Talk:Bogdanov affair/Archive 1

message: I have just created an account « Igor Bogdanoff » on this site. I do not wish to maintain the least discussion, within the framework of Wikipédia, with Mr. Messager whose opinion about us is well known by all those who could read his articles on internet. I will thus remove all his interventions about us  which  obviously, do not proceed of constructive intention. It is not a question of « vandalism », but such an action is  a simple defense of our moral integrity. Consequently, I make a point of preventing that a sterile dispute does develop in the context of an encyclopaedia which  must respect a chart (even not formal) of objectivity.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Bogdanov (talk • contribs) 20:46, 3 August 2005
:It is vandalism since you removed most part of the origigal article as well as the whole discussion.
:The basic (even not formal) objectivity implies that someone directly concerned with an article would not rewrite it.--YBM 00:41, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: >1. It is undeniable that we passed our thesis in 1999 and 2002 without any dispute
:This is false, Grichka didn't pass "without any dispute", the examination board considered "he didn't address correctly most of the questions asked, especially none of them about physics" and got the Ph. D. (after ten years !) under the condition to rewrite the thesis. Igor has been advice he'd better "go to another domain, such as epistemology (!)" and had to wait three years in order to be allowed to support. Both Ph.D. have been passed with the lower grade, meaning that any further involvement in the academic research is impossible.
>2. It is undeniable that we published all our papers between 2001 and 2002 without any dispute
:This is false : (from Baez site) : "What did the journals say about it all? The Chronicle writes:
:    Mr. Wilczek is editor in chief of Annals of Physics, which published one of the Bogdanoff brothers' papers in February. But he and all of the current members of the journal's editorial board had recently joined and did not handle papers in that issue. He says that standards at the journal had slipped in recent years because of the illness and death of a previous editor in chief.
:    Although he will not comment on the Bogdanoff paper, Mr. Wilczek says he intends to raise the journal's standards. As part of that drive, members of the editorial board now do most of the reviewing. "I'm trying to get much tighter control, just because of things like this," he says, referring to the Bogdanoff case. 
:Hermann Nicolai, editor of Classical and Quantum Gravity, told Die Zeit that if the Bogdanoffs' paper had reached his desk, he would have immediately sent it back: "The article is a potpourri of the buzzwords of modern physics, that is completely incoherent."
:Sometime around November 1st, the editorial board of Classical and Quantum Gravity issued the following statement, which I obtained through Greg Kuperberg:
:Classical and Quantum Gravity and the paper "Topological theory of the initial singularity of spacetime" by G Bogdanoff and I Bogdanoff, Class.
:Quant. Grav. 18 4341-4372 (2001)
:A number of our readers have contacted us regarding the above paper and in response we have decided to issue the following statement.
::Classical and Quantum Gravity endeavours to publish original research of the highest calibre on gravitational physics. It is not possible for the Editorial Board to consider every article submitted and so, in common with many journals, we consult among a worldwide pool of over 1000 referees asking two independent experts to review each paper. Regrettably, despite the best efforts, the refereeing process cannot be 100% effective.
::Thus the paper "Topological theory of the initial singularity of spacetime" by G Bogdanoff and I Bogdanoff, Classical and Quantum Gravity 18 4341-4372 (2001) made it through the review process even though, in retrospect, it does not meet the standards expected of articles in this journal.
