Hi, Kimmo. I hope you will forgive me, but I am going to hold off on elaborating on this point for now.
As for debate, I will gladly give you the names of all of the principle EU critics. They are:
Tom Bridgman
Note that Tom freely admits that the Electric Universe is not creationism, but he insists upon using this URL nevertheless. Many people never make it past the Bridgman pages. In fact, I’ve observed that a lot of people pass these Bridgman links around without any follow-up discussion – and apparently drop the subject right there.
You will find numerous arguments against the EU here. I’d be glad to walk you through one of these. Either way, what I would suggest is to pick a few and pursue them to their natural conclusion by tracking down the debate online, and when necessary interacting with both sides. That is the correct way to get a feel for it.
Joshua Schroeder
Go to the Wayback Machine and type in:
http://scienceapologist.wikinet.org/wiki/Joshua_P._Schroeder_(ScienceApologist)
Joshua has a habit of getting kicked off of wikipedia for his edits. Honestly, the EU more-or-less gave up on wikipedia a number of years ago. It’s not designed to document controversy. This is what education reformer, Joseph Novak, calls a “positivist” view of science. The problematic idea here is the premise that we can basically learn how to think like a scientist by learning what scientists think. That sharply contrasts with the constructivist take on science education, which positions knowledge as having important social aspects to it. For instance, Joshua speaking of himself (from the Wayback Machine link) …
I am ScienceApologist. People generally hate me because I am fairly uncompromising when it comes to describing academic science and oppositional pseudoscience. In fact, I’m more strident in writing the encyclopedia than in real life because I believe that an encyclopedia is meant to be first-stops and so general as to be blandly pedantic: a style of writing which does not lend itself to nuance but is rather offensively dismissive of the minority opinions in and outside of academia.
and a critique …
ScienceApologist gives a self-description that raises the suspicion that he, she, or they is or are in reality a Trojan Horse designed to discredit all who claim to defend science. I could not reach a conclusion as to whether or not this self-description was written satirically, because it is so perfect a send-up of the most extreme scientism — “scientism” being the quasi-religious belief that contemporary science is the place to get true answers to everything.
Leroy Ellenberger
Leroy likes to launch letter-writing campaigns – especially when he discovers that there is a laboratory which is permitting electrodynamic simulations of the universe. This sort of research apparently must be stopped before it can conclude. Leroy will tell you word-for-word what you said to him 20 years ago, so you’ve been warned.
APODNereid
APOD stands for Astronomy Picture of the Day, and a nereid is a sea nymph which protects “sailors” (ie, conventional thinkers are sailors, apparently) through rough seas. So, it would seem that APODNereid is on a mission of sorts. Not a lot is known about Nereid. The actual identity of this individual is a well-kept secret, but I don’t think anybody would be surprised if it ended up being one of the other individuals already on this list.
Tim Thompson
I’ve mentioned Tim before, in his questionable invitation to simultaneously critique the EU and justify the widespread refusal amongst astrophysicists to read IEEE’s Transactions on Plasma Science. He and Don Scott have exchanged rebuttals off-and-on. You can find these online.
Phil Plait
I believe Phil used to run CosmoQuest, back when it was the Bad Astronomy & Universe Today forum (bautforum.com). The BAUTForum was the official place where astrophysicists would use their pre-existing training in conventional theories to attempt to deconstruct competing paradigms & worldviews. It seems to have never occurred to them to try to actually elaborate ideas into competing models which could actually survive critique on a level playing field. Of course, Jeff Schmidt argues in Disciplined Minds that this is no accident. The BAUTForum also had a nasty habit of treating against-the-mainstream theorists like a form of pond scum. Many of these debate scripts are actually a bit hard to follow, because big chunks appear to be missing.
Since then, Phil has published a book on pseudoscience.
What is interesting about Phil Plait is that he and Wal Thornhill share a particular interest in the highly unusual cosmic object known as sn1987a. I believe that this was Phil’s dissertation topic, so one way to compare the two worldviews is to contrast their two very different takes on this specific cosmic object. Phil’s work seems to miss many of the features which Wal’s work points out, and what’s interesting is that Phil’s work repeatedly stresses uncertainty about what they are seeing.
Exploring this debate is actually an excellent way to appreciate the complexity of controversy in science more broadly. It was my own experiences following up on these debates back-and-forth with critics and theorists that I came to get a feel for the two sides’ concerns with one another. This is also how I came to understand that we should be mapping out the arguments systematically. In fact, I find it very problematic that the astrophysicists are not already dong this – and I think this speaks to their eagerness to judge competing ideas which appear to undermine their pre-existing knowledge. You will run into many people who like to imagine that they can wing this, in terms of keeping track of all of the complexity – and perhaps some can (?) – but this is exactly the type of problem that we should be solving with a knowledge graph.
And that’s a subject that I hope to talk more about, as this is where I am confident that online discourse is heading.
