I forgive you, dont worry..
just to clarify the matter: My theory explains flat galaxy rotation curves without resorting to Dark Matter..I do not believe in DM in general as I have said, but that is another issue and the theory adresses only one of the “supposed” evidences for DM (which is the most heavyweight I believe).
The physics and mathematics is really simple !! you see, you cannot solve a problem even if you have the most sophisticated tools available, if your approach is wrong from the start..
we are all aware of neutrinos and neutralinos and follow the experiments deep underground just to spot a handful of them..aether is of course a completelety different historical concept which has been abondened long ago but has started finding serious interest lately..I believe there was an ambiguity on ur side there..
and last of all, lazyness may actually be defined as sitting idle and doing nothing which seems to be the case in DM theory, as so many scientists spend so many valuable man-hours and precious resources despite there is no viable clue yet, for DM to exist..all “evidences” suggested might be explained by various phenomena as I have stated earlier..Good luck to all DM fans in their relentless search to prove it..beam me up Scotty )

Now, if only we could discover some particles that interact only through the Strong force and gravity, I have a name for them ready to roll…

SIMPles.

Yes. They’re called neutrinos. They only interact via the weak nuclear force, and gravity. Because of this, they can pass through enormous amounts of ordinary matter without coming close enough to a single atomic nucleus to interact. It takes a gigantic detector (Ice Cube neutrino observatory is a cubic kilometer in size) to have a decent chance of seeing an interaction out of the billions of neutrinos that are passing through our planet in any given instant.

One of the primary hypothesized particles to explain Dark Matter would be a more massive relative of the neutrino. This hypothesis actually comes from a different theory, not DM, and is called the neutralino. There are projects active right now that are attempting to find out if this particle exists. So it is not proven, but particles with similar (and probably to you seemingly very strange) properties are known to exist.

And while I welcome anyone to come up with an alternative explanation, it would be pretty difficult to do so without resorting to something like the neutralino. You can’t just tweak gravity a bit and explain gravitational lensing in the complete absence of any electromagnetically visible matter, or matter than appears to have passed through an entire galaxy without being slowed down by gas clouds, etc. The MOND guys gave a serious go at it, they really know what they’re doing, and while they did pretty good with galactic rotation even they eventually had to add some kind of weakly-interacting dark matter in order to explain observations.

So forgive me if I’m skeptical of someone claiming to be able to get rid of the need for DM using simple physics. Forgive me if it seems to me that the ones who dismiss Dark Matter because it seems made up (and aren’t aware of neutrinos), and liken it to the Aether, are themselves the ones guilty of lazy thinking and being stuck in their ways, refusing the new information because it’s too weird or something.

And forgive me if I’m simply sick of people saying that well, eventually the evidence and ‘truth’ will prevail in a way that presumes truth will favor their interpretation, despite their being no evidence for it turning out that way and plenty to the contrary.

P.S.
@Messier Tidy Upper:
I don’t really care what you call it, but there’s a 5 order of magnitude difference between the IAU-defined “planet” that has cleared its orbit the least, and the dwarf planet that has cleared its orbit the most. We’re talking the difference between the planet being over 10,000 times the mass of everything else in its orbit not counting direct satellites, and the dwarf planet being 1/3rd the mass of everything else.

That distinction is clear, obvious, and deserves to be recognized. I don’t care what you call it; “Uber planets” and “regular planets”, fine. But Earth, Mars etc are Uber Planets, and Ceres and Pluto are Regular Planets.

While science is excellent at abandoning everything it once held dear with no regrets, this kind of ‘brand loyalty’ does still seem to exist to a small degree. So while you probably won’t get many people refusing to accept relativity in favour of good ol’ Newtonian gravity, there still seems to be an alarming number of people who can’t let go of Pluto being planet #9.

It is really a whole other topic but, in fairness, there are a tonne of valid reasons why the recent IAU definition of the word “planet” which was deliberately & dubiously foisted upon us all solely to remove Pluto and the other ice dwarf type planets from being considered “proper” planets along with the rock dwarfs and gas giants is ridiculously wrong.

The current downright illogical and dumb IAU definition is, I think, one of the mistakes of current science that will, hopefully, be corrected sooner rather than later and will go down in history as a temporary silly aberration.

I think the best definition – the one originally proposed and which far better fits logic and Occams’ Razor and rational understanding – is that a “planet” is an object which is gravitionally rounded, never self-luminous via nuclear fusion and is not directly orbiting another planet. It’s that simple &clear-cut really.

Thus Pluto counts as a planet along with Ceres, Haumea, Sedna, Quaoar, Eris & many others. Planets come in three main types : the gassy like Jupiter, the rocky like Earth & the icy like Pluto.

