Fake Physics Salesmen Will Not Help Us Avoid Fakery in Science Research

An article from not long ago discusses fraud in science research. We read this shocking statement (I'll boldface part of it):

"The U.S. financial system is hardly the greatest edifice of justice in the world. Yet, it demonstrates a basic level of self-policing, effort to uphold professional standards, and accountability to the rest of society. Academic institutions fall far short of these minimal standards. Known serial frauds are sheltered by their bosses and feted by their peers. The culture encourages this at every step of the way, starting with PhD candidates ordered to produce a positive result by any means necessary, continuing with coauthors and grantmakers who can’t be bothered to look at the data and check whether it makes any sense, all the way to department heads and famous bestsellers being widely cited even after they’ve been caught. Those who do not commit fraud themselves usually tolerate it in their peers. The minority who will not tolerate frauds usually weed themselves out quietly. I have lost count of how many friends of friends entered a PhD program, had an adviser who tacitly or explicitly demanded they commit fraud to get publishable results, and quit in disgust without raising a public stink. What that says about those who remain is not encouraging....With some honorable exceptions, most academics don’t care very much about the capital-T Truth....More likely, fraud will grow more and more common as young scientists realize that lies are the best way to advance their careers and that serious punishment is about as likely as being struck by lightning."

Towards its end, the article suggests that "hope rests with truthseekers outside academia." The author states this:

"More likely, reform will come through circumvention from outside the academic system. There is no shortage of people who pursue the sacred quest for Truth. Increasingly, they are not pushing forward the frontiers of knowledge in peer-reviewed journals and university campuses, but in fringe niches of internet discourse. Because the internet commentariat’s intellectual elite is more attentive to an argument’s substance than whether it observes the bureaucratic forms, these circles are much less vulnerable to the problems which afflict academia."

The article then refers us to a blogger that it claims as a great example of a truth-seeker.  I started reading his posts at the blogger's site. I was not very encouraged by the first posts I read, in which the blogger lectures us at great length about rationality, and tries to pass himself off as a rationalist. My experience has been that people lecturing you about rationality are often people clinging to irrational dogmas.  Often lectures about rationality are excuses for avoiding observational reports that conflict with someone's worldview such as a materialist worldview. The self-described "rationalist" will claim that 1001 types of things are "irrational," on the grounds that they do not fit in with his idea of how nature works.  That's a defective approach. It's much better to closely study observations that defy your expectations about how nature works, and modify such expectations and assumptions when necessary, rather than throwing away such observations and calling them "irrational." 

In one post the blogger repeats one of the most glaring errors of today's Darwinism. He states, "Evolution is powered by a systematic correlation between the different ways that different genes construct organisms, and how many copies of those genes make it into the next generation. " Genes do not construct organisms.  Genes only specify the amino acids sequences that make up protein molecules.  Genes have no specification of anything larger than a protein molecule. An organism is built out of a skeletal system and organ systems. Organ systems are built from organs and other components. Organs are built from tissues, which are built from cells, which are built from organelles, which are built from protein complexes, which are built from individual protein molecules.  By claiming that genes construct organisms, the blogger is saying something as wrong as claiming that nails and screws construct apartment buildings. 

Later in the same essay the blogger refers most erroneously to "fox genes which construct foxes" and "rabbit genes which construct rabbits." Genes do not construct visible things, and have no specification of any anatomy or cells. In the same article we have very nonsensical shadow-speaking in which humans are described as the faintest shadows of themselves. The blogger states, "We are simply the embodied history of which organisms did in fact survive and reproduce." Oops, our "rationalist" has given us the silliest kind of irrational shadow-speaking, in which humans are depicted as a billion times less than what they are. 

In another essay the blogger repeats the same errors, erroneously claiming that "DNA constructs protein brains." DNA is an inert molecule with no power of construction, and no specification of anything bigger than a protein molecule. DNA does not even have a specification of a neuron or any of the organelles that make up a neuron. 

A big section of the blogger's blog posts is devoted to selling reductionism. Very strangely, he states in one of his posts, "Ultimately, reductionism is just disbelief in fundamentally complicated things." It is rather obvious that we do not have here a careful student of biology, which everywhere presents us with examples of mountainously complex and enormously complicated things. Nowhere at the site do we get a sign that this blogger is a very thorough scholar of biology or any of the sciences.  It sounds as if he is relying mainly on armchair reasoning rather than in-depth investigation of facts and observations.  

