But a lot of theoretical physics straddles between your definition of science and maths. Not just String Theory but most of the Standard Model and General Relativity. Einstein wasn't trying to create a testable theory when he wanted to see what SR would say about gravity. He was simply trying to find a mathematically consistent framework that would deal with accelerating bodies and not violate SR. He didn't say, "Well I will work on this because it's testable". He just worked on the framework and its conclusions, after the fact, could be tested - lucky for Einstein. Of course, if it wasn't testable we might never know who Einstein was - so we're lucky both ways, I guess.

Hi, I don't have much to add. Your comments are valid. But thanks for the well thought out reply.

Sure it can be taken as arrogance, or you can take it as some people still have a high-school mentality with knowledge transfer and expect all the work to come from the "smart one" - when in real life it should come from both sides.

As for our "expert" engineer - what is expected from him is to follow the conventions and not redefine well known definitions (like what a prime is). If you want to impress someone with your knowledge of a language you don't first start of with spelling errors and horrendous grammatical errors. It defeats the whole purpose, and we are not talking about an exercise handout here, or someone wanting to learn maths or physics, but high level proves that is trying to show how stupid the "majority" is and how smart they themselves are. If you want to play with the big boys then you need to make sure you have dotted your i's and crossed your t's.

Now, it's not like academics don't have to do things for free: peer reviewing papers and writing reviews (e.g. Mathematical Reviews) are things most science/maths academics already do for free. Consuming a whole lot of their time. Then on top of that it's the weekly 100-page handwritten manuscript that, now, you say, also has to be reviewed because, you know, that one time in history when that guy, you know the Indian one, was right.

And trust me. It's not the original manuscript. It's been photocopied to death and sent to hundreds of people - the complete opposite of how a mathematician/scientist will do it.

...diatribes, usually against Einstein, or mathematicians that don't understand their wonderful two page proof of Fermat's Last Theorem(*), were always engineers. You always dread the big manila envelope in your (physical) mailbox. Then you open it to see about 100 pages of tightly written notes, or typed on a typewriter (none of them ever used LaTeX). Asking for your time to read through and appreciate, the great contributions that the writer has made to physics or pure mathematics, even though the first few pages they've decided to invent their own notation, definitions, and just for the hell of it, their own logic.

Of course, you would say, "Well history is full of people, out of the blue, turning science and mathematics on their heads and it's stuck-up ivory tower professional academics like you, that hold back the progress of science. If you only took time to read and understand the occasional maverick we would have had hoverboards and interstellar space travel by now."

My answer, is the same I give any 16 year old looking for a job, no one owes you anything - if you want them to spend their time and energy on you then *you* have to show why that won't be a waste on their part.

Engineers: I'm right until you prove me wrong.
Scientists: I'm wrong until I can prove I'm right.

(*) It's funny how you can make a two page proof proving Fermat's Last Theorem if you change the definition of a prime number.

It's only handwavy because you don't want to take the time to understand the evidence for it and against it. There is a lot of evidence for the WIMP model of dark matter, including the current data just posted and things like the Bullet Cluster.

They take the time off in summer because of one thing...kids. If you don't have a family then you take your holidays whenever.
In the US where do your kids go for a holiday? Do they go without their dad or mum? That just sounds...sad.

When the deniers ignore their own study (Berkeley Earth Report) because it doesn't confirm their original biases then they can no longer call themselves skeptics.

Anyone going to thank the EU anti-monopolistic laws for forcing Microsoft to add alternative browsers or is that against the libertarian streak of Slashdot.

I remember when the universe was between 10 to 20 billion years old. We were trying to figure out why the Sun only expelled 1/3 as many neutrinos as we would like. Progress in science is one of the few things that put a smile on my face.

What is the statistical difference between the models and reality? Again, any peer reviewed papers on this?

With all that time to spare he could have sent a link to a peer reviewed paper on it. I wonder why he didn't?

Also in Soylent Green.

He profited from a market that doesn't exist. He's better than I thought!

$120k is a lot of money if you don't have anything else to use it on: eg. postdocs, conferences etc, which is precisely his situation. He was paid to have a desk at a prestigious university; put his name on papers dealing with output of the Sun's energy; and then sit back when everyone calls him an astrophysicist at a prestigious astrophysics institute and take the money.

Can you show me that climatologists are getting their money from "green" industries? Because I think paying an institution to accept an engineer into an astrophysics institute so his publications on solar output can seem more authoritative is as conspiratorial as it gets: But you just skip over that bit - how convenient.