"A thing that is hoped or wished for but in fact is illusory or impossible to achieve." -- Google definition of "chimera."
Let us take a look at some Big Science projects which were funded mainly because scientists were very eager to find things that they eagerly hoped to find, things that are probably purely imaginary.
The first example involves the Large Hadron Collider, a project that has cost nearly 5 billion dollars. Now, you may say that the Large Hadron Collider should not be on this list, because this gigantic machine was built to find evidence of the Higgs Boson, and such evidence was found. But the claim that the Higgs Boson had been discovered was announced in 2012, and the Large Hadron Collider has been running since then, at a very high annual cost that has been estimated at about 1 billion dollars a year. Why were so many billions spent to keep the Large Hadron Collider running? Mainly to search for some of the cherished chimeras of physicists: the "superpartner" particles predicted by supersymmetry theory.
The issue of the fine-tuning of the Higgs mass (the mass of the Higgs boson) was skillfully explained by physicist Ben Allanach in a previous article at the Aeon site:
"Behind the question of mass, an even bigger and uglier problem was lurking in the background of the Standard Model: why is the Higgs boson so light? In experiments it weighed in at 125 times the mass of a proton. But calculations using the theory implied that it should be much bigger – roughly ten million billion times bigger, in fact....Quantum fluctuations of ultra-heavy particle pairs should have a profound effect on the Higgs boson, whose mass is very sensitive to them....One logical option is that nature has chosen the initial value of the Higgs boson mass to precisely offset these quantum fluctuations, to an accuracy of one in 1016. However, that possibility seems remote at best, because the initial value and the quantum fluctuation have nothing to do with each other. It would be akin to dropping a sharp pencil onto a table and having it land exactly upright, balanced on its point. In physics terms, the configuration of the pencil is unnatural or fine-tuned. Just as the movement of air or tiny vibrations should make the pencil fall over, the mass of the Higgs shouldn’t be so perfectly calibrated that it has the ability to cancel out quantum fluctuations. However, instead of an uncanny correspondence, maybe the naturalness problem with the Higgs boson could be explained away by a new, more foundational theory: supersymmetry."
In an article in Symmetry magazine, we have a similar explanation:
"To understand what’s fishy about the observable Higgs mass being so low, first you must know that it is actually the sum of two inputs: the bare Higgs mass (which we don’t know) plus contributions from all the other Standard Model particles, contributions collectively known as “quantum corrections.” The second number in the equation is an enormous negative, coming in around minus 1018 GeV. Compared to that, the result of the equation, 125 GeV, is extremely small, close to zero. That means the first number, the bare Higgs mass, must be almost the opposite, to so nearly cancel it out. To some physicists, this is an unacceptably strange coincidence."
How big a coincidence? The Symmetry article later quotes physicist Lawrence Lee Jr. as saying “the conundrum with the Higgs mass, which would require fine-tuning on the order of 1-in-1034,” which is a coincidence like the coincidence of you correctly guessing the full phone numbers of three consecutive strangers.
Scientists should have just accepted this case of very precise fine-tuning in nature. But instead, many of them made a long, quixotic, futile attempt to overthrow it (like someone trying to overthrow the observation that the sun is hot, with some elaborate theory trying to explain how the sun isn't really hot). Why did they do that? Because they had a motivation, an ideological motivation rather than the motivation of simply discovering truth. Their ideological motivation was related to a belief that the universe should not be anything that looked like a product of design. This ideological motivation is clearly stated in the Symmetry article by physicist Lee, who states it as follows: “In general, what we want from our theories—and in some way, our universe—is that nothing seems too contrived.” If you want for the universe to not "seem too contrived," then you may twist yourself into knots trying to explain away cases of apparent fine-tuning in the universe.
An article last year makes it rather clear that the supersymmetry theory was mainly motivated by a desire to get rid of a case of fine-tuning, and make the universe look like it was a little less lucky, a little less providentially blessed. We read this:
"For example, the small mass of the Higgs boson is notoriously difficult to explain—its calculation requires subtracting two very large numbers that just happen to be slightly different from each other. 'But if you add supersymmetry, this takes care of all these cancellations such that you can get a light Higgs mass without needing to have such luck,' says Elodie Resseguie, a postdoc at the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory."
All attempts to get evidence for the theory of supersymmetry have failed. The "superpartner" particles that are the core of supersymmetry theory are chimeras that scientists wanted to believe in so badly that they wasted billions in futile attempts to find them. Scientists also wasted countless millions in federally funded dollars spinning out endless different speculative versions of the supersymmetry theory. A search for "supersymmetry" papers on the Cornell physics paper server gives more than 15,000 matches. Physicists seem to have spent more hours speculating about supersymmetry theories than medieval theologians spent speculating about angels and the Second Coming, with the results being as futile.
