Physics education research, electronic materials, and the musings of Christopher Moore, Ph.D.

A few other points:

Even the most esoteric scientific journals are indexed by Web of Science. Physics Essays is not.

Its "peer-review" policies are ridiculous:

Realizing the interchangeable roles of authors and reviewers, the positive aspect of the reviewing process will be retained by providing the authors with the reviewers' comments. Authors should judge which part of the reviewers' suggestions are appropriate to improve the quality of his or her paper. The editor, who is responsible for the Journal, will allow a large degree of freedom to the authors in this process.

In general, the review process for physics journals is anonymous. The comments will pass to the author with no information about who is making them. And generally, the editor gives a lot of weight  to the referee's recommendation for or against publication. After all, the referees are the experts in the field.

At Physics Essays, it appears that by design they publish just about anything, so long as the "referees" cannot completely invalidate what the author has written. This leads to a large percentage of articles that would widely be considered pseudoscience.

fortaq wrote:

So, after disparaging a "new" journal and finding out that it hardly can keep up with the quality of the present forum

Actually, after a little research, it appears the journal has been around for a few decades. Some of the authors are credentialed physicists who have published articles in more respectable journals. The problem I have is that their other articles are in completely different fields (such as electrical or computer engineering). This leads me to think some engineers are wading into waters well over their heads.

Other "authors" wander around the internet going from one physics forum to another boasting about their publication in a "peer-reviewed" journal. They generally make little to no sense and their writings contain numerous fundamental misconceptions about basic ideas in physics.

The article you are referring to keeps dubious company.

I would like to discuss rather about the article. It claims that the universe is a priori exactly flat. I checked the theory several times and still can't find something wrong with it.

I'm sure you can't. Nor can you find anything wrong with my theory that invisible, undetectable bacteria inhabit a very localized region in the atmosphere of Venus approximately 800 meters above the surface. It is impossible for you to invalidate precisely because it is an arbitrary assertion.

If you would like to have a serious discussion about this "paper" then answer a few questions:

How can a physical science theory claim a priori knowledge?

Does this theory accurately explain all previously observed/measured phenomena? Give examples.

Does it predict results not predicted (or incorrectly predicted) by previous theories? Give examples.

Can results predicted by the theory be shown (by observation/experimental
measurement) to be accurate? Give examples.

fortaq wrote:

The result claims to be a priori just from the mathematical point of view. More exactly, it claims that in the Robertson-Walker metric the curvature index k is a priori equal to 0. To what degree the R-W metric agrees with nature is a different question here and the answer to it would have no effect on the idea of the theory anyway.

Then this belongs in the "Math" forum, and not here. The degree to which a metric agrees with nature is very relevant to a physical theory. Otherwise we are not talking about cosmology.

In other respects, the theory seems to be fully consistent with the present experimental situation - otherwise things would be much simpler and would not deserve much discussion. Furthermore, it is not so much the final result (k=0) that is new but rather the way this result is obtained.

Answer the other three questions and we'll see.

So, still looking for someone that has read the paper.

Are you the author?

fortaq wrote:

But why do you take so much care to show there is something wrong with my posts? I thought the idea of a forum is to support discussion, not to strangle it (as you are the admin). I raised an issue about that you obviously don't want to discuss. You don't need to give explanations why you don't want to discuss about it and disparaging "my" thread.

You asked for opinions about an article. There is nothing wrong with your post specifically, I'm just giving you my opinion from the information I have. Or did you think that a forum was just supposed to support discussion you agree with?

The chair of my department has entire universes named after him. They are complete mathematical constructions, and he makes no claim that they resemble reality. They are based on a priori assumptions and are developed via deductivist logic.

You stated:

It claims that the universe is a priori exactly flat.

implying that this theory makes a claim about the physical universe.

Then you state:

The paper I'm talking about is a purely mathematical one. Your example refers to an empirical problem.

So which is it? A mathematical construct of some ficticious world, or a physical theory?

Of course there is still the problem in that the article is published in what appears to be a pseudoscience/crack-pot journal. This fact alone makes its merits suspect. I tend to automatically discount any article published in the same journal that publishes AutoDynamics papers.

My only point is to make sure visitors to this site understand that most articles published in Physics Essays are NOT generally accepted in the scientific community.

Some articles may actually be interesting, thought provoking, and even correct. The problem is the journal is also filled with articles containing complete misrepresentations of current physics. And since this site is dedicated to physics education, I feel it is my obligation to point out possible quackery. You may or may not be a quack. I don't know.

If you take offense, then feel free to leave. Otherwise, I welcome you to stay and contribute on any topics you wish.