The foolish optimism of thinking dark matter is about to be detected (Synopsis)

"For me the best answer is not in words but in measurements." -Elena Aprile

Dark matter is perhaps the most mysterious substance in the Universe. It outmasses normal matter and radiation, which includes all the known particles in the Standard Model, by a factor of 5-to-1. The observational, astrophysical evidence for its existence is overwhelming, and there are a slew of direct detection efforts underway here on Earth. Depending on dark matter’s properties, any number of them might claim success at any point in the near future.

The cryogenic setup of one of the experiments looking to exploit the hypothetical interactions between dark matter and electromagnetism. Image credit: Axion Dark Matter Experiment (ADMX), LLNL’s flickr. The cryogenic setup of one of the experiments looking to exploit the hypothetical interactions between dark matter and electromagnetism. Image credit: Axion Dark Matter Experiment (ADMX), LLNL’s flickr.

But because we don’t know the properties of dark matter, they could easily all return null results, or results consistent with no dark matter. That isn’t an indication that dark matter isn’t real or doesn’t exist! Rather, it’s an indication that we don’t know what the nature of dark matter is, and a reminder that every one of these experiments is operating under the assumption that dark matter will interact in a way that it’s not yet proven to do so.

Limits on the dark matter/nucleon recoil cross-section, including the projected predicted sensitivity of XENON1T. Image credit: Ethan Brown of RPI, via http://ignatz.phys.rpi.edu/site/index.php/the-experiment/. Limits on the dark matter/nucleon recoil cross-section, including the projected predicted sensitivity of XENON1T. Image credit: Ethan Brown of RPI, via http://ignatz.phys.rpi.edu/site/index.php/the-experiment/.

It’s important to keep looking, but it’s also important to not oversell the probability of our direct detection efforts bearing fruit anytime soon. Be free to hope, but don’t be overly, foolishly optimistic!

More like this

@Ethan

Can you please clarify your stance on the EmDrive? Back in August 2014 in a piece titled 'How to Fool the World with Bad Science' you called the EmDrive 'false information posing as science, eroding the public trust in science itself". You had a follow-up thought this past month opining that such things, and all reporting on such things should be banned. Your exact words were "Perhaps we have a right to be free from misinformation masquerading as truths".

Although you did mention the broader 'electromagnetic resonance experiments' here it is unclear if you are including the EmDrive in that or limiting it to the more traditional experiments like ADMX.

Given that the EmDrive is most likely nothing, are you still of the anti-American and frankly anti-Science opinion that the creator of the EmDrive and anyone daring to publish anything about it should be prosecuted by the government? Or should the Doc Brown's of the world be allowed to tinker in garages and let people know when they find something odd without fear of government reprisal?

Here in 2017, can you see any value in allowing others to pursue ideas you believe at first look to be 'false information posing as science'?

" You had a follow-up thought this past month opining that such things, and all reporting on such things should be banned. "

Why do you feel the irrepressible urge to make shit up, denier?

Ethan,
Here is the whole kit and kaboodle
The Expanding N.E.T. Wave theory copyright 2004, all rights reserved.
The Big Bang created space but each atom is continuing to give of more energy in the form of gravitational waves adding to space. Gravitational waves are NOT RIPPLES IN SPACETIME, 1). they are ripples "OF" Spacetime.
2). Gravitational waves are continuously emitted from all atoms as photons slow in the magnetic moment with the field holding the electron in its angular momentum orbit, within the em field.
The abundance of photons allows mass to be in static equilibrium as lowest energy gravitational waves are given off continuiously from all mass and the collisions forming larger constructive wavefronts create tension back to the sources and the sources come together! This is the actions of generated Spacetime and these waves follow Newton's laws of motion creating gravity and dark matter actions. An event hirizion and a dark matter halo are standing wavefronts.
4). The formula that Einstein could not find is this:
An increase in the gravitational field, Spacetime, (S), is equalivant to a decrease in the energy within the surface of an atom x c^3. So S=ec^3=mc^5.

So as space increases, overall energy particles decrease. This is the process that runs the universe and explains dark energy as a constant force of the Hubble flow on a decreasing galactic mass, gravity and dark matter are reactions to wavefront formation and the entire universe is run by two point source interference patterns forming larger and larger wavefronts pressure with reactive tension forces. Anyhow, I will have a peer review paper out sometime soon. This should blow you away. And you do not have my permission to use it.

By Charles Michae… (not verified) on 03 Jan 2017 #permalink

Jesus Christ, is there any point to necromancing this topic? It's been beaten to death in the comments, whether you were paying attention or not.

^ Oh, right:

Gravity is the type of law I definitely get. Constitutional law, not as much.

Enough for you?