Another type of cherished chimera which scientists spent endless effort and countless dollars on was cosmic inflation. Not to be confused with the undisputed reality of cosmic expansion (the expansion of the universe), cosmic inflation is the idea that the universe underwent a very unusual exponential expansion during its first instant. Like the endless versions of supersymmetry theory, scientists have created endless versions of the theory of cosmic inflation, which all have in common the claim that the universe expanded at an exponential rate in its first instant, rather than the normal linear rate of expansion we now observe.
Just as supersymmetry was invented to try to avoid a very dramatic case of apparent fine-tuning in nature, cosmic inflation theories were created to try to avoid a very dramatic case of apparent fine-tuning in nature: the apparent fine-tuning of the universe's expansion rate at the very beginning of the Big Bang to about 1 part in ten to the fiftieth power. Just as scientists produced endless thousands of papers producing countless versions of the supersymmetry theory, scientists produced many thousands of papers producing countless versions of the cosmic inflation theory.
For many decades cosmologists have been lost in a strange little world of fantasy whenever they dealt with this cosmic inflation theory. No evidence has ever existed that the theory is true. As different versions of the theory have kept failing, cosmologists keep producing new versions of the theory; and by now there are hundreds of versions of it, making predictions all over the map.
All attempts to provide some empirical support for the theory of primordial cosmic inflation have failed. Cosmic inflation theories predict something called primordial B-modes, but nothing has come from searches for primordial B-modes that have gone on for years with fancy expensive equipment. A 2019 article states, "Models such as natural and quadratic inflation that were popular several years ago no longer seem tenable, says theorist Marc Kamionkowski of Johns Hopkins University." But rather than discarding a theoretical approach that isn't working, our cosmologists keep spinning out more and more speculative ornate versions of the theory (which already has hundreds of different versions). Cosmic inflation theory is correctly described as tribal folklore, the tribe being the very small band of people who describe themselves as cosmologists.
Gravitational waves have been discovered, but not the primordial gravitational waves predicted by cosmic inflation theory. Noting the complete failure of searches for the primordial B-modes, a scientist recently stated, "If, however, future measurements continue to find no gravitational-wave signal, it will likely imply that we must seriously reconsider our inflationary models or perhaps dismiss inflation altogether, which would be a significant paradigm shift." A more candid version of that statement would say something like this: "All these observational failures are making it pretty clear that cosmologists have been wasting their time for forty years messing around with groundless theories of primordial cosmic inflation."
It cannot be said for sure whether dark matter and dark energy are cherished chimeras that scientists have wasted very many billions looking for. But thus far it seems like such things are merely fond fantasies of astrophysicists. Call them "dark darlings" of the modern cosmologist, who loves them because it allows him to speak as if he understands the composition of the universe and the motion dynamics of stars and galaxies, something cosmologists do not actually seem to understand. Wikipedia.org lists 34 dark matter search missions, all of which have failed. A single 2019 press release mentions a 24 million dollar price tag, and some online sources say hundreds of millions have been spent in the futile quest for dark matter. At the "Dark Matter Crisis" blog (www.darkmattercrisis.wordpress.com), we have a post that looks like this, one that estimates more than half a billion dollars is being spent per year related to the fruitless quest for dark matter:
The post states the following:
"The dark-matter based models were clearly ruled out already in 2010 (read 'Local-Group tests of dark-matter concordance cosmology . Towards a new paradigm for structure formation') and definitely falsified in 2012 (read 'The Dark Matter Crisis: Falsification of the Current Standard Model of Cosmology'). Today, ten years later, ample time has passed even for the dimmest scientist to be able to catch up. Given that the arguments against dark matter have not been shown to be invalid, and have in fact multiplied manyfold (see the iai piece above), it is simply not to be understood from a rational point of view why we keep expending so many valuable resources into a falsified theory while, at the same time, suppressing a highly interesting and successful alternative [MOND]. The scientists who continue pushing for this falsified dark-matter theory are hurting the sciences and are, by ignoring the falsifications, being unscientific. They appear to behave more like ancient Egyptian priests who fervently guard their particular god(s) to thrive on the citizens by faking the ability for communicating with these imaginary deities. What keeps this system going? The LCDM [lambda cold dark matter] model is a gold of mine for those, the 'LCDM priests', who are able to sell the dark matter and dark energy stories to the funding agencies."
A post by a scientist describes a case of blowing lots of money chasing a cherished chimera, a search for a Weakly Interacting Massive Particle that could be a type of dark matter:
"This scenario became known as the 'WIMP miracle' scenario, because it seems like a miraculous coincidence that putting in these parameters would lead to the expected weak interaction-based cross-section just popping out. For many years, a series of direct detection experiments were conducted, with the hope that the WIMP miracle scenario would turn out to be real. As of late 2022, there is no evidence that this is the case, and the cross-section limits from experiments such as XENON have ruled out the standard WIMP miracle scenario in practically every reasonable incarnation."
