Caldrid, why do you care if he keeps posting? If there truly is a flaw in his argument, explain what it is. If you’re sick of explaining, simply walk away from the thread in question. Nothing is compelling you to continue dealing with his “preposterous tosh,” why not just add him as a foe and be done with it?
PhysBang, sometime, somewhere, a question will be posed first on an internet forum that has real merit, and which can’t be answered in a library. If you can’t provide the explanation for why a theory is wrong, aren’t you taking it on faith that the answer is in the library? I agree with you that almost all (something like “all-1”) theories proposed to radically revise science, whether on a forum or elsewhere, will be proven to be wrong, and adequate research would lead any reasonable individual to reject them. But there’s value in discussing an incorrect theory. In researching James’ Clock Paradox, I refreshed my memory of relativity, and learned about new positions worth considering (like four-dimensionalism). Conversely, there doesn’t seem to be any harm in proposing an incorrect theory, and certainly it’s better than believing it and never discussing it, thereby never being corrected.
Farsight, arXiv gets about 6000 submissions a month, about 200 a day. With that volume, there are bound to be some mistakes made. In a year, if 5 submissions are mistakenly rejected, their process is still accurate to four decimal places. Since few if any write editorials to explain the system that accurately evaluated their paper, the press will overvalue these 5 mistakes, but to suggest that it can be otherwise is dubious.
Jenkins’ article is more about the politics of science, balancing science as a national priority against other goods. But the question of if or how government should fund science is very different from the question of whether the institution of science excludes legitimate theories because they go against the mainstream. Jenkins does touch on the latter, but the brunt of his argument, and virtually all his evidence, goes to the former.
Matthatter, as simple as science is, I think it’s legitimate to refer to the institutions of science as “science”. And there is a legitimate question as to whether the institution is effectively producing reliable statements of the type “A (reliably) results in B,” and not illegitimately excluding other reliable statements.
That said, it seems clear to me that institutional science is doing an adequate job.
James, the major difference between scientific faith and religious faith is that, where religion is set up from top to bottom to bolster such faith and actively and openly discourage dissension, science is set up from top to bottom to shun faith. Of course, as you have said, people are by nature religifiers, but that doesn’t support the contention that science and religion are similar because of it any more than does the observation that both religious and scientific beliefs are both written in ink.
As to your proof (and straying off topic), you assume that the flash occurs simultaneously for both frames of reference, but such simultaneity is relative, and won’t be the same for both the station and the train. A possible resolution is that the clock on the train is stopped, and the observers at the station are wondering why the flash went off late (early?). If you assume simultaneity, you have assumed an internally inconsistent premise, and as a result you arrived at an inconsistent conclusion.