Einstein wrong, says poly politics lecturer
Wednesday 13 May 2009 at 10:48 BST
I’ve just come across a very odd press release issued from one of northern England’s lesser-known seats of higher education. In an academic treatise to which the release refers, Dr Peter Hayes – a senior lecturer in politics at the University of Sunderland – takes issue with Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. Which particular theory – special, general or both – is not stated.
“Over the years many people have pointed out that there are logical flaws in the theory. Back in the 1960s Professor Herbert Dingle warned that large scale experiments drawing on relativity theory might end by destroying the world. Perhaps we are lucky that the Large Hadron Collider merely broke down!”
So far so bad.
In the highlighted research paper, published in January of this year in the journal Social Epistemology, Hayes claims that Einstein’s theory is not science, but “ideology”. Relativity theory contains “elementary inconsistencies”, says Hayes, and the reason why these errors went unnoticed when Einstein first published his ideas was that the world in 1919 had just:
“…come through a terrible war followed by a flu pandemic. Einstein’s ideas were the tonic they needed. In the rush to celebrate them few people stopped to question the obvious logical flaws in the theory.”
Good heavens! Why did I never consider that?
And just what are these flaws to which Hayes alludes? This is not clear, and in the press release the specialist in social policy touches on the clock paradox, which is not paradoxical at all when one moves beyond common-sense perception and looks at the problem in physical detail. If Hayes thinks of the clock paradox as a flaw in relativity, then he has clearly failed to grasp the essential physics, and has only a very shallow understanding of that on which he writes.
If relativity is wrong, then we should all throw out our GPS receivers, and fear for the future of the many communications and other satellites currently orbiting the globe. Seriously, though, maybe future scientists will find flaws in either or both of Einstein’s theories of relativity. That’s the nature of science; I’m not sure that political ideologies develop in quite the same way.
If there are errors in our current understanding of objects moving at high speeds, and the nature of space and time around large masses such as planets and stars, then they will be subtle, and their discovery will not overturn Einstein’s core idea. Describing relativity as a “craze” which should have died out is a bizarre stance for a serious academic to take. As is likening Einstein’s ideas to those of Karl Marx, whose work continues to provide insights into the dynamics of capitalist economies, while no longer being taken seriously as an all-encompassing social framework.
Feed the writer! 
Thursday 14 May 2009 at 07:38 BST
Hmm. “Einstein’s ideas were the tonic they needed… few people stopped to question the obvious logical flaws in the theory” Understandable. People whose families had just been decimated by warfare and ‘flu would be clinging to E=MC2 like men after a shipwreck.
Thursday 14 May 2009 at 12:10 BST
Mesmerised, they were, by the magical incantation-like equation E=mc2. If Hayes seriously believes that E≠mc2, then he should not only throw away his satnav, but take to lighting his home with candles.
Thursday 14 May 2009 at 14:51 BST
Interesting, what kind of “ideology” the learned Dr sees behind Einstein’s work? Anyhow, on this photo he looks sufficiently mad to be taken seriously, you know.
And yeah, Gadjo Dilo took the words out of my mouth.
An almost unrelated observation: during my university days for some reasons the dormitories were split according to the faculty. Ours (physics) being almost totally devoid of girls, we used to look at the linguists’, poli sci, etc dorms chiefly as a source of romantic opportunities. I gather that this habit left its impact on my soul. Cannot say more – to avoid falling in the chasm of political incorrectness.
Thursday 14 May 2009 at 14:56 BST
P.S. Its’ here:
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a909857880~db=all
But costs $30, which I am in no way ready to part with for that crap. Anyhow, there is an amazing abstract with some priceless ambiguity:
“Some of these critics held extreme right-wing and anti-Semitic views, and this has tended to discredit their technical objections to relativity as being scientifically shallow. This paper investigates an alternative possibility: that the critics were right and that the success of Einstein’s theory in overcoming them was due to its strengths as an ideology rather than as a science.”
He he…
Thursday 14 May 2009 at 16:57 BST
Snoopy – The paper was already linked to in my text above.
Friday 15 May 2009 at 10:28 BST
Oops… now that I look at your post again, in that sentence “In the highlighted research paper” I see the highlighting. Not using reading glasses when prescribed is a sure sign of vanity.
Saturday 16 May 2009 at 09:02 BST
Just looked at that photo again. I think we now know where David Icke ended up; the mad hair, piercing gaze, turquoise shirt. It all makes sense: Einstein was an alien lizard.
