Evidence of Gravitational Waves, or Confirmation Bias?

[Michael Mozina]

There is a respond from a junior scientist related to LIGO.

To argue against the signal correlation problem (paper above), he shows that this correlation is caused
by the Fourier transform. He states that the data needs to be "whitened" first.

Yet, this "whitening" procedure is not a part of the LIGO signal analysis.

What makes you think that LIGO doesn't whiten the data before searching for signals? Of course they do: you need to follow the procedures on their tutorial page here: https://losc.ligo.org/s/events/GW150914 ... orial.html

IMO the problem isn't related to any whitening process or to Fourier transformations, it's directly related to *cherry picking* only the "non noisy" data to work with, and applying a *hypocritical* standard of evidence the rules *out* other potential causes based on a lack of external verification, yet hypocritically *rules in* all celestial origin claims based on that very same lack of external validation. Pure confirmation bias on a stick.

I don't personally doubt that any of the three candidate signals are "real" signals of unknown origin, I simply lack belief that any of them are related to celestial events since they provided *no evidence* to directly support their claim as to cause. A template curve fitting routine with *lots* of wiggle room in the variables simply doesn't eliminate anything else as the cause of the signal(s). All that curve fitting exercise demonstrates is *possibility*, not *probability*.

Had LIGO followed the very same process of elimination method to their celestial claims as they applied to *every other* potential cause of the signal, their lack of external corroboration should have eliminated celestial origin claims too, and these signals should end up in the "unknown origin" category, not the "gravitational waves did it" category. They simply cheated in their methodology because they *favored* celestial origin claims and *disfavored* everything else.

[Michael Mozina]

I must say that I'm very encouraged to see some additional papers emerge that are critical of the LIGO claims, even if I personally think that they're barking up the wrong tree.

I think it's extremely important to look at LIGO's methodology, *before* they even start to compare the candidate signal to a cherry picked data set of data of their own personal choosing. Sure it's true that LIGO could have overlooked some processing problems in that particular comparison process, but their actual "magic trick" occurred long before that point in the magic show.

LIGO went to *painstaking* lengths to strip out all "normal environmental" influences from the cherry picked data set. They picked only the most "quiet" days, and only the times of the day where there were no obvious vetoes present. This methodology is ensured to minimize the "normal" background effects in terms of any later comparisons that LIGO might do. The "magic" part of that cherry picking trick is to ensure that when they do any type of "time slicing' on that cherry picked data", it's not going to include the "normal" background effects that were actually present all along.

LIGOS 5+ sigma figure is entirely "contrived". The only point in getting that number to a 5 sigma rather than say a 2 sigma is to then be able to claim a "discovery" in physics. It's a purely psychological "ploy" Without a 5+ sigma figure, there's no "discovery". It's just a mental gymnastics mathematical manipulation routine that is intended to have a desired emotional and psychological impact on the reader. A very high figure conveys the false notion of "importance", when it fact that figure is completely *unimportant* as it relates to LIGO's claim as to the actual cause of the signal.

Since all the ordinary and normal environmental data has already been stripped from the cherry picked and hand selected test set, in no logical way can that sigma figure be used to imply that there is a 5+ sigma likelihood that the signal was not caused by normal background noise from the local environment. In short, that number means absolutely nothing. It's a psychological Trojan horse.

The methodology that LIGO used to claim to have eliminated anything from consideration in terms of the cause is directly related to what they did or did not observe in *external* hardware. While they claimed to have eliminated every *other* possible cause based on a *lack* of external corroboration from external hardware, they applied nothing like that to their own claims. Instead they literally "dreamed up" a blatantly unjustifiable claim about two invisible objects emitting 3 solar masses of invisible energy in a quarter of a second without emitting obvious EM radiation, and then changed the rules to suit themselves. It's just an absurd claim to begin with.

They 'magically" excused themselves from passing the same external process of elimination "test" that they imposed on all other possible environmental causes of the signal.

With this kind of cherry picking of data, and this type of blatant double standard that they are using, there is simply no limit on the number of "discovery' claims which they might come up with, and no limit on how high of a sigma they might be able to get if they do enough 'cleaning" of the cherry picked data set.

It's not the processing of the cherry picked data that really matters that much, it's all the manipulation they did up front by cherry picking only "good" data that actually matters. If they didn't use only the quietest days, and only non vetoed times, their claim of discovery falls flat on it's face because the sigma figure is too low. The real 'magic' is concealed in the up front cherry picking process, not the comparison process. The 5 sigma figure is pure psychological manipulation, and it's dependent upon hand selecting only the data which you wish to consider, and by tossing out any and all data which drives down that sigma figure. That's where the slight of hand begins in this magic show.

The other main "trick" that LIGO relies upon is the switch-a-roo they pulled at the end when they exempted their own claims from any sort of process of elimination based on the same requirements which they imposed to all other potential claims about the cause of the signal.

There's literally no ceiling on how high of sigma figure that LIGO might come up with, and there's no limit to the number of "signals" that they might try to claim are "celestial" in origin. LIGO could release a *million* or more of these manipulated claims, and it wouldn't prove a damn thing if they're all devoid of visual support.

The only way to falsify these never ending LIGO claims is to point out the less obvious magic tricks in their techniques, not to focus on the minutia of their data comparison techniques within the sigma figure they trumped up.

The other major slight of hand that occurred in the first paper at least is a blatant whitewash of veto accounts. Had they been honest about the actual series of events, and discussed the veto of this specific signal, it would have set off alarm bells for the peer reviewers and readers. By simply giving a whitewashed account of events, they misdirected the peer reviewers and all other readers.

Those are the most important three magic tricks that LIGO pulled IMO. The rest of their techniques might be "debatable" but those three issues are inexcusable and undeniable.

[Higgsy]

I must say that I'm very encouraged to see some additional papers emerge that are critical of the LIGO claims, even if I personally think that they're barking up the wrong tree.

