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Old March 7th 16, 10:23 PM posted to sci.astro.research
Robert L. Oldershaw
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Default Did LIGO Detect Dark Matter? - New paper on arxiv.org

On Monday, March 7, 2016 at 2:58:24 AM UTC-5, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) wrote:


Yes, but there is no way one can distinguish them in the LIGO data.


The authors of that paper were specifically discussing the fact that
primordial black holes were scientifically valid and interesting
candidates. No more , no less.



It's Lacey, not Lacy; sorry about that. Pre-arXiv. ADS has only one
refereed-journal paper by these two authors (there is also a
conference-proceedings contribution with the same title but without a
question mark). So, go the the ADS abstract search and search for
papers with Lacey AND Ostriker. Then there are links to the full text.

They were thinking about larger-mass black holes, but on the other hand
VLBI has improved as well in the last 30 years. I don't know what the
current limits, but presumably lensing limits can now rule out
lower-mass objects.


So that reference was not the best choice for supportive evidence of
your claims. "Presumes, madam? I know not presumes" (if you know your
Shakespeare).

There is a HUGE difference between claiming that someone intentionally
fudged their results to get an answer they wanted to get, and expressing
the opinion that a decision might have been made to write a paper (as I
noted, "not wrong") which contains some topical buzzwords as opposed to
writing some other paper.


Well, any decent lawyer would have a heyday with your purported
distinction, basing his/her arguments largely on the semantics of the
way you spin things.

Here is a way for objective readers to see this. For years de
Vaucouleurs and Sandage debated fiercely about the value of the Hubble
constant. Using virtually the same data they "proved" that their
favorite value for H was the right one. The problem was that the two
values differed by A FACTOR OF TWO! I respected both astrophysicists.
Today's accepted value is about half-way between. This shows that
one's expectations and preferred answers can play a big role in how
data is analyzed and how tests of ideas are chosen. This is NOT
"INTENTIONALLY FUDGED". It is basic human nature. I was not claiming
that the authors were committing premeditated fraud. I just said they
were perhaps exemplifying the natural human biases discussed above,
and seen over and over again throughout the history of science. It
takes a real effort not to see and understand this.

So it must be taken into account when evaluating theories, models and
opinions.

RLO http://www3.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw