Why is this going to the public before being accepted by scientists? This format is appropriate for things that have been known to be true for twenty years, not random models. Taking your ideas straight to the public before obtaining wide expert agreement is actually one of the signs of physics-themed crackpottery.
We may be talking past one another here with the word "format". I read and responded to what seemed yet another round of irrelevant (or at least low-signal), "This site looks terrible on mobile" style noise, which HN discussions are sometimes entirely too full of. Now, however, I think you (and possibly the grandparent comment) may have been talking about addressing the content to a general audience, instead of peer review.
If that's the case, I apologize for my own noise.
EDIT: Even so, that The Fine Article is (potentially) directed at an inappropriate audience doesn't tell me much about its "crackpottery", except in a mildly Bayesian kind of way.
I like to pay attention to the discussions on physics articles that cross the HN front page because I more often than not learn something by reading the conversations between the people who understand the material better than I do. That remains the kind of discussion I want to see.
Watch out - he's publishing a model, not facts. In physics you are allowed to publish "random models," so to speak, on nothing other than the hope that at some point in the future someome will identify them as true or false.
There's a huge difference between a paper about a model being published, and the model being accepted as a true fact.
Agreed. Now what's more interesting is that his model is close enough to the one developed in a paper from 2008 by Sabine Hossenfelder [1]. Close enough to be accused of plagiarism when he reached out to her. We discussed this article 5 months ago: "'Dark fluid' with negative mass could dominate the universe" [2]. Experiments are currently being setup to see how antimatter behaves in a free-fall situation [3]. The lead scientist says it will fall up, while Petit asserts it will fall down.
So it's not like this model is totally isolated from what is being done in physics, although he has developed it on his own. He's into bimetric models of gravity like many other people in his field, and as far as I can tell, this is Occam's bush growing we are seeing here. Let's not hasten to use the razzor.
I'd say that a discussion and criticism by experts must be required, not really wide acceptance. In theoretical physics, there can be many competing models that could be hard to verify or proof wrong. "Science advances one funeral at a time", progress is made quite slowly to make everyone accept a new theory.
Edit: So, I'd like to see a peer-reviewed article by the author, and some responses by people in the field. That could be enough for a new theory.
If you look at the bottom of every page, including the homepage, the author references his own relevant peer-reviewed articles.
I'm not saying his theory is right, or that the presentation doesn't smell a bit of crackpottery (it does), but at least he's referencing some real science he's done and that has apparently been accepted.
This is the main point he's upset about. Because of his interest in the UFO phenomenon in the 70s and 80s he has been ostracized from the wider french community (mostly the state-run National Center of Scientific Research aka the CNRS). It's not a subject he wants to talk about anymore.
His main grief is not that his genius theory is not understood , but that he cannot discuss it with his colleagues for the reason above.
People have set up a petition [1] so that he present his ideas during a seminary (he's indeed quite popular with videos on youtube frequently reaching more than 100k views).
To give you a more concrete example, he stumbled upon a paper by physicist Sabine Hossenfelder [2] which presents a very similar approach to the Janus model but with a broader, more abstract framework Petit is not able to understand. He reached out to her and was accused of plagiarism ! He tried to play it cool, saying she would be remembered as the 21st century's Einstein (her paper predates his by a decade), telling her she should invest energy into this (she published that paper in 2008 and did not follow this track further) offering her to collaborate as friends on the subject. Result: she declined because of his background.
Now, what background are we talking about ? IIRC he published a paper in the 90s where he thanked M. Bazoof. What you have to know is that Petit has been personally involved in the UMMO affaire [3]. Along with several people, mostly from Spain, he received letters and phone calls by people that claimed to be from another planet. These letters were full of scientific content and he's written multiple books about it (the latest, from last year, is jokingly subtilted "How far can we think to far ?"). Back to M Bazoof: "What ? He is citing an alien ? Is he kidding us ?" => that's Petit that imitates his colleagues' reaction back in the days, and then he burst in laughter. Serious again: "But that's the truth, alien or trickster, I received UMMO messages without which I would not have thought of the Janus model. A stuff life this, this is is insane, you have no idea. It brings you into a life-long adventure. It's like my life is the script to a Spielberg movie. And I suppose I'm Doc from back to the future ! laughs".
"If it's not fun, it's not really serious" is one of the maxims he lives by.
Ad hominem attacks instead of real arguments about the proposed theory is mean and not professional.. If that's what happened. My guess is that many areas of theoretical physics are getting too competitive, while funding is always limited. So, intellectual merit could be not the only (or not the main) consideration, outwheighed by things like reputation. Most mainstream researchers also have their own pet theories, and defending "some UFO guy's theory" that might compete with their own pet theory is hardly a priority for them either, especially at such a reputation cost. In the field that has so many theories that are hard to prove right or wrong, human capital and connections could decide the future of your theory, apparently.
Sabine Hossenfelder is an open-minded researcher, as far as I can tell. Sad that the author could not follow up with her, but there must be reasons for that.
Very interesting, thank you for the comment. I like math and computer science academia more than physics for these reasons -- people are less cut-throat, and generally more fun than in physics.
He managed to publish this theory in some peer-reviewed venues, so there’s that. However, it is a minor hypothesis on the verge of fringe science (but not quite there), not some blinding glimpse of genius.
Comments
Why is this going to the public before being accepted by scientists? This format is appropriate for things that have been known to be true for twenty years, not random models. Taking your ideas straight to the public before obtaining wide expert agreement is actually one of the signs of physics-themed crackpottery.
We may be talking past one another here with the word "format". I read and responded to what seemed yet another round of irrelevant (or at least low-signal), "This site looks terrible on mobile" style noise, which HN discussions are sometimes entirely too full of. Now, however, I think you (and possibly the grandparent comment) may have been talking about addressing the content to a general audience, instead of peer review.