So gravitation is the reaction of emission of Spacetime itself from all atoms and these Spacetime waves colliding and rearranging into wavefronts with backactions of gravity and dark matter halos actions. Dark energy is the combined wavefronts of generated space forming the Hubble flow of space as a force with decreasing mass.

By Charles Michae… (not verified) on 03 Jan 2017 #permalink

You had a follow-up thought this past month opining that such things, and all reporting on such things should be banned.

I'm sure you can find exactly the quote from Ethan that says exactly what you claim he said.

@Narad

No. To me there is a difference between understanding the limitations in the law, and the personal decision to in what to value.

On the law, @Ethan was flat out wrong. He was calling for repealing of First Amendment protections even though he didn't know it. I read your quote as an admission that he now realizes he cannot get the government to do what he was advocating for.

Understanding that you cannot get the government to do your awful thing is different from understanding what you wanted was awful. I've seen absolutely nothing from @Ethan to indicate he personally believes the Freedom of Speech is important.

Forget the law for a moment. Imagine President Trump repeals the First Amendment so he can outlaw flag burning. If there were no First Amendment, would @Ethan push the government to prosecute scientific apostates?

With what @Ethan has written, do you know what @Ethan would do? I don't.

I bring up the EmDrive because it is the clearest example I can think of to show his stance as anti-Science. If the EmDrive inventor and anyone who had published anything about it has been jailed in 2014, we never would have gotten enough development to see it as a possible Axion Dark Matter detector.

Essentially I'm taking the previous statement as an admission that he understands the government values Free Speech. I want to know if @Ethan also values Free Speech. To me, they are different questions.

"On the law, @Ethan was flat out wrong. He was calling for repealing of First Amendment protections even though he didn’t know it"

That would be because he WASN'T calling for the repealing of the First Amendment protections, you dumbass hick. And it's not like you've been corrected on this before.

"would @Ethan push the government to prosecute scientific apostates?"

Unlike your credulous mythology, there are no apostates in science, since we have no religion, therefore no apostles or apostates or heretics or any of that moribund crap that, to you fundies, are only bad when applied to others.

He was calling for repealing of First Amendment protections

I love how you make over-the-top proclamations like this repeatedly on a forum where you could be banned with the click of a button, yet haven't been.

By Naked Bunny wi… (not verified) on 03 Jan 2017 #permalink

To make a comment that is actually on the topic of the article,
it sounds as if today's dark matter search experiments are the scientific equivalent of the drunk who is looking for his keys under the lamp post - it is not necessarily that he thinks that is where he lost them, it is just the only place he can see. I agree with Ethan that we should certainly keep looking for WIMP's, since that is in fact what we are best able to detect at the moment. But it sounds as if some people have confused 'this is the only place we can see' with 'this is where we are likely to find our keys'.

Denier must get his jollies out of beating straw men.

By Anonymous Coward (not verified) on 03 Jan 2017 #permalink

@Naked Bunny with a Whip

I love how you make over-the-top proclamations like this repeatedly on a forum where you could be banned with the click of a button, yet haven’t been.

I know. Crazy. Right?!? I never, ever would have thought @Ethan would have voiced that idea, but he did. He's let all sorts of people say all sorts of wrong things here in the comments of his blog. I'm absolutely included in that. I've never even been threatened with a ban. Not one time.

It was hard to reconcile that with a call for government censorship. I'm not the only one who had a hard time with it as originally @eric refused to believe that is what he actually meant until @Ethan corrected him and confirmed that yup, he wanted censorship.

Finally it was @Narad stepping in with links to an article on the First Amendment at a well known law blog that got @Ethan to stop and Mea Culpa with "Gravity is the type of law I definitely get. Constitutional law, not as much."

Currently @Narad is saying I'm an ass because @Ethan already conceded the point and I'm beating a dead horse. He's probably right. I'm having problems letting go because to me it is so disappointing.

" I never, ever would have thought @Ethan would have voiced that idea, but he did"

Except he didn't. And all of us here know he didn't.Currently

"@Narad is saying I’m an ass because @Ethan already conceded the point and I’m beating a dead horse."

No, you're an ass for repeating the same bullshit that you were told and explained time and time again that you had brought up out of your own alarmism.

To denier, kiddie porn restrictions are government censorship.

How about our foolish optimism that denier will learn anything when his politics doesn't want to encompass it.

@ ketchup

one minor correction. Axions are not WIMPs. Two different categories of particles. Axions are suppose to be very light, lighter then neutrino and in specific scenario would interact with EM field. WIMPs on the other hand are suppose to be much more massive and interact only through weak force.

Two different searches for two very different kinds of particle.