But I have a nit to pick with how they subjectively characterize galaxies in 3 categories, as exhibiting evidence of a recent merger: 1. “No Distortion”, 2. “Moderate Distortion”, and 3. “Heavy Distortion”.

The problem is that some merger events – perhaps most, if one counts the far more frequent kind involving a big galaxy absorbing a small dwarf system – don’t produce any discernable tidal distortion at all, while a fair number of examples that appear to be distorted may not in fact be due to a merger but instead may be attributable to another system that lies on or along the line of sight, to the foreground or background, making it appear distorted. The latter circumstance is much more common than one might at first expect, since galaxies are naturally gregarious and are commonly grouped in relatively population-dense clusters where superpositions are statistically more likely. (For example, an observer situated in certain places outside of our galaxy could mistake our Milky Way to be “heavily distorted” because of the nearby LMC, while as seen from other directions our galaxy would seem to be nearly distortion-free, with the LMC and SMC unambiguously separated from it). Dwarf systems absorbed into the core (a MERGER event!) can activate a nucleus without ever distorting the system as a whole.

The SUBJECTIVE characterization of systems in those categories (yes, by experts) strikes me as too haphazard and weak to support a firm conclusion about a NON-correlation with AGN activity. Merger or absorption is still a perfectly serviceable mechanism for delivering fuel to the central SMB, as are instabilities that can arise in or near the core without external encouragement. Star-forming regions near the core can produce supernovae shocks that can fuel the nucleus as well. There are many scenarios that can fuel central SMBs.

But it always bothers me whenever people pull the either-or card and insist that scientists must come down exclusively in favor of one mechanism or hypothesis or another as THE explanation at the expense of others that might well also play a significant role. This business isn’t a popularity contest or an election selecting a favorite candidate. Nature is not nearly so finicky or squeaky-clean as our ideals demand. I think this ‘study’ isn’t nearly what it’s cracked up to be.

After some scientists find and accept the truth of non-collision theory, they will try to share their love of the new idea with the collision theorists. The Ns and the Cs will find it hard to agree, the discussion will become heated, and the Ns will be banished. Later, the Ns will return wielding many strong telescopes of iron and carrying thick clipboards, impenetrable to the pens launched from the Cs’ rubber bands. The Ns will take back the convention hall and drive the traditionalist Cs from Seattle’s business district. But the Cs will survive and plot their revenge in the hotel lobbies, stewing in anger over cold coffee and stale doughnuts. The struggle will remain, heated by the burning furnaces of ad hominem debates, for tens of thousands of ten-thousandths of a University’s pre-approved per-diem. With no resolution possible and the world growing too small for such opposing dichotomies of astrophysical theories, the citizens of both sides, well, they don’t really care, but still must be defended in the name of reasonable assumptions in accordance with observation and natural laws. The mighty tour buses roll through the battle field, the scientists on both sides pull out their calculators, waving them in the air, both declaring victory by calculating the odds with all relevant variables. But the exchange of bizarrely inappropriate quark insults ends when King C’s crown of paper clips crashes to the pavement and he screams in agony as the atomic wedgie decides the victory for the Ns.

The way you describe it, it sounds like people just talk it out and accept the whole thing on reason and evidence. Pfft.

as far as I am aware, Einstein never accepted the basic ideas of quantum mechanics

All the more ironic given that the work for which Einstein won the Nobel prize, his paper on the photoelectric effect, laid a lot of the foundations for quantum mechanics…

Dirt. Or dust. Very small rocks. Planets thrown out of their home solar systems billenia ago wandering the intergalactic abyss forever.

Dark matter is basically stuff that either isn’t emitting on the EM spectrum itself or being illuminated by something shining on it or by other bits of matter (very small bits) slamming into it at a fair percentage of the speed of light and making it glow.

Erm … would not such dust show up in the far IR?

(1) : alt-meds are after the same customers as Big Pharma, i.e. everyone.
(2) : Big Pharma are required by law in every civilised nation to prove that their products are (a) at least as safe as the best existing treatment, and (b) more effective than a placebo with statistical significance in a large double-blind trial.

This is an oversimplification for the sake of argument, of course, but the point remains: Big Pharma are required by law to carry out trials that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to test their products in order to get a licence to sell the stuff. What regulation does alt-med have? In some cases, the same as food supplements (i.e. they may be required to prove that it contains what it says on the label), but in many other cases, none at all.

So, alt-med practitioners are chasing the same customers as Big Pharma, but don’t have to make even 0.1% of the investment that Big Pharma companies are required to make. Think on that the next time you compare alt-med with Big Pharma.

One other thing I agree about – that Pharma companies do indeed have a conflict of interest if a clinical trial returns a negative result. However, if the trial was properly designed in the first place, a repeat of the trial should return the same result.

While there may be many flaws in the existing system, it is far easier to whine about “Big Pharma” than to propose a realistically workable and better alternative.