::The journal's Editorial Board became aware of this situation already in April 2002. The paper was discussed extensively at the annual Editorial Board meeting in September 2002, and there was general agreement that it should not have been published. Since then several steps have been taken to further improve the peer review process in  order to improve the quality assessment on articles submitted to the journal and reduce the likelihood that this could happen again. However, there are at this time no plans to withdraw the article. Rather, the journal publishes refereed Comments and Replies by readers and authors as a means to comment on and correct mistakes in published material.
::We are also grateful to our readers, contributors and reviewers for their vigilance and assistance both before and after publication.
::Dr Andrew Wray
::Senior Publisher
::Classical and Quantum Gravity
::Institute of Physics Publishing
::Professor Hermann Nicolai
::Honorary Editor
::Classical and Quantum Gravity
::Albert Einstein Institute
"
>3. Is undeniable that on October 22 2002, Niedermaier decided to send an email to thousands of his colleagues and pretended that our thesis were a "hoax".
:True.
>4. It is undeniable that on October 22, after having received this email, John Baez opened a discussion on SPR on this topic and created a page "The Bogdanoff Affair"on his website.
:True.
>5. It is undeniable that John Baez page plus the thread of discussion on SPR attracted worldwide attention on our case.
:True.
>6. Is undeniable that on October 26 Niedermaier retracted and issued a disclaimer where he apologized (but it was too late : the "affair" had already blown up).
:Perhaps true. This should be verified by a independ source or confirmed by Niedermeier.
>7. It is undeniable that after long debates and discussions the majority of the physicists seems to regard Bogdanoff work as incomprehensible and meaningless
:True.
>8. It is undeniable that the veracity of our work has recently gained new supporters among certain researchers in theoretical physics (http://motls.blogspot.com/2005/06/bogdanoff-papers.html.). We had a personnal correspondance with the physicist Lubos Motl and I can assure you that he published his supportive opinion about our work totally independently from us (we were not aware of it untill he attracted our attention by email) and only because he sincerely beleives that it might contain new ideas or at least relevant and interesting questions.
:Not true. As usual you are mistranslating Motl actual words. IMHO. This is not a good idea from Motl to support cons in order to address his own legitimate recriminations against some people in the theorical physics field who could deserve it. 
>9. It is undeniable that we never wrote in our book "The volume of the solar system has grown twice since the beginning of Earth's history" (which is Mr Messager's invention).
:You suggest it in your book "Now we are four billion years before now. […] Everything has changed in the Universe of these times since it is twice smaller than now. Nothing surprising that the Sun looks like so huge and bright in the sky, that one would perfectly see some stars (like Sirius or Polaris). The night, the show is even more impressive Mars is almost here, […] just as Saturn" and the sentence "The volume of the solar system has grown twice since the beginning of Earth's history" is a direct transcript of your TV show.
>10. It is undeniable that the aim of a book and a TV show is only to popularize science. Neither of these medias should be considered as "scientific publications". Therefore one should not criticize as a scientific research the inevitable approximations and metaphores that appears in a popularizing work of large audience communication. If we had been as bad as Mr Messager pretends I do not beleive that our shows would still be on the air 25 years after their creation.
:Falsifying texts (see : Urs Screiber, John Giorgis and Peter Woit), presenting you non-sense in a popular science show, accumulating mistakes at a college level on TV and in your book is not a point of "approximations and metaphores", it is dishonesty and hijacking.--YBM 14:16, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Let's see the details 

