tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764506766343254616.post3184067187980020242..comments2024-03-26T14:20:38.103-04:00Comments on The Thought Criminal: Lying For Science Censoring Questions The Taboo 2Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764506766343254616.post-17044596941672631572013-05-29T16:34:05.581-04:002013-05-29T16:34:05.581-04:00Almost all particle physicists have seen plots sho...Almost all particle physicists have seen plots shown in the official particle databook which look like this,<br />http://pdg.lbl.gov/2012/reviews/rpp2012-rev-history-plots.pdf<br />Presumably, Sean Carroll in his professional career has seen many such histograms.<br /><br />A naive interpretation would be indeed that physical constants are changing.<br /><br />But the majority of working physicists who think about it just assume that either poor measurement techniques were used in the past or perhaps some data had been fudged to match consensus opinion in order to get published. Of course it's really embarrassing. But censoring people who point it out does not constitute good practice of science. <br /><br />IMHO, Sheldrake is correct on the physical constant data but wrong on his interpretation of it. Sheldrake does make a good point in his book "Science Set Free" that parapsychology has much higher experimental methodological standards than physics (such as publication of null results and blind analysis techniques). I've done work in both experimental physics and parapsychology and agree with Sheldrake on the existence of psi but disagree on physical constants. <br /><br />I'm agnostic on the other dogmas he reports, though mainstream physics has already let in violation of energy conversation through the properties of "dark energy" since the mainstream cosmological model has new dark energy being created continuously as the Universe expands. In this respect, the mainstream position has already become muddled. <br />Pavonishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03934389893589821519noreply@blogger.com