Something seems terribly wrong in physics.

[RArvay]

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When heated disputes arise between scientists, even a layman can often get a sense when something is amiss. An explanation of that sense is in order.

Physics, and especially mathematics, are the most empirical sciences we have. They are not like art or philosophy, in which differing opinions dominate the subject. Disagreements between physicists should be definitively settled after only brief presentations by each side. One expects the facts, not opinions, to decide the issue.

For example, even the awesome Stephen Hawking admitted to error regarding conservation of information in black hole stars. Hawking seemed absolutely certain that he was correct, but when those who disagreed with him laid out their case, Hawking recognized the truth and conceded. This is the way it should be.

Why is this not the case with quantum mechanics, and in particular, with quantum entanglement? Why is it that, after more than a century, quantum physicists are in strenuous disagreement over vital elements within the theory?

The core of the dispute goes back at least as far as Albert Einstein’s discourses with Niels Bohr.

The details of that dispute are well known to physicists. Most physicists seem to “side with” Bohr, Heisenberg and others. Einstein derided an important theory in quantum mechanics as “spooky action,” an insulting reference. Today, the dispute continues, with a minority of physicists rejecting certain vital concepts such as the “majority” interpretation of quantum entanglement.

The question, then, is not so much about “who is right,” or who is wrong. The more important question in my mind is, why does there remain so much intense disagreement? This is not politics, it is not literature, it is physics!

It is not as if the arguments of each side lack support. Both sides have published their arguments, using both experimental and mathematical expositions. These should be conclusive. I admit to not being able to understand the math, but those who are making the arguments can understand. Both sides can see the other’s evidence. Both sides can evaluate the math. In my view, the matter should have been settled long ago.

Why hasn’t it?

Certain scientific arguments can get clouded by politics, financial interests and/or personal rivalries. In such cases, the arguments of one side are subjected to censorship, dissembling, and even downright fraud. Examples of this can be shown in AIDS research, climatology and macroeconomics.

Is any of this present in quantum physics? Or is it that science has reached the outer edge of its map, beyond which one can only say, “here there be dragons?”
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[Joy Christian]

Certain scientific arguments can get clouded by politics, financial interests and/or personal rivalries. In such cases, the arguments of one side are subjected to censorship, dissembling, and even downright fraud. Examples of this can be shown in AIDS research, climatology and macroeconomics.

Is any of this present in quantum physics?

Yes, all of the above is present in physics, and much more. I have written about my personal experiences in this regard, and there is much more I cannot say in public.

[minkwe]

Why is this not the case with quantum mechanics, and in particular, with quantum entanglement? Why is it that, after more than a century, quantum physicists are in strenuous disagreement over vital elements within the theory?

Good questions but the answer might be easier than we think -- Because there is no "mechanics" in Quantum Mechanics, and Quantum Mechanics is not physics, and most of what is called "Quantum Foundations Research" these days is not science but religious speculation.

The core of the dispute goes back at least as far as Albert Einstein’s discourses with Niels Bohr. The details of that dispute are well known to physicists. Most physicists seem to “side with” Bohr, Heisenberg and others. Einstein derided an important theory in quantum mechanics as “spooky action,” an insulting reference. Today, the dispute continues, with a minority of physicists rejecting certain vital concepts such as the “majority” interpretation of quantum entanglement.

To this day, very few people have understood what the Einstein Bohr debates were all about. One of them was Jaynes:
http://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/articles/cmystery.pdf

Put most briefly, Einstein held that the QM formalism is incomplete and that it is the job of theoretical physics to supply the missing parts; Bohr claimed that there are no missing parts. To most, their positions seemed diametrically opposed; however, if we can understand better what Bohr was trying to say, it is possible to reconcile their positions and believe them both. Each had an important truth to tell us.
But Bohr and Einstein could never understand each other because they were thinking on different levels. When Einstein says QM is incomplete, he means it in the ontological sense; when Bohr says QM is complete, he means it in the epistemological sense. Recognizing this, their statements are no longer contradictory. Indeed, Bohr's vague, puzzling sentences -- always groping for the right word, never finding it -- emerge from the fog and we see their underlying sense, if we keep in mind that Bohr's thinking is never on the ontological level traditional in physics. Always he is discussing not Nature, but our information about Nature. But physics did not have the vocabulary for expressing ideas on that level, hence the groping.

