Dear CERN:
I love you as only a scientist can love the biggest scientific institution on earth. My proposal how to stabilize the ITER (a still larger big-science experiment than your LHC) so it can produce unlimited usable energy for the planet, just got published. I very much cherish high tech whenever it serves humankind.
This attitude of mine notwithstanding, I have been asking you in public for 4 ½ years to, please, falsify some other results which prove that your LHC experiment is jeopardizing the planet on a maximally short term basis. Specifically, I showed in mounting detail that the black holes that you are trying to produce in the LHC, (i) arise much more readily than hoped for, (ii) are invisible to your superb detectors, and (iii) are going to grow exponentially once gotten stuck inside matter (so as to shrink the earth to two centimeters in perhaps ten years’ time).
As you know, I dearly hope that the result can be shown to be false at a critical junction. Anyone who succeeds in doing so is your closest ally. However, as long as this aim is waiting to be achieved, I continue being your only ally. All other apparent allies who support your strategy of non-updating your 4 ½ years old safety report are your worst enemies. They have good reason never to show their face in public. Anyone who is opposed to the danger being disproved is obviously not your friend.
Forgive me, dear CERN, that I am so much on your side as to give you the “order” to immediately halt the LHC experiment until the proof of danger has been dismantled.
I know I have no right to give you any orders. I am not the police nor the CERN Council nor the Security Council of your sister organization, the United Nations. As long as these institutions all violate their duty of requesting an update on your 4 ½ years old safety report before letting you continue, I have the right and the duty to speak in their name to you.
The planet will never forget it to you if you heed the friendly order given to you by someone who deeply admires all your great achievements but, at the same time, insists on the worst safely gap of history to be plugged immediately.
Take care,
Sincerely yours,
Otto E. Rossler, chaos researcher
There is no way to prove such a negative. It can be and has been pointed out that your model that predicts these things is rather non-standard. Unless it is supported by successful predictions and successfully explaining existing data better than more successful models why would it be taken seriously? There were for instance scientists that thought the first atomic explosion would start a chain reaction that might destroy the entire planet. They happened to be wrong. Should not only nuclear weapons but also nuclear power have been put on hold until they could conclusively disprove the possibility on theoretical grounds? Or perhaps until the possibly oh so dangerous experiments could be tried off-planet? Or did we need to move forward with the best consensus science of the day?
Oh no, my dear revered Samantha: You talk as if this was an ordinary refereeing task on hand here: Is the given proof of the usual standard type, with nothing radically new involved (since that takes always quite a while to verify definitively for the future)?
In a case like this, the principle of reversal of the burden of proof applies. Not I have to prove that I am right (after haviung done my best to do so), it is everyone else’s duty to show that I am wrong.
I am the young ship boy who saw the iceberg. The officers have the duty to take out their glasses and check.
Right?
The best consensus you quote is not meant seriously by you: A consensus which refuses to check a proof of danger is the stupidest thing of history.
I so much admire you. Please, forgive me for having told you what I think you missed putting into regard.
Thank you from my heart, Otto