Talk:Herbert Dingle/Archive 10

message: The main reason why anybody wants to read about Herbert Dingle is to find out more about the controversy surrounding Einstein's theories of relativity. A bit of biography is always interesting too.
But eventually we need to get to the main point. This entire controversy surrounds the changing attitudes in physics between the war years.
Einstein's theories of relativity began to take on a higher degree of credibility following the 1919 eclipse of the Sun, in which starlight was observed to have bent while passing the Sun. This fact had been predicted by Einstein's 1915 general theory of relativity.
However, at that time many of the contemporary top physicists remained fervently opposed to Einstein's theories. Off hand I can think of Lorentz, Larmor, Heisenberg, and Tesla, but I'm sure I could find more.
Prof. Herbert Dingle was one of the first scientists to openly support Einsetin's theories. He wrote about relativity and became an accepted authority on the topic.
By the late thirties, the question of atomic fission and its relationship to Einsetin's mass energy equivalence relationship started to become a matter of intense interest due to the impending possibility of global warfare.
The details of the subsequent Manhattan project and the atomic bomb have always been shrouded in mystery as they are subject to military secrecy laws.
At any rate, the 1950's began a new post war era with new educational curriculums, and we had by then firmly entered into an age in which Einstein's theories were in the ascendancy. That is still the case today.
Herbert Dingle rocked the boat in the 1960's with his U-turn on relativity, and his argument with Prof. McCrea was recorded in the Nature magazine. Dingle then came to believe that a conspircay exists to suppress all opposition to Einstein's theories and he writes about this in his 1972 book 'Science at the Crossroads'.
Dingle was then totally marginalized by the physics community and he died in 1978.
Mainstream physics today is very much in favour of Einstein's theories. Mainstream journals very seldom, if ever, publish material that is critical of Einstein. This is in line with what is predicted in Dingle's book.
An active fringe element continue to argue against Einstein and they get publications in a number of fringe journals such as Apeiron and Galilean Electrodynamics. This fringe element contains both professionals and amateurs.
I believe that the new article should reflect this chronology. Anybody who is opposed to this chronology of events is clearly opposed to the truth. This chronology is not POV. It requires no citations. It is common knowledge and that is the way it should be presented in wikipedia. (Brigadier Armstrong 10:07, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I have a few remarks on this. First, the traditional histories claim that special relativity became accepted physics circa 1911. Second the hoopla surrounding the eclipse expidition of 1919 pretty much made the general theory the accepted theory during the 1920s. There was a flood of books promoting Einstein' theories, special and general during this period. It would seem that it was accepted physics during this period. I am not certain I would class Dingle as a relativity expert during these years as he only published a low level exposition on relativity. The real break came in the 1930s when Dingle disovered that there were clocks that did not adhere to the relativistic transformation law for time. His claims were disputed and never resolved. He did not disown relativity but sought to modify it to resolve the descrepancies he discovered. His attempts were attacked repeatedly. In the 1940s his book Special Theory of Relativity was severely criticised by an Einstein follower. Again in the 1950s he was similarly attacked by Grunbaum who repeated the previous attacks. Dingle still did not disown relativity. It was only in the late 1950s about 1958 that Dingle discovered additional reasons to question relativity. He was again attacked. Since he was now retired, and had no academic position to hold onto, he apparently decided that relativity was seriously flawed. He was again ignored and attacked for his findings. This entire history shows that relativists were unable to objectively examine the issues and preferred to attack their critics rather than examine the evidence in an objective manner. This attitude continues to this day. The difficulty originally discovered by Dingle in the 1930s has never been resolved. This is that there are some physical processes that do not obey the relativistic law for time dilation. Since this problem has basically been ignored and swept under the scientific rug, one suspects that there is not any real effort to be scientific in this matter.72.64.40.71 16:05, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Chronology 

message: I Undid "Brigadeer Armstrong's" removal of relevant refs and "Dr. Seaweed's" unsourced POVs and irrelevant 'examples'. This was already discussed on this talk page before. Both accounts are clearly special purpose accounts and strongly suspected to be two of the sock-puppets of Electrodynamicist. See also archived indicent. This kind of disruptive editing is beginning to look like vandalism. Perhaps article should be more than semi-protected? - DVdm 10:30, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Another instance of the special purpose Dingle account: 58.147.22.174 - DVdm 13:31, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

