JTankers, what the hell is your problem? Do you get a medal, or, you know, special services or something?

Mr Wright writes: “I retract the statement the Wagner is a convicted criminal. But only the specific term Convicted Criminal.” [1] and “I retract the statement that Wagner lied under oath, or lied to me.” [1]

[1] Jim Wright, StoneKettle Station (December 27-28, 2008) stonekettlestation.blogspot.com/2008/10/walter-l-wagner-pitifully-insane.html

One of the side effects of this little affair is to make one cynical and mistrustful. Outside of the scientific issues, I think that’s the greater harm of a Wagner.

I think the argument you posted to was tongue and cheek. If not, it present a rather common fallacy that crops up around Femi’s Paradox.

If fact, you can prove that anything will destroy the world using Femi’s Paradox. During the Cold War people argued that nuclear war must be inevitable because no other advanced species had contacted us. Likewise, you could “prove” that nanotechnology, global warming, resource depletion, carnivorous teddy bears, etc must all seal our doom.

The simplest explanation is of Femi’s Paradox is that Femi got his assumptions wrong. The simplest assumption is that earth is not the first planet in the galaxy to evolve intelligent life. Research in the last ten years suggest that we might well be.

now seriously there is nothing new that dissproves the safe of this machine

The Large Hadron Rap

I could be wrong, but I believe that’s Hawking doing the machine voice for them.

They need to incur this if need be (some collective action can spread the expense, for one thing). If they can’t be trusted on to actually vet sources, then they can’t be trusted, period.

You might as well usa a blogger or Wiki as a reference. Journalists CLAIM they have higher standards. This sort of thing (plus the overall political scene) show that to be a blatantly false claim.

At the very least, WHY ARE THEY REPORTING ON IT? They certainly can’t be sued for ignoring the topic, since the individuals involved don’t pass vetting.

Part of this is a wholesale effort on the part of journalism, from what I can see, to misinterpret, misinform, and deceive people about what is science and what is the scientific method. When they quote cranks like this, they create confusion about what is known and unknown, and about who can officially say “what” and actually know what the hell they are talking about. You see the same sort of crap, on a lesser level, with Global Warming.

This idiot could not even pass the basic introductory graduate physics class at Berkeley. The fact that he lists no graduate training in physics in the court documents where he outlines his credentials should have set off the radar of any competent reporter.

LOL. The guy is bragging about doing well at algebra and calculus? Not to promo my own chops (I’ve not worked on anything substantial in Math since about 1989, and really not since 1982), but I taught myself calculus when I was 15. I took calculus in JuCo while in HS (giving me official credit in it), and took the 4000-level DiffEq course in my freshman year, then 2 5000-level grad courses (Special Functions was one of them, I forget the other) as a soph, then 2 6000 level courses as a junior (Approximation Theory and Tensor Analysis) — (again, it’s been decades. I’d have a hard time doing an integration by parts these days).

My point is that Algebra and Calculus at the level’s he’s trying to sound so snooty about are really BASIC, and don’t even BEGIN to touch on the kind of math that goes into modern advanced physics (which is one of the chief drivers of applied math) — which deal with multidimensional analysis and some VERY high level concepts of topology.

To put it in perspective, realize that Newton’s calculus was developed BEFORE 1700 AD. So there’s been <b<more than 300 years of development in the mathematical arena since that time, and that development has occurred in a period with far more specialist mathematicians involved than existed ever before 1700 AD.

The man’s credentials aren’t only nonexistent, by his own efforts to trumpet them, he shows how deeply ignorant of the actual subject he actually is:
Wagner: Oooh, I know *calculus*.
Me: A whoop ti f***ing sh**. What do you know about conformal mapping? Can you integrate a curve through an area with a hole in the middle of it? What technique would you use? Please identify how a Laplace Transform compares to a Z-transform. What is Time-Scale Calculus?. Define how to use a Heaviside step function to solve a differential equation. Annnk!!! Sorry, you lose, don’t bother to insert another coin. Not only don’t you know the rules of the game, you can’t even grasp the vast array of concepts involved.

I’ve written extensively about false information and how it is increasingly becoming common in this age of instantaneous connectivity for unvalidated data to ingrain itself into the public consciousness. Part of the problem is that in this case, reporters are incestuous, i.e. because Wagner has been widely reported as a Radiation Safety Officer, Nuclear Physicist, Attorney and etc – it’s simply taken as something “everybody knows” and without question. When in reality, the first thing any competent reporter should ask himself is “what the heck is a radiation safety officer?” It sounds weighty, but then so does “Sanitation Engineer” when you’re talking about a simple garbage man.

When a guy like Wagner who is at odds with the entire scientific establishment, and who is emphatically not part of the experiment in question, claims greater knowledge than the actual scientists and engineers who are running the project the very first thing that should have been checked was his background – prior to any phone call or interview.

The media was eager to write “World will End” and “Black Holes, Oh Noes!” stories, because those always sell papers – but the truth of the matter is that “Alleged Expert Exposed as Fraud” sell papers too, and it’s a hell of a lot more useful to the public at large. Too damn many once respectable News outlets (CNN for example) have become the all-britney-all-the-time channels.

Now, however, a certain type of person will believe his claims, no matter what proof is presented refuting them. A lot of people believe that science is evil and scary and that scientists are going to uncork the genie – and no matter what, because Wagner was originally reported as a credentialed scientist, they will always believe that he just might be correct and that his opinion should be considered. And they have, and have been soundly refuted, but most people simply aren’t equipped to evaluate the math (me included), and so they still think that there just might be something to Wagner’s claim.

The simple truth of the matter though, is that Wagner is no different from the crazy long-haired fruitcake with the sandwich board out there on the street corner with the bible and the sign claiming that the world will end tomorrow. You wouldn’t believe him, why would you believe Wagner?

Shannon: if they accurately report the credentials, it’s not libel–truth is a defense.

(1) Just because they might win doesn’t mean they won’t get sued and incur the cost defense. (2) Even if they misrepresent the credentials of a small number of people they report on, the damage to their prestige and bottom line of small number of mistakes outweigh the benefits of accurate reporting that most people do not notice. (3) Most media consumers will not notice such mistake so it really doesn’t pay to spend the time and effort to track the correct information down.