The Virtue of Heresy

[HysteryDiagnosis]

http://www.amazon.com/Virtue-Heresy-Confessions-Dissident-Astronomer/dp/1434307271

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41u8KyAzWWL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg

5.0 out of 5 stars "The Iron SUN"
What a great book!

What an adventure!

If you like philosophy, quantum physics, cosmology, string theories, Theories of Everything, Neutron Stars,... Read more
Published 8 days ago by Clifford S. Saunders

2.0 out of 5 stars Not the ravings of a madman - but one verging on crank status
Definitely not a crank - yet. However, books like this could be immensely shorter if they left out the "The whole scientific community is wrong about everything, their whole... Read more
Published 10 months ago by Marion Delgado

5.0 out of 5 stars A great and entertaining review of cosmology
A wonderful book about science that's relevant on many levels. The interspersed history of philosophers and scientists, and the importance of their contributions makes science... Read more
Published 18 months ago by Paul Schroeder

5.0 out of 5 stars Academic suppression of ideas?
I have just ordered this book BECAUSE of the negative feedback. It is incredible to me the absolute venom generated when someone has the audacity to think outside of the box in... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Steve S. Jones

5.0 out of 5 stars EXCELLENT!
My name is Oliver K. Manuel, Emeritus Professor of Nuclear Chemistry and Space Physics.

Here is my research profile: http://myprofile.cos. Read more
Published 20 months ago by Oliver K. Manuel

3.0 out of 5 stars Before you accept that five-star review average at face value...
... You might like to consider the following:

Before I posted this review, there were 6 reviews for this book, all of them awarding the maximum five stars. Read more
Published on March 9, 2008 by O. Buxton

5.0 out of 5 stars The Joy of Fighting Dogma with the Truth
Hilton Ratcliffe's is a real joy to read. With his humour and his stories.
but his book is the first science book I have read this year that makes you
think about... Read more
Published on October 3, 2007 by Gregory B. Murphy

5.0 out of 5 stars I am no rocket scientist and I found it to be very readable and intellectually stimulating.
Throughout history (particularly in the religious arena) heresies have been punished by immolation, excommunication or at least banishment. Read more
Published on August 1, 2007 by M. J. Jameson

5.0 out of 5 stars THE VIRTUE OF HERESY: Confessions of a dissident astronomer
Hilton is a great storyteller.

Curious minds of all ages will thrill to his telling of a journey through the real universe. Read more
Published on July 23, 2007 by C. Manuel

5.0 out of 5 stars A review by prof Kiril Panov
2nd Edition now out:The Virtue of Heresy: Confessions of a Dissident Astronomer

(a review by Prof Kiril Panov, PhD, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences)

The... Read more

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. "The Ranting of Mad Man" 1 out of 5 stars.

"I was a particle physicist by training but had only cursory exposure to cosmology. Over the years, I have observed at least three cases of mass-hallucination among the majority of the practitioners of an academic displine, including String in particle physics, portfolio theory in finance and cognitive dissonance in psychology, so I was quite intrigued by the prospect of seeing the same phenomenon again in cosmology. In fact, I was eager to believe what the author promised in his self-promotion.

What a disappointment this book turns out to be! The first reading was painful beyond words already because of the author's shockingly dilettant understanding of even very basic concepts in physics. For example, he could not even give a half-decent definition of "matter", which should have been easy for any good undergrad physics majors. His rambling diatribe against evolution was so incoherent, I had to give up on making any sense of it after several valiant tries.

Still, among the nonsensical garbage that permeates this book, I was at first drawn to two specific alternatives to mainstream cosmology theory: That the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation is really faint glows of Inter-Stellar Gas, and that quasars' red-shifts come from gravitationial well instead of Doppler effect. But after half an hour of wiki-ing as well as digging into my memory of those graduate school courses, it became plain to me that neither claims hold much water in the way they were presented. The details of the reasoning are a little beyond the scope of a short blurb here, but it suffices to say that the mainstream theories in cosmology are backed not by one, not even by dozens, but by literally hundreds of different and independent real-life observations. The alternatives this author so fervently believes in are viable for only one or two of those experiments. The author simply does not even attempt to provide a coherent or complete explanation for all the features of CMBR or quasars. Some researchers following similar lines of thoughts, known as plasma cosmology, have made better efforts toward this end (see The Big Bang Never Happened: A Startling Refutation of the Dominant Theory of the Origin of the Universe), but largely failed to confer with new data of the last decade. By ignoring these negative results, this book certainly does nothing to advance the plasma-cosmology cause among the informed.

