Good Article About LIGO and the Future of Gravity Wave Research

It is getting gradually together isn't it ? :-)

As mentioned - even though a hiatus in detection was predicted some 20+ years ago - there will still be a tension for a 'pass/fail' mark to be applied. Such comments will come from those not familiar to the history of the field, and those that misunderstand that we can't prejudge physical findings. If no waves are found then that is actually a successful finding : the universe just is that way, theory be damned. So now we know something new. That is why experiments are performed in order to connect to reality and re-think upon received findings. This is quite contrary to the poison of many modern 'scientific' approaches where findings must reflect a priori expectations, lest it be deemed as invalid.

I think we will look back on the last couple of years at these boards as 'the quiet ones'. Around this time next year I expect these forums will be just a hummin' and a poppin'. Once it gets out that data is available that any member of the public might contribute to finding a gravitational wave - maybe even the first - then we will have hordes arriving here !

Now won't that be fun ! Especially to moderate ! :-) :-)

Cheers, Mike.

( edit ) Indeed I had a conversation with a young ecosystem researcher about a year ago. She was up in the nearby mountains undertaking a study. I forget the exact detail she described, but essentially the idea was to connect FactorA with EventB, say. The disturbing aspect for me was her insistence that the study was going to demonstrate that FactorA was causative for EventB. I queried as to whether the aim of the study was to define one or more of the possible causative relationships b/w FactorA and EventB ie. there would be a null hypothesis plus alternates to compare. Oh no, she replied. She knew what would be found - some proposition put forward by her thesis supervisor - so that is what must be demonstrated. It was her role to ensure that the desired relationship was brought forth during the study. More importantly the study was to be 'designed properly' so that said conclusion would be manifest.

It became clear to me that she wasn't actually aware of any traditional meaning of objective scientific investigation. She was to do whatever her PhD mentor said, and having done so then it must have been science because the supervisor said so. I must admit this hit me like a wet fish in the face, that I was hearing from two generations ( the investigator and her professor ) that had not the least clue of any process to undertake in order to decide whether ideas inside one's head really do relate to the outside of the skull. Self reference is now King and by that benchmark all succeed. Reality be damned. It seems this 'scientific method' has supplanted much that went before ( critical thinking & iterative reference to measurement ), so much so that a mind boggling semantic substitution has occurred behind the label of 'science'. This is now the norm alas.

If I thought that way in clinical practice I would be killing people left, right and center every day .... the faulty methodology as described is very common in the pharmaceutical industry for instance. Null findings, or unfavourable ones for a product are suppressed/downplayed. Whole rafts of investigations are not disclosed because of non-science agenda. It seems that many areas of academia have well and truly caught the disease, not unlike the sandbagging of economic policy by high profile institutions to validate the decisions made up to the 2008 nonsense in Wall Street. The trick is to pick the right High Priests, dress them in the correct political clothing, and then cred them up !