These papers are not barking up the same tree that you are barking up, because your complaints are utterly ridiculous and based on a fundamental misunderstanding of physics in theory and practice. The critical papers are written by apparently competent physicists and no competent physicist could possibly take your absurd ideas seriously. You have had a number of people explain to you in great detail why your issues with the LIGO data analysis are non-issues and yet you persist in them. This is just invincible ignorance. There are papers now and there might be different papers in the future critical of the LIGO conclusions, and so there should be, but I can guarantee that none of them will make the claims that you are making, because no competent physicist could possibly take your complaints seriously - your issues with LIGO, repeated ad nauseam, are in themselves evidence that you have no idea what you are talking about, and that is obvious to any knowledgeable person.

[Michael Mozina]

I must say that I'm very encouraged to see some additional papers emerge that are critical of the LIGO claims, even if I personally think that they're barking up the wrong tree.

These papers are not barking up the same tree that you are barking up, because your complaints are utterly ridiculous and based on a fundamental misunderstanding of physics in theory and practice. The critical papers are written by apparently competent physicists and no competent physicist could possibly take your absurd ideas seriously. You have had a number of people explain to you in great detail why your issues with the LIGO data analysis are non-issues and yet you persist in them. This is just invincible ignorance. There are papers now and there might be different papers in the future critical of the LIGO conclusions, and so there should be, but I can guarantee that none of them will make the claims that you are making, because no competent physicist could possibly take your complaints seriously - your issues with LIGO, repeated ad nauseam, are in themselves evidence that you have no idea what you are talking about, and that is obvious to any knowledgeable person.

That is all just pure unadulterated nonsense which is entirely based on pure fear.

Until LIGO does start taking those methodology criticisms seriously, LIGO is doomed to fail and doomed to keep failing by repeating the same mistakes in methodology over and over and over again/ They are doomed to keep publishing more and more pointless and erroneous papers that are actually *devoid* of any real empirical evidence to support their claims about the 'cause" of such signals.

Their whole methodology is inherently biased in favor of celestial origin claims, and heavily biased against all other potential environmental causes of the very same signal. That's an undeniably fact, and it's why nobody in any conversation anywhere has dealt with that specific issue. There isn't even a possibility in their horrific methodology to label any particular candidate signal as "unknown" in origin which should be everyone's first clue that there's a serious problem in LIGO's methodology.

The critical paper in question may have indeed been written by competent scientists, but they simply overlooked the key problems in LIGO's methodology, and they simply focused on the details of the signal processing technique rather than LIGO's cherry picking of the data. The real problem is the *blatant cherry picking* of data which occurred before the other types of processing took place, and that cherry picking was done with the express intent of artificially driving up the sigma figure in the first place. That's the real problem with the data set that was chosen for comparison, not the way that LIGO processed the data sets from that point forward.

The magic show, and the slight of hand took place long *before* LIGO even started to compare the (vetoed) signal in question to the "cherry picked" data set. Their methodologies of filtering were the *least* of their problems, and in fact that particular processing technique is probably not a real problem. The major problems" in LIGO's methodology are all clearly spelled out in my paper. I don't think I missed any important problems in their methodology, but there may have been a few points that I overlooked that seemed less likely to be problematic.

All LIGO essentially did is find a specific "noise range" and signal pattern type that happens to coincide with some of their mathematical mass merger models. While that may be a completely valid way to test for the *possibility* that gravitational waves could make that type of signal and transient noise appear in LIGO instruments, it in no way eliminates any other potential *environmental* causes of the very same signal.

Without any sort of visual confirmation of a corresponding celestial event, LIGO's whole methodology is useless and ultimately meaningless in any scientific sense. They simply *cheated* by exempting themselves from the same process of elimination methods which they applied to all other potential causes of the signal. If they had been consistent in their methodology, their lack of visual or neutrino support should have put these signals in the "unknown origin" category, not the "gravitiational waves did it" category. They simply changed the methodology to favor all celestial claims of origin.

With a corresponding visual or neutrino confirmation there actually could be a quantified way to calculate some real "confidence" in their claim as to cause. Without such support however, they're simply engaging themselves in a highly biased methodology that automatically and overwhelmingly favors celestial origin claims over any and all other potential causes of all similar such chip signals.

I have no doubt that all three candidate signals are "real" signals and, and they are caused by "real' things because *all* background noise comes from "real" events and *real* causes. The problem is that there is no way to hold any confidence in a celestial origin claim as to cause *without* any evidence of a real celestial event!

LIGOs' entire methodology is absurdly flawed in numerous ways which is why they are already 0 for 3 in terms of finding any visual or neutrino evidence of any celestial events which can be associated with these candidate signal. Their flawed methodology is also why I'm already 3 for 3 in predicting that no uch confirmation will *ever* occur.

Since they've exempted themselves from any and and all falsification potential in their current methods and they don't require any external verification of their claims, this charade could go on for years in paper after paper. Just like any ponzi scheme however, sooner or later the whole thing is bound to implode, just like the mainstream dark matter arguments are completely imploding at this point. It's only a matter of time before other authors notice LIGO's flawed methodology. I just happened to write about it first, that's all.

Care to make a small public wager that I go 4 for 4 in predicting no visual confirmation of any of their claims, and that LIGO goes 0 for 4 in their next paper? Keep in mind that according to the article in Nature magazine, LIGO already has a half dozen more "candidate signals' to choose from as they write their next paper. If they're right, *surely* one of 9 possible signals would have some kind of visual confirmation, right? Care to put your position on this topic up for change based on the outcome of the next paper? Yes? No? Only if they go 0 for 10?

I've already publicly committed myself on this topic using my real name. If LIGO is able to show even *one* correlation to a real celestial event, it's going to undermine my arguments instantly. Meanwhile your side won't even commit themselves to *any sort of falsification mechanism* at all! You don't offer any visual way to falsify it. You don't offer us way to falsify it based on neutrino measurements either. In fact, you don't have *any* logical way to externally falsify their claims because the whole methodology is corrupt from start to finish.

I definitely would not have stuck my neck out like this if I honestly believed that there was any significant possibility that LIGO might be right. It's at least a million to one shot IMO. Ya, it's theoretically "possible" that all those flaws in LIGO's methods aren't leading them astray, but it's obvious that their methods are overtly biased against all environmental sources and they are heavily biased in favor of all celestial origin claims, and therefore there is a very high probability that LIGO is just fooling themselves.

