101–110 of 195 posts
This sounds like a good candidate for submission to the Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis, my favorite journal, http://www.jasnh.com/ .
This reminds me of xkcd's "what if" Project.
Mandatory XKCD Time travel Comic http://xkcd.com/716/
Imagine: Google itself could find proof of this, given that it's organizing the world's information. In fact, Google is one of the only entities that could actually 'prove' this out. What would they do if they identified the time traveller? Locate him/her? Use his knowledge to further their plans? The knowledge may be potentially world-changing; whoever finds the traveller will be in a very powerful position. Script…
Neat idea. But if you were a time traveller, what would you use Google for, and why? I'm not convinced you're going to be Googling the future pope, because it's trivially easy to Google the current one. The possible telltales are not obvious.
Slightly off-topic, but normally HN is scientifically sound when physics or any other science is mentioned. But when it comes to time-travel/FTL, I can't help but feel that half the posters here seem to almost want it to be true. Or at least seem to think that all of our physics knowledge is worthless when it comes to FTL et al. Or is everyone just having a laugh?
"First of all, the topic itself is a controversial one, as made clear immediately by the work's title "Searching the Internet for Evidence of Time Travelers" (Nemiroff & Wilson 2014). It is perhaps accepted common knowledge that people who believe in time travelers are crackpots and their ramblings are not to be believed. For the record, I do not believe that traveling back in time is possible, nor do I believe that time travelers are among us."
The biggest issue that I see with publishing this work in a physics journal is that although time travel is certainly a concept in physics, the research involved here is not physics research. I'd describe it as sociological(?) research intended to shed light on a problem of interest to physics. That may seem like splitting hairs, but there's a real question of competence here: as a physicist, I don't feel especially…
I agree. His attempts to get his type of paper being published in established physics journals are sort of explained in his last paragraph though. He thinks that there's "room in the world of publishing for science motivated primarily BY public interest, instead of IN THE public interest". Certainly there's no reason why such a journal to exist--free speech and all. I'm not a physicist, but certainly saying that such…
Such as this time travel paper: Clearly it capture public imagination, even if the result was negative.
I think the methodology of the paper is flawed. Why would a time traveller from the future be discussing "Comet ISON" or "Pope Francis"? According to Wikipedia, comet ISON wasn't ever bright enough to spot with the naked eye, and thus left no significant impact on humanity. It's obviously too early to decide if Pope Francis will leave a deep, significant impact, but odds are against it. For this methodology to really…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is, in my mind, a big difference between a scientist publishing a paper in which they investigate some outlandish science-fiction-like concept (such as time travel or anti-gravity) and find evidence AGAINST it, and one where they find evidence FOR it. The former is a reasonable result, and although expected the research provides evidence to support the hypothesis. The latter is an extraordinary result and wise…
I see nothing wrong with publishing ordinary evidence for extraordinary things. I mean, I still wouldn't beleieve the extraordinary thing, but it could still be useful.
I see little difference between searching for evidence of time travel on the internet and searching for evidence of pink unicorns on the internet. Current theory predicts that we should not find evidence of either one, nor any evidence of ESP, telekinesis, or a zillion other phenomena. So searching for evidence of these phenomena and failing is about as interesting as searching for evidence of anti-gravity by droppin…
Confirming common-sense "obvious" results is actually one of the important things science is for. Sometimes it turns out those obvious things aren't actually correct and nobody had bothered to check.
Whenever I mention my skepticism of the peer review mechanism, someone is always quick to claim how important and special it is, and that I should have faith in it. Here, they reject a paper and refuse even to peer review it. They refuse to explain why they feel it unacceptable. It comes from a scientist who has already published, and in the relevant fields. If they'll do this because of the slight risk of someone ma…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So then why didn't the editors suggest it for a more appropriate journal rather than call it unpublishable entirely?
Because (for example) I, as a physicist, didn't even know enough to immediately suggest topics like "network science, internet research, web science", and instead said the work was "sociological(?)". For all we know from this story, the rejection letters might have suggested trying a non-physics journal. But even then, the result reported here just provides weak evidence supporting an overwhelmingly expected null hyp…
The latter is (perhaps) good judgment; the former, a poor understanding of the limits of one's expertise.