* Examples of how academic science fails its ideals and potential.
"I gloomily came to the ironic conclusion that if you take a highly intelligent person and give them the best possible, elite education, then you will most likely wind up with an academic who is completely impervious to reality."
(Halton Arp)
"I believe the observational evidence has become overwhelming, and the Big Bang has in reality been toppled. There is now a need to communicate the new observations, the connections between objects and the new insights into the workings of the universe - all the primary obligations of academic science, which has generally tried to suppress or ignore such dissident information...
The present book is sure to outrage many academic scientists. Many of my professional friends will be greatly pained. Why then do I write it? First, everyone has to tell the truth as they see it, especially about important things. The fact that the majority of professionals are intolerant of even opinions which are discordant makes change a necessity. Those friends of mine who also struggle to get the mainstream of astronomy back on track mostly feel that presenting evidence and championing new theories is sufficient to cause change, and that it is improper to criticize an enterprise to which they belong and value highly. I disagree, in that I think if we do not understand why science is failing to self-correct, it will not be possible to fix it...
I believe we must look for salvation from the non-specialists, amateurs and interdisciplinary thinkers - those who form judgments on the general thrust of the evidence, those who are skeptical about any explanation, particularly official ones, and above all are tolerant of other people's theories. (When the complete answer is not known, in a sense everyone is a crackpot - Gasp!)...
If the cause of these redshifts is misunderstood, then distances can be wrong by factors of 10 to 100, and luminosities and masses will be wrong by factors up to 10,000. We would have a totally erroneous picture of extragalactic space, and be faced with one of the most embarrassing boondoggles of our intellectual history. Because objects in motion in the laboratory, or orbiting double stars, or rotating galaxies all show Doppler redshifts to longer wavelengths when they are receding, it has been assumed throughout astronomy that redshifts always and only mean recession velocity. No direct verification of this assumption is possible, and through the years many contradictions have arisen and been ignored. The evidence presented here is, I hope, convincing because it offers many different proofs of intrinsic (non-velocity) redshifts in every category of celestial object...
It is interesting to note that at first, Einstein felt this solution was incorrect. Later he said it was correct, but of no consequence. Finally he accepted the validity of this solution, but was so unhappy with the fact that it was not a stable solution, i.e., it either collapsed or expanded, that he retained the cosmological constant he had earlier introduced in order to keep the universe static. (This constant was later referred to as the cosmological fudge factor). In 1924, Hubble persuaded the world that the white nebula were really extragalactic, and a few years later announced that the redshifts of their spectral lines increased as they became fainter. This redshift-apparent magnitude relation for galaxies became known as the Hubble law (through lack of rigor, often referred to as the redshift-distance relation). At this point Einstein dropped his cosmological constant as a great mistake, and adopted the view that his equations had been telling him all along, that the universe was expanding. Thus was born the Big Bang theory, according to which the entire universe was created instantaneously out of nothing 15 billion years ago. This really is the entirety of the theory on which our whole concept of cosmology has been rested for the last 75 years. It is interesting to note, however, that Hubble, the observer, even up to his final lecture before the Royal Society, always held open the possibility that the redshift did not mean velocity of recession but might be caused by something else. In his seminal book Realm of the Nebulae Hubble wrote: 'On the other hand, if the interpretation as velocity shifts is abandoned, we find in the redshifts a hitherto unrecognized principle whose implications are unknown'. In the ensuing years the evidence discussed in the present book has built up to the point where it is clear that the velocity interpretation can now be abandoned in favor of a new principle which stands on a firm observational and theoretical foundation." (Halton Arp, Seeing Red)
https://opensciences.org/videos/physics-and-cosmology/halton-arp-on-intrinsic-redshift
Halton Arp, Seeing Red, 1998, Apeiron, Montreal, 1998, p. 306, 8 plts, index; paperback; signed by Halton Arp; fine condition.
Price: USD 2, 000,000.00