I'm also just *stunned* that LIGO actually resorted to giving the public a complete snow job by giving everyone a false and misleading account of veto events on that first signal in their first published paper on this topic. That particular choice demonstrates the flimsy nature of their claims. Even they must have felt the emotional need to keep things from the public to erroneously claim that there were no vetoes present within an hour of the event when in fact there was a veto of that very signal within 18 seconds which stayed in place for the next 2.5 hours until the veto was overridden by someone. That was just a bogus and untrue series of statements by LIGO. I'm appalled by that choice. Had they not done that, I might have taken a more "wait and see" approach to future claims, but that choice by LIGO demonstrated to me that even LIGO doesn't have an serious confidence in their own claim as to cause.

Mark my words, this LIGO fiasco is going to go south, and start to implode the moment that more LIGO stations start coming online. Then we can finally start to "test' their "assumptions" about "blip transients" not affecting multiple stations at the same time. Until then, that "assumption" is not even a falsifiable assumption, but it will be soon enough. I suspect that LIGO has a year or two of glory ahead of themselves, but Like Bernie Madoff found out, all ponzi schemes eventually blow up in your face sooner or later.

[Michael Mozina]

Let's recap the various the conversations that have taken place and the responses I've gotten related to the points in my paper.

Fuzzy Sigma:

Everyone here, everyone at CF and everyone at Reddit seems to admit/agree that the sigma figure which is provided by LIGO in no way relates to "cause" or supports their claim as to cause. All that fuzzy sigma really demonstrates is that "cherry picked" and highly filtered data sets" are unlikely to recreate the same signal pattern. So what? Nothing is demonstrated by that fuzzy sigma. Nobody even seems to dispute this problem.

Environmental factors:

Nobody seems to disagree about the fact that LIGO *removed* most typical environmental noise before calculating their fuzzy sigma figure, so in no way can that sigma figure be used to eliminate environmental factors as the real cause of the same signal.

LIGO also verified vie email that their published claim about no vetoes being present within an hour of the signal was inaccurate and there was an actual veto of this very signal which occurred within 18 seconds and which remained in place for the next 2.5 hours. LIGO *won't* however even publicly discuss why that particular veto was added in the first place and what specific type of environmental "noise" it was intended to filter out, nor will they provide any quantified assessment of the actual "safety" related to that veto. The won't discuss how that veto achieved a "high confidence" level of rejection either.

Nobody effectively dealt with that problem, and LIGO simply confirmed that at least one "high confidence' veto of this very signal *was* present within 18 seconds.

LIGO is 0 for 2.

Blip Transients:

The only argument that was offered related to the "blip transients" problem was offered by Selfsim at CF who cited one paper which simply began by *assuming* that blip transient events A) cannot produce "chirp" features which can B) show up in both detectors. That paper described how LIGO created three arbitrarily different categories based on signal shape and detection range which were nothing more than *pure assumptions* that LIGO made about blip transients in general. There's really no way to even 'test" those two core assumption at the moment because there are only two detectors online right now. That debate at least got some amount of attention, but alas it's not a resolvable debate without more LIGO stations to "test" those two basic assumptions about bllp transients.

We'll call that issue/problem as being "in dispute" at the moment. That's only 1 for 3 so far.

Confidence from black hole calculations:

Since LIGO cites at least one blip transient event that also fits their mass merger mathematical models, it's impossible to claim that these mathematical merger models demonstrate anything more than the *possibility* that gravitational waves could produce such a signal, but in no way do those calculations demonstrate the *probability* that only gravitational waves could produce those noise patterns.

So far, the mainstream is just 1 for 4 in even offering any type of refutation.

Confirmation Bias:

All I've heard anywhere is one lame excuse after another as to why all celestial claims as to cause should somehow be exempted from elimination based on a lack of external corroboration like every other claim as to cause, and not one logical argument as to why that should be the case. The fact that it's "difficult" to externally verify celestial origin claims isn't a valid scientific excuse. They're applying an *elimination* method related to every *other* possible cause of the signal, but offering *no* elimination method whatsoever related to celestial claims. Celestial origin claims are automatically exempted from the same methodology that was used to eliminate every other potential cause of the signal. Nobody want's to even touch that issue with a 10 foot pole, nor acknowledge the fact that LIGO doesn't even allow for a category of "unknown cause" for any of these candidate signals.

LIGO is 1 for 5 at best case.

Of the five major problems listed in my paper, you guys are exactly 1 for 5 in terms of even offering a logical argument or rebuttal about any of the points I have made, and the one point that is debatable isn't resolvable yet. About the best I can do now is to continue to "test" my paper by continuing to predict that LIGO will *never* visually verify their claims of a celestial origin of these types of chirp signals. That's actually more than LIGO is even willing to do because there is no way to *falsify* their claims in any logical way. One would have to spend upwards of a half a billion dollars to build their own LIGO station to even "test" some of LIGOs claims about blip transients, and they'd still need LIGO's help to do it! To actually "test" LIGO's claims in a completely independent manner one would have to spend over a *billion* dollars to build three or more of their own LIGO detectors, and even then they could never hope to ever "test" any claim that has already been made in the past, they could only ever "test" all claims that might be made in the future.

LIGO basically figured out a very clever and highly skewed way of assuring the fact that nobody on planet Earth could hope to ever independently verify or falsify any of their claims. About the best anyone could hope to do independently is to find flaws in LIGO's methodology and I'm at least 4 out of 5 on that score, with only one real "debate" on one of the five points I made. I could be 5 for 5 too. I'm also 3 for 3 in predicting that because these noise transients aren't likely to be celestial in origin, LIGO will *never* visually verify one.

I'd have to say that even I'm a little surprised at how well my paper has held up to public scrutiny to date. So far I've only seen one semi-valid attempt at a rebuttal to only one of the five major problems I have cited in LIGO's methodology, and that one issue is still hotly contested and it's still up for debate. I could be shown to be 5 for 5 on that point once the next LIGO detector is operational.

It was certainly "risky' to publicly challenge LIGO's claims, but so far I"m quite pleased that I did so. I've yet to see any useful rebuttal on most of the points that I've made and even the blip transient debate remains on the table. So far, so good, and I'm 3 for 3 now in predicting that there will *never* be any visual or neutrino support for any of LIGO's "signal transient" claims. So far I'm batting 1000 on that prediction.

Keep in mind that at least I have shown the courage to make public predictions related to visual evidence which can be used to falsify my position. LIGO hasn't even been willing to do that much.

[Higgsy]

Until LIGO does start taking those methodology criticisms seriously, LIGO is doomed to fail and doomed to keep failing by repeating the same mistakes in methodology over and over and over again/ They are doomed to keep publishing more and more pointless and erroneous papers that are actually *devoid* of any real empirical evidence to support their claims about the 'cause" of such signals.

"Taking these methodology criticisms seriously"? Really? You think any LIGO physicists know or care about what some random non-physicist on the internet thinks? And moreover, one whose very criticisms show that he hasn't got a clue what he's talking about? Dude, you have delusions of competence and importance.

[Webbman]

ahh the personal attack. Last defence of the snake oil salesman.

[Cargo]

I imagine the LIGO physicists to be more concerned about their job security. Most of them probably don't even know how the whole thing works except for a few big wigs. I seriously doubt any of them could actually admit to anything that would harm LIGO. It's a self-filling billion dollar boondoggle.

Pleading to their Authority will not help help anyone.

[Michael Mozina]

Until LIGO does start taking those methodology criticisms seriously, LIGO is doomed to fail and doomed to keep failing by repeating the same mistakes in methodology over and over and over again/ They are doomed to keep publishing more and more pointless and erroneous papers that are actually *devoid* of any real empirical evidence to support their claims about the 'cause" of such signals.

"Taking these methodology criticisms seriously"? Really? You think any LIGO physicists know or care about what some random non-physicist on the internet thinks? And moreover, one whose very criticisms show that he hasn't got a clue what he's talking about? Dude, you have delusions of competence and importance.

i think everyone here at Thunderbolts already sees past your personal attack nonsense. All that bad behavior demonstrates is the fact that the mainstream cannot handle an honest scientific debate. You obviously cannot handle the *issues* I have raised, so you're down to your last line of defense, the pitiful personal attack routine. Yawn.

Your only valid point was whether or not those authors even know about my paper yet which is why it would have been nice to get it published, and that is why I originally shopped my paper around, but alas I have no control over what the mainstream publications choose to accept or reject. I know for a fact that at least a few key people at LIGO already know about my criticisms and my paper because I've taken the time to email them. They seem pretty worried too because they won't even bother to explain *why* that veto was written in the first place and what type of noise it was originally designed to detect and remove, nor will they explain to the public how it achieved a '"high confidence" rejection. They haven't provided a quantified definition of 'safety' either. If they weren't worried about it, they'd have simply answered by questions.

It's actually very amusing to me that you have the audacity to question *my* competence while I'm currently batting 1000 on my key falsifiable prediction, and LIGO is now 0 for 3 in terms of offering any external support of their claims.

For the record, I have no illusions about my "importance". I'm just a lonely voice in the wilderness who is *already* pointing out the obvious methodology problems in LIGO's papers. I'd say that my only claim to fame might be the fact that I pointed out those methodology problems first, and I did it publicly. If and when these "discovery": claims blow up in LIGO's face, it will probably have nothing to do with me personally. It will likely be the result of having more LIGO detectors online, which will allow them to actually test their core assumptions about environmental noise transients, not because of anything that I've said or written about. I suspect that the only satisfaction I'll ever get for my efforts is the ability to gloat.

As I stated early, my best guess is that LIGO has another year or two of glory ahead, and maybe a Nobel prize to look forward to, but once more LIGO stations begin to come online, and LIGO continues to consistently fail to visually confirm any transient signals as being celestial in origin, it's bound to eventually blow up their face. LIGO's 'discovery' claim obviously hasn't crashed and burned as fast as the BICEP2 "discovery" paper crashed and burned, but like the BICEP2 claims, LIGO is also headed for a brick wall. The only reason that BICEP2 paper bit the dust so quickly is because their claim to have eliminated dust and synchrotron radiation from consideration *could be* scrutinized externally by the folks at Planck, whereas there isn't even a valid way to 'test" LIGO's claims independently without spending billions of dollars. The BICEP2 folks also made the bonehead mistake of publicly crowing about their 'discovery" to the press before their paper even passed the peer review process so other people had the ability to scrutinize their claims *before* hand. LIGO was smart enough to keep their mouth shut until *after* their papers had passed peer review, and they didn't even discuss the infamous veto of their signal until a *month after* the peer review process was complete. LIGO was just tactically smarter and more devious than BICEP2.

Keep in mind that the mainstream's exotic "dark matter" claims looked very promising and they appeared to be on quite solid footing in 2006 and yet I still went on record as a "skeptic". Today however that now infamous 2006 bullet cluster lensing study looks like a bad joke. Their assumptions about the baryonic mass that is present in those clusters have since been shown to be horrifically flawed. Even worse for them, they've since spent billions of dollars supposedly "testing" their claims about exotic types of DM in the lab, and they found absolutely nothing but negative results which they must constantly sweep under the rug as fast as they can. That particular "discovery" claim is now a complete joke in 2017. It took almost a decade for that claim to fall apart.

I'm a patient guy, and I'll probably live to see this GW wave nonsense bite the dust too. It's only a matter of time IMO.

[nick c]

Higgsy,
Ad hominem attacks are frowned upon on the TB forum.
If you feel that an idea is untenable then show, using facts, why that is so.
Please refrain from using personal attacks.

[Zyxzevn]

The ESA is now investing a lot of money too.
ESA approves gravitational-wave hunting spacecraft for 2034

To the discussion, it appears to me that the proponents of LIGO are not even trying to
work out the relevant details.
There is not real science in the way the Sigma has been established.
None of that criticism has been addressed.

My own criticism is that the echoes in the very complex LIGO system are not well modelled.
A amplitude modulated signal, which is very very clearly visible in their raw data has not been
addressed in full detail. It has been hand-waved away.
If you have a amplitude modulation on the main resonating signal, what does that mean
for all other resonating signals? Are they also modulated?
(Any modulation means that the noise frequencies add to each other in the analysis).
Is the modulation linear? Or non-linear like the current signal.
(Non linear means that it creates other signals in higher frequencies).
How does the system handle the 60 Hz net frequency, and changes in it?
(The electric grid is connected to both detectors and may influence both).
(It would be better if these detectors had their own generators).
Is the circular system creating a resonating noise too? What is the modulation on that?
(LIGO's laser follows a path 1120 km or 2240km if you go via the interferometer.
This gives a resonance of 268 Hz or 134 Hz. Maybe even a mixture of both).

The latter is very close to the signal-frequency that was attributed to the GW.

The LIGO is a complex system that needs a very deep analysis of all components and
all interactions with each other.
For a good analysis, each part of the signal needs to be decomposed,
and every part of the signal needs to be identified. Like what I am doing.

[BeAChooser]

i think everyone here at Thunderbolts already sees past your personal attack nonsense. All that bad behavior demonstrates is the fact that the mainstream cannot handle an honest scientific debate. You obviously cannot handle the *issues* I have raised, so you're down to your last line of defense, the pitiful personal attack routine.

Yeah, it looks like he's exposed himself for what he really is, Michael.

[Higgsy]

i think everyone here at Thunderbolts already sees past your personal attack nonsense.

Then they'd be wrong. There is no personal attack involved. I am merely stating facts, backed up by what I have previously pointed out on this forum.

It's simply a fact that no LIGO scientist will take him seriously, even if what he had to say was sensible. (As it is, it's not sensible. See below). It's simply a fact that professional physicists will ignore unknown and clearly unqualified people commenting on discussion forums. Michael and others here might not like it, but it is a fact, so his threats to LIGO that they must take him seriously are quite empty. Science is not done on discussion forums like this, even if those discussing are qualified and knowledgeable.

But it's not even that he has valid points. Any one of his criticisms is so far off-beam that it makes it immediately obvious to a competent physicist that he simply doesn't know what he's talking about. Let's go through his claims one by one again.

His repeated insistence that transient environmental noise should be included in the measurement of the static background is utterly ridiculous. Any physicist reading that, and his repeated diatribe against what he calls "cherry-picking" will immediately dismiss those claims as coming from someone who doesn't understand data analysis in general and how LIGO deals separately with environmental transients and static background separately. You have to really misunderstand the measurement of background and SNR to make that demand. Strike one.

His fixation with an invalid veto is also absurd. He has been told over and over again that the channel in question was an uncalibrated strain channel that ought not to have been active. He keeps asking what environmental noise was the veto attached to this channel designed to exclude. That question in itself, would show a LIGO physicist that he doesn't understand what he's discussing, because he has been repeatedly told that the channel was measuring h(t)- it is not an environmental noise channel. What's more, his demand that LIGO tell him how they quantify safety on a channel is completely irrelevant (why would they engage in discussion with him, or me, or any random keyboard warrior?). The fact that the channel was uncalibrated and ought not to have been active is sufficient to determine that it was an unsafe veto, especially since there are multiple other calibrated h(t) channels. The data is in the other calibrated strain channels which show that GW150914 was by far the loudest event in the entire period of data gathering even without data quality vetoes applied. See Fig 7 of Abbott et al. The idea that LIGO, which everyone who has followed this story closely knows has been extremely careful in accounting for every source of environmental noise (see, for example, their discussion of a noisy compressor and all the other environmental channels with excess energy around the time of the signal in the Abbott paper), would simply sweep a valid veto under the carpet and hide it from the world is just stupid. Given the number of people involved, such a conspiracy would be untenable anyway. So this obsession with an invalid veto, which is merely mentioned in passing in the LIGO magazine to give journalistic flavour to the popular description of the discovery would disqualify him in the minds of serious physicists from further consideration. Strike 2.

The third claim that he has made over and over again is that GW150914 might be a blip transient. Never mind that LIGO have explained with copious data that blip transients are not coherent and do not match the template of inspiral and ringdown templates, in that they do not display any time evolution of frequency. He has even started to focus on the blip transient reported in Abbott et al figure 12, claiming that it matches a merger template, but he misses the point of that report entirely. The point of that section is to show how the match of the loudest recorded blip transient to a CBC template is actually not a good match at all, and moreover that the closest match is to an NSBH merger which is hugely different from the form of BH merger detected in GW150914. What's more NO blip transients produced a SNR close to GW150914, and no coherent blip transients have been detected. GW150914 stands out like a sore thumb from the data, both because it is louder than anything else detected and because it is coherent. So Michael's constant complaint about this point, which has been covered thoroughly in the formal reporting from LIGO would also disqualify him from consideration in the mind of a competent physicist. Strike 3.

Michael's blunders here are not the reasons he has been and will be ignored by the professional community - the reason that he has been and will be ignored is that physicists don't take account of unqualified people commenting on discussion forums like this. But even if he could overcome that hurdle, his often expressed views would themselves disqualify him from consideration.

Does he have anything valid to say? Well, I respect but do not share his decision to withhold acceptance of the discovery until a GW event with a counterpart is detected. Not just LIGO, but pretty much the entire physics community, including electromagnetic astronomers who were very skeptical and I'd even say jealous of LIGO, have accepted these reported events are detections of GWs, so he's pretty much on his own there but his view about that is not entirely unreasonable. The community knows that BH mergers have weak or no counterpart (they do not, in Michael's words "light up the sky like a beacon"), but are louder in GW energy than BHNS and NS mergers which should have strong counterparts, so are willing to accept that the detected loud events are GWs without a counterpart. Michael disagrees and that's OK. But the rest of his issues with LIGO are without substance and that's pretty clear to anyone who knows what they are talking about.

[Higgsy]

To the discussion, it appears to me that the proponents of LIGO are not even trying to
work out the relevant details.
There is not real science in the way the Sigma has been established.
None of that criticism has been addressed.

That's nonsense. Until you have carried out every step of the tutorial here: https://losc.ligo.org/s/events/GW150914 ... orial.html you can't claim to begin to understand the LIGO data analysis and your criticisms are without merit.

My own criticism is that the echoes in the very complex LIGO system are not well modelled.
A amplitude modulated signal, which is very very clearly visible in their raw data has not been
addressed in full detail. It has been hand-waved away.

Rubbish. Your claim that the Fabry-Perot cells used to recycle the signal and the power will introduce resonances at 268 and 134Hz shows a fundamental ignorance of interferometry. As I have pointed out to you multiple times, such recycling does not and cannot introduce those tones. And what's more, those tones are not present in the very data that you have downloaded but have failed so far to properly analyse. Look at 7: in the ipython notebook.

If you have a amplitude modulation on the main resonating signal, what does that mean
for all other resonating signals? Are they also modulated?
(Any modulation means that the noise frequencies add to each other in the analysis).
Is the modulation linear? Or non-linear like the current signal.
(Non linear means that it creates other signals in higher frequencies).

Sigh. It's all in the tutorial.

How does the system handle the 60 Hz net frequency, and changes in it?
(The electric grid is connected to both detectors and may influence both).
(It would be better if these detectors had their own generators).

It's removed in whitening and band passing.

Is the circular system creating a resonating noise too? What is the modulation on that?
(LIGO's laser follows a path 1120 km or 2240km if you go via the interferometer.
This gives a resonance of 268 Hz or 134 Hz. Maybe even a mixture of both).

No it doesn't. It can't. You keep repeating this utterly silly claim even after it's been explained to you that you're totally mistaken here.

The latter is very close to the signal-frequency that was attributed to the GW.

The latter doesn't exist. You can see all the tones that are present in the raw data if you'd only take the time to read and work through the tutorial and your idea is a fantasy not supported by the facts. It's not in the data. If you actually worked through the tutorial, you'd stop making these silly claims.

The LIGO is a complex system that needs a very deep analysis of all components and
all interactions with each other.
For a good analysis, each part of the signal needs to be decomposed,
and every part of the signal needs to be identified. Like what I am doing.

You crack me up.

[Michael Mozina]

i think everyone here at Thunderbolts already sees past your personal attack nonsense.

Then they'd be wrong. There is no personal attack involved. I am merely stating facts, backed up by what I have previously pointed out on this forum.

No, actually you engaged in pure personal attack you tried to play mind reader. You really stink at it too.

It's simply a fact that no LIGO scientist will take him seriously, even if what he had to say was sensible. (As it is, it's not sensible. See below).

It's completely sensible. The only thing that isn't "sensible" is their methodology itself. It's a methodology that automatically favors celestial origin claims and automatically disfavors every other potential explanation for the same chip signals. The fact that you folks are only 1 for 5 in even being able to attempt to refute anything says volumes IMO. The only criticisms I've seen even an *attempt* at addressing is the blip transient problem, and that can only be done by making *assumptions* that cannot be verified or falsified.

It's simply a fact that professional physicists will ignore unknown and clearly unqualified people commenting on discussion forums.

You haven't demonstrated that I am, or any other human being is unqualified to make an assessment as to their *methodology*. Were I claiming to be a foremost leading expert on their equipment, you might have a case. Anyone and everyone can assess their methodology however, and it's 'bush league" at best case.

Michael and others here might not like it, but it is a fact, so his threats to LIGO that they must take him seriously are quite empty. Science is not done on discussion forums like this, even if those discussing are qualified and knowledgeable.

If they don't take my criticisms of their methodology seriously, they're headed for disaster. Then again it's probably too late for that. It's now a train wreck in slow motion. They have quite literally boxed themselves into a logical corner over over invisible objects, without any way out. It's not going to be me that they answer to either, it will be the scientists from other LIGO stations that they'll ultimately be answering to once those new stations come online. Until then they can keep making these absurdly unsupported claims at their own risk, but they're going to look pretty ridiculous in another year or two when "blip transient chirps" start showing up in just 2 of 3 (or 4) detectors at a time, and they go 0 for 10, or 0 for 20 in terms of verifying their claims visually even with better triangulation potential. Then things will start to get ugly.

I'm just the canary in the coal mine. I can see at least 5 major methodology problems in LIGOS claims that are certainly cause for concern. Since there is no way to verify or falsify LIGO's claims independently yet, I'll just have to be patient.

But it's not even that he has valid points. Any one of his criticisms is so far off-beam that it makes it immediately obvious to a competent physicist that he simply doesn't know what he's talking about. Let's go through his claims one by one again.

Well, let's see how you do....

His repeated insistence that transient environmental noise should be included in the measurement of the static background is utterly ridiculous. Any physicist reading that, and his repeated diatribe against what he calls "cherry-picking" will immediately dismiss those claims as coming from someone who doesn't understand data analysis in general and how LIGO deals separately with environmental transients and static background separately.

They didn't deal with the environmental aspects in a *quantified* manner! They 'dealt with them separately" because it allows them to "cheat the system" that way. If they didn't do that, they'd have to compare the signal to *all real environmental data* and the sigma figure would be a complete bust. They need a high sigma figure so they cherry picked out the noise which they didn't wish to deal with in the sigma figure, and they artificially drove up a meaningless sigma figure above the magic number of 5 in the process. That was their whole point in trying to "separate" them in the first place.

They didn't even deal with the environmental influences in a *quantified* manner! They simply applied a "process of elimination" methodology to the issue and then *changed the rules* to suit themselves with respect to their own claims.

You have to really misunderstand the measurement of background and SNR to make that demand. Strike one.

They didn't do any corresponding sigma figure on the environmental noise and in fact there was no quantified definition of "safety" ever even provided with respect to the *veto* of this very signal. They used a process of elimination methodology on all *other* options, but they excluded their own claims from anything of the sort. It's pure confirmation bias on a stick and it's directly related to that slight of hand they did by cherry picking data sets just to get a high sigma figure.

His fixation with an invalid veto is also absurd. He has been told over and over again that the channel in question was an uncalibrated strain channel that ought not to have been active. He keeps asking what environmental noise was the veto attached to this channel designed to exclude. That question in itself, would show a LIGO physicist that he doesn't understand what he's discussing, because he has been repeatedly told that the channel was measuring h(t)- it is not an environmental noise channel. What's more, his demand that LIGO tell him how they quantify safety on a channel is completely irrelevant (why would they engage in discussion with him, or me, or any random keyboard warrior?). The fact that the channel was uncalibrated and ought not to have been active is sufficient to determine that it was an unsafe veto, especially since there are multiple other calibrated h(t) channels.

Why was that veto added originally, and what was it's original purpose to start with? How "unsafe" was it? Who quantified anything related to "safety" as it relates to this veto or any other supposedly "unsafe" veto? How and why did that particular veto come up with a "high confidence" rejection of the signal if it was so "unsafe"? Nobody wants to answer any of those questions related to that veto, and LIGO simply misrepresented the historical series of events in their published paper. The peer reviewers were not even made aware of the facts related to the real series of events. They were given a completely whitewashed account of events and the real series of events wasn't even made public until *after* the peer review process.

The data is in the other calibrated strain channels which show that GW150914 was by far the loudest event in the entire period of data gathering even without data quality vetoes applied. See Fig 7 of Abbott et al.

So what? The fact that it was a loud signal doesn't mean that it has to be gravitational wave related! Holy cow. So what if it's a "loud" bit of noise among a lot of other noise?

The idea that LIGO, which everyone who has followed this story closely knows has been extremely careful in accounting for every source of environmental noise (see, for example, their discussion of a noisy compressor and all the other environmental channels with excess energy around the time of the signal in the Abbott paper), would simply sweep a valid veto under the carpet and hide it from the world is just stupid.

And yet that is exactly what they did when they stated in the published paper that *no* vetoes took place within an hour of the signal. They didn't even report the *true* series of veto events until *after* the papers were past the peer review process. That's about as unethical as it gets. I certainly agree that it wasn't a really smart thing to do, but it's exactly what they did.

Their "methodicalness" got thrown out the window as it relates to their own claims too.

Given the number of people involved, such a conspiracy would be untenable anyway. So this obsession with an invalid veto, which is merely mentioned in passing in the LIGO magazine to give journalistic flavour to the popular description of the discovery would disqualify him in the minds of serious physicists from further consideration. Strike 2.

In other words, the mere fact of pointing out their inaccurate account of veto events is somehow *my* fault, and you think it undermines *my* credibility that they have two different account of events? Give me a break. I'm just pointing out the obviously *false* statements that were made in the published paper. FYI, that's not even one of the five major "problems" that is listed in my paper, it just happens to *undermine* their claims about eliminating environmental noise.

You claim they went to great lengths to account for environmental data, but their process of elimination methodology was never applied to their own claim. Even if we accept that their methodology was "good" for eliminating environmental data (which it wasn't), their methodology was *horrific* in terms of applying the same process of elimination methodology to their own claims. They didn't even bother!

The third claim that he has made over and over again is that GW150914 might be a blip transient. Never mind that LIGO have explained with copious data that blip transients are not coherent and do not match the template of inspiral and ringdown templates, in that they do not display any time evolution of frequency.

You mean *besides* the three blip transients they erroneously labelled "gravitational waves"? How could they even have any historical blip transient data sets on the new equipment while still in the "engineering run"? When did they do what you're claiming, and in which exact paper was that ever done? LIGO even cited one example of a blip transient event that did *fit* their BH/neutron star merger templates. There are so many fudge factors in their templates that those mathematical models can match a variety of different patterns, including blip transients, not just one specific pattern.

He has even started to focus on the blip transient reported in Abbott et al figure 12, claiming that it matches a merger template, but he misses the point of that report entirely. The point of that section is to show how the match of the loudest recorded blip transient to a CBC template is actually not a good match at all,

Except it is a match.

and moreover that the closest match is to an NSBH merger which is hugely different from the form of BH merger detected in GW150914.

Here's your problem in a nutshell. They're in an *engineering* run after a massive hardware upgrade of both detectors. They're supposed to be "testing" to find out what kind of noise shows up in their upgraded equipment and identifying that noise during this "shake out" period. They *routinely* observe blip transients in this frequency range, with very similar duration patterns too. To this day, they *still* have no idea what causes them.

For all they know they're discharge related phenomenon which because of the upgrades can now *sometimes* be observed by both detectors depending on the location. Instead they simply *assumed* that this one loud "chip" is not a "blip transient" and their primary "excuse" was to suggest they they don't "typically" (whatever that even meant) affect both detectors at once. That's not even a "safe" assumption after hundreds of billions of dollars of sensitivity upgrades, and they couldn't possibly have enough data to even know what kind of noise might now effect their new equipment while still in the *engineering run* for crying out loud.

What's more NO blip transients produced a SNR close to GW150914,

Unless of course we categorize 150914 as a "blip transient", in which case one did.

and no coherent blip transients have been detected.

That's an *assumption* that cannot be supported based on the recent sensitivity upgrades and the fact they can't identify the source of blip transients in the first place. That was just an *assumption* they made to try to claim to be able to differentiate between gravitational waves and ordinary events. Since they don't even know the cause of the ordinary events, and the upgrades were being 'tested', that ends up being an *unsupportable assumption* they made. All three of the "signals" in question could just as easily be categorized as "blip transients" which do sometimes have an effect on more than one detector at a time. That was purely a *subjective choice* in terms of classification.

FYI, I believe that this specific *assuption* is going to go down in flames the moment that a third LIGO detector comes online. LIGO is 'predicting' that similar signals will not show up in 2 detectors, but not all of the LIGO stations. I'm predicting that they will sometimes produce chirps in *some* (more than one), but not *all* the detectors at a time. When LIGOs' assumption starts to unravel, all hell is going to break loose IMO, particularly since LIGO doesn't have a single visual or neutrino confirmation to it's name.

GW150914 stands out like a sore thumb from the data, both because it is louder than anything else detected

Are you really trying to claim that no other environmental factor has *ever* been louder than that one signal? I don't believe that's even true to start with. It might be louder than anything "classified" as a "blip transient", but that's *before* the upgrades, and only if you *assume* the signal is not a "blip transient".

and because it is coherent.

