Conservapedia:Censorship of Einstein and Relativity
From RationalWiki
- For discussion of the scientific claims made on Conservapedia, see Conservapedia:Conservapedian relativity.
Conservapedia is a "Trustworthy Encyclopedia," with a stated goal of providing "educational, clean, and concise entries" for use by students, well served by the censorship, deprecation, disparagement, and belittling of well-known information?
Relativity is widely regarded as being among the most renowned scientific advances in human history. Albert Einstein is, of course, the name most widely associated with it, though many others contributed.
But Andy Schlafly (and others) of Conservapedia have been engaged in a long-running battle to minimize its importance, minimize its acceptance, minimize its truth, and, in a bizarre twist, minimize Einstein's connection with it. In [1]img, he says "There is a correlation between enthusiasm for the theory of relativity and political views, and there is an unmistakable effort to censor or ostracize criticism of relativity" with a footnote pointing out that the "liberally biased Wikipedia ... omits one word of criticism" of relativity (presumably he means something like "contains not one word of criticism"). He then complains about how the liberal science establishment has ostracized Robert Dicke for his competing theory, suggesting that this "may have hurt him professionally". He gives a reference to an article in Time Magazine [2] presumably supporting his position. Guess what? The article describes an extremely sensitive test conducted in 1970 comparing general relativity with the Brans-Dicke theory, using an interplanetary space probe. The test confirmed relativity and refuted Brans-Dicke. Perhaps Andy thinks people don't read his references. Or perhaps he is utterly clueless about facts and observations that refute his fantasies.
Contents |
[edit] The Relativity talk page
The Relativity talk page, [3] provides fascinating reading on the lengths to which Andy will go. When someone pointed out to him that the Time magazine article contradicted the point that he was trying to make, Andy replied "Time magazine is not an authority on whether Dicke's theory is better than Einstein's." The talk page continues at great length about Andy's bizarre interpretation of Dicke's theory.
Shortly after the first version of this page was written, there was a major blowup on the CP talk page, involving a number of sane contributors, including User:Bayes, now one of our own, of course. This was largely about the connection between General Relativity and the GPS satellite system. After going off into such topics as liberalism, global warming, and the Strategic Defense Initiative, Andy's astonishing arguments include:
- Bayes, you're talking to a former engineer. GPS was built by engineers, not by theoretical physicists. GPS never used the theory of relativity.
- Give me your best cite for the claim that GPS *uses* the theory of relativity.
- GPS never used the theory of relativity.
- That's simply not true. GPS adjustments have been based on observation, not theoretical prediction.
- GPS was built by engineers and there is no reason for them to rely on the theory of relativity. It is far simpler and more reliable simply to observe the time differences. Engineers don't study the theory of relativity, and if you think a physicist well-versed in the theory of relativity provided essential predictions for the GPS engineers, then who was he?
- No physicists have been identified who supposedly incorporated relativity into the GPS design.
- No papers exist describing how relativity *was* (not "might be") used in GPS.
- Those claiming that GPS confirms relativity compared to Newtonian mechanics don't know whether Newtonian mechanics also predicts time differences, which renders the comparison pointless.
- (Utterly ridiculous. Galilean/Newtonian physics is based on global absolute time. It therefore predicts zero time difference. All physicists know that.)
- OK, this [relativistic time dilation] is true, but purely theoretical.
- We don't delete or censor factual scientific information here.
Clearly, Andy thinks that, if the engineers and technicians uploading the correction data to the GPS satellites don't understand or care about why General Relativity provides the reason for what they are doing, then GR must either be wrong or not applicable to the time dilation that they are uploading corrections for. This is like saying that, if someone using a vacuum cleaner does not understand or care about why Maxwell's equations explain the electromagnetic fields that make the motor work, then either Maxwell's equations are wrong, or they don't apply to vacuum cleaner motors.
And contrary to what Andy thinks, the basics of relativity are not so hard, and they are learned in some engineering schools. It's really silly to ask "if you think a physicist well-versed in the theory of relativity provided essential predictions for the GPS engineers, then who was he", because the relativity formulas that GPS needed can be found in any book of introduction to relativity in a public library.
In an astonishing sidebar, Roger Schlafly (not exactly a liberal fact addict or sock of a RW user) foughtimg for relativity...and was promptly godspeed'd.
But wait, there's more! In the early days of Conservapedia, when the insanity of the sysops was not immediately apparent, our own Linus attempted to fight the scientific fightimg. This lead to a ridiculous series of responses by Andyimg, which were refutedimg.
[edit] The Einstein article page
The page on Einstein himself also contains some amazing deprecation, mostly by Roger Schlafly, including the following astonishing paragraph:
- Many ideas and quotes are falsely attributed to Einstein. He did not invent very much of we now call special relativity. The Principle of Relativity, that the law of physics should be the same in all inertial frames, had already been published before Einstein. He did not discover the Lorentz transformation, or the Lorentz invariance of Maxwell's equations for electromagnetism. He was not the first to propose that the speed of light is constant for all observers, or that the aether is superfluous and not observable. He was not the first to recognize and explain how special relativity causes an ambiguity in defining simultaneity. He did not combine space and time into a four-dimensional spacetime in his special relativity papers until others had been doing it for a couple of years.
- Einstein was not the first to observe the equation E=mc2 as a consequence of special relativity, or to foresee its application to nuclear binding energies or antimatter annihilation. He did not foresee a nuclear chain reaction and had to be persuaded about the possibility of an atomic bomb.
- Einstein did not originate the idea of using metric tensors to reconcile gravity with special relativity. He did not discover the Lagrangian formulation of general relativity, and was not the first to publish the field equations. He did not foresee the expansion of the universe, the possibility of black holes, or dark energy.
(In fairness, the statements in that paragraph cite (and spin) "references", which we have not included here. Feel free to look at the actual CP article [4].)
Even if absolutely true, however, one is instructed to remember that breakthroughs in science, as often as not, are in tiny increments that sometimes shift the entire course of thought in a subject, and to also remember Isaac Newton's invocation of the old statement: "If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."
[edit] Why?
One wonders what animates the CP authorities' spitefulness toward Einstein?
- Could it be that he was a liberal?
- Could it be that he was a socialist?
- Could it be that he was a pacifist?
- Could it be that he was Jewish?
- Could it be that he was German/Swiss? (He was born a German, had Swiss nationality but never renounced it, even when he became a US citizen.)
It could be argued that CP's antagonism towards Relativity stems from their belief that God is the absolute and constant source of moral authority. In their world view, without God, there is no source of morality and no absolute right and wrong - that's why they think that atheism and "evolutionism" necessarily lead to genocide. That being the case, a relative universe threatens that all-important sense of absolute, undeniable moral authority. So in Schlafly's mind, if time and space are relative, then morality, too, would be relative, something a dogmatic religious ideologue could never accept.
It is also possible that Andy wishes to downplay Einstein's genius in order to accentuate that of Newton, the scientific figure that most closely matches (or surpasses) Einstein's universal renown and happens to be a Christian.
[edit] See also
- Conservapedia:Conservapedian relativity provides an in-depth Fisking of Conservapedia's article on relativity
[edit] External links
- Conservative fear of Albert Einstein -- A 1997 essay by a UC-Berkeley economics professor
- Commentary on right-wing cranks' accusations of Einstein cheating (abridged version at salon.com)
