Anti-Relativity as Viewed by Milena Wazeck and Peter Hayes

Nowadays most theoreticians reject Einstein's spacetime, explicitly or implicitly, and the reason hasn't changed since 1905: The ad hoc distortion of space and time, just to conform to the nonsense that the speed of light is independent of the speed of the observer, was and still is unacceptable:

http://www.aip.org/history/exhibits/...relativity.htm
John Stachel: "But this seems to be nonsense. How can it happen that the speed of light relative to an observer cannot be increased or decreased if that observer moves towards or away from a light beam? Einstein states that he wrestled with this problem over a lengthy period of time, to the point of despair."

https://www.aip.org/history/exhibits...teins-time.htm
Peter Galison: "Only by criticizing the foundational notions of time and space could one bring the pieces of the theory - that the laws of physics were the same in all constantly moving frames; that light traveled at the same speed regardless of its source - into harmony."

Two different accounts of the anti-relativity activity (excerpts):

http://www.newscientist.com/article/...y-deniers.html
Milena Wazeck, Einstein's sceptics: Who were the relativity deniers? "Yet what flourishes today on the fringes of the internet was much more prominent in the 1920s, in the activities of a movement that included physics professors and even Nobel laureates. Who were Einstein's opponents? Why did they oppose one of the most important scientific theories of the 20th century? And was Einstein right in saying "political affiliation" was responsible for the fierce opposition to relativity theory? [...] Gehrcke was an experimental physicist at the Imperial Technical Institute in Berlin. Like many experimentalists of that era, he felt uncomfortable with the rise of a theory that demanded a reformulation of the fundamental concepts of space and time.. Relativity messes with these to the extent that events which one observer deems simultaneous are no longer simultaneous as viewed by observers moving in different frames of reference. Gehrcke could not imagine such a scenario. In 1921 he argued that giving up the idea of absolute time threatened to confuse the basis of cause and effect in natural phenomena. [...] Another motivation was more noble. Einstein's opponents were seriously concerned about the future of science. They did not simply disagree with the theory of general relativity; they opposed the new foundations of physics altogether.. The increasingly mathematical approach of theoretical physics collided with the then widely held view that science is essentially simple mechanics, comprehensible to every educated layperson. This way of thinking can be traced back to the 19th-century heyday of popular science, when many citizens devoted their leisure to the pursuit of scientific understanding, and simple theories of gravity or electricity were widely discussed in scientific magazines. Relativity represented a quite different way of understanding the world. It was a theory that "only 12 wise men" could comprehend, The New York Times declared in 1919. The increasing role played by advanced mathematics seemed to disconnect physics from reality. "Mathematics is the science of the imaginable, but natural science is the science of the real," Gehrcke stated in 1921. Engineer Eyvind Heidenreich, who found relativity incomprehensible, went further: "This is not science. On the contrary, it is a new brand of metaphysics." The Academy of Nations therefore saw itself as directed not only against the theory of relativity, but also towards the salvation of what it considered to be real science. Gehrcke insisted that the Academy "must become an alliance of truth". [...] By the mid-1920s Einstein's opponents were facing overwhelming resistance, and most refrained from taking a public stance against the theory of relativity. Many of them simply gave up, and the Academy of Nations ceased to serve as the central organisation campaigning against Einstein, though it lingered on until the early 1930s. But the anti-relativists did not revise their opinion. In 1951, Gehrcke was still writing letters about the fight against relativity. "The day will come where everything, but everything about this theory will be abandoned by the world at large, but when will this be?" he asked. The debate about relativity lingers on today. Though the new generation of Einstein's opponents have mostly moved their protests online, they share some fundamental characteristics with their predecessors. [...] The controversy over relativity represents a scientific dispute that is crucially shaped by the participants' world views and draws heavily on metaphysical conceptions of reality. Like those who oppose Darwin's theory of evolution, Einstein's opponents back in the 1920s were impervious to reasoned criticism, just as his critics today are. Physicists do sometimes try to discuss relativity theory with their opponents and point out their misunderstandings, just as physicists did 90 years ago. But this will not resolve the controversy. The opponents' understanding of the very nature of science differs so fundamentally from the academic consensus that it may be impossible to find common ground."