text: Another instance of the special purpose Dingle account: The Marmosets - DVdm 14:11, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

text: Another instance of the special purpose Dingle account: 124.157.246.207 - DVdm 15:14, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Undid special purpose account sock-puppet contributions 

message: It would appear that DVdm's entire purpose on wikipedia is to suppress any notion at all that anybody might even be as much as questioning Einstein's theories.
DVdm, would you prefer it if we removed all references to the Dingle controversy and concentrated exclusively on his biographical details. That would help to avoid bringing attention to the fact that a prominent physicist once dared to challenge Einstein.
DVdm, please read  special purpose Dingle account: (The Marmosets 14:02, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  DVdm, suspected sock puppet of Denveron and special user account 

message: As a mater of simple factual accuracy, this article fails because Dingle was a physicist and not an astronomer. He did work in spectroscopy in his early years at Imperial College. Since spectroscopy is an important astronomical tool one could say he did work useful to astronomy. He was not trained as an astronomer, but as a phyicist and natural philosopher. He apparently came to natural philosophy under the influence of A. N. Whitehead during Whitehead's years at Imprial College and University College. Now notice that Whitehead had a theory of relativity different from Einstein's. Since Dingle was a student of Whitehead, it is natural to assume that many of the attacks upon him were because Einstein's followers were opposed to Whitehead's theory of relativity. That theory is currently given a negative review here in Wikipedia which reinforces my opinion that much of the Dingle bashing was motivated by Einstein's crew in their attempts to suppress Whiehead's theoretical viewpoint.
In any event the factual accuracy of the Dingle article continues to suffer from a pro Einstein bias and contains factual errors that reflect upon the poor scholarship of Wikipedia editors. This is all too common a problem with Wikipedia. I just don't understand why Wikipedia continues to let editors who are evidently incapable of factual accuracy and obviously biased in their views continue to dominate this article.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.64.40.71 (talk) 15:06, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Herbert Dingle Was Not An Astronomer

message: Can you please explain what aspects of the article you are not happy with. Point out a single untruth in it. Why do you want to try to hide the truth about what made Herbert Dingle encyclopaedia-worthy? Is he a threat to your own researches? Are you afraid that too much truth might tip the scales and undermine Einstin's theories?
Why is it also that you never discuss the matter. You play out the wikipedia rules to the full by leaving sneaky little warnings in trays and quoting nonsense such as 'single purpose users' which you yourself are a prime example of? You are always sneaking off to the wikipedia administrator's message board seeking to get them unto your side as if you are a good little boy. And you use sockpuppets. I'm very sorry that they can't see right through you. ( Brigadier Armstrong 16:20, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Message to DVdm 