Saturday 16 May 2009 at 11:48 BST
From sports reporter to political “scientist”, eh? It’s a grand world we live in, where our only limitation is our imagination.
Wednesday 20 May 2009 at 12:40 BST
Being thick as two short planks, I shamelessly read the paper. I’ve read stuff from Polys, stuff from lowly patent clerks, and even stuff from a guy laying in the gutter, though he did say he was looking at the stars.
“Seriously though, maybe future scientists will find flaws in either or both of Einstein’s theories of relativity.” Yes of course, it might even be the case that the wunderkind of CERN are doing just that. I’m surely not the only one that has noticed a subtle shift back to Lorentzian ideas. Think of the implications of a BEC universe, and BEC particles. Negative refractive index, and phase change at the speed of light.
Back to that paper again. It appears to me, to be in support of Lorentzian relativity, and if I have minor criticisms it’s that, one, it’s a little too heavy on the arguments of Popper, and two it merely whets the appetite for more on the nature of the undoubted crisis in physics at the beginning of the twentieth century.
I’m pretty sure that Yahweh will turn Peter Haye’s light bulbs into candles, though even those shouldn’t be allowed. What I would baulk at, would be if Yahweh went on his hols and left the universal t.v. zapper in the hands of Albert Einstein. I’d much prefer a committee of Newton, Poincare, Reimann, Jeans and Ken Dodd. ken to add a note of music-hall bawdiness and keep the show going for hours.
Thursday 21 May 2009 at 11:33 BST
If “that paper” appears to be in support of Lorentzian relativity, it is because the author is grabbing at anything that gives credence to an ideological prejudice in favour of a preferred reference frame. It’s certainly not based on any scientific understanding.
For those unfamiliar with the physics, I should point out that Albert Einstein’s relativity is rooted in the ideas of Hendrik Lorentz, as incorporated by Einstein and the mathematician Hermann Minkowski. What distinguishes Einstein’s theory of special relativity is the assumption that the speed of light is the same in all inertial frames of reference.
If one doesn’t accept Einstein’s special relativity, then the default fall-back position is an updated version of Lorentz ether theory, which posits the existence of an ether that pervades spacetime and establishes a preferred frame of reference. This introduces a whole new set of problems, and violates the Occam’s razor principle which dictates that the simplest physical explanation is probably the best one. It also faces another problem: the failure thus far to observe any violation of the the so-called Lorentz invariance.
Thursday 21 May 2009 at 12:06 BST
It’s a parody, surely? Is Alan Sokal on sabbatical?
Thursday 21 May 2009 at 12:08 BST
Maybe Hayes will claim the paper as a parody after reflecting on the critical comment it has attracted.
Friday 22 May 2009 at 13:08 BST
It has recently been my misfortune to engage in a debate on Special and General Relativity with a plasma physicist who dismisses them with nonsensical and ill-informed arguments. He has no (and wants no) understanding of differential geometry, and apparently rejects the elegant physical ideas that the mathematics was invoked to formalise. His position is essentialy that spacetime is a mathematical abstraction and therefore physically meaningless. The fact that this model works as well as it does is dismissed as an irrelevant coincidence. Einstein was just wrong, OK!!! It is not clear why curved spacetime is any more meaningless than Newton’s unexplained instantaneous attraction between masses, but Newton’s gravity is just better, right!!!
Searching the web, I found many other devoted relativity-haters who seem also to go out of their way to diminish Einstein’s involvement in these theories by asserting that he plagiarised his ideas or somesuch drivel, rather than standing on the shoulders of giants, as all good scientists do. They clearly do not understand how science works.
No evidence is ever produced in support of their positions – no worked out alternative theories; no confirmed counter-examples; no novel predictions that might be tested. Basically they are like creationists. I find it all rather sad and pathetic, really.
They can’t all be Alan Sokals, can they? I would really like to understand the motivation of relativity-haters in the sense that I understand the motivation of creationists. I suspect a profound confusion between relativity and (moral) relativism.
Friday 22 May 2009 at 13:24 BST
Plasma physicists are an odd, and, in many cases, reactionary bunch of social and scientific misfits. I should know, as I used to be one!
This comment is of course completely hyperbolic, and therefore entirely in keeping with the spirit of the plasma physics community.
Wibble.