Needless to say, we consider all of Einstein's reasoning and conclusions correct on his level; but on the other hand we think that Bohr was equally correct on his level, in saying that the act of measurement might perturb the system being measured, placing a limitation on the information we can acquire and therefore on the predictions we are able to make. There is nothing that one could object to in this conjecture, although the burden of proof is on the person who makes it. But we part company from Bohr when this metamorphoses without explanation into a claim that the limitation on the predictions of the present QM formalism are also -- in exact, minute detail -- limitations on the measurements that can be made in the laboratory!

Like Einstein, we can see no justification at all for this gratuitous assumption. ... But to return to the historical account; somehow, many physicists became persuaded that the
success of the QM mathematical formalism proved the correctness of Bohr's private philosophy, even though hardly any -- even among his disciples --understood what that philosophy was. All the
attempts of Einstein, Schrodinger, and others to point out the patent illogic of this were rejected and sneered at; it is a worthy project for future psychologists to explain why.

The question, then, is not so much about “who is right,” or who is wrong. The more important question in my mind is, why does there remain so much intense disagreement? This is not politics, it is not literature, it is physics!

The reason is rather simple: Sloppiness and ineptitude combined with lots of money, power and a loud voice. Lack of sound reasoning abilities, failure of the educational system. Scientists these days are not taught logic, sound reasoning, critical thinking and philosophy. Instead, philosophy is gleefully derided. Add to that the fact that a lot of expert mathematicians think they are now physicists because they can push around symbols and perform calculations artfully.

It is not as if the arguments of each side lack support. Both sides have published their arguments, using both experimental and mathematical expositions. These should be conclusive. I admit to not being able to understand the math, but those who are making the arguments can understand. Both sides can see the other’s evidence. Both sides can evaluate the math. In my view, the matter should have been settled long ago.
Why hasn’t it?

See previous point. Pushing around symbols and evaluating the math does not mean you understand physics. 98% of so called "theoretical physicists" are simply expert mathematicians in over their heads. And I'm being conservative.

Certain scientific arguments can get clouded by politics, financial interests and/or personal rivalries. In such cases, the arguments of one side are subjected to censorship, dissembling, and even downright fraud. Examples of this can be shown in AIDS research, climatology and macroeconomics.

No doubt, politics, censorship, fraud and financial motives play a big part in sustaining the fallacies. I don't yet know the way out but its certainly won't be by yielding to the mafia.

[Joy Christian]

When heated disputes arise between scientists, even a layman can often get a sense when something is amiss. An explanation of that sense is in order.

Apart from what I and "minkwe" have noted, a more general sociological perspective on how science (not just physics) really works would be instructive. I recommend anyone interested in such questions to read this scholarly yet entertaining book (which is now a "classic"): http://www.amazon.com/dp/1107604656/ref=rdr_ext_tmb.

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[Ben6993]

Joy wrote:
I recommend anyone interested in such questions to read this scholarly yet entertaining book (which is now a "classic"): http://www.amazon.com/dp/1107604656/ref=rdr_ext_tmb.

By coincidence, I had this book in my hand yesterday at the university bookshop in Manchester, England. Nearly bought it but I have a few history books unread that I bought just before Christmas so I put 'Golem' back down. If I had seen the recommendation first I would have bought it!

[Joy Christian]

Certain scientific arguments can get clouded by politics, financial interests and/or personal rivalries. In such cases, the arguments of one side are subjected to censorship, dissembling, and even downright fraud. Examples of this can be shown in AIDS research, climatology and macroeconomics.

Is any of this present in quantum physics?

Yes, all of the above is present in physics, and much more. I have written about my personal experiences in this regard, and there is much more I cannot say in public.