message: Following is an explanation of why the neo-Dingle version of the article is inaccurate and not suitable for Wikipedia.  I’ll take it one sentence at a time.
::* "Dingle was involved in two highly public and polemical disputes. The first took place during the 1930s, triggered by Dingle's criticism of E. A. Milne's cosmological model and the associated theoretical methodology, which Dingle considered overly speculative and not based on empirical facts.[3]"
The above sentence is fine.  It’s identical to the consensus version.
::* "The second was the notorious dispute with astrophysicist Professor McCrea and it took place in the 1960s. It was published in the Nature magazine and it centered on Dingle's objections to Einstein's theory of special relativity."
The above sentence is inaccurate and misleading on several counts. First, the dispute was not with McCrea alone, second, it was not confined to ‘Nature’, and third, it was not just in the 1960’s.  Literally dozen’s of people were involved in sending explanations of Dingle’s errors, and they appeared in many different periodicals (and even some books), and it took place beginning about 1955 and continued until Dingle’s death in 1978. Also, the characterization of the incident as “notorious” is inappropriate. (A better word would be “pathetic”, so you can see how POV such adjectives can be.) The consensus version of this article gives a more accurate summary, and is non-POV.
::* "In his early years, Dingle was actually one of the first open supporters of Einstein's theories of relativity in an era when many of the leading scientists of the day such as Werner Heisenberg, Hendrik Lorentz, Joseph Larmor, and Nikola Tesla were strongly opposed to Einstein."
The above sentence is false and misleading on several counts. First, Dingle was not “one of the first supporters of Einstein’s theories”, because (1) 1922 was not “early” for the special theory, and (2) Dingle was never really a supporter of special relativity. He believed he was, at the time, but he later realized that he was not a supporter, because he realized that the ideas he supported were not relativity. Basically, Dingle was taught “relativity” by A.N.Whitehead, who was an opponent of Einstein’s relativity, and Whitehead passed his POV misconceptions along to Dingle, who unfortunately passed them along to a whole generation of students, with unfortunate consequences even to this day. Second, Heisenberg was an early and ardant enthusiast for Einstein’s special relativity. (It’s true that in later life, after Einstein rejected Heisenberg’s quantum mechanics, the two men came to detest each other, but Heisenberg never stopped being appreciative of relativity.) Lorentz was always warmly appreciative of Einstein’s relativity, both special and general, despite the fact that he (Lorentz) maintained a preference for his own interpretation. He certainly never disputed the logical consistency or validity of either special or general relativity. Quite the contrary, he frequently spoke in praise of them. Nikola “Death Ray” Tesla was never a leading scientist, he was more of an inventor, like his rival Thomas Edison. Joseph Larmor originally embraced Einstein’s theories, but then later reverted to his own earlier ideas. So, your list of “leading scientists” who were “strongly opposed to Einstein” is highly inaccurate, misleading, and POV.
::* "After the Second World War, however, the consensus amongst the new generation scientific community was very much in favour of Einstein's theories of relativity, and Herbert Dingle was considered to be quite an authority on the subject."
The above sentence is inaccurate on several counts. First, the theories of relativity were well established within the scientific community PRIOR TO the second world war. Second, although Dingle represented himself as an expert on the subject of special relativity, he was never an “authority” on the subject, as witness the fact that his writings on the subject were frequently challenged, because it was clear to every real expert that Dingle mis-understood and mis-represented what relativity was. Look at how Einstein dissed him in the Schlipp volume in 1949. And most importantly, Dingle himself acknowledged subsequently that he had never understood relativity during the years when he was writing about it.  He even says in the preface to the 1961 edition of his 1940 book on special relativity that he now believes special relativity is totally wrong and logically inconsistent, but fortunately he can still re-publish his book on the subject because it doesn’t contain anything wrong or logically inconsistent!  In other words, his book on special relativity wasn’t about special relativity at all.
::* "In 1922 he had written an essay, "Relativity for All", and in 1940 he wrote a monograph The Special Theory of Relativity. A collection of Dingle's lectures on the history and philosophy of science was published in 1954.[6]"
The above statement is okay. It is identical to what is in the consensus article.
::* "His U-turn in the 1960's and his argument with Professor McCrea resulted in him being marginalized from the mainstream scientific community."
As explained above, Dingle didn’t make a U turn. He had always misunderstood relativity, believing (for example) that a traveling twin would be the same age as his brother when re-united. Only after 40 years of erroneously presenting his misconceptions as “relativity” did he finally realize that he wasn’t describing relativity at all, and in fact he didn’t understand the first thing about relativity. Also, the argument wasn’t just with McCrea, it was with the entire scientific community. Also, it is inaccurate to say he was “marginalized” because that word means to place someone where they can have no influence. Dingle’s views were published very prominently, and given a very generous hearing. The reason he had no influence is that he was self-evidently wrong.
::* "This culminated in his 1972 book, Science at the Crossroads in which he claims that any attempts to argue against Einstein's theories of relativity will be ignored.[7][8]"
The above sentence is not a very accurate summary of his claim. It wasn’t so much that his claims were ignored. He received many many responses. His complaint is that no one agreed with him. Of course, after answering his foolish challenges dozens of times, people did begin to ignore him, but as a summary of what he claims in his book, the above sentence is not representative. Paul Davies has published an accurate summary, but it was removed from the article.  My heavens... it appears that any attempts to argue against Dingle are being suppressed! [sarcasm]
::* "There exists even today a growing number of dissenters who support Herbert Dingle's arguments."
The above statement is both unsubstantiated and false. Granted there are always a number of physics crackpots, but there’s no evidence (from a reputable source) to show that the number is increasing.
::* "Their writings tend to be confined to specialized journals since the mainstream journals usually have a strict policy of refusing to publish material that is critical of Einstein."
The above statement is clearly not appropriate or relevant. The fact there are crackpots who traffic in such nonsense is lamentably true, but it doesn’t need to be stated in this article. It would be more suitable for an article on physics crackpots.
In summary, the currently protected article is a pure crackpot fabrication (except for the parts taken from the consensus version). It should be removed and replaced with the consensus version.Denveron 18:49, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I have in the interim tagged it as disputed on the grounds of factual accuracy as I imagine given the discussion here that would be an accurate statement.--Isotope23 talk 18:54, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