Big pharmaceutical companies have time and again been shown to twist the research to their favour if not outright fabricate positive results.

While I know there to be clear evidence that negative results from clinical trials are rarely published, I have never seen any evidence that Pharma companies fabricate results.

Full disclosure – I work in the biopharmaceuticals industry, and the site at which I work was bought last year by a Big Pharma company.

What I do know is that if I were ever to fabricate results, I would be fired. A few years ago, a worker here was fired for making a fraudulent entry in a critical manufacturing document.

If you’re going to throw around serious allegations like that, I think you should back it up with some evidence.

Dirt. Or dust. Very small rocks. Planets thrown out of their home solar systems billenia ago wandering the intergalactic abyss forever.

Dark matter is basically stuff that either isn’t emitting on the EM spectrum itself or being illuminated by something shining on it or by other bits of matter (very small bits) slamming into it at a fair percentage of the speed of light and making it glow.

The idea is that there’s a lot more of that stuff than originally thought. Enough to resolve the discrepancy in the equations, and therefore, a good candidate for further investigation.

So while there’s little reason for astronomers to ‘hide evidence’ for astrology (if there was any), it’s not seemingly impossible that pharmaceutical companies might have conflicting interests when it comes to funding and presenting research about some new lines of healthcare.

She presents some interesting concepts, and by her arguments a lot of scientists are simply ignoring the evidence for her theory. Again, I don’t know any details about the field, I’m not an expert, etc. etc.

Well, I can’t follow the link you provide from work, but I guess from the title that the theory is the old “aquatic ape” idea.

IIUC, there is currently no consensus about whether or not the aquatic ape idea is correct.

On the one hand, the hypothesis very neatly explains many odd features about humans where we differ from the other great apes.

On the other hand, there is a twofold problem. The first part is that we haven’t any evidence to indicate that any stage of our ancestry since we split from the chimpanzee lineage was aquatic (or sufficiently aquatic for the adaptations to have been brought about by this lifestyle). The second part is that it doesn’t really fit what has already been worked out from the evidence that we do have, i.e. that, until they migrated out of Africa, most ancient hominins lived in parts of Africa that are some considerable distance from any coast.

A compounding issue is that, since pretty much all of the “aquatic ape” adaptations occur in soft tissues, we may never have the evidence to resolve this for sure, as soft tissues are notoriously poorly preserved as fossils.

Until we have some better evidence, the aquatic ape idea cannot be resolved – IMO it remains a possibility, but the features of human anatomy that might be explained by the aquatic ape hypothesis remain only circumstantial evidence for it.

. . . [scientists] can just look at the evidence and say “yes, I was wrong, let us study this more” instead of whining and crying and blindly saying “this cannot be” and citing history and precedence

Individual scientists do sometimes fall prey to this (for example, as far as I am aware, Einstein never accepted the basic ideas of quantum mechanics). However, science as a whole moves ever forward, based on evidence and reasoning. For example, Wegener’s initial formulation of continental drift was not adequately supported by evidence, and his contemporaries rejected his idea. Subsequently, as new evidence came to light, Wegener was proved right. Now, continental drift is a necessary component of our understanding of the Earth.

Correction:

“When scientists see better data, when the evidence is weighed *and there are no negative political or financial implications of doing so*, they can change their minds!”

This is an exceptional case, unfortunately.

Is it?

I think this claim requires some evidentiary support. Put up, or shut up, I say.

Thomas (?) Kuhn’s

On checking, yep, it is indeed Thomas Kuhn – See :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuhn

&

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_shift

&

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science

for more. Hope these links are interesting / useful for y’all.

Dead certainty and unchangeable inflexibility are, I think, flaws not virtues although many religions & religious folks seem to think and claim otherwise.

@17. Bob_In_Wales :

Blimey, we’ve hit on a deep one here. This is one of those topics best reserved for the pub and a good long face to face. However, it is also a good chance to trot out one of my favourite quotes:

“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
Max Planck, A Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers, 1949

Sounds very much like Thomas (?) Kuhn’s idea of scientific revolutions as the original and technically most applicable idea of the now vastly over-used and abused “paradigm shift” term.

Which is NOT always true methinks – but often so.

P.S. While hunting for the exact quote and who said it I found this, which is quite amusing:

“Physics isn’t a religion. If it were, we’d have a much easier time raising money.”
Leon Lederman

Now *that* is both very true & very funny! Hadn’t heard that ‘un before – thanks Bob_In_Wales for that!

Because there are few, if any, financial or political consequences of the results. This is an exception, rather than the rule. It makes perfect sense as more money is likely thrown in the direction of research that does have.

I don’t have a problem with science, I just think bent science is way more troubling than anti-science, mainly because the latter is easier to spot.