I'm not liking the scenario (which seems more and more likely) where both searches find nothing in their regimes of probing. With axions.. there aren't that many spaces we can look for if they don't find anything. With WIMPS AFAIK the only space remaining would be the very bottom energy levels where their signal is dominated with background noise. So they might have a space to improve for another generation of detectors.

But in terms of theory... if it's not axions, not WIMPS, and no SUSY to speak of... what else is there that matches with observation?

By Sinisa Lazarek (not verified) on 03 Jan 2017 #permalink

Denier:

I’m not the only one who had a hard time with it as originally @eric refused to believe that is what he actually meant until @Ethan corrected him and confirmed that yup, he wanted censorship.

Nope, that's just more extrapolative bullflop. Here is Ethan's exact response to me: "My point is not that scientists and PhDs should have the exclusive voices on policy; that was never my intention. It is that when it comes to factual information, there are correct statements and there are incorrect ones. There are truths that come about from looking at the full suite of evidence, and there are lies that come about from failing to do so. And that should be where the policy conversation begins: with everyone agreeing on the facts. We have not reached that point. There are people in power — and people supporting them — actively working against that point. This, in my book, is a problem"

No word on censorship, despite what Denier says. For context, here is Ethan in the same article, a little before that: I have never advocated abolishing the first amendment — which, by the way, is about the government not making laws to restrict the freedom of the press or of the people to speech or assembly — nor do I advocate for it here. It is not a crime to be ignorant. It is not a crime to share your opinion. And you assert that it’s not a crime to lie. That it’s not a crime to willfully lie in an attempt to mislead people. Except, of course, where it is, as your lawyer friends-and-spouse will tell you.

So, we have here Denier reading "nor do I advocate it here" as "I advocate it here", and then claiming the rest of us are bonkers for not agreeing with him.

To put the nail in the coffin, here is Ethan discussing what he proposes (my bold and I added the numbers for clarity):

You are also saying that non-legal measures, like for:
[1] search engines and social networking sites to elevate the truth while treating lies like spam,
[2] for journalists and publications to have an obligation to report the truth rather than whatever agenda they choose,
[3] and that people should out-shout lies with truths,
should be abhorred as well. The second of those, by the way, is what I’ve explicitly advocated for many times over.

Seems pretty clear. Ethan is saying he advocates for nonlegal measures that put an obligation on journalists and publications to report the truth. This is a far cry from criminal law based censorship.

@eric

So, we have here Denier reading “nor do I advocate it here” as “I advocate it here”, and then claiming the rest of us are bonkers for not agreeing with him.

Not at all. I can read and I did understand that @Ethan stated that he was NOT advocating for abolishing the first amendment. I got it. I also read and understood his advocating for a right against misinformation masquerading as truth.

Those are contradictory statements. The first amendment protects us from the government establishing a right against misinformation masquerading as truth. You can't establish the second part without dealing with the first. @Ethan didn't understand that when he authored the cited quote.

You are also saying that non-legal measures...

I read and understood that too. I also understood that he was advocating for a 'right'. A 'right' is a legal construct. A 'right' is NOT a non-legal measure, but all of this is a pointless discussion because @Ethan already conceded the point. He didn't understand the first amendment protections. He admitted it. Move along.

When I am asking about the EmDrive, it is a query separate from rights, or laws, or obligation. All of those things derive their power from something external be it government or societal pressure. Falling back on that is a cop out.

I'm asking if @Ethan personally sees a value in allowing others to pursue and publish ideas believed at first look to be ‘false information posing as science’ even if that means we have to deal with LENR garbage. Conversely would @Ethan be fine with possibly destroying some real science and some real scientists to achieve the goal of getting rid of fake scientific news?

@Wow

kiddie porn restrictions are government censorship.

I have no say on what the UK government allows or doesn't allow. If you want to lobby your government to provide you with whatever freedoms you need to pursue your passion, all I can say is you're on your own. Personally I hope the UK government continues to protect the children in your neighborhood.

"Not at all. I can read and I did understand that @Ethan stated that he was NOT advocating for abolishing the first amendment. I got it. "

Liar. Your posts prove you don't get it.

"I also understood that he was advocating for a ‘right’. A ‘right’ is a legal construct. "

Nope. Hell, even in the USA only restrictions on rights are in the law. Germany has a default-denied legal system, but the UK, USA and most of the other western systems have a default allowed system.

You only insist on this and your tired old screed because deniers HAVE to lie because reality and facts are against them, and they want the right to continue to lie without consequence, otherwise they'd have to do something positive rather than shit all over every discussion.

"" kiddie porn restrictions are government censorship."

I have no say on what the UK government allows or doesn’t allow. "

So you don't live under a government, denier?

Also, why the eliding quote mine? To denier, kiddie porn restrictions are government censorship.

A statement tat your "reply" is less than worthless for, since it neither clarifies anything different as being your opinion (ergo, evasive indication that you DO think that way), but also gives a vapid and tangential assertion that is merely confusing and meaningless.

"I’m asking if @Ethan personally sees a value in allowing others to pursue and publish ideas believed at first look to be ‘false information posing as science’ "

If you;d set yourself only to that claim, then you would have very much fewer people giving you a rightly deserved kicking. However, YOU DID NOT. You repeated calumny that you had been (and now, belatedly, when eric faces you down with the facts of the past events, "admit" to knowing prior to your post here) corrected on, purely so as to poison the well for anyone coming here without hearing the context of your lies.

Currently @Narad is saying I’m an ass

I didn't go that far, but the only thing it's going to do is generate more off-topic noise. (Hilariously, a member of the Age of Autism commentariat recently suggested punishments for those who spout untruths – in this case, that vaccines don't cause a grab-bag full of maladies, including autism.)

I mean, I can ignore it, particularly with W. back in the killfile, but I don't see the point. The random prepending of ampersands actually annoys me more.

Anyone want to guess why nads is telling everyone he uses a killfile? It's not like I'll change, and not like he'll learn more. Nor can I discuss it to even attempt to change or find reason for it.

Kinda pointless.

Denier, do you consider current US defamation laws to be a form of censorship?

Pfft. Lets see if he thinks the laws against possesion of kiddie porn is a form of censorship.

@eric

Denier, do you consider current US defamation laws to be a form of censorship?

No. Defamation laws are protection of property. If it was just censorship then simply saying something defaming would be enough for a judgement. It isn't. You have to prove injury. If there is no injury proven then there is no damage to property and no negative judgement.

"No. Defamation laws are protection of property."

Yeah, it;s speech about someone's BODY, people!!!! Aint it OBVIOUS!!

FFS, you're a retard, denier.

"You have to prove injury."

No you don't. It helps, but you can get a court to order an official retraction, and no injury needs to be shown.

So if someone initially misrepresents my research findings, and the law says 'no, you can't misrepresent eric's findings that way,' that would also not be censorship because I would be protecting my intellectual property?

@eric

We do have laws that protect property, intellectual and otherwise. Those laws have nothing to do with censorship. However before you go too far down that rabbit hole I would suggest a Google search on understanding what is and is not intellectual property.

But they're speech, not property. Therefore the laws against them have nothing to do with property.

Before going on and on about "intellectual property" google up and find out that this has nothing to do with property, only rivalrous ownership of unrivalrous words and copies.

If I take your car and give it to someone else, you don't have your car. If I take your joke and tell it to someone else, you still have your joke.

Property is not intellectual.

And I think we can get from this repeated ignoring of kiddie porn, that Denier is against their restriction by government laws.

It's not as if it is hard to say he's for restrictions on it, or that he'd be socially stigmatised for it. And it's not as if he hasn't had time to answer, since he's made several.

Its not that denier has actually answered eric, either.

After all, the science paper is "intellectual property", as is repuatation. Both of which is present in eric's hypothetical. And the protection of which is what Mann is fighting in his libel cases.

Which denier REALLY doesn't want to succeed, since that rather crimps the hand of deniers, that they're going to be liable for the consequences of their "speech".

@32, from uslegal.com: "Intellectual property is a property right that can be protected under federal and state law, including copyrightable works, ideas, discoveries, and inventions." Also, journal publications have been formally protected as intellectual property in the past, though it probably isn't common.

So, that would make your answer a yes, then? If I first protect a discovery of mine via formal legal intellectual property rights, I can then bring legal suit against someone who misrepresents my findings and you would not consider that to be censorship, yes? If your answer is no, then please explain why.

Also, journal publications have been formally protected as intellectual property in the past, though it probably isn’t common.

Beg pardon? Journal articles are obviously intellectual property: that's what the copyright transfers and subscription prices are all about.

I've only skimmed it, but the paper you linked to is about something very different, a – for lack of a better word – sociological effect of combining journal publications with (follow-on) patents. It does use "IPR" to distinguish the two, but the authors are specialists in "entrepreneurship," not lawyers.

I wasn't planning to get involved in a discussion about US legal system, but in threads before and in this one again.. terms like jail, criminal prosecution, etc.. have been used in same sentence with discussion on policy and regulations or at a more ground level it might be what you cal Tort or Tort law.. or maybe civil cases for bad mouthing and such.

But here is what was gnawing me. Torts are not part of criminal law. None of what is being discusses is criminal offense.