In a later essay, the blogger makes this confession:

"So by the laws of science, if psychic powers are discovered, non-reductionism wins. I am therefore confident in dismissing psychic powers as a priori implausible, despite all the claimed experimental evidence in favor of them."

The blogger is apparently a psi denialist, one of the many so-called "rationalists" who refuse to study and accept two hundred years of compelling written evidence for the existence of telepathy and clairvoyance.  Nowhere in his very many blog posts do we have any sign  that the blogger has studied the evidence for paranormal phenomena. 

In another long section on the site, the blogger starts giving us posts trying to sell one of the most absurd and extravagant pieces of nonsense that humans have ever constructed:  the Fake Physics of Hugh Everett's "many worlds" theory that there are an infinite number of copies of you in parallel universes. Supported by zero evidence, this Fake Physics lunacy is as irrational as any doctrine ever taught. It is also the exact opposite of reductionism. Instead of stripping things down by reducing, the believer in Everett's "many worlds" theory is doing the worst conceivable extravagance in needlessly postulating an infinity of unobservable things. 

After reading this section, it becomes crystal-clear that the recommended blogger is neither a rationalist nor a reductionist. No one who tries to get us to believe in about the most irrational doctrine ever constructed can claim to be a rationalist, unless we define that term so that it includes the most irrational thinkers.  And no one claiming that there are an infinite number of copies of you in parallel universes can credibly claim to be a reductionist. The blogger loses all credibility when he most ludicrously states, " I write as if the existence of many-worlds were an established fact, because it is," referring to the doctrine of parallel universes, which is not supported by the slightest speck of evidence. The blogger in question lacks even a high-school diploma, so we need not take seriously his opinion on this matter, which is a matter related to the most abstruse quantum mechanics he does not understand. 

Materialism at its maddest, Everett's fake physics "many worlds" lunacy is morally destructive nonsense. It is morally destructive because anyone believing in it will tend to lose any basis for moral action. For example, if you are driving in winter, and you see a small child without a coat wandering on the road, you may say to yourself, "There are an infinite number of parallel universes in which that child will survive, and an infinite number of parallel universe in which she freezes to death, so I need not bother to help the child."  Never expect moral behavior from anyone who believes in this loony nonsense. Always expect dishonest speech from such people, who tend to supply us with abundant examples of their deceptive speech. 

For  the blogger to teach this most nonsensical of doctrines and also to try and pass himself off as a rationalist and reductionist is the most laughable farce. We should classify all believers in Everett's "many worlds" nonsense as being the most irrational of thinkers, and also thinkers engaged in something the exact opposite of reductionism.  

The author of the article with the opening quote gave us a good article exposing the problem of fraud and misconduct in today's scientific research. But near the end of the article he has given us a very big bum steer by mentioning a particular blogger as someone outside of academia we should go to for guidance. We should seek out diligent scholars outside academia; but we won't help fight the problem of fake research in academia by reading the posts of Fake Physics salesmen such as the recommended blogger. 

Postscript: A recent scientific paper informs us about how universities and colleges are covering up evidence of fraud and researcher misconduct:

"The vast majority of misconduct investigation reports, however, remain hidden from view. While summaries from the ORI and the US National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) Office of Inspector General are useful, they are not very detailed, and in the case of the NSF are carefully anonymized....And while public universities like Ohio State are subject to laws pertaining to the disclosure of public records, in our experience, such statutes in many states are not helpful for these types of records even for public universities. Some exempt investigation reports because they are considered personnel records; others require requesters to be residents of the relevant state; and still others consider all investigation reports to be drafts by claiming they are subject to revision until some final — and often malleable — decision by a state or federal agency... Universities often use exorbitant charges, based on the costs of legal review of relevant documents, to win their wars of attrition against requesters. And private universities are not subject to public records laws at all, of course....Recent experience suggests that in many cases, science is failing to self-regulate, prioritizing self-interests — on the part of both institutions and individuals — over reform. The existence of schemes such as citation cartels, paper mills, rigged peer review, and other abuses are clear indications many scientists are willing to take steps to game the publishing system. The rapid encroachment of artificial intelligence into the production of journal articles poses perhaps the largest threat yet to the integrity of scientific research."