In retrospect, I probably should have known better and seen that mass-hallucination was highly unlikely to occur in a field like Cosmology in the first place. The disaster that was string happened because particle physics was without experimental inputs for 30 years. Portfolio theory is such a mess because anyone who knows better would simply keep his mouth shut and go make some real money by trading on his superior knowledge. Cognitive dissonance may still turn out to be a valid idea, albeit to a lesser degree than previously thought, even though the statistical methodology underlying the bulk of existing literature has been shown to be unsound, but that is what can be expected when social scientists attempt to do real math without outside help. Cosmology, on the other hand, is an experimental science through and through. Its practitioners are well trained in physics and math. They also have every incentive to publish as quickly and frankly as possible. This is simply not a field where a maverick with good new insights will be suppressed for long."

"I just notice that, of the nine 5-star reviews, one is from the author himself and another from a Christian fundamentalist. The other seven all come from reviewers whose only Amazon review is on this book. It is pretty obvious that they are the friends and family of the author. I hereby challenge them to declare that they do not know the author personally, or they have actually paid real money for the book like I did.

It is really pathetic for people to write things that are patently untrue for money or favor. I call that academic prostitution. We probably have seven such prostitutes here, assuming that they have some common sense to see through the junk argument in the book. The alternative, that some tenured professors actually believe in this fantastic tale, will be a truly sad indictment on the state of higher education at the respective institution.

As for the substance of the book, I am still waiting for someone to actually defend the author's rambling definition of "matter", which should be something that the educated half of the general public will be able to judge. While he is on that subject, maybe he can also enlighten the rest of us on why evolution theory "fails completely" in the author's view. (Let me list a few quotes from the book: "We are designed to evolve." "Species have a divine destiny." "The more complex structure can be created..., but for this to happen consistently a template is essential." "the act of encoding the template...needs additional 'intelligence'." "The crucial point here is that...some of the organs that keep us alive are intrinsically so complex that the possibility of their forming by trial and error is vanishingly improbably, and in some cases just plain impossible." Is there any wonder why the intelligent design crowd loves this book?)

My point is, if the author cannot even handle something this basic, how can anyone blame the mainstream academia for turning its back on him? After all, it is 2008 and you cannot just yell "maverick" and expect everyone to automatically give you his vote. I have never been part of the cosmology mainsteam, so I have no vested interest either way. It is just sad to see fools deceiving the public and/or themselves in the forum of Amazon, which contains more sophisticated thoughts than many third rate academic journals on which most of the junk professorship makes its living. I have written over 100 reviews on Amazon over several years, and this book is the only one that is such an obvious sham. Shame on you people."

[HysteryDiagnosis]

3. Are you seeing red??

>>That the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation is really faint glows of Inter-Stellar Gas, and that quasars' red-shifts come from gravitationial well instead of Doppler effect.<<

http://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Red-Redshifts-Cosmology-Academic/dp/0968368905


63 of 66 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating and extremely disturbing, October 1, 2003
By Eric B. Norris (Santa Clara, California USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
This review is from: Seeing Red: Redshifts, Cosmology and Academic Science (Paperback)
If Dr. Arp's earlier book, "Quasars, Redshifts, and Controversies" put a few pinpricks into the Big Bang and Redshift-Distance Relation theories, this book blows open a hole so large you could drive a Mack truck through it. Dr. Arp shows us a number of galaxies that appear to be associated with quasars or other extremely compact, radio-emitting objects that have grossly different redshifts. If these objects are indeed related then the inconsistent redshifts mean the accepted distances for these objects are bogus, to use a scientific term. Dr. Arp states in the preface that if you are math-impaired you will still be able to follow the book easily because the eye-popping evidence is all in the pictures. And so it is.
What is so disturbing is the effect on Halton Arp's career this decades-long search for the truth has wrought. In the earlier book one of the appendices is the letter from CalTech throwing him off the 200-inch Hale telescope on Mt. Palomar. In this book he describes how difficult or impossible it has been for him to publish his research. Dr. Arp is no crackpot claiming aliens are making crop circles or the Bermuda Triangle is swallowing up ships--he received his Ph.D with honors from CalTech itself, and created the Catalog of Peculiar Galaxies (using of course the same 200-inch Hale telescope he was later denied). In the later part of the book Dr. Arp also catalogs several other scientific theories, such as continental drift, which were heresy at the time they were published but later became universally accepted. He discusses the sometimes stifiling atmosphere of academia, and how it impedes the investigation of new ideas. Finally, Dr. Arp offers some intriguing ideas on just where those quasars and other active objects came from in the first place.

This book is a page-turner, and you don't need to understand calculus or anything else to read it. A basic understanding of statistics would help but is not necessary.

My only gripe is that the paper used is so thin the illustrations can be seen somewhat on the opposite side of the page.

If you have any interest in astronomy or cosmology I would say this book is a must read.