Denier.. you say: "If the EmDrive inventor and anyone who had published anything about it has been jailed in 2014..." Jailed?! WTF

Let's quote wiki: "'Criminal law involves the prosecution by the state of wrongful acts which are considered to be so serious that they are a breach of the sovereign's peace (and cannot be deterred or remedied by mere lawsuits between private parties). Generally, crimes can result in incarceration, but torts (see below) cannot" So two things, no jail for Torts.. and second... more importantly, noone ever suggested that discussion about paper publishing or news reporting equate to breaches of peace.. like murder or rape or GTA or drug production or smuggling?! It's only you here who is arguing that two hold the same level in court of law, but that just isn't so.

What IMO this boils down is some scenario, where a congress would pass a regulation or guideline or policy statement where it advises i.e."... to consider partial reporting, or negating scientific evidence to be avoided wherever possible as it doesn't server to bla bla.. and that all should try to maintain fact checking and rigor when doing bla bla...".

But when some statue or act gets cosnidered like that.. it goes to public debate, modifications, edits.. even when and if it gets adopted, that doesn't make it by default a part of criminal lav, or civil prosecution where a penalty could be incarsaration. Further, they mostly serve as guidelines for the judges to consider when ruling, but not actual senteces. There can't be a congress act that says.. oh if you publish 2 pages, you get 3 years of prison, if 10 then 20. That is ludicrous on so many levelvs, yet that is what you seem to believe that ethan and rest are proposing. That is what I don't get in your arguments. Surely you realize that your legal system is not only based on criminal and "some other puny stuff" legal system. And nothing discussed here even remotely touches on criminal prosecution. Especially none of the talk about freedom of speech.

Don't get me wrong, I don't really hold any side in this argument (ethan's or yours), because honestly I can't really do anything about if a news agency or president or anyone in US believes anything or anyone.

Am just saying that criminal prosecution has nothing to do with the topic, except that you claim any regulation equates it to being part of criminal prosecution. That's incorrect AFAIK.

By Sinisa Lazarek (not verified) on 04 Jan 2017 #permalink

"Denier.. you say: “If the EmDrive inventor and anyone who had published anything about it has been jailed in 2014…” Jailed?! WTF"

Denier, like all AGW deniers, are embedded deep in alarmism. Jailing is just alarmist bullshit from denier to scare people into doing what denier wants and ensure that the ideas move only into areas denier can control.

And it's why they see "alarmism" everywhere. They're busy framing things they want that way to preclude options they don't want, so they see everyone else doing it to get ideas that denier doesn't like into view (after all, deniers don't like it, therefore it MUST be bad, therefore it CAN'T be valid, therefore it MUST be alarmist bullcrap!).

Narad,
WTF indeed. Denier has got it into his head that Ethan is demanding "prosecution by the government" (his words, see #1) as a way of controlling 'false news' problem as it relates to science. I don't personally think anyone here is actually demanding that, but it's the subject he seems to want to discuss ad nauseum.

@Denier:

Defamation laws are protection of property. If it was just censorship then simply saying something defaming would be enough for a judgement. It isn’t. You have to prove injury.

Note that some jurisdictions provide a cause of action for "defamation per se"; no damages need be shown.

@Eric:

If I first protect a discovery of mine via formal legal intellectual property rights, I can then bring legal suit against someone who misrepresents my findings and you would not consider that to be censorship, yes? If your answer is no, then please explain why.

I'm not sure where this question is coming from, but the answer depends on what you mean by "via formal legal intellectual property rights." The obvious case is the tension between keeping a trade secret and filing a patent: In the latter case, the details are disclosed in exchange for exclusivity under patent law. In the former, the secret has to be protected by private contracts such as nondisclosure agreements, and violations lie in the realm of tort law. (The upside is that – unlike patents – they can extend for as long as one can keep the secret. The downside is that patenting a reverse-engineered version is perfectly kosher.)

But none of this has to do with "misrepresenting" anything.

@Sinisa Lazarek

Am just saying that criminal prosecution has nothing to do with the topic, except that you claim any regulation equates it to being part of criminal prosecution. That’s incorrect AFAIK.

I've already explain this one. For abstract concepts no one has any standing to bring a tort case. What @Ethan had proposed cannot fall under tort law. No one has a patent on Global Warming. Global Warming isn't anyone's Intellectual Property. The *ONLY* entity in the US who could seek redress against damage done to the idea of Global Warming is the state, and even then only if the act were criminalized.

What @Ethan was proposing necessarily involved criminalization.

"What @Ethan was proposing necessarily involved criminalization."

Stick with your pet lie. I'm sure you'll find someone clueless enough to believe you.

@eric

If I first protect a discovery of mine via formal legal intellectual property rights, I can then bring legal suit against someone who misrepresents my findings and you would not consider that to be censorship, yes?

