[packetlss]

Yes. Let's have a discussion with crackpots.

Dr. Amrit Sorli is a researcher with the Osho Miasto, Institute for Meditation and Spiritual Growth, Siena, Italy. His research subjects are Unknown Vacuum Energies in Living Organisms and Direct Scientific Experience. Dr. Sorli is the author of several books and articles and currently gives courses on this theme.

[pygy_]

More ad Hominem. You can have batshit beliefs and do proper math/science on the side. Prejudice due to the former may prevent a rational evaluation of the latter, as it happens here, and may also happen during peer review or editorial decisions.

I can't read the full text, but the abstract claims that their views are based on the interpretation of experimental data.

If you can read it, could you tell us if is it a mere thought experiment, or if they performed it? In the latter case, what's the flaw in their experimental setup or reasoning?

Edit: I've done a quick google scholar survey of the second author, and he's also used to delve far into the "not even wrong" territory... That being said, neither the abstract nor the phys.org summary ring any objective crackpot sign to my untrained eye. The claim that they proved Einstein wrong, their track record, and the journal the paper was published in are of course big red warnings. But that doesn't mean that the core of their argument has to be dismissed out of hand.

[2muchcoffeeman]

The problem with engaging with everybody that has an idea is that we don't have the resources to do so.

This was actually discussed in an episode of the Scientific American podcast. I can't find the episode, but they mentioned that they would need a member of staff working full time to reply to and debunk all the crack pot theories.

What's more important, staff doing research and teaching or answering crack pots that cannot be persuaded?

[pygy_]

I know that. You don't need to engage with the authors, but assessing some of the papers once in a while may not hurt either.

In the abstract of this paper, they claim that they have experimental support for their theory. This is enough to lower my guard, and make me want to know if 1) they indeed do and 2) they bring something novel on the table.

The explanation given by phys.org sounds like it could make some sense (even though they are most probably beating an old misconception like a dead horse).

That's why I wouldn't mind if a physicist was kind enough to skim and debunk or validate the paper beyond simply bashing the authors.

[xyzzyz]

That's why I wouldn't mind if a physicist was kind enough to skim and debunk or validate the paper beyond simply bashing the authors.

So hire one and pay him to do it. What do you think a physicist will rather do, read a paper published in a reputable journal that is highly likely to teach him something new, or paper that is enormously unlikely to be something else than crackpot theories?

Have there ever been any actual progress in physics coming from someone without academic credentials and/or published in crackpot journal, hm?

[DerKommissar]

Attacking someone's work is not ad Hominem. If he called him an asshole or some other unrelated insult that would be ad Hominem.

If just listing the guys work comes off as insulting, you gotta wonder...

[pygy_]

By attacking his previous work, you don't address the question at hand, and sidetrack the debate on the worth of the messenger.

Strictly speaking, you could say it's an ad opus attack, which is still fallacious.