45 of 48 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Be ready to give up the Big Bang, September 27, 2000
By D. Sinclair - See all my reviews
This review is from: Seeing Red: Redshifts, Cosmology and Academic Science (Paperback)
Arp argues convincingly that the holy grail of cosmology, the hubble flow, exists only in the minds of astronomers. There are abundant examples of high-redshift quasars which are physically connected to low-redshift galaxies. There is convincing evidence that redshift is quantized, which is inexplicable in the conventional picture where redshift is caused by recession speed. Big bang cosmology has been overthrown, and the evidence against it is getting stronger with new observations.
Mainstream astronomy, unfortunately, does not want to recognize this evidence. Scientists who have built whole careers on a flawed theory are not ready to admit that they have been totally, completely wrong. Instead, they have chosen a much easier way to deal with this unpleasant evidence, one that has been succesfully employed in many other fields of science: they suppress, ignore & ridicule, while they keep adding epicycles to their ever more complicated theory of the big bang.

Arp's account of the utterly unscientific behavior of the scientific establishment is sobering. It reveals once more how the great human endeavor of science, which should be an unbiased and objective search for the truth, has been corrupted by the vested interests of individuals and academic institutions, blind belief in authority and by herd mentality, and thus turned into something that is eerily reminiscent of the medieval Catholic Church. Then, as today, observations and new theories were suppresed by those in power for contradicting what was considered the truth.

Although this book is a bit technical in nature, it is accessible to any layperson with some basic knowledge of astronomy. If that describes you, or if you are interested in great case material for a study of the sociology of science, I can unconditionally recommend it.

0 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Triumph of Empirical Astronomy, February 3, 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: Seeing Red: Redshifts, Cosmology and Academic Science (Paperback)
Having read many of Dr. Arp's articles in the astronomical journals, I was not sure that I would find anything new in Seeing Red. I was wrong! The contents of this book put together an accessible argument that leaves no doubt in the open minded readers mind that the Big Bang is wrong!
The most stunning revelation in Seeing Red for me was the association of Abell galaxy clusters with nearby galaxies and quasars. The Abell clusters fall in close proximity to nearby galaxies. This is a remarkable coincidence if the Abell clusters are actually at their redshift distance.

Anyone who looks at the pictures in Seeing Red will be able to understand why the Big Bang's future lies on the ash heap of theories based upon faulty assumptions.

The views presented in this book will provide a foundation for the future of cosmology.

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[grantcart]

23. Is this going to be on the midterm?

[ZeitgeistObserver]

2. And then there's this...

Astronomers may have underestimated the tally of galaxies in some parts of the universe by as much as 90 percent, according to a study reported on Wednesday in Nature, the weekly British science journal.

http://richarddawkins.net/articles/5333

[mike_c]

4. you've been pushing this book, so I've been looking for information about it....

It looks like a fundamentalist, creationist diatribe disguised as science written for an educated lay audience. Is that a fair description?

on edit: I added emphasis in the quote below.

Quoting from another Amazon review:

I just noticed that, of the nine 5-star reviews, one is from the author himself and another from a Christian fundamentalist. The other seven all come from reviewers whose only Amazon review is on this book. It is pretty obvious that they are the friends and family of the author. I hereby challenge them to declare that they do not know the author personally, or they have actually paid real money for the book like I did.

It is really pathetic for people to write things that are patently untrue for money or favor. I call that academic prostitution. We probably have seven such prostitutes here, assuming that they have some common sense to see through the junk argument in the book. The alternative, that some tenured professors actually believe in this fantastic tale, will be a truly sad indictment on the state of higher education at the respective institution.

As for the substance of the book, I am still waiting for someone to actually defend the author's rambling definition of "matter", which should be something that the educated half of the general public will be able to judge. While he is on that subject, maybe he can also enlighten the rest of us on why evolution theory "fails completely" in the author's view. (Let me list a few quotes from the book: "We are designed to evolve." "Species have a divine destiny." "The more complex structure can be created..., but for this to happen consistently a template is essential." "the act of encoding the template...needs additional 'intelligence'." "The crucial point here is that...some of the organs that keep us alive are intrinsically so complex that the possibility of their forming by trial and error is vanishingly improbably, and in some cases just plain impossible." Is there any wonder why the intelligent design crowd loves this book?)

My point is, if the author cannot even handle something this basic, how can anyone blame the mainstream academia for turning its back on him? After all, it is 2008 and you cannot just yell "maverick" and expect everyone to automatically give you his vote. I have never been part of the cosmology mainsteam, so I have no vested interest either way. It is just sad to see fools deceiving the public and/or themselves in the forum of Amazon, which contains more sophisticated thoughts than many third rate academic journals on which most of the junk professorship makes its living. I have written over 100 reviews on Amazon over several years, and this book is the only one that is such an obvious sham.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

10. Yeah I noticed the same thing.... so let's just judge all of the people

who discuss plasma cosmology by this one person. That's the scientific method at work.

http://www.amazon.com/Big-Bang-Never-Happened-Refutation/dp/067974049X/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51NkV-yUD7L._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg

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[mike_c]

12. trying again....

