Einstein must have been a liar (E).
(E) and (4) => Relativity is a big conspiracy. (C)
(E) and (5) => QM is not a conspiracy but merely an effect of confusion and delusion (D).
Conclusions:
- (C) => We must fight this worldwide conspiracy to avoid falling back to the middle-ages!
- (D) => Fighting QM should have less priority than fighting Relativity. Given its power to confuse people, it should best be avoided or ignored alltogether.
- Einstein caused a spontaneous breakdown of modern physics misconceptions into a real conspiracy and confusion remnant. However, the confusion part is reabsorbed into relativistic field theories giving particles to the masses of physicists.
- The author of this text has too much time on his hands, possibly from waiting for a Monte-Carlo simulation to finish.
Comment from ecoli
Time: February 28, 2008, 12:27 am
LIKE, OMG… EVERYONE IS SO, LIKE WRNG, CAUSE, U NO, THERE SO LIKE DUM N STUFF. IM SO SMRT CAUSE I LIKE NO SO MUCH MOR THAN EVERYONE ELSE.
(Y IS NO ONE LISTENING TO ME 
)
The crackpot/adult version of teen angst, anybody?
Comment from swansont
Time: February 28, 2008, 4:35 pm
I had another thought on QM — it’s not a great deception, because so many people adopt the term “quantum” to legitimize their woo. Quantum snake oil is so much better than snake oil.
Comment from Green Eagle
Time: May 15, 2008, 2:26 pm
Relativity is a myth?
Try telling that to the people of Hiroshima.
global RSS feed.
Comment from gg
Time: February 27, 2008, 6:51 pm
Egad. That relativity denialist is a good example of “a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.” He knows enough to use the terminology in vaguely the right way but completely fails to apply the theory correctly when it counts. He also has a near-complete lack of quantitative analysis.
It’s nice that he’s got a big list of ‘relativity refutations’. There are enough physics bloggers out there that we could each slap down one of his ‘refutations’ with plenty to go around. Any takers?