I would not consider that to be censorship. Defamation and Censorship are not the same thing. Protection of Intellectual Property and Censorship are not the same thing. One is based on content. The other is based on damage.

Also, discovery does not mean you own something. It has to be patentable. The team that discovered gravitational waves does not own gravitational waves. They can't sue to protect the idea of gravitational waves. No one can. They are no one's intellectual property. The published research paper is covered by copyright, but that only covers the printed words, not the concepts the words describe.

@Narad

Note that some jurisdictions provide a cause of action for “defamation per se”; no damages need be shown.

Even in those cases it is the damage that is actionable, it is just that the damage is presumed. I'll concede the nitpick but the larger point on the distinction between Censorship and Defamation stands.

the larger point on the distinction between Censorship and Defamation stands.

However, you seem to agree with me that misrepresenting someone's intellectual property can be a form of defamation. Thus it can be address civilly, meaning "prosecution by the government" is not the only solution here. Right?

As for your comment 'discovery does not mean you own something', I already quoted USlegal.com as stating that intellectual property can include discoveries as well as copywriteable works and patentable inventions. Nobody is trying to say the first is the third, but it does appear that all three of these different things can be protected by intellectual property law. Or do you disagree with that?

"Note that some jurisdictions provide a cause of action for “defamation per se”; no damages need be shown."

Note too that there's no need to prove damages for copyright infringement, either. So damages aren't necessary even in the cases that denier likes existing (because he personally benefits from the monopoly state grant).

“What @Ethan was proposing necessarily involved criminalization.”

Nope, it still doesn't.

Only your insanity is building this fantasy world up, denier.

"Even in those cases it is the damage that is actionable,"

No it isn't.

Moreover, lying damages society. After all, lying on your adverts is still illegal, even if nobody gets round to buying your product.

What an utter failure you are, denier.

But I guess you gotta keep protecting the liars, since they're the only ones on your "side" on climate change.

"As for your comment ‘discovery does not mean you own something’,"

And writing doesn't mean owning it, either. None of the mythological intellectual properties actually means you own it. It ONLY means you can demand government shut other people up and take money off them at the point of a gun to protect your "right" to own it.

"I would not consider that to be censorship."

Why? "Defamation is not censorship" isn't it, because censorship is what defamation is doing, just like the justice system anywhere else: punish those who get caught to put others off even trying.

Indeed, if your claim was right, then what Mann is doing is not censorship, and neither is what Ethan proposed, nor is even making writing the "wrong" paper censorship, since you can still write what you like, you'd just be open to arrest and detention (or execution).

Censorship would be silencing the voice BEFORE it makes the statement.

if your claim was right, then what Mann is doing is not censorship, and neither is what Ethan proposed, nor is even making writing the “wrong” paper censorship, since you can still write what you like, you’d just be open to arrest and detention (or execution).

IIRC prior restraint is unconstitutional for the most part. Its definitely treated as a different thing (by US law) than defamation after the fact. The same holds true for newspapers publishing classified information, IIRC; the government can't really stop them from doing it, but they can go after them for doing it after they've done it.

Prior restraint is another one of those extremist ideas that probably nobody is suggesting.

@eric

However, you seem to agree with me that misrepresenting someone’s intellectual property can be a form of defamation. Thus it can be address civilly, meaning “prosecution by the government” is not the only solution here. Right?

@Ethan's proposal included the protection of truths that were not privately owned and therefor necessarily involved criminalization.

I already quoted USlegal.com as stating that intellectual property can include discoveries as well as copywriteable works and patentable inventions.

I really don't care what you found on some website. If you want to believe that tort law would allow scientists to sue fake news producers for misrepresenting their discoveries and the only reason they haven't so far is that they just don't know the law as well as you after your Google Search education, then go for it. I'm waiving the white flag in my attempt to inform on the problem preventing it.

@Narad

You were right. It just generated off topic noise.

@ Denier

"I’ve already explain this one."
- Actually no, in the previous post where I raised this same issue, your reply was "In US we have civil law and criminal law". At that stage I let it pass because as I said before, didn't want to get involved in the topic which I don't fully know. But just saying you have civil law and criminal law is grossly misrepresenting different legal subjects Anglo-Saxon law system. This is what I tried to show you now.

"What @Ethan had proposed cannot fall under tort law. No one has a patent on Global Warming. Global Warming isn’t anyone’s Intellectual Property. "

Think on this a bit... if there is no grounds to EVEN bring fort a Tort case, then imagine how even less grounds there is for a criminal one. And besides... Torts deal with a whole slew of things other than patent or intelectual property.

" The *ONLY* entity in the US who could seek redress against damage done to the idea of Global Warming is the state, and even then only if the act were criminalized. "

This is your own personal view which is not based within the US law system in any way. And that's what's pissing people up. You not seeing any other way or even being willing to accept that even today your country has tens of thousands of regulations and legilastions that have nothing to do with criminal prosecution, but which do regulate everyday life in your country non the less.