Make no mistake. There are real academic gangsters who operate within the physics community, just as they do in the larger scientific community. This is especially true within the community of Bell-believers. Some of the bigshots act and behave just as how the mafia bosses act and behave, with the foot-soldiers like Richard Gill doing their dirty work on the street. See, for example, some of the papers by the physicist-turned-sociologist Prof. Brian Martin, who has investigated such phenomena extensively within science for many decades. Here is one of his latest papers on the subject, which analyzes the extent of just one aspect of this despicable practice.

Here is a direct quote from the above paper:

Struggles between academics can occur for a range of reasons, so each case is different, which is why case studies are important to document and analyze. Academics are under pressure to gain jobs and promotions, obtain personal prestige, add importance to their fields of research or teaching practice, and build networks of supporters. They are also playing out personal, psychological drives. Like other workplaces, some academic units contain people or groups that try to obtain material or symbolic resources in damaging ways. Universities tend to be a good context for narcissistic personalities with grandiose conceptions of their own worth that are threatened by others’ success. They can even have types of psychopaths, who think only of their own needs and have no concern for others, but who are often
convincing because of the peculiar dynamics of academic environments (Babiak & Hare, 2006). Especially when resources are at stake — funding, research grants, desirable courses to teach, promotions, new positions, new programs, graduate students to supervise, etc. — some academics can become vicious in their efforts to serve their own ends at the expense of others. As is ironically repeated, “Struggles in academia are especially nasty because the stakes are so small.”

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[optiongeek]

I'd like to suggest that the divergence from reality occurred much earlier than Bohr v. Einstein. Physics went off the rails when it accepted as fact a model of the electron that has proven to be so flawed that it can't predict ionization energies for ions with more than one proton. Everything that was added to the QM model after this simply increased it's instability.

Perhaps we should go back to the beginning and insist that a model for an electron actually answer some fairly simple questions with robustness:

1. Why does acceleration cause a distribution of charge density to radiate? Why is a bound electron stable to radiation? What accounts for spin?
2. What is the true nature of alpha and why does it only ever show up in equations that deal with matter but not photons?
3. What is the mass ratio of the electron to the proton/neutron? Why?
4. Why are there only three generations and what are the mass ratios between the leptons?
5. Why is there so much dark matter? Why is it so widely dispersed? Shouldn't we have detected it by now in high energy labs if it were created in normal stars?
6. Why does the transition of energy into matter also result in the creation of gravity?

These shouldn't be hard questions to answer, but these have remained impervious to Physics for decades. Perhaps we need to reexamine the predicates that were used to "solve" the electron in the first place because one would think the right model would have revealed answers to these questions by now.

Here's a couple of predicates I'd like to nominate off the bat, good 'ol Heisenberg (the uncertain) and his good buddy Schrödinger.

[Ben6993]

Wrt the first point in optiongeek's post.

Walking (unaccelerated) through a crowd of people, one can make uninterrupted progress [but you could gain mass in the higgs 'molasses' analogy] . Running, accelerating, through a crowd usually results in collisions. The latter analogy is equivalent, IMO, to when an electron emits a photon.

In the Standard Model weak isospin is not conserved. In my preon model I decided to make weak isospin a fundamental property of particles which is always conserved. The above Standard Model interaction can be described as, say:
LH electron plus acceleration gives off a RH electron plus a spin -1 photon
(-1, -0.5, -0.5) + acceleration -> (-1, 0.5, 0) + (0, -1, 0)
where parentheses refer to (electric charge, spin, weak isospin).
The total electric charge is -1 on both sides of the interaction and so is conserved.
The total spin is -0.5 on both sides of the interaction and so is conserved. [{Chiral} Spin is a conserved fundamental property in both SM and my preon model.]
Weak isospin is -0.5 coming into the interaction and is zero after the interaction and so is not conserved.

In my preon model this becomes:
(-1, -0.5, -0.5) + (0, 0, 0.5) -> (-1, 0.5, 0) + (0, -1, 0)
i.e. LH electron + higgs with weak isospin 0.5 -> RH electron + spin -1 photon
This higgs is a lighter higgs generation than the one recently discovered.

