In fact, Lee Smolin's shock and horror is based on the secret
rejection of "one of the principles of Einstein's special theory of
relativity, the theory that says that the speed of light is a
universal constant":

http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_4.3/smolin.htm
Lee Smolin: "Special relativity was the result of 10 years of
intellectual struggle, yet Einstein had convinced himself it was wrong
within two years of publishing it."

http://www.fqxi.org/community/articles/display/148
"Many physicists argue that time is an illusion. Lee Smolin begs to
differ. (...) Smolin wishes to hold on to the reality of time. But to
do so, he must overcome a major hurdle: General and special relativity
seem to imply the opposite. In the classical Newtonian view, physics
operated according to the ticking of an invisible universal clock. But
Einstein threw out that master clock when, in his theory of special
relativity, he argued that no two events are truly simultaneous unless
they are causally related. If simultaneity - the notion of "now" - is
relative, the universal clock must be a fiction, and time itself a
proxy for the movement and change of objects in the universe. Time is
literally written out of the equation. Although he has spent much of
his career exploring the facets of a "timeless" universe, Smolin has
become convinced that this is "deeply wrong," he says. He now believes
that time is more than just a useful approximation, that it is as real
as our guts tell us it is - more real, in fact, than space itself. The
notion of a "real and global time" is the starting hypothesis for
Smolin's new work, which he will undertake this year with two graduate
students supported by a $47,500 grant from FQXi."

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/smol...n03_print.html
Lee Smolin: "Now, here is the really interesting part: Some of the
effects predicted by the theory appear to be in conflict with one of
the principles of Einstein's special theory of relativity, the theory
that says that the speed of light is a universal constant. It's the
same for all photons, and it is independent of the motion of the
sender or observer. How is this possible, if that theory is itself
based on the principles of relativity? The principle of the constancy
of the speed of light is part of special relativity, but we quantized
Einstein's general theory of relativity. Because Einstein's special
theory is only a kind of approximation to his general theory, we can
implement the principles of the latter but find modifications to the
former. And this is what seems to be happening!"

Pentcho Valev