message: I rest my case (Igor has no real objection, as usual he tries to obfuscate the issue and wrongly accuse people of quotes forgery - an activity where he's proven to be a real specialist). He shouldn't invoque 'honesty', something he has no experience in.--YBM 18:15, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  My conclusion 

message: Dear anonymous PhD in electrical engineering,
The Bogdanoffs affair is nothing but personnal attacks.
As for the unanswered questions, try to think about time and places where you had to explain a complex topic, who was quiet difficult to grab even for people of the same scientific knowledge than you, and in the same field, to technicians.
Did it all went smoothly, or do you remember having problems at getting everybody along?
Thats the same here.
Technicians and engineeer do work in the same field, but do not always agree, nor understand each other, far from that.
Where Engineer will take the theoretical approach to the problem at hand, technicians will use their own experience and will know what will not work and why, thought they will be most embarassed to explain it to an engineer, as they are not using the same tools so to speek.
Take a concreete exemple: the geography og an electronic circuit.
There is many ways to dispose the different components and parts in the circuit, but only a very small handfull of configurations will work satisfactorly, and only one configuration will work with the upmost efficiency.
What is this configuration?
Nobody knows it nor can calculate it.
In fact the best calculations, also concerning the charge of some of the components will be all together wrong, if calculated by super engineer, using only theoretical data and mathematical skills.
A technician will know intuitively what will be best.
But there is less intuition in that than there is plain practical experience of the matter.
They know it work best that way, and that this theoretically perfect geographic configuration will never work.
They also know that a little more or less charge is asked for this and this component to can function now, and under other conditions.
Thats' not magic, but that ain't exact science either!
And we are only talking here about any given electrical circuit.
And about rules that thought uncalculable, are much the same for each identical type of circuit.
Now take cosmology, physic, theoretic physic, and quantum Mechanic, mix it together and tell me: How big is the probality that all the people with more or less knowledge in any of the given fields, will understand the same, will discuss about the same, and will agree about the same?
We are here talking about the same kind of situation as above: a beforehand known field of interest and/or profession, confronted with an unheard theory, who doesn't make much sense, and doesn't find echo in the scholastic well known ground, but who nevertheless work.
All that teached or told by people, (before the technicians/ here the Bogdanoff) who should know less than the specialists in that matter (engineer/Physicists) but who anyway come up with a workable configuration who wasn't calculated before, and who take other parameters into account than those applied until now.
And thats it.
You don't have an unknown object, you don't have a fancy jonction of components, you have a workable theory.
Like for the circuits geography, it can be bettered, tested, rethought, but it still remain the main thought and plan of the workable concept.
When this one work all others are put aside, as the understanding of the workable circuit explain why it has to be that way. Which mean studying it longer.
Learning to know it does not imply to reject it and fight about its rejection or acceptation, but on the opposit, on making a consensus about founding out in what way it operate, and what make it work better than the previously assumption.
At the moment many says: it cannot work because we didn't thought it, calculate it, and made it that way. Dito: it can never work.
Other says: we thougth it, calculate it, and made it that way, and it works.
Who are you most appealed to listen to? those who have a workable thought discussed configuration, or those who have a theoretically working but accepted configuration?
Try the bike first, argue about its skills later.
Not all can actually do that, but we can all get used to the idear that this is a breakthrough in physical science, and try to grab as much we can from it, until a more "satisfactory-for-all" explaination is brewed.
I don't think that a meticulous step by step work like the one Igor and Grishka have done during 10 years, has much chance to contain any major mistakes or falls.
If that is what some are hoping for.
I myself am not hoping for anything, for they have allready granted us our wish, so that case is closed.
 --213.237.21.6 06:44, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  '''THE WORKABLE CONFIGURATION''' 

message: In the former paragraph Igor wrongly give me the authorship of "5. On the basis of the disputed content of these theses, they received doctorate degrees in theoretical physics from from the University of Bourgogne, France.". This come from the original definition. So I have nothing to do with it, I only restablished it when Igor anonymously blanked it (as the sentence is quite correct).
We have the same problem here, as we have on the french page. There is a way, I think, to address it : stick to the facts, don't try to give all of them, and let the Bogdanov express their counterclaims.
Igor should understant that he won't succeed in making this article (which is about the affair) and the one on the "polémique" in french, a part of their personal advertising. Noone can accept that such an article (which is well-founded because there are a real issues with the serious of their work, their thesis and their book/show, and real questions about the legitimicy of some practice of quoting in their book) would be hijacked by the Bogdanov themselve in order to spread their own personal and discable views of their own work.
What I propose here is a basis for a replacement of the paragraph "In 2004 ...", he express the critic point of view on purpose, for I propose to let Igor modify it so that their point of view could be expressed. What I couldn't accept (in order to consider this conflict settled) is the removal of its content. Of course a native english speaker should proofread it ;
:In 2004 they published, quite successfully, a popular science book ("Before the Big Bang") where they present their views on cosmology and theoretical physics as well as a simplified version of their thesis on the state of the universe "between the planck scale and the singular origin". A TV show on the same subjects has been broadcasted on august of 2004. The book and the show have been critized for their scientific inaccuracies such as that "The golden number is transcendental" or that "The solar system volume is twice bigger now than it was at the origin of Earth". The book gave several cut or mistranslated quotes of scientists where they appear to support the authors' work even when they actually don't (Urs Schreiber, Peter Woit, John Giorgis). Given the poor support of their theories in the scientific community, one could ask if they would ever have been presented in any popular science TV show but the authors' one. 
:Links : 
- J. Baez's site
- Urs Schreiber] and Peter Woit 1, 2, 3 blogs entries
- J. Giorgis article
- A list of some 'blunders'
- French Wikipedia entries: Iget et Grichka Bogdanov and Polémique autour des travaux des frères Bogdanov
- The author's personal 'scientific' sites (Mathematical Center of Riemannian Cosmosology, International Institute of Mathematical Physics) (both without any kind of academic support even if they faked the DNS records once)
- Arkadiusz Jadczyk's pages on the 'affair'
- A physicist account of the affair on the Internet
:--YBM 13:15, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Who are you thanking for what ? --YBM 13:15, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  end of A. Blanchard's statement 

message: In the former paragraph Igor wrongly give me the authorship of "5. On the basis of the disputed content of these theses, they received doctorate degrees in theoretical physics from from the University of Bourgogne, France.". This come from the original definition. So I have nothing to do with it, I only restablished it when Igor anonymously blanked it (as the sentence is quite correct).
We have the same problem here, as we have on the french page. There is a way, I think, to address it : stick to the facts, don't try to give all of them, and let the Bogdanov express their counterclaims.
Igor should understant that he won't succeed in making this article (which is about the affair) and the one on the "polémique" in french, a part of their personal advertising. Noone can accept that such an article (which is well-founded because there are a real issues with the serious of their work, their thesis and their book/show, and real questions about the legitimicy of some practice of quoting in their book) would be hijacked by the Bogdanov themselve in order to spread their own personal and discable views of their own work.
What I propose here is a basis for a replacement of the paragraph "In 2004 ...", he express the critic point of view on purpose, for I propose to let Igor modify it so that their point of view could be expressed. What I couldn't accept (in order to consider this conflict settled) is the removal of its content. Of course a native english speaker should proofread it ;
:In 2004 they published, quite successfully, a popular science book ("Before the Big Bang") where they present their views on cosmology and theoretical physics as well as a simplified version of their thesis on the state of the universe "between the planck scale and the singular origin". A TV show on the same subjects has been broadcasted on august of 2004. The book and the show have been critized for their scientific inaccuracies such as that "The golden number is transcendental" or that "The solar system volume is twice bigger now than it was at the origin of Earth". The book gave several cut or mistranslated quotes of scientists where they appear to support the authors' work even when they actually don't (Urs Schreiber, Peter Woit, John Giorgis). Given the poor support of their theories in the scientific community, one could ask if they would ever have been presented in any popular science TV show but the authors' one. 
:Links : 
- J. Baez's site
- Urs Schreiber] and Peter Woit 1, 2, 3 blogs entries
- J. Giorgis article
- A list of some 'blunders'
- French Wikipedia entries: Iget et Grichka Bogdanov and Polémique autour des travaux des frères Bogdanov
- The author's personal 'scientific' sites (Mathematical Center of Riemannian Cosmosology, International Institute of Mathematical Physics) (both without any kind of academic support even if they faked the DNS records once)
- Arkadiusz Jadczyk's pages on the 'affair'
- A physicist account of the affair on the Internet
:--YBM 13:15, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Call to proposal 

message: All sane people who have written something here will agree that we should ask for a blocking of 213.237.*.* editing of this page.--YBM 13:00, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request to ban a "user" 

message: :We shouldn't consider opinion as relevant. She's a psychopath who is yelling at my feet for some weeks for some obscure reason. She is an extreme representant of a puzzling phenomenon around the brothers : the fanatism of uneducated hysteric morons. (BTW, how could someone who confuses Wilhelm Reich with the Third German Reich say anything meaningfull ?).	 
This statment is a lie: I ONLY REMOVED YOUR INSULTING STATEMENTS, WHERE YOU AMONG OTHER THINGS, ACCUSED ME VANDALISING YOUR TEXTS AND GET ME BANISHED WHEN YOU HAD JUST REMOVED MY WRITTINGS, AND I HAD DONE NOTHING OF THE SORT! THEN, AFTER YOU HAD CHANGED THE PLACE OF MY ARTICLES, REMOVED MY ENTIRE POST AND BLOG, AND AFTER YOU HAD PUT THE TITLE "GARBAGE" TO MY ARTICLES, AND AFTER YOU HAD HINDER ME 8 TIMES TO REESTABLISH IT.
- ONLY THEN I TOOK DECISIV ACTIONS - BUT IN THE TIME IN BETWEEN, YOU HAD ACCUSED ME OF VANDALISING YOUR TEXT AND THE SITE WHEN IN FACT IT WAS YOU WHO WERE DOING SO TO MINE. XAL --213.237.21.6 02:50, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  a comment about Sophie's vandalism 

message: <A couple of sections here containing dialogue between me and Sophie have been moved to her Talk page, as being strictly irrelevant to Bogdanov Affair. Bishonen | talk 19:00, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Irrelevant posts removed to User Talk