I'm presuming you've read the book. I have not. I'm interested in your comments, not those of all the Amazon reviewers you keep quoting who, despite having left their comments, are not available to question. If you've read the book, would you characterize the author's perspective as anti-evolution, fundamentalist christian? Does that perspective color his science?

Honest question, not snark. Seriously. I mean, one might respond that I should simply read the book, and I might very well, but I'm just not interested in fundamentalist religiosity or creationism, so if that's the main thrust of the author's viewpoint, I'll pass. Could you please tell me whether that is your understanding or not?

[mdmc]

14. my question as well..

[HysteryDiagnosis]

15. Honestly, I could give a crap about evolution vs creation myths... I simply

do not take as gospel everything science tries to spoon feed the masses. I have a good electrical background and am not a stupid person by any means. I will be ordering the book pronto and will surely put into my own words what "appears" to be logical and well thought out observations by the author. Personally, I do not believe everything was "exploded out of nothing". Talk about crackpot ideas... well there's one fer sure.

[Posteritatis]

17. Taking something as gospel simply because it contradicts science isn't that bright either. (nt)

[HysteryDiagnosis]

22. Yeah... not too bright, agreed.

The CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background)

Big Bang supporters are fond of claiming CMB radiation as conclusive evidence for their theory, but these claims begin to look somewhat revisionist in the light of the following facts.

The background temperature of space was predicted by Guillaume, Eddington, Regener, Nernst, Herzberg, Finlay-Freundlich and Max Born, based on a universe without expansion, and prior to the discovery of the CMB. Their predictions were far more accurate than models based on the Big Bang.

In 1965, two young radio astronomers, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, accidentally discovered the CMB using a small horn antenna. This discovery was quickly seized upon by Big Bang supporters and they were later awarded the Nobel Prize!

Here is an excellent paper (PDF) that outlines the real history of The CMB

http://redshift.vif.com/JournalFiles/Pre2001/V02NO3PDF/V02N3ASS.PDF

[bemildred]

5. This is drool.

There is plenty that may be criticized in modern belief-based sciences, and cosmology is certainly vulnerable on that count, but that does not mean that this sort of gullible drool is better.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

6. belief-based sciences?

The fuck?

[bemildred]

8. There is, in general, no way to test cosmological theories directly.

There is, therefore, a good deal of belief involved in them. The picture they paint is based on speculations and inferences from the idea that the cosmos is broadly consistent from place to place, a sort of extension of Occam's Razor, and a lot hinges on the accuracy of the "cosmological constant" and various measurements that are available to be made from here with the tools presently at hand. Yet it is still a science, because it proceeds empirically.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

11. If the big bang were true, maybe there's left over radiation.

Is there left over radiation? Let's test it. Why yes, there is!

If the big bang were true, the universe would be expanding. Is the universe expanding? Why yes, there is!

[bemildred]

18. Those are not direct measurements.

Why would there not be "background radiation" in a universe awash in radiation? Could it come from something besides a big bang? Why yes, yes it could. The possibilities are endless.

Inferences of expansion are based on red-shift measurements, and we are already in the position of inferring "dark matter" and "dark energy" to makes things come out right. There are other possible hypotheses.

[Ichingcarpenter]

9. The author doesn't believe in black holes, singularity nor Hawkins radiation

Let's see? Stephen Hawkins or an electrical engineer
My vote is on Hawkins, I've seen the author write about his stuff in physics forums.
He never backs up his stuff for peer review

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[BlooInBloo]

13. Since Americans love being stupid more than anything else, I predict this will be a best-seller.

[Posteritatis]

16. LOL at astroturfed Amazon reviews. (nt)

[bemildred]

19. Does seem to be very polarized. nt

[chollybocker]

20. LOL at this astroturf DU thread, too.

;)

[Posteritatis]

21. Really? Which posters here are sockpuppets, on DU specifically for this thread?

Most of the reviews of that book are either the actual author or single-review accounts who five-starred it the day it appeared on the site. It's pretty obvious they're also the author, or at least the author's friends.

You seem to think that's the same case here, so please, tell us which posters are sockpuppets here.

[chollybocker]

24. I was referring to the poster who started this thread.

I'm in total agreement with you - astroturf here, astroturf there - so transparent. :)

[Posteritatis]

25. Whoops!

Sorry about that. :blush: