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Re: [Phys-l] Prof. Hal Lewis resigns from APS



Of course pseudoscientific generally refers to the fringe that doesn't like
the current scientific models. After all the body of science is determined
by the majority consensus of scientists. That can and does change with
time, but until it changes the minority is opinion is either a deprecated
model, or a fringe pseudoscientific model.

"It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions
of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has
carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most
successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a
physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force
himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford's
book organizes the facts very well.) I don't believe that any real
physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would
almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.


This analogy really doesn't work. Galileo and Copernicus were opposed by
the religious and conservative "orthodoxy". They had new ideas that were
opposed. Global warming is a new idea, and it is opposed by both
conservatives and fundamentalists. But hey, the connection is in the eye of
the beholder. Actually the big money is against global warming. I wonder
what the ratio is of scientific climate research funding to industrial
advertising opposing that research.

There are schools which are promoting the idea that oil is not a fossil
fuel, and that it is actively being made in the Earth. There is a whole
fringe of oilmen who believe this nonsense. So lets get down to the really
pseudoscientific ideas.


As I recall, Galileo Galilei did have a problem with the authorities when
he adamantly took a scientific stand. Of course, Nicolas Copernicus was
on his deathbed when he finally had his heliocentric theory published.
And Ole Roemer's claim of the finite speed of light was never widely
accepted until well after his death.

This unfortunate event may just play into the hands of the Creationists by
allowing them to claim that science is biased and illogical. They would
call evolution pseudoscientific. I also think it is unprofessional to claim
that other branches of science are unprofessional. This has been used too
often to kill legitimate inquiry. OTOH physics is generally considered so
remote and forbidding that a tempest in the APS may not make much of a
ripple in the general debate.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX