Shivali Best, Executive Science and Technology Editor, will be the next *science communicator* whose propaganda I examine.
She writes …
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech ... -Bang.html
Claims have been spreading that James Webb's photos debunk Big Bang theory
The claims are based on an article published by Big Bang denier Eric Leaner
He has misconstrued data to suggest that astronomers are worried
Now right off the bat I have to note that she misspells Lerner last name 5 times in her article. She only spells it correct twice. My daddy use to say that I care what you write about me in the papers, just spell my name correctly. Her doing this is sloppy and shows a lack of attention to detail.
Now let's see if Shivali came come up with anything that I haven’t already debunked in this thread. She writes ...
Leaner has misconstrued early data from James Webb to suggest that astronomers are worried the Big Bang Theory is incorrect.
Let’s review again exactly what Lerner said in his article. In the first paragraph, he noted that “In the flood of technical astronomical papers published online since July 12, the authors report again and again that the images show surprisingly many galaxies, galaxies that are surprisingly smooth, surprisingly small and surprisingly old. Lots of surprises, and not necessarily pleasant one. One paper’s title begins with the candid exclamation: ‘Panic!’” So far, everything he wrote is true. Nothing is misconstrued.
Then he wrote “Why do the JWST’s images inspire panic among cosmologists? And what theory’s predictions are they contradicting? The papers don’t actually say. The truth that these papers don’t report is that the hypothesis that the JWST’s images are blatantly and repeatedly contradicting is the Big Bang Hypothesis that the universe began 14 billion years ago in an incredibly hot, dense state and has been expanding ever since.” Again, that’s all true or a valid opinion to express.
He continues … “Since that hypothesis has been defended for decades as unquestionable truth by the vast majority of cosmological theorists, the new data is causing these theorists to panic. “Right now I find myself lying awake at three in the morning,” says Alison Kirkpatrick, an astronomer at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, “and wondering if everything I’ve done is wrong.” Again, he’s just reporting facts.
And ironically, the extremely hostile response from *communicators* to Lerner’s article (they’re coming out of the walls, ceiling and floor) is a clear sign that the mainstream has indeed panicked. Otherwise they’d just ignore him like they have all the other times he’s said in the last 2 decades. Like they have ignored what all the other EU/PC/PU proponents have said and written for decades.
Now notice, the next part of Lerner’s article doesn’t talk about "panic" but just discusses the data from JWST (as reported by mainstream sources) and what that suggest to him. And when he’s done, he writes “While Big Bang theorists were shocked and panicked by these new results, Riccardo and I (and a few others) were not. In fact, a week before the JWST images were released we published online a paper that detailed accurately what the images would show. We could do this with confidence because more and more data of all kinds has been contradicting the Big Bang hypothesis for years.”
Again all true. Numerous Big Bang scientists have expressed “shock” about the JWST results. And Lerner (and other EU proponents) did make predictions that are far closer to what JWST found than what the Big Bang theorists said they expected. Again, nothing was misconstrued or wrong.
Lerner than goes on in the article to say more about failed Big Bang predictions then, this is key because this is why the mainstream and their communicators are panicked, writes "Readers may well be wondering at this point why they have not read of this collapse of the Big Bang hypothesis in major media outlets by now and why the authors of so many recent papers have not pointed to this collapse themselves. The answer lies in what I term the “Emperor’s New Clothes Effect”—if anyone questions the Big Bang, they are labeled stupid and unfit for their jobs. Unfortunately, funding for cosmology comes from a very few government sources controlled by a handful of committees that are dominated by Big Bang theorists. These theorists have spent their lives building the Big Bang theory. Those who openly question the theory simply don’t get funded." And he is 100% correct.
He then notes, “It has now become almost impossible to publish papers critical of the Big Bang in any astronomical journals.” And that’s 100% true as well. And he gives a personal example to prove it. He writes “Such censorship is now, as always, inimical to the progress of science. Two dozen researchers in astrophysics, astronomy and space science have signed a letter of protest to the arXiv leadership. I have personally called on leading Big Bang theorists to openly debate the new evidence. For cosmology – as for any research area - to advance, this debate must happen openly in both scientific journals and the public media.” There's nothing misconstrued or incorrect in that ... or unreasonable.
He’s totally justified in saying that and, as he proves, he’s not alone in that view. Now notice that NOT ONE of the *science communicators* who articles or videos I’ve discussed so far has even mentioned this portion of his paper. They ALL got stuck on the first several paragraphs where he poked the Big Bang community in the gut ... poked fun at them. Not one of them mentions that ALL Lerner is asking for is open debate about the evidence in media that will reach the masses. That’s what science is supposed to be about, isn't it? He hasn't demanded that everyone believe his (EU/PC/PU) theories. He just wants the ability to debate the issues in a level playing field that the public can witness. Yet, every one of the so-called *science communicators* has ignored this and, in fact, are focused solely on shutting down Lerner to make sure there is no debate. How ANTI-SCIENCE.
And this latest article from Daily Mails *science communicator* is no different. The truth is that it is Shivali who misconstrues. No, worse than that, she deliberately misrepresents what Lerner wrote in his article. She spends much of her article space defending poor little Allison Kirkpatrick from an injustice that mean old Lerner, who only accurately reported what Allison tweeted,
did not commit. He never said she’d become a Big Bang supporter. He only, accurately, noted her despair upon seeing the JWST results and asked why? The mere self inflicted notion that she might be thought a Big Bang support because of Lerner’s interest, drove Allison to change her moniker on the internet. She was that fearful of being lumped into the Big Bang "denier" catergory. Why is that?
BECAUSE IT MIGHT AFFECT HER FUNDING, that’s why. And that's EXACTLY what Lerner noted in his article.
So Shivali is sent out to make poor Allison a victim and works hard at that … rather than carefully explore the important question … why did Allison say what she did in the first place, if all is well in the astrophysics community, as we’re still being led to believe by the communicators? Shivali glosses over that question and simply regurgitates what seems to be the explanation most of the *communicator* community is now offering … that she was only referring to the “early evolution of the universe." That she wasn't talking about the Big Bang.
But remember, Kirkpatrick said she wondered if “EVERYTHING” she “EVER” did “is wrong.” She claims she’s not a cosmologist … just a black hole expert. Black holes are now a central feature used to explain just about every observation in the Big Bang Universe. If she is concerned that everything she ever thought about them is wrong, then that potentially might undermine one of the major entities that the mainstream has relied on to prop up their model.
This is no minor matter and just because Allison's statement wasn’t a “direct reference” to Big Bang theory (as Shivila makes sure to point out) doesn’t mean what Kirkpatrick is worried about has nothing to with whether mainstream Big Bang cosmology is right. Indeed, caption in Shivila’s own article, reads that “the Big Bang Theory is a cosmological model used to describe the beginning
AND THE EVOLUTION of our universe.” So if Allison was worried about the early evolution of the universe, she was worried about the Big Bang. It's right there, in black and white, in *science communicator* Shivali's article. Doubt me not.
Next Shivali writes that “One of the key reasons why the Big Bang is still the leading theory on our universe's beginnings is because of cosmic microwave background (CMB) - the radiation leftover from the Big Bang” and that “While Lerner has proposed other explanations for CMB, these have all been disproven in the past.” Again she misconstrues and misrepresents. Let’s talk about what Lerner says here,
https://www.lppfusion.com/science/cosmi ... -big-bang/, regarding CMB (since he says nothing about it in his latest article).
First he notes that the initial prediction of the Big Bang was that CMB would be “smooth” but then it was observed to be so smooth on large scales that there would have been “too little time for regions that we now see in different parts of the sky to reach equilibrium with each other, or even to receive energy from each other at the speed of light. So to fix that, Big Bang theorists introduced “an unknown force, dubbed ‘inflation’, that generated an exponential phase of the Big Bang that blew up the universe so rapidly that all asymmetries were smoothed away.”
He then notes that “the latest crisis is that “based on the data from the Planck satellite, the best fit to the CMB predicts a Hubble constant (the ratio of redshift to distance) in conflict with observations based on Supernovae. The best fits imply a curved universe, in conflict with the predictions of inflation for a flat universe. And they predict a density of dark matter far greater than any measurements derived from the motion of galaxies.” And that “In contrast to the multiple contradictions of the Big Bang theory of the CMB with its “ultra precise” but wrong predictions, non-Big Bang processes provide a better explanation. The energy that was released in producing the observed helium in the universe equals the energy in the CMB. Any radiation become isotropized if it travels in a medium that scatters it. There is abundant observational evidence that microwave-frequency radiation is scattered in the intergalactic medium.” Now contrary to what Shivali claims, that has not be disproven.
In fact, inflation, which current Big Bang theories depend on to solve the CMB smoothness problem, is in trouble itself. As Wikipedia notes “Paul Steinhardt, one of the founding fathers of inflationary cosmology, has recently become one of its sharpest critics.” Here's an article in Scientific American (
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cr ... -conceive/ ) titled "Physicist Slams Cosmic Theory He Helped Conceive". Wikipedia says that he and his colleagues' analysis of the Planck satellite 2013 results led them to conclude (according to Wikipedia) that "the chances of obtaining a universe matching the observations after a period of inflation is less than one in a googolplex. That small. In fact, that's next to impossible. Wikipedia further notes that “in 2015, the unlikeness problem was reaffirmed and strengthened by a subsequent round of measurements reported by the Planck satellite team.” Sorry, Shivali ... if there’s no inflation, Big Bang is in Big Trouble.
Now you won’t find this worry discussed by any of the so-called *science communicators". For example, In Ethan Siegel’s hit piece on Lerner, he mentions inflation and it’s importance, but doesn’t once mention any of this. Instead he assures his audience that “Inflation allows us to describe the initial conditions of the Universe at the start of the hot Big Bang: how hot and dense it was, what the initial spectrum of density imperfections were — including that were all adiabatic, gaussian random fluctuations — and what the magnitude of these fluctuations were on all cosmic scales” and moves on.
And that, my friends, is the sum total of Shivali’s *destruction* of Lerner. LOL!