Nobody needs to listen to my opinion, but it remains a fact that the teachings of Professor Brian Cox’s profession also contain demonstrably NONSENSE. Theories, irrespective of their authors, are mere figments of human imagination and are fallible.
We cannot order men to see the truth or prohibit them from indulging in error.
Max Planck (1936)
another man of wisdom said:
By admitting our shortcomings, we give our children hope that they too can contribute to the advancement of scientific thought.
Pierre-Marie Robitaille 2013
But there is too much at stake:
In the sciences, the formation of specialized journals, the foundation of specialists’ societies, and the claim for a special place in the curriculum have usually been associated with a group’s first reception of a single paradigm.
The more rigid definition of the scientific group has other consequences. When the individual scientist can take a paradigm for granted, he need no longer, in his major works, attempt to build his field anew, starting from first principles and justifying the use of each concept introduced. That can be left to the writer of textbooks.
Thomas Kuhn
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
The group, to which Professor Cox belongs, propagate, teach and defend theories as scientific fact based on the pretence that these theories are the only acceptable way to explain the observed. The group venomously rejects counter postulates. The older the challenged theory the stronger the rejection; much is to lose, too many later theories are based on the original paradigm.
One such old theory is Paul Drude’s 1900 model for electric current. It postulates the electrons are the charge carriers for electric current. Valence electrons are said to drift, or flow, in the conduction band of metals, physically drifting along the conductor in the general direction of the electric current. In 1933 Arnold Sommerfield ‘quantumised’ Drude’s model, and numerous further refinements followed as obvious in this University of Oxford handout and in the numerous relevant literature and textbooks. Drude’s initial model, together with the many refinements, underpin all the modern theories of electric conduction in solids.
However, Drude’s model is demonstrably nonsense. A simple thought experiment, using only logical thought disproves Drude and the 116 years of theoretical research that followed. A crisis for physics indeed.
The question that needs answering:
How many instances are there in the currently accepted statements and interpretations of Physics that can be impartially shown to be logically fragile, mistaken, unsupportable, or wilfully incoherent?
Professor Cox with your permission, there is an old saying:
He who laughs last, laughs best.