If you reverse this interaction one obtains the absorption of a spin -1 photon by a RH electron to give off a LH electron [in Standard Model] or give off a LH electron plus a light higgs [in my preon model].

But what if a spin -1 photon, or Z, interacts with a LH electron? It emits, in my preon model, a RH electron plus a graviton as follows:
(0, -1, 0) + (-1, -0.5, -0.5) -> (-1, 0.5, 0) + (0, -2, -0.5)
photon wih spin -1 + LH electron -> RH electron + graviton

References to my preon model:
http://vixra.org/abs/1511.0115
Hexark and Preon Model #7: for Standard Model Elementary Particles, Higgs, Gravitons, Dark Energy and Dark Matter

http://vixra.org/abs/1510.0338
Models for Quantum Gravity, Dark Matter and Dark Energy Using the Hexark and Preon Model #7

[optiongeek]

Thanks for your reply Ben6993, but I think you may have missed my point.

Simply iterating on the existing base of QM theory (and the Standard Model) to try to solve any one of these six problems at once is unlikely to produce a satisfactory result that solves them all simultaneously. I submit that were it possible to do with QM/Standard Model pedagogy, we would have seen it by now.

No, what I'm suggesting is that we test the idea that perhaps the Schrodinger wave equation is not the only solution that matches the ionization energies for H. That instead of a point particle, an electron might actually be modelled as an ensemble of current density. And that with these new predicates, we might start a new search for a solution that would provide a satisfactory answer for my six questions.

That's a tall order, because anyone who is capable of taking on this challenge likely has many years of their career invested in learning the nuances of the Standard Model and will resist any idea that it might not be true. I don't think the answer will come from a current member of the Physics establishment.

[Joy Christian]

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Here is another take on the same theme, just published in the Scientific American: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cro ... -its-fizz/

In the past (i.e., in my naïve, innocent, and idealistic youth) I had strongly disagreed with John Horgan's anti-physics stance. But now I think he has a point.

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[optiongeek]

Thanks, I sympathize with the author's sentiment but I, for one, am not willing to call it quits. I reject the notion that the ultimate rules of physics are self-concealing and we've gone as far as we're going to go.

I think we just need to reverse course to where we plainly went off the track and start over. Ditch Schrodinger, ditch Heisenberg, ditch the point-particle model of the electron, and see where it takes us.

[thray]

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Here is another take on the same theme, just published in the Scientific American: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cro ... -its-fizz/

In the past (i.e., in my naïve, innocent, and idealistic youth) I had strongly disagreed with John Horgan's anti-physics stance. But now I think he has a point.

***

I had the same attitude toward "ironic science," Joy. I hated Horgan's book so much I read it three times in a row. I so much enjoyed reading off-the-cuff brilliance from my science heroes.

And I still think there's room for novel advancement. Abstraction doesn't scare me.

[Tony_r]

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Here is another take on the same theme, just published in the Scientific American: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cro ... -its-fizz/
***

Horgan complains that:
'if theories are being passed off as science, shouldn’t they have at least a remote chance of being empirically corroborated? Otherwise, how do they differ from pseudoscientific ideas like intelligent design?'

Well of course empirical corroboration is required to be accepted as science and Horgan's desire for new 'facts' is understandable. However giving up on the current scenario which might be labeled as theory-rich but fact-light seems irrationally premature. That facts haven't materialized in his idea of an acceptable time frame is an intellectual capitulation spawned by petulant impatience. Whether there is anything of significance to be found that will shed insight about any of the theories Horgan dismisses is an open question but there won't be any possibility of insight if we stop looking.

And to return to Horgan's quote above about what is the difference between uncorroborated theories and the idiocy of intelligent design, Horgan himself provides the answer elsewhere in the essay. He refers to string theory as 'science fiction with equations' and it is the mathematical grounding of these esoteric theories that should motivate us to keep investigating to see if we can find ways to verify if any of them actually do model the reality in which we are embedded.