I thank Helen for the corrected URL for the Setterfield article that was rejected by three Journals, and for the synopsis of the reasons for rejection by each.
I've got to say that I receive the news with mixed feelings; I've read the article in question, and thought that no one could possibly have submnitted it to any journal. On the other hand, it is among Setterfield's articles, easily the most sophisticated. If I'd had to pick one of the articles on his web site as the most likely to have been submitted to (and rejected by) a scientific Journal, I'd have picked that one.
But I am pleased to see the paper available on the web. I well recall your complaints (I think on this forum) about alleged injustices in the Journal refereeing of that paper, but we couldn't see the paper then. Now, at least, everyone interested can read the paper and judge for himself or herself whether a refereeing injustice was done.
I have a few comments. Helen wrote:
http://www.setterfield.org/quantumredshift.htm
This is the one that was rejected by three different journals because
1. It was not timely and the subject was not of interest (Foundations in Physics)
I recall discussing this one with you before. I can see why this one would bother you as a lay person. It would bother me also if thaat reason were given by referees for most Journals.
However, FOF is a bit of an eccentric Journal, and their definition of timliness and [general] interest are not the everyday definitions of those terms. FOF is more a philosophical Journal than an archival Journal. By "Foundations of Physics" is meant the seeking of a rigorous development of established physics. FOF is not the Journal in which to publish something novel. Even if I thought Setterfield's paper was perfectly sound I would not have expected FOF to have published it. It's just the wrong subject for the Journal.
2. It was very interesting but should be in a physics journal (Astronomical Journal)
Again, wrong Journal. I hope you have learned from those two rejection experiences. Part of scientific communication is picking the correct medium, the right Journal in which to publish. You wouldn't have tried to publish it in "Journal of Fluid Mechanics" or "Solid State Communications" either. If you had you would expect that the article would have been rejected out of hand by those Journals, even if the article was entirely correct.
Evidently you didn't know that FOF and AJ were bad choices for the subject matter of that article. I hope you learned better by now. It would be foolish for you to inveigh against either of those Journals for rejecting an article which, even if entirely correct, clearly falls outside the scope of either of those Journals.
The case of (3) below is, however, somewhat different:
3. Didn't approve that one of the references was a university text and not a peer-reviewed journal (it had been used for a definition), didn't like the second Bohr equation quantized, didn't use the QED approach, did not think a quantized redshift was the subject of any studies other than Tifft's (which was totally wrong) -- (Annals of Physics).
At least that would have been a suitable Journal had the article been sound.
I remember you complaining about the first objection about using an introductory physics text as a reference. I do not think that it would be reasonable for any referee to reject an article solely on such a basis. It would be appropriate to insist on a different reference as a condition of publication, but not to reject an article outright solely on that basis.
As your synopsis of the referee report makes clear, however, that reference was only one of many objections the referee had.
The quantization of the second Bohr equation really doesn't make sense. If Setterfield had used quantum mechanics (a Schrôdinger Wave Equation instead of the old Bohr theory, which is known not to work) then he would have immediately run into the problem that there is no way to do the "quantization" he wants to do. Quantum conditions follow in quantum mechanics from boundary conditions on admissible solutions of the Schrôdinger Equation (or sometimes, as in the case of quantization of angular momentum, simply algebraic commutation relations of Hermetian Operators corresponding to observables.) You can't just impose quantum conditions arbitrarily. This is a difficult point to make to a non-physicist, since you do not understand where quantum conditions come from in quantum mechanics. In any event, if Setterfield thought that his second quantum condition made sense withoin quantum mechanics (rather than the old quantum theory) it would have been incumbent upon him to demonstrate it. Setterfield didn't, and the referee quite reasonably insisted he do so if the paper and its ideas are to be taken seriously.
Regarding the use of SED rather than QED, you need to remember that the SED program (still unrealized) is to duplicate (or establish its testable differences from) QED. QED is the established theory that makes predictions to as many as 11 significant figures (the electron g factor). SED can sometimes duplicate QED, but not everywhere. SED is a more intuitively pleasing approach. Someday it may establish itself to rival QED, but not yet.
If someone wants to do new physics based on SED one must, to be taken seriously, either demonstrate that one's new results agree with QED (thus doing the derivation in QED as well as SED) or that they disagree. Or if one can't establish whether QED and SED give the same results for whatever one is doing, one must discuss the calculational difficulties prohibiting a determination.
Remember that QED is, in terms of its predictive precision, the most successful theory bar none in all of science. SED is not. You are free to philosophically prefer the conceptual simplicity of SED over the weirdness of QED, but if you base your theory on SED it is incumbent upon you to explain at great lenght and breadth why.
Regarding the final referee point about quantum redshift not being the study of any studies except those of Tifft, you are correct that the referee was wrong (although my reading is that Tifft's work is not taken too seriously by most astronomers. However, among astronomers he does have his defenders, and the referee's remark was wrong.)
However, ignoring the first point (the text book reference) which could have been easily corrected, and the fourth (the mistaken remark on the uniqueness of Tifft's studies) there remain points 2 and 3 (and any others that the referee didn't bother to mention.) Either or both is sufficient to torpedo the whole paper. The paper needs to be, at least, rewritten in terms of standard quantum mechanics (and quantum electrodynamics) with a view towards explaining how the novel quantization arises. This means essentially a complete rewriting of the paper.
Note that this is the case even if the paper is otherwise completely sound. The paper as written does not meet curren standards for a paper in a professional physics Journal. (Good grief. I haven't harped much on QED versus SED, but even I have ragged Setterfield about his failure to use ordinary quantum mechanics in favor of the ancient