Anyone with alternative theories they wish to discuss should follow a few simple procedures . . . .
Note from the Linguistics Moderator
I always gnash my teeth when I see the word "theory" used this way. Unfortunately I can't rant about it since
scientists themselves misuse the word.
A
theory (in science) is a hypothesis that has been proven
true beyond a reasonable doubt. Plate tectonics, evolution, relativity: these are theories because there is no
reasonable doubt about them; 99.999% of the doubts are from
crackpots, religionists, politicians with an agenda, and
precocious teenagers who have taken a few science classes and think they now know everything.
What about that .001%? That's the one professional scientist who has a PhD in this particular science (physics, biology, etc.), has been working in it for 20 years and is regarded as a leader, and who has spent 5 years being bothered by what seems to be a teeny-weeny anomaly in the canonical theory. You won't see this guy on SciForums. He's doing his work the right way and has even already consulted with the scientist who presented the original theory if he's still alive, or if not, with the current leaders in the field. He's not going to shoot his mouth off before his
hypothesis has been peer-reviewed and other scientists find it to be promising--because if he's wrong and spoke too soon, no one will ever
respect him again.
Don't present the theory as fact...don't present it as something that is a fait accompli. It most certainly isn't.
Don't even present it as a "theory." As I noted above, it is nothing more than a
hypothesis at this point. As I also noted, the word is often used incorrectly, even by scientists, who are notoriously poor communicators, especially when talking to us laymen. These are the guys who blithely talk about "String Theory," which is nothing more than some really cool math and a lot of arm-waving.
Whatever you have at the very least, must be able to explain and predict better then the incumbent model.
That's where a lot of wannabee scientists go off the rails: they fail to even
try to explain why their hypothesis is better than the canonical theory. It makes so much sense
to them that they don't feel the need to prove it
to us.
Peer review may not be perfect, but it is absolutely necessary. The participants of any forum one sets out his alternative theory on, are your peers.
Actually, the beauty of the peer review process is that in order to review another scientist's work, you only have to be
almost as good as he is; you don't actually have to be in his class. This means that for any scientist there are hundreds of other scientists who are qualified to review his work. Unless he's Einstein, he can probably find a dozen of them within driving distance.
If you think you have accomplished a theory overriding Evolution, SR, GR, the BB, QM, or Newton, you most certainly have not: 100 years and more of past giants, and the 100's of books and papers since, means that you will not invalidate such overwhelmingly supported ideas in a few words or posts:
Although this is true (beyond a reasonable doubt
), it's not an effective way to communicate with the people you're trying to reach. What they need to understand is that what they are, in effect, attempting to do, is to
peer-review Darwin, or Einstein, or Newton, or whoever developed the canonical theory they're challenging. At this point they should take to heart what I said earlier: You are not qualified to peer-review someone else's work unless you truly are his
peer. You must have a PhD in the same science, you must have specialized in the same field, and you must have spent the last ten years going over his work and finding little nits that don't sit well. Otherwise you simply don't understand the canonical theory deeply enough to be able to challenge it.
In all likelihood you are not Einstein, Newton, Hawking, Bohr or Feynman
If you are, you have an advanced degree, you've been working in the field for 20 years, and you've already bounced your ideas off of the modern leaders in the field, so your own errors have been corrected and you understand the issue even better now.
Since most seem to agree with the OP, the next step from where I'm sitting is, realizing that sometimes there are some genuine smart people that are able to come up with some viable alternative. So, how do we sort the true genuine alternative theorist from the troll, the average Joe Blow that is simply suffering delusions of grandeur, and the pseudoscientist?
It takes a long time to learn that much science, so for starters he's going to be at least 40 with a PhD.
I think we have a total of about eight members here who have those qualifications. And isn't it interesting that
these are the members who never claim to have found the flaw in relativity. Or heliocentricity.
And the ability to imagine beyond the general accepted parameters of the general accepted science.
Any dedicated science fiction fan can do that. What they generally cannot do is explain why they believe one of the parameters is wrong. Just because Captain Picard had a transporter and warp drive doesn't mean that these things can be developed in the universe on the other side of the TV screen.
The second piece of this is that the word "mainstream" has become mangled, in the lexicon of the anti-science fiends, to convey political impact, such as "fascist" or "authoritarian". That's not the literal meaning of the word, so to be clear it would be better for you to say "fascist" if that's what you mean.
Actually, "mainstream" applies to art, politics and other culture where taste, fashion and popularity are at play. It does not apply to science. If someone utters or writes the phrase "mainstream science," it is safe to ignore anything else he says.
Finally, the main problem with this question is that posters never actually have theories at all. Not in the scientific sense. They simply have wild ideas, usually either completely unfounded or entirely imaginary, which don't even qualify as alternative theories. But the site encourages them to keep thinking, by awarding them probationary status as "alternative theorists" -- which is entirely well intentioned. It's just chronically abused because of the high incidence of cranks.
Since SciForums is not an academy, and also since the people who own the website insist on making a profit (non-members are bombarded with advertisements), we can't run this place like an academy. A real academy would not even have a Department of Crackpottery and Pseudoscience.
Clearly the best advice anyone can give is "Stop trolling. Get off your lard-padded duff and work a few high school math problems. Challenge yourself. Stop pretending the experts are naive tyrants. Why are you on this site if you hate science? Go away. Go bother the anti-science fiends at places like ICR."
Again, the people you're talking to are exactly the people who don't realize that you're talking to
them. They're positive that they are scientists.