So your whole argument comes down to the bald faced *assumption* that blip transients cannot affect more than one detector at a time, *in spite* of the fact that you have no clue what causes blip transients in the first place. Is that your argument in a nutshell?

So Michael's constant complaint about this point, which has been covered thoroughly in the formal reporting from LIGO would also disqualify him from consideration in the mind of a competent physicist. Strike 3.

Anyone who would discount the possibility that an unknown signal might have an effect on more than one detector at at time after hundreds of millions of dollars worth of *massive* upgrades, isn't really a "competent physicist" in the first place. That whole argument is based on logical quicksand. If you could identify the source of ordinary blip transients, then your argument *might* have merit. Since you don't even know what their cause might be, and the new detectors are now 10 times more sensitive, it's *irrational* to even make that assumption.

Michael's blunders here are not the reasons he has been and will be ignored by the professional community - the reason that he has been and will be ignored is that physicists don't take account of unqualified people commenting on discussion forums like this. But even if he could overcome that hurdle, his often expressed views would themselves disqualify him from consideration.

And yet some supposedly "unqualified" guy is now 3 for 3 in terms of correctly predicting that LIGO will be incapable of supporting any of these "transient signal" claims visually and demonstrating that they are celestial in origin, and all the 'qualified" LIGO folks are 0 for 3. Care to wager that I go 4 for 4 and that LIGO goes 0 for 4? What are the odds that the only things which LIGO can supposedly "observe" are noise patterns from an invisible wave, caused by two invisible objects merging together invisibly over a billion light years away? Somehow these powerful events supposedly release multiple solar *masses* of energy in a quarter of second, yet they're entirely *invisible* in the EM spectrum here on Earth. That's more that a little fishy to start with. The paper I cited shows that some black holes might be expected to emit more energy in the EM spectrum than in gravitational waves, yet miraculously all three of these events are entirely invisible.

Does he have anything valid to say?

Yep. There's been no rebuttal on four of my five criticisms so I'm at least 4 out of 5, and I could easily be shown to be 5 for 5 when more detectors come online. That last debate and issue is the one that is going to sink their ship IMO. Once similar 'chirps' start showing up in two but not all three detectors at a time, things are going to get ugly in a hurry, particularly if they are US power grid related phenomenon as others have suggested. Mark my words.

The confirmation bias issue is the real show stopper IMO and your side won't even touch that issue with a 10 foot pole. The only thing I've seen to address that criticism are a bunch of lame excuses.

Well, I respect but do not share his decision to withhold acceptance of the discovery until a GW event with a counterpart is detected.

That's fine by me. I had no illusions that I was in the majority position with respect to that choice. Since however I have exactly *no* external evidence to support their claim and no way to independently verify it, I'm going to remain a skeptic. If and when they can correlate one of these "chirps" to a real celestial event, then and only then will I accept that these chirp signals are celestial in origin. Until then, had they followed their own process of elimination methodology *consistently*, all three of these chirp signals should have ended up in the "unknown origin" category, not the "gravitational waves did it" category. The fact they don't even allow for any signal to be categorized as "unknown" in origin demonstrates the highly biased nature of their claim.

Not just LIGO, but pretty much the entire physics community, including electromagnetic astronomers who were very skeptical and I'd even say jealous of LIGO, have accepted these reported events are detections of GWs, so he's pretty much on his own there but his view about that is not entirely unreasonable.

Meh. I have no idea how many of them actually accept the LIGO claims, and there were at least five authors in that most Arxiv paper that seem to question LIGO's claim, and three other individuals in another paper I cited earlier in this thread. I may be in the minority position on this topic, but I'm certainly not alone. I think that resistance will continue to grow every single time that LIGO comes out with another GW claim with no visual support. It's going to become obvious that they have a problem once they're 0 for 5, or 0 for 10.

The community knows that BH mergers have weak or no counterpart

How can they "know" that? The published paper that I cited suggests that some types of black hole mergers could emit more energy in the EM spectrum than in gravitational waves. You're just essentially making up "excuses" for engaging in a completely *biased* process of elimination methodology. Period. Had they simply decided to apply the same process of elimination methodology to celestial origin claims, as they did for everything else, their entire claim falls apart.

(they do not, in Michael's words "light up the sky like a beacon"),

Except two charged BH's would "light up the sky" according to that paper that I cited which was written *before* the LIGO "discovery".

but are louder in GW energy than BHNS and NS mergers which should have strong counterparts,

So why not focus their attention on quieter, but more easily visually verified types of mass mergers? Why fixate on random signals which they cannot verify as even being celestial in origin?

so are willing to accept that the detected loud events are GWs without a counterpart.

Translation: Since they need to justify the blatant confirmation biased methodology, that's their "excuse". It's a terrible excuse and it's makes their work both "sloppy" and prone to error. Some EM effects on their equipment might be hard to detect externally too, but they eliminated those options based on a *lack* of external confirmation.

Michael disagrees and that's OK. But the rest of his issues with LIGO are without substance and that's pretty clear to anyone who knows what they are talking about.

If they really knew what they were talking about, they'd have given an honest account of veto events in the published paper. They would have fully explained the purpose of that specific veto, explained how it achieved a "high confidence" rejection of the exact signal in question, and they'd have answered some basic questions about a lack of a quantified definition of "safety" when asked about it. Since they won't provide any quantified "safety" assessment, their entire claims lacks any quantified support for their claim of "discovery". That five sigma figure is *pointless*. It serves no other purpose other than to confuse the reader into believing that their claims as to cause are valid and "important", when in fact it demonstrates nothing of the sort.

If they knew what they were talking about, they wouldn't have needed to resort to blatant confirmation bias by excluding their own claims from the same process of elimination methodology that they applied to every other claim as to "cause".

The fact they're already 0 for 3 demonstrates that they don't know what they're talking about. They actually have *zero* empirical evidence to support any of their first three claims, and they're all based on the "assumption" that blip transients cannot affect more than one detector at a time.

That particular "assumption" cannot be tested by anyone outside of LIGO, but it eventually will be something that can be verified or falsified by other detectors. IMO that's where LIGO's claims about "transients" are going to hit a brick wall. The moment one of those chirps shows up in just two out of three detectors, the whole claim falls apart.