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Re: Evidence for "Big Bang Theory"
JAMES BENTHALL (st26h@jane.uh.edu)
27 Apr 1995 13:44 CDT
In article <3nofju$p6l@sat.ipp-garching.mpg.de>, bds@ipp-garching.mpg.de (Bruce D. Scott) writes...
>Ben Weiner (bweiner@electron.rutgers.edu) wrote:
>
>: This is not just garbage, it's insulting to the memory of so many
>: Soviet scientists who were murdered or imprisoned for holding beliefs
>: unpopular with Stalin's pets. Robert, even if you think advocates of
>: your pet theory are being driven out of the profession, I defy you to
>: name me any astronomers (or other scientists) in the US who have been
>: physically harmed as a result of attacking "big bang" theories.
>
>Yes, quite a few of us by now in physics and other fields have met
>colleagues from the former Soviet Union and learned about things like this
>first-hand. Quacks cease to be just quacks when they slander people who
>really put their livelihood on the line during those dark times.
Well, I know of at least one US astronomer that was "harmed" in the sense
that he was persecuted and denied his livelihood for attacking the Big
Bang theory--Halton Arp. As a result of his continuing to look,and find,
inconsistencies with cosmological redshifts (mostly quasars) he was finally
denied telescope time. (I believe at UC Berkeley?) Whereupon, he quit in
disgust and moved to Germany (at Max-Planck?).
The West has more subtle ways of handling nonconformists...deny telescope
time, deny funding, etc.
james
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