Integrity of Einsteinians

Ultimate catastrophe in physics:

Neil Turok, September 2013: "It's the ultimate catastrophe: that theoretical physics has led to this crazy situation where the physicists are utterly confused and seem not to have any predictions at all." http://www.macleans..ca/politics/ott...odern-physics/

June 2015: "My view is that this has been a kind of catastrophe - we've lost our way," he [Neil Turok] says." http://blog.physicsworld.com/2015/06/22/why-converge/

Physics is in a golden age:

Neil Turok, June 2016 (11:47): "Physics is in a golden age. It really is." http://pirsa.org/displayFlash.php?id=16060107

Lee Smolin rejects Einstein's relative time, a consequence of Einstein's constant-speed-of-light postulate:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013...reality-review
"And by making the clock's tick relative - what happens simultaneously for one observer might seem sequential to another - Einstein's theory of special relativity not only destroyed any notion of absolute time but made time equivalent to a dimension in space: the future is already out there waiting for us; we just can't see it until we get there. This view is a logical and metaphysical dead end, says Smolin."

https://www.amazon.com/Time-Reborn-C.../dp/B00AEGQPFE
"Was Einstein wrong? At least in his understanding of time, Smolin argues, the great theorist of relativity was dead wrong. What is worse, by firmly enshrining his error in scientific orthodoxy, Einstein trapped his successors in insoluble dilemmas..."

Lee Smolin worships Einstein's constant-speed-of-light postulate and its consequences:

http://www.independent.com/news/2013...7/time-reborn/
QUESTION: Setting aside any other debates about relativity theory for the moment, why would the speed of light be absolute? No other speeds are absolute, that is, all other speeds do indeed change in relation to the speed of the observer, so it's always seemed a rather strange notion to me.
LEE SMOLIN: Special relativity works extremely well and the postulate of the invariance or universality of the speed of light is extremely well-tested.. It might be wrong in the end but it is an extremely good approximation to reality.
QUESTION: So let me pick a bit more on Einstein and ask you this: You write (p. 56) that Einstein showed that simultaneity is relative. But the conclusion of the relativity of simultaneity flows necessarily from Einstein's postulates (that the speed of light is absolute and that the laws of nature are relative). So he didn't really show that simultaneity was relative - he assumed it. What do I have wrong here?
LEE SMOLIN: The relativity of simultaneity is a consequence of the two postulates that Einstein proposed and so it is deduced from the postulates. The postulates and their consequences are then checked experimentally and, so far, they hold remarkably well.

Joao Magueijo declares that special relativity is "the root of all the evil":

http://www.amazon.com/Faster-Than-Sp.../dp/0738205257
Joao Magueijo, Faster Than the Speed of Light, p. 250: "Lee [Smolin] and I discussed these paradoxes at great length for many months, starting in January 2001. We would meet in cafés in South Kensington or Holland Park to mull over the problem. THE ROOT OF ALL THE EVIL WAS CLEARLY SPECIAL RELATIVITY. All these paradoxes resulted from well known effects such as length contraction, time dilation, or E=mc^2, all basic predictions of special relativity. And all denied the possibility of establishing a well-defined border, common to all observers, capable of containing new quantum gravitational effects."

Joao Magueijo teaches ... general relativity:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo%C3%A3o_Magueijo
"Joao Magueijo studied physics at the University of Lisbon. He undertook graduate work and Ph.D. at Cambridge University. He was awarded a research fellowship at St John's College, Cambridge, the same fellowship previously held by Paul Dirac and Abdus Salam. He has been a faculty member at Princeton and Cambridge, and is currently a professor at Imperial College London where he teaches undergraduates General Relativity and postgraduates Advanced General Relativity."

Pentcho Valev