text: This comment by Denveron is a bit strange. It weaves factual innacuracies into a biased view of Dingle. There is no proof that he misunderstood relativity any more than Einstein or his followers did. One can read any textbook today and find that the author misunderstands relativity. That is all too common an ailment. One finds it all over this comment page. The issue is this. Given the divergent opinions about relativity,can  you state with certainty that Dingle was wrong? You can not. So dont try. All that can be stated objectively is what he wrote, and there is actually nothing of that in this article. Try sticking to the facts and the article will come out just fine. The problem is that the writers want the article to come out that Dingle was wrong. That is not the purpose of this article.71.251.188.80 18:51, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why the Currently Protected Article is Bad 

message: It has already been conceded that the mainstream are not convinced by Dingle's arguments and the article records that fact. The bit that you deleted was merely pointing out that the matter is still debated by dissidents outside of the mainstream. Do a google search on Einstein or relativity and you will find no end of websites critical of Einstein.
One of the journals that deals with this debate is Galilean Electrodynamics for which there exists a wikipedia article. (Brigadier Armstrong 18:02, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Subsequent to writing this, I have just noticed that Wwoods has removed the relevant clause again claiming that it is a crank statement. Can he clarify that claim? Can he look up the wikipedia article on Galilean Electrodynamics and then tell me that this subject is not being discussed by dissidents? Brigadier Armstrong 18:07, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ideally, to make this statement, you need to find a reliable source that makes that statement verifiable and cite it in the article.  Expecting readers to visit other articles and see debate would constitute original research.  That said, "crank" edit summaries are not especially helpful.--Isotope23 talk 18:14, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Argument going on outside of the mainstream 

message: DVdm; I see that you put in a request for page protection. And you tried to insinuate that those who don't go along with your plans for a highly anti-Dingle POV version are vandals and disrupters who have been subject to allegations of such. Did you tell them that it was you who made all those allegations? (Brigadier Armstrong 11:41, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  DVdm's request for page protection 

message: Quote of Official Wikipedia Policy:
--------------begin quote-------------
Wikipedia's founder, Jimbo Wales, has described original research as follows:
The phrase "original research" originated primarily as a practical means to deal with physics cranks, of which of course there are a number on the Web. The basic concept is as follows: It can be quite difficult for us to make any valid judgment as to whether a particular thing is true or not. It isn't appropriate for us to try to determine whether someone's novel theory of physics is valid; we aren't really equipped to do that. But what we can do is check whether or not it actually has been published in reputable journals or by reputable publishers. So it's quite convenient to avoid judging the credibility of things by simply sticking to things that have been judged credible by people much better equipped to decide. The exact same principle will hold true for history" (WikiEN-l, December 3, 2004).
The phrase "original research" in this context refers to untested theories; data, statements, concepts and ideas that have not been published in a reputable publication; or any new interpretation, analysis, or synthesis of published data, statements, concepts or ideas that, in the words of Wikipedia's founder Jimbo Wales, would amount to a "novel narrative or historical interpretation".
If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it doesn't belong in Wikipedia ... regardless of whether it's true or not; and regardless of whether you can prove it or not.
-------end quote----------
Hopefully the above statement of Wikipedia policy helps to clarify for editors of this article the criteria for including statements and views in the article. The criterion is not whether something is true or false, it is whether you can back it up with a reputable source. Naturally this policy has the effect of excluding crackpot views, which is precisely the effect it was intended to have. Anyone who doesn't like this policy should go elsewhere to present their views.63.24.121.14 19:29, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Interesting quote. Next time, please mention the source? Thanks. DVdm 19:40, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia Policy Against "Physics Cranks" 

message: We are being reminded above about the wikipedia rules regarding original research. Who exactly is advocating original research? What original research are you referring to? It strikes me that you are stirring up a fuss about absolutely nothing just because you were unable to impose your own POV on this article. (Brigadier Armstrong 07:17, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Original Research