"What @Ethan was proposing necessarily involved criminalization."

Believe what you will, but it sure isn't based in US law or what Ethan wrote.. twice.

By Sinisa Lazarek (not verified) on 05 Jan 2017 #permalink

@Sinisa Lazarek

Torts deal with a whole slew of things other than patent or intelectual property.

Yes. And one of the very first things they do in ALL tort cases is determine if the plaintiff has standing. If the plaintiff does not have standing the case is dismissed.

Think on this a bit… if there is no grounds to EVEN bring fort a Tort case, then imagine how even less grounds there is for a criminal one.

That is right. That is why currently no one is using the courts to address fake scientific news. No one has any standing to do so. To address it the government would have to criminalize it so the state would have standing.

As with my earlier reply to @eric. If you want to believe that tort law would allow plaintiffs with no legal standing to sue fake news producers and the only reason they haven’t so far is US lawyers just don’t know the law as well as you after your Google Search education, then go for it.

" If you want to believe that tort law would allow plaintiffs with no legal standing to sue fake news producers and the only reason they haven’t so far is US lawyers just don’t know the law as well as you after your Google Search education, then go for it."

I don't care one way or the other, I said it before.. am not in US. If it were up to me, I would first ban your gun laws and lobys. This talk about EM drive etc is peanuts... But if you can't understand that not all legislations are court based, or that things dealing with education/information don't lead to episodes of The Suits, or Boston Legal or Law and Order then what the hey... your country after all.

By Sinisa Lazarek (not verified) on 05 Jan 2017 #permalink

I would like to see much more censorship of mainstream films and other entertainment media. Extreme violence from Hollywood has fuelled social breakdown and gang culture around the world. It's ,addictive to watch and stimulates compulsion, in line with all appeal to base nature.

I don't see a way to censor scientific developments or claims, because that places far too much surety on the scientific mainstream, which wouldn't be at all advisable or sensible.

The mainstream is obviously all that w have, and it has no choice but to be uber-conservative. This is not a matter of preference or fashion, it is literally the stabilising counter weight to the continuous revolution that has characterized scientific progress, that secures the basic possibility such thing can even exist.
So there's no choice involved. Scientific mainstream must protect the body of hard won knowledge, must be very sceptical of that which is new, must respond to unorthodox behaviour from scientists with harsh career limiting punishments, including shunning. It's all necessary it's all good. But it's also something that we shouldn't need to be told generates deeply flawed and problematic distortions down the line. We know this, because it's the meat and potatoes of human affairs generally. Uber-conservatism very easily degrades into self-serving protectorates of the mediocre. Once you get a significant number of mediocre people in, they will then make sub-optimal decisions in terms of recruitment, in terms of integrity, plagiarism and all the rest, which quickly degenerates into a 'snowball' scenario of exponentially rising corruption (in subtle forms). We know all this because it goes on all around us through our lives.

The major consequence of these constraining pressures on the mainstream - the uber-conservatism and all the unwanted slippery slope knock on effects translate to the scientific mainstream spending the majority of each century up a blind alley and not capable of paddling it's way out.

That's the price. And there's nothing we can do about it, fundamentally. What we could do, though, is spend more time reflecting on the reality of this, and the implications for various policy directions. Censorship is a good example of a policy envisioning that makes a lot of good sense viewed from within the mindset of the mainstream. Viewed from within the mainstream, in reflective out-of-the-box mode, it clearly would be a disaster because it would prolong even longer the already dominant part of the cycle the mainstream has to spend with up its own arse.

I hope it's obvious that I'm not being unsupportive of the mainstream. There is nothing else but the mainstream, but it's just that in any one random moment in history that you find yourself, it's a lot more likely than not that the mainstream is currently in an 'up shit creek' phase of the cycle and more probably than not that it has the critical point of no return long time ago but that there's no end in sight.

WHY DOES SCIENE WORK DESPITE THIS? It's because even when scientists are going in the wrong direction in the big themes, they are still practicing an immensely powerful methodological framework, and they still have the ethics and the skills and the infrastructure, like nothing the world has ever seen before, and for all of those pointers and much more, they will still be creating robust knowledge that will still serve a purpose later on, when the contextual big picture stuff is ironed out back to the straight and narrow

By Chris Mannering (not verified) on 05 Jan 2017 #permalink

"IIRC prior restraint is unconstitutional for the most part. "

It's not censorship.

"Prior restraint is another one of those extremist ideas that probably nobody is suggesting."

