Darren New wrote:
> If the new theory actually does explain *most* phenomena but maybe not
> all, I don't think it gets rejected out of hand.  I was considering
> primarily what you'd call the "crackpot" theories. (I haven't watched a
> lot of Joseph's videos, but they don't seem scholarly to me. :-)

	Well, I think it's a philosophy that's an overreaction from crackpots,
that unfortunately has become a prevalent mentality. Imagine if
Schrodinger's Equation, when formulated, was found to be inconsistent
with some actual measured GR phenomenon, and they simply wouldn't allow
it to be taught in schools, for example.

> But yes, now I understand what you meant when you said "a philosophy you
> never understood", and I see you're probably seeing reasonable theories
> rejected more often than I do (since I'm no longer in the
> theory-investigation business).

	Well, not for anything serious (as I don't know particle theory, etc -
I'm not a physicist - I just *do* physics<G>). At a much smaller level,
I think this is common in a lot of scientific disciplines. A colleague
of mine had trouble publishing a paper some years ago. His paper
proposed a theory that explained some previously unexplained phenomena
in carbon nanotubes, but lacked feature B (a hypothesized form of a
phonon, if you need to know). B had been used in the past to explain
some phenomena in nanotubes, but was a much more sophisticated theory.

	It's important to note here that no one had ever observed B (those
kinds of phonons) in the lab (which doesn't mean they don't exist - just
that it's hard to measure).

	For a while, the paper was rejected purely because it didn't account
for B. The referees wanted to know how his theory ties in with B (it
doesn't - he was pointing out the results could be explained without
resorting to B altogether).

	So here's a situation where a theory explained a phenomenon and matched
experimental results well (after some parameter tweaking). It was a
simple model that didn't involve as yet unmeasured particles. Yet
somehow the onus was on him to show it explains everything B does...

	(He got it published eventually).

-- 
For Sale: Parachute. Only used once, never opened, small.


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