DNA anatomy blueprints are another imaginary chimera that scientists spent billions looking for. The cost of the Human Genome Project has been estimated at 3 billion dollars. In the 1990's we were told that this expense was justified, because the project would discover a DNA specification for building humans, a genetic plan for what makes us us. All kinds of groundless claims were made about DNA and genes as part of the sales job for the Human Genome Project. But no DNA anatomy blueprint was ever found in DNA. The Human Genome Project was completed about 2001. All that was ever found in DNA and its genes was low-level chemical information, such as which amino acids make up particular proteins. No one ever found a blueprint for making a human, or a recipe for making a human, or a specification for the human body, or a genotype that maps a phenotype. We can't quite call this a case of "blowing billions," because at least the human genome (the contents of DNA) was mapped, an accomplishment of some scientific value.
After the Human Genome Project was finished, our scientists never announced their failure to find the chimera of a DNA anatomy blueprint, something we had been told countless times would be discovered by the project. In government web sites built to hype the Human Genome Project, you can still read the lies that were told to drum up support for the project or to extol the project: false claims that DNA is a specification for how to build bodies. In the Guardian, science writer Phillip Ball says this about the Human Genome Project that ended in 2001:
"But a blizzard of misleading rhetoric surrounded the project, contributing to the widespread and sometimes dangerous misunderstandings about genes that now bedevils the genomic age. So far, there have been few attempts to set the record straight. Even now, the National Human Genome Research Institute calls the HGP an effort to read 'nature’s complete genetic blueprint for building a human being' – the 'book of instructions' that 'determine our particular traits'. A genome, says the institute, 'contains all of the information needed to build and maintain that organism'. But this deterministic 'instruction book' image is precisely the fallacy that genomics has overturned, and the information in the genome is demonstrably incomplete. Yet no one associated with genomic research seems bothered about correcting these false claims...Plenty remain happy to propagate the misleading idea that we are 'gene machines' and our DNA is our 'blueprint'."
Another cherished chimera that scientists have blown hundreds of millions or billions seeking is the engram: a supposed part of the brain offering evidence of memory storage in brains. Over decades neuroscientists have spent billions of dollars looking for some place that offers evidence of physical memory storage in brains, but have found no convincing evidence of such a thing.
There are claims in the neuroscience literature that engrams have been observed, but all such claims are spurious. No solid evidence has ever produced for the discovery of an engram in any type of organism. Just as there are some unjustified claims to have observed dark matter, there are some unjustified claims to have observed engrams. I can describe the typical affair that goes on when neuroscientists claim to observe an engram:
(1) Scans will be made of some tiny parts of an animal's brain (typically synapses) before the animal is subjected to some type of learning, typically fear conditioning involving training the animal to fear electrical shocks when it touches some shock plate in its cage.
(2) The animal will then be subjected to some learning program, such as fear conditioning.
(3) Scientists will then rescan the animal's brain, looking for some tiny part of the brain (such as synapses) that underwent some very tiny little change, such as synapse strengthening.
(4) Upon finding such a tiny change in any one region, such as a little strengthening of synapses somewhere, the scientists will triumphantly announce that they have discovered an engram, presuming that the little change that occurred must be an example of physical memory storage. The tiny change found may be called "learning-dependent synaptic modification."
This type of utterly fallacious technique has gone on in quite a few scientific studies. It is easy to explain why the technique offers no good evidence for engrams. The problem is that synapses are constantly undergoing what is called random remodeling or stochastic remodeling. This is partially the result of the very short lifetimes of the proteins that make up synapses. Such proteins have average lifetimes of only a few weeks or less. Also, synapses are attached to units called dendritic spines, which have short lifetimes, typically only weeks or months. Synapses are rather like the sand of the edge of the seashore, which is constantly being remodeled by the action of wind and waves.
Accordingly, it is fallacious to search out for some tiny bit of synaptic matter that looks different after some learning occurred, and to claim that this shows that the tiny bit of synaptic matter must have changed because memory storage occurred. Given a brain in which synaptic matter is constantly undergoing random changes, like the constantly remodeling sand at the edge of the seashore, we have no basis for suspecting that some change in the synaptic matter was caused by memory storage rather than mere random changes such as typically occur throughout the synapses of the brain.
Using the Google NGram Viewer (which can search for the number of occurrences of a search phrase in the vast number of books indexed by Google books), we can search for how often the term "engram" has been used in the past 70 years. The result below is just what we expect if no real progress had been made in discovering an engram. Instead of seeing a rising line, we see a decrease in uses of the term.
Rather than use the term "engram," neuroscientists often push the same idea by claiming that memories are stored in "connection patterns" or "synaptic patterns." A search for the uses of those phrases hints at how they enjoyed a short heydey, followed by a reduction in popularity (just as we would expect if no evidence had been found for memories stored in connection patterns or synaptic patterns):
Searches for engrams have failed to produce any convincing evidence for them. What would be a convincing discovery of an engram? It might go something like this: scientists would be able to read memory information from the brain of a dead man. So given the corpse of John Hypothetica, and not told who the person was, the scientists would be able to read some memory information that would only be found in the head of John Hypothetica. For example, they might say, "Upon examining his synapses we found a memory that he had once been married to someone named Violetta." No such thing has ever happened. A memory has never been read from the brain of a dead man or any organism. And scientists have never been able to extract a memory after removing brain tissue from the brain of a living person.
Short of finding a memory in the brain of a dead person, one that could be read to discover something about who the person was or what he had learned, the next best thing would simply be to find evidence that brains stored the symbolic tokens that are the hallmark of information storage. Below are some examples of symbolic tokens.
There are symbolic tokens in the brain, but only the same type of tokens found in almost every cell: the nucleotide tokens in DNA that specify mere amino acids, according to the system of representation called the genetic code. No other type of symbolic token has ever been found in the brain. Scientists never found human memory information by examining brain tissue, and they have never found any symbolic tokens that could be the basis of some memory representation system they don't understand. Together such facts (and many other reasons discussed here) tell us that the notion of memory engrams in the brain is a chimerical one. We know from computers and from books the type of things found in a system allowing the fast retrieval of stored information, things such as indexing, addressing and sorting. The human brain has no such things.
The fact is that humans can instantly form complex new memories, a fact completely contrary to the prevailing idea that memories form from "synapse strengthening," a sluggish process that would take many minutes or hours. The fact is that humans can remember things very well for 50 years or more, something completely inconsistent with claims that memories are stored in the synapses of brains, very unstable things subject to constant turnover and remodeling because of the short lifetimes of synapse proteins and the instability of dendritic spines which synapses are attached to. The fact is that given any of very many thousands of one-word prompts such as "Waterloo" or "Dickens," humans can instantly retrieve complex relevant information, something that should be impossible in a brain because of its total lack of the things (addressing, indexing and sorting) that make possible instant information retrieval.
In a book a neuroscientist (Darold A. Treffert) discussed many marvels of human memory and enormously fast human thinking that should have been utterly impossible for a brain, given its speed limitations, high protein turnover in synapses, and unreliable signal transmission (synapses in the cortex transmit nerve signals with only 10% to 50% reliability). In many cases Treffert discusses such marvels of memory and blazing fast thinking occurring in people with heavily damaged brains. The items discussed were only some of the marvels of the human mind and memory discussed here, all showing humans thinking so fast and remembering so well that such mental activity cannot be explained by brains. On page 207-208 of the book the neuroscientist Treffert considers some facts that throw into doubt all claims of memories being stored in brains. He states this about memory storage:
"Is storage electrical? If so, then why aren't memories permanently destroyed during an epileptical seizure, which is truly an electrical storm in the brain -- as can be witnessed by watching an EEG during a seizure? Or, if storage is electrical, why aren't memories permanently affected when a patient receives electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), during which time an electrical current is passed through the brain ? If storage is electromagnetic in the same manner that storage of 'memories' on tape or storage of data on a computer is, then why isn't memory permanently affected by a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) brain scan, during which the brain is subjected to tremendous magnetic fields? Try that with some tapes or disks. If storage is an actual physical storage, like grooves on a phonograph disk, why isn't there some clear evidence of that process in microscopic examination of the brain?"
Alas, our neuroscientist then stumbles by saying that these are "questions I guess we will need to leave for the future." No, rather that "sweeping under the rug" so many facts that conflict with prevailing dogmas by "leaving them for the future," we should instead be drawing an inference from such facts, and countless other facts of neuroscience and human observation, after very carefully studying them by doing things such as reading posts like those you can read at my blog www.headtruth.blogspot.com, or reading up on countless reports of people floating out of their bodies and viewing them from above during near-death experiences. The inference that follows from such observations and facts is that the brain does not store memories and does not produce the human mind.
There is a way for scientists to get a very high "bang for the buck" in research. That way is:
(1) Spend a great deal of time analyzing important-seeming observational reports that have already been made, insteading of "sweeping under the rug" and ignoring observational reports conflicting with your cherished beliefs.
(2) Do research looking for more examples and a greater understanding of things that many people have already reported seeing, rather than trying to discover new types of things that no one has ever reported seeing.
Were scientists to follow such an approach, they would spend far more time and money researching things such as apparitions and near-death experiences and ESP and unexplained healing (all abundantly supported already by observations) than looking for things they hope to find which no one has ever reported seeing (such as supersymmetry superpartner particles).
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