The latest from the New York Times:
I have to admit that I find this type of pseudo-scientific puff piece conducive to depression. Nothing discussed here involves anything remotely to do with an actual observation. What is described instead, is a mathematical fiction, with such a slender and tenuous connection, to a dubious, claimed detection, it boggles the scientific imagination.
What we have here is a display, not of science, but of mathematicism, a disease of modern culture more reductive than reductionism. A large piece of 19th century machinery, polished and constructed, to spit out reams of data, destined to be massaged by elegant algorithms of deep complexity, in silent computers running ceaselessly, and laboring mightily to bring forth a shred of a signal, so flimsily beneath any possible sensitivity of the employed machinery, as to be laughable.
From this shredded evidentiary bean of dubious provenance, is spun a mighty mathematical beanstalk, a tale of fantastical proportions, with beasts of impossible construction, swirling about in a dance of destruction and laboring mightily to bring forth a shred of a signal, so flimsily beneath any possible sensitivity of the detecting machinery, as to be laughable.
This piece is nothing but a rewrite of a vapid press release, as substance free as a DJT tweet touting his magnificent intelligence. Science weeps, bound in a dungeon of mathematical formalisms.
[Comment submitted to NYT on 10/16/17. It may or may not get published.]
The String Theory fiasco of more than 40 years and the pursuit of ghost dark matter particles for a similar period of time show that scientists as a group are not different from any other group of humans: they tend to follow the flow/herd uncritically and will shun/belittle anybody that try to move away from the herd. Clearly there is a systemic problem in mainstream Science rooted in its departure from objectivity: where models of Reality take precedence over empirical evidence.
This again shows one more time a lesson that we still had not learned: we should not take anything on faith from anybody; including scientists obviously. Accepting uncritically claims from any “authority”, including the authority of “consensus” is a clear expression of complacency.