comments on arXiv:1106.3875v1 (latest from Hawkins)

As promised, I read the paper on holiday. Here are some comments.

The second line in the abstract is wrong. This is the famous Press &
Gunn result for lambda=0, but for other cases things aren't that simple.
Off to a bad start. ((This is repeated later in the paper.)

He needs to be more clear about why he uses the shape of the Fourier
power spectrum rather than other measures of the timescale.

The last paragraph in section 2.1 is wrong. Reference:
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0306434. The problem is that if a theory
stands up to some tests, it is still possible that some new test will
disprove the theory. This has happened and Hawkins ignores it. He is
still using the same basic arguments he used 20 years ago. If someone
cites one's work and one returns to that work in a later paper, one
should at least discuss the citation to one's previous work. Especially
in the case where the citation claims to disprove one's previous work,
one needs to show why the refutation is wrong.

Sect. 2.2 claims that NO time dilation effect should be present for
microlensing. It should be less than for intrinsic variation (assuming
no evolution in the mechanism for intrinsic variation), but it shouldn't
be zero. Also he the mean redshift is not always 0.5; it depends on
the cosmological model.

In section 5 in the second paragraph he accepts the standard wisdom
about the mass distribution within galaxies, but previously in the paper
contests this wisdom in the case of our galaxy. I don't think the
latter is wrong, but he should have the same scepticism with respect to
the mass distribution within other galaxies.

Summary: This paper rehashes 20-year-old arguments and ignores
criticism in the refereed literature. The interesting thing is the
discussion of the interpretation of the MACHO results, where Hawkins
might be correct. However, as mentioned above, he goes into detail to
disprove something which contradicts his work (which is OK) but doesn't
bring the same scepticism to stuff which appears to confirm his work.