If that's the case, I apologize for my own noise.
EDIT: Even so, that The Fine Article is (potentially) directed at an inappropriate audience doesn't tell me much about its "crackpottery", except in a mildly Bayesian kind of way.
I like to pay attention to the discussions on physics articles that cross the HN front page because I more often than not learn something by reading the conversations between the people who understand the material better than I do. That remains the kind of discussion I want to see.
> Why is this going to the public before being accepted by scientists?
The usual reason for someone doing that is that they know their model won't be accepted by scientists. That's what I'm betting on here.
He has been publishing elements to this theory for the last 40 years.
See the bottom of this page: http://www.januscosmologicalmodel.com/.
Some of his latest papers have been published in Astrophysics and Space Science, Modern Physics Letters A & Progress in Physics [1]
[1] https://scholar.google.fr/scholar?hl=fr&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=JP+Pe...
Watch out - he's publishing a model, not facts. In physics you are allowed to publish "random models," so to speak, on nothing other than the hope that at some point in the future someome will identify them as true or false.
There's a huge difference between a paper about a model being published, and the model being accepted as a true fact.
Agreed. Now what's more interesting is that his model is close enough to the one developed in a paper from 2008 by Sabine Hossenfelder [1]. Close enough to be accused of plagiarism when he reached out to her. We discussed this article 5 months ago: "'Dark fluid' with negative mass could dominate the universe" [2]. Experiments are currently being setup to see how antimatter behaves in a free-fall situation [3]. The lead scientist says it will fall up, while Petit asserts it will fall down.
So it's not like this model is totally isolated from what is being done in physics, although he has developed it on his own. He's into bimetric models of gravity like many other people in his field, and as far as I can tell, this is Occam's bush growing we are seeing here. Let's not hasten to use the razzor.
[1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/0807.2838.pdf [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18609375 [3] https://cerncourier.com/does-antimatter-fall-up/
I'd say that a discussion and criticism by experts must be required, not really wide acceptance. In theoretical physics, there can be many competing models that could be hard to verify or proof wrong. "Science advances one funeral at a time", progress is made quite slowly to make everyone accept a new theory. Edit: So, I'd like to see a peer-reviewed article by the author, and some responses by people in the field. That could be enough for a new theory.
If you look at the bottom of every page, including the homepage, the author references his own relevant peer-reviewed articles.
I'm not saying his theory is right, or that the presentation doesn't smell a bit of crackpottery (it does), but at least he's referencing some real science he's done and that has apparently been accepted.
Yeah, that's good, thank you.
This is the main point he's upset about. Because of his interest in the UFO phenomenon in the 70s and 80s he has been ostracized from the wider french community (mostly the state-run National Center of Scientific Research aka the CNRS). It's not a subject he wants to talk about anymore.
His main grief is not that his genius theory is not understood , but that he cannot discuss it with his colleagues for the reason above.
People have set up a petition [1] so that he present his ideas during a seminary (he's indeed quite popular with videos on youtube frequently reaching more than 100k views).
To give you a more concrete example, he stumbled upon a paper by physicist Sabine Hossenfelder [2] which presents a very similar approach to the Janus model but with a broader, more abstract framework Petit is not able to understand. He reached out to her and was accused of plagiarism ! He tried to play it cool, saying she would be remembered as the 21st century's Einstein (her paper predates his by a decade), telling her she should invest energy into this (she published that paper in 2008 and did not follow this track further) offering her to collaborate as friends on the subject. Result: she declined because of his background.
Now, what background are we talking about ? IIRC he published a paper in the 90s where he thanked M. Bazoof. What you have to know is that Petit has been personally involved in the UMMO affaire [3]. Along with several people, mostly from Spain, he received letters and phone calls by people that claimed to be from another planet. These letters were full of scientific content and he's written multiple books about it (the latest, from last year, is jokingly subtilted "How far can we think to far ?"). Back to M Bazoof: "What ? He is citing an alien ? Is he kidding us ?" => that's Petit that imitates his colleagues' reaction back in the days, and then he burst in laughter. Serious again: "But that's the truth, alien or trickster, I received UMMO messages without which I would not have thought of the Janus model. A stuff life this, this is is insane, you have no idea. It brings you into a life-long adventure. It's like my life is the script to a Spielberg movie. And I suppose I'm Doc from back to the future ! laughs".
"If it's not fun, it's not really serious" is one of the maxims he lives by.
[1] https://www.mesopinions.com/petition/sante/droit-debat-nouve...
[2] https://arxiv.org/pdf/0807.2838.pdf
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_objects_proposed_in_...
Ad hominem attacks instead of real arguments about the proposed theory is mean and not professional.. If that's what happened. My guess is that many areas of theoretical physics are getting too competitive, while funding is always limited. So, intellectual merit could be not the only (or not the main) consideration, outwheighed by things like reputation. Most mainstream researchers also have their own pet theories, and defending "some UFO guy's theory" that might compete with their own pet theory is hardly a priority for them either, especially at such a reputation cost. In the field that has so many theories that are hard to prove right or wrong, human capital and connections could decide the future of your theory, apparently.
Sabine Hossenfelder is an open-minded researcher, as far as I can tell. Sad that the author could not follow up with her, but there must be reasons for that.
Very interesting, thank you for the comment. I like math and computer science academia more than physics for these reasons -- people are less cut-throat, and generally more fun than in physics.
He managed to publish this theory in some peer-reviewed venues, so there’s that. However, it is a minor hypothesis on the verge of fringe science (but not quite there), not some blinding glimpse of genius.