Cosmology and the Theory of Twin Universes
Open Letters
October 12, 2006
On October 10th, I had posted on my website two open letters concerning two young researchers, addressed to the directors of their respective research programs. These letters have become obsolete. Indeed:
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The first one referred to criticisms of my work, which were linked to a link at the bottom of my biography page. This text was hosted on the official website of the Paris Institute of Astrophysics and gave the impression that this laboratory endorsed the "very severe" opinion of a 33-year-old polytechnician, Alain Riazuelo, regarding my work, by questioning my qualities as a researcher. This link has disappeared in the new version of this biography, which has become more factual.
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The archives of the discussions, which had an impressive number of contributions, have been completely revised by the Wikipedia administrators and no longer contain the vulgar, insulting, and defamatory passages that had motivated my actions. Those who followed these discussions will not have failed to notice the remarkable and sudden shortening of the volume of these "variable geometry archives".
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I maintain the proposal I made to the directors of the two laboratories in question to give a seminar in their premises. My approach included two requests:
http://www2.iap.fr/users/riazuelo/cosmo/jpp/p2.html
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Mr. Alain Riazuelo, a 33-year-old polytechnician, researcher at CNRS, stationed at the Paris Institute of Astrophysics, had written in the Wikipedia discussion pages:
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Regarding the scientific works of Jean-Pierre Petit, the scientific community has already rendered its verdict.
He then included in the discussion page a critique, preceded by the heading:
An astrophysicist, Alain Riazuelo, stationed at the Paris Institute of Astrophysics, judges Jean-Pierre Petit's theory of twin universes
At the moment I write these lines, this text is still accessible on the official website of the Paris Institute of Astrophysics at the address:
Considering that a discussion page on the Web was not really the place to answer a pseudo-scientific argument revealing its shortcomings on the subject and its misunderstanding of my work, I then asked him, after pointing out a mistake he made regarding the determination of the Einstein constant, to offer me the opportunity to respond to his criticisms in front of his colleagues during a seminar at the IAP (where I had, in fact, given a lecture on the same topic six years earlier without triggering any criticism). He replied that my work was too mediocre to deserve being discussed in such a setting, where only serious people are invited.
These remarks, as well as those of a second researcher of the same age, working in the field of superstrings, stationed in another laboratory and operating this time under a pseudonym, revealed a deep ignorance of General Relativity (to the point that I had taken the latter for a young student). I addressed the directors of their research programs a formal proposal for a seminar, as is customary, to clarify these scientific issues and, incidentally, to complete the shortcomings of these two researchers.
These directors will or will not follow up on this seminar proposal. If there is a response, I will keep my readers informed.
- I also asked the director of the Paris Institute of Astrophysics to remove from its official website the critique that Alain Riazuelo, a CNRS researcher, had posted there.
This official will leave or not leave this text in place; it is his problem. However, since the link no longer appears in my Wikipedia biography, it no longer really matters; this page was not very visited.
In conclusion to this sad story