Me neither, but I was pointing out that Deniers' arrogant and incorrect assertions about his personal definition of what is censorship and what is not would also have the scenario as not being censorship, therefore not a problem for him, since his only gripe is censorship.

"@Ethan’s proposal included the protection of truths that were not privately owned and therefor necessarily involved criminalization."

No it didn't. Stop making shit up.

"I really don’t care what you found on some website"

IOW, don't listen to anyone else but denier for whether denier is right or not....

Fail.

" No one has any standing to do so"

The scientist does. The publisher of the paper does.

FFS, truth in advertising and FCC regulation don't own the airwaves or the adverts, and nobody needs standing to sue. This claim, like the other asinine assertions you've made are WRONG.

"To address it the government would have to criminalize it so the state would have standing. "

No they don't. See the actual world outside your libertarian bubble of blindness, you retard. It's already the case that this is not true.

If you want to believe that tort law would allow scientists to sue fake news producers for misrepresenting their discoveries and the only reason they haven’t so far is that they just don’t know the law as well as you after your Google Search education, then go for it.

No, what I believe is that when Ethan says he wants a non-legal measure that puts an obligation on journalists to report the truth rather than whatever agenda they choose (a close paraphrasing of his words), he isn't proposing an "anti-American and frankly anti-Science opinion that the creator of the EmDrive and anyone daring to publish anything about it should be prosecuted by the government" (your radically bad interpretation of his words).

That's it. That's the main point. You're badly interpreting him. The rest of my stuff was attempting to show that your logic leading to this misinterpretation is faulty, because it rests on the assumption that the only possible method of accomplishing his goal is to enforce a criminal penalty on bad speakers, and that assumption is wrong because there are many non-criminal ways to do so. My last several posts explored one way, and the assumption/premise that 'he must of meant criminal because no non-criminal solution is possible' is demonstrably shown to be wrong by providing one non-criminal solution.

@eric

demonstrably shown to be wrong by providing one non-criminal solution

No. You didn't. All you showed was that you don't understand the law. I have personally been through IP-related litigation more than once. I suspect that Narad is either a lawyer or at a minimum has had classes in the subject. Your writings show that you have done neither.

Worse still, you aren't trying to understand the problem but rather you've taken a naive position and are attempting to scour the web to support your position. You're wrong here, which is fine. The problem is that you don't want to learn even though it involves a subject you obviously don't know.

My interpretation of Ethan's words wasn't incorrect, Ethan's interpretation of the law was incorrect. Ethan was at least smart enough to know what he didn't know and admitted it. That is not you.

You want to assert that discovering something makes it your intellectual property because you misunderstood something on a website? Guess what? You're wrong! IP protections are a blanket term. Patent law is slightly different from Trade Secret law is different from Copyright law is different from Trademark law is different from Geographic Designation law.

Protectable discoveries generally fall under patent law or trade secret law. Either way it has to be patentable, but even if you weren't completely 100% wrong on that, those protections have noting to do with protections from misrepresentations. Narad told you that.

Your premise is wrong. The protections you built on that premise are wrong, and your conclusions are wrong. I know that even now you smugly think you are right as you proudly admire your monument of legal ignorance. When I point out the courts are not filled with scientists suing people for misrepresenting their discoveries, it never registers that maybe, just maybe you don't know what you're talking about. That is why I give up. I can't inform someone who doesn't have any interest is becoming informed.

“”demonstrably shown to be wrong by providing one non-criminal solution”

No. You didn’t”

YES. HE DID.

“Your premise is wrong. The protections you built on that premise are wrong,”

When you typed this, did you not notice you were staring at your reflection?

"My interpretation of Ethan’s words wasn’t incorrect"

Yes it was, and still is.

My interpretation of Ethan’s words wasn’t incorrect

Well, Oh Most Experienced Lawyers of Lawyers, I guess my ending point is that if I were a juror and a witness said "I want a non-legal measure that puts an obligation on journalists to report the truth rather than whatever agenda they choose," and the opposing council said "that witness said 'anyone daring to publish anything about it should be prosecuted by the government'”, you wouldn't win my vote. But you would win my laugh. These are clearly not the same statement. They're not even in the same ballpark.

I suspect that Narad is either a lawyer or at a minimum has had classes in the subject.

No on both counts, but I've been employed at a large law firm and still do some editorial work in the field.

"You’re wrong! IP protections are a blanket term."

And you were the one who brought it up as if it were a real thing, when now you're admitting it's a fiction.

Recorded music wasn't copyrighted. Object code (and earlier, source code) wasn't copyrighted. Computer programs didn't get patents. Many places they still don't.

So calling papers non copyrighted, even if it were either relevant or true, is a nonsequitur, since they could be protected merely by doing what has been done scores of times before, nary a one called censorship by you or your ilk.