Do Physicists Understand Their Own Peer-Reviewed Literature?

"Most of the papers which are submitted to the Physical Review are
rejected, not because it is impossible to understand them, but because
it is possible. Those which are impossible to understand are usually
published." Freeman Dyson, Innovation in Physics.

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Eugene Shubert

In article <[Only registered users see links. ] >,
Perfectly Innocent <[Only registered users see links. ]> wrote:


I remember a quote that was something like "It doesn't get into
Fundamentals of Physics Letters unless it's wrong." Also a quote about
APS journals soon filling library shelves faster than the speed of light,
but not violating relativity since no information would be transmitted.

Maybe you're taking the quote more seriously than Dyson meant it.

--
"When the fool walks through the street, in his lack of understanding he
calls everything foolish." -- Ecclesiastes 10:3, New American Bible

Perfectly Innocent wrote:

“Faster Than the Speed of Light: The Story of a Scientific
Speculation”

Empirically discredited.

<http://rattler.cameron.edu/EMIS/journals/LRG/Articles/Volume4/2001-4will/index.html>
Experimental constraints on General Relativity.
<http://rattler.cameron.edu/EMIS/journals/LRG/Articles/Volume6/2003-1ashby/index.html>
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Relativity in the GPS system

--
Uncle Al
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(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" The Net!

[Only registered users see links. ] (Gregory L. Hansen) wrote in message news:<bkpiku$c2a$[Only registered users see links. ].indiana.edu>...

Gregory, Your reference to faster-than-light, non-luminal journals is
hilarious.


I'm certain that Dyson meant his remark to be taken in a lighthearted
way but the question remains. How much of his statement is true? "Do
physicists understand their own peer-reviewed literature?"

We've all read stuff in the "scientific literature" that we know for
a fact would have a much easier time qualifying as "highfalutin
pomposity" than "a clear exposition." How do we know that physicists
today aren't running amok, pretending that they understand everything
and successfully publishing incomprehensible gibberish on the remote
edge of decipherability and clarity?

Eugene Shubert
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Perfectly Innocent wrote:

By learning the field. Then you can read papers with discernment.

Bob Kolker

In article <[Only registered users see links. ] >,
Perfectly Innocent <[Only registered users see links. ]> wrote:

Every quip like that has some grain of truth to it, I'm sure. But then we
have the interesting situation of some people saying journals will publish
anything the reviewers don't understand, while at the same time other
people are saying journals won't publish anything that doesn't look like
"the party line". Luckily there are lots of journals, some more tolerant
of novelty than others.

--
"When the fool walks through the street, in his lack of understanding he
calls everything foolish." -- Ecclesiastes 10:3, New American Bible

In article <bktfca$n7b$[Only registered users see links. ].indiana.edu>,
Gregory L. Hansen <[Only registered users see links. ].indiana.edu> wrote:


An interesting example, I think, is an article published by Van Flandern,
"The speed of gravity -- What the experiments say", Phys Lett A 250, 1-11
(1998). Van Flandern argues from data that the speed of gravity must be
at least 2e10 c to avoid noticeable decays of orbits and transverse
acceleration of the Earth. Carlip replies, "Aberration and the speed of
gravity", Phys Lett A 267, 81-87 (2000), that Van Flandern would be right
if the forces were strictly central, but he showed by explicit
calculation that non-central forces in electromagnetism and then gravity
cause an acceleration that points towards the source's "extrapolated
position", and then argues on more general principles that it's a
necessary consequence of any Lorentz-covariant force.

Strictly speaking, the reviewers should have already known that, and
recognized Van Flandern's argument as not worth publishing. But because
they published it, I learned about an issue and got some insight that I
might not have come across otherwise. Maybe it was an exchange more
worthy of Am J Phys than Phys Lett A, but what the hell, I still got
something out of it.

--
"When the fool walks through the street, in his lack of understanding he
calls everything foolish." -- Ecclesiastes 10:3, New American Bible

[Only registered users see links. ] (Gregory L. Hansen) wrote in message news:<bktfca$n7b$[Only registered users see links. ].indiana.edu>...

I see no contradiction between the two claims and believe the first is
only exaggerated slightly.

Why can't both statements be true?


Eugene Shubert
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[Only registered users see links. ] (Perfectly Innocent) wrote in message news:<c45b45b3.0309251700.4e15272a@posting.google. com>...


You write an incomprehensible anti-relativity article. The
reviewers can't make head or tail of it. Which rule
applies?

- Randy

"Robert J. Kolker" <[Only registered users see links. ]> wrote in message news:<bkt42j$5immr$[Only registered users see links. ].uni-berlin.de>...


I assume that the many postdocs and GR experts at the newsgroup
sci.physics.research have discernment. I've asked an extraordinarily
simple question of them regarding VSL relativity. It's obvious that
no one there has an answer and those that are just pretending to
understand the physics are totally clueless.

See VSL (Variable Speed of Light) Relativity at sci.physics.research.

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Eugene Shubert