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/con...ent=a909857880
Peter Hayes, The Ideology of Relativity: The Case of the Clock Paradox: "In the interwar period there was a significant school of thought that repudiated Einstein's theory of relativity on the grounds that it contained elementary inconsistencies. Some of these critics held extreme right-wing and anti-Semitic views, and this has tended to discredit their technical objections to relativity as being scientifically shallow. This paper investigates an alternative possibility: that the critics were right and that the success of Einstein's theory in overcoming them was due to its strengths as an ideology rather than as a science. The clock paradox illustrates how relativity theory does indeed contain inconsistencies that make it scientifically problematic. These same inconsistencies, however, make the theory ideologically powerful. The implications of this argument are examined with respect to Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper's accounts of the philosophy of science. [...] The prediction that clocks will move at different rates is particularly well known, and the problem of explaining how this can be so without violating the principle of relativity is particularly obvious. The clock paradox, however, is only one of a number of simple objections that have been raised to different aspects of Einstein's theory of relativity. (Much of this criticism is quite apart from and often predates the apparent contradiction between relativity theory and quantum mechanics.) It is rare to find any attempt at a detailed rebuttal of these criticisms by professional physicists. However, physicists do sometimes give a general response to criticisms that relativity theory is syncretic by asserting that Einstein is logically consistent, but that to explain why is so difficult that critics lack the capacity to understand the argument. In this way, the handy claim that there are unspecified, highly complex resolutions of simple apparent inconsistencies in the theory can be linked to the charge that antirelativists have only a shallow understanding of the matter, probably gleaned from misleading popular accounts of the theory. [...] The argument for complexity reverses the scientific preference for simplicity. Faced with obvious inconsistencies, the simple response is to conclude that Einstein's claims for the explanatory scope of the special and general theory are overstated. To conclude instead that that relativity theory is right for reasons that are highly complex is to replace Occam's razor with a potato masher. [...] The defence of complexity implies that the novice wishing to enter the profession of theoretical physics must accept relativity on faith. It implicitly concedes that, without an understanding of relativity theory's higher complexities, it appears illogical, which means that popular "explanations" of relativity are necessarily misleading. But given Einstein's fame, physicists do not approach the theory for the first time once they have developed their expertise. Rather, they are exposed to and probably examined on popular explanations of relativity in their early training. How are youngsters new to the discipline meant to respond to these accounts? Are they misled by false explanations and only later inculcated with true ones? What happens to those who are not misled? Are they supposed to accept relativity merely on the grounds of authority? The argument of complexity suggests that to pass the first steps necessary to join the physics profession, students must either be willing to suspend disbelief and go along with a theory that appears illogical; or fail to notice the apparent inconsistencies in the theory; or notice the inconsistencies and maintain a guilty silence in the belief that this merely shows that they are unable to understand the theory. The gatekeepers of professional physics in the universities and research institutes are disinclined to support or employ anyone who raises problems over the elementary inconsistencies of relativity. A winnowing out process has made it very difficult for critics of Einstein to achieve or maintain professional status. Relativists are then able to use the argument of authority to discredit these critics. Were relativists to admit that Einstein may have made a series of elementary logical errors, they would be faced with the embarrassing question of why this had not been noticed earlier. Under these circumstances the marginalisation of antirelativists, unjustified on scientific grounds, is eminently justifiable on grounds of realpolitik. Supporters of relativity theory have protected both the theory and their own reputations by shutting their opponents out of professional discourse. [...] The argument that Einstein fomented an ideological rather than a scientific revolution helps to explain of one of the features of this revolution that puzzled Kuhn: despite the apparent scope of the general theory, very little has come out of it. Viewing relativity theory as an ideology also helps to account for Poppers doubts over whether special theory can be retained, given experimental results in quantum mechanics and Einsteins questionable approach to defining simultaneity. Both Kuhn and Popper have looked to the other branch of the theory - Popper to the general and Kuhn to the special - to try and retain their view of Einstein as a revolutionary scientist. According to the view proposed here, this only indicates how special and general theories function together as an ideology, as when one side of the theory is called into question, the other can be called upon to rescue it. The triumph of relativity theory represents the triumph of ideology not only in the profession of physics bur also in the philosophy of science. These conclusions are of considerable interest to both theoretical physics and to social epistemology. It would, however, be naïve to think that theoretical physicists will take the slightest notice of them."

Pentcho Valev