Bogdanovs Gain a New Supporter
Answering “Quantoken” Peter Woit wrote:
[…] The Bogdanov papers are different. There are huge leaps of logic from one sentence to the next, clear examples of misunderstandings of basic ideas by the authors, etc. The problem isn’t their assumptions, but that they can’t construct a coherent argument and don’t understand the technical tools they are using.[…]
The last sentence fits the conclusions stemming from the dialog in The Bogdanov Affair - The Dialogue Continues… It is clear from this dialog that the brothers do not know the precise definitions of the terms that they are using, neither they have a real understanding of what a “mathematical proof” should look like. Yet Peter Woit is not quite right when he writes that “The Bogdanov papers are different. ” There are many, even eminent, theoretical physicists who are using the terms that they would be unable to define, like “manifold”, “topology”, even a “group” or a “spinor”. While it is difficult to detect such cases by just reading the papers (an so, it is difficult to blame the referees for letting such papers to be published), it is relatively easy to detect such a phenomenon in a dialog. An examiner, or a PhD referee has a duty to start a dialog when things that are “suspicious” show up. By asking simple questions and by getting avoiding answers, one can rather soon to come to the conclusion that the other person is ignorant in this or another area. The next question that can be asked is how far the ignorance goes. A couple of additional questions can reveal that level too. Yet….
Being “ignorant” is not necessarily “bad”. Sometimes good, innovative, ideas come ONLY because the author is “ignorant” in some areas. What to do then? I suggest to open a special section of arXiv.org and to start a new journal for “Impressionistic Physics”.
