Something like virology is not a social science, but that does not mean that we should confuse it with the hard sciences. This sort of scam could not have been pulled in something like physics, let alone for a year.
Possibly. But the black holes in question would be so small that they wouldn't be able to attract anything.
My point wasn't that physicists are infallible. The whole history of ether should show that. It's that there is a much more healthy discourse in a discipline when you cannot smuggle in wholesale fraud because many of your fellow members agree with it. There is an external test, as Thomas Sowell said.
The problem is peer review, which has morphed from a form of quality control into a puritanical kind of establishment gatekeeping. Most of the greatest advances in physics and every other discipline were published before peer review was really a thing: none of Einstein's big papers were peer reviewed before they were published, for example. In those days, anything could be published and if another scientist disagreed, they could publish their own dissenting paper in the same journal.
These days, radical dissentions from established scientific narratives, especially ones touching on politically charged issues like climate change or the efficacy of masks, can't get published in most major journals, because external reviewers have the power to squash them. Often these reviewers are academic insiders with their own careers and reputations invested in scholarship that upholds the status quo.
Something like virology is not a social science, but that does not mean that we should confuse it with the hard sciences. This sort of scam could not have been pulled in something like physics, let alone for a year.
Aren't the physicists making the experiments that can potentially create s black hole and other ridicalous scenarios like that?
Possibly. But the black holes in question would be so small that they wouldn't be able to attract anything.
My point wasn't that physicists are infallible. The whole history of ether should show that. It's that there is a much more healthy discourse in a discipline when you cannot smuggle in wholesale fraud because many of your fellow members agree with it. There is an external test, as Thomas Sowell said.
The problem is peer review, which has morphed from a form of quality control into a puritanical kind of establishment gatekeeping. Most of the greatest advances in physics and every other discipline were published before peer review was really a thing: none of Einstein's big papers were peer reviewed before they were published, for example. In those days, anything could be published and if another scientist disagreed, they could publish their own dissenting paper in the same journal.
These days, radical dissentions from established scientific narratives, especially ones touching on politically charged issues like climate change or the efficacy of masks, can't get published in most major journals, because external reviewers have the power to squash them. Often these reviewers are academic insiders with their own careers and reputations invested in scholarship that upholds the status quo.
Peer Review in its earliest form was a way for the Catholic Church to dictate science. The only thing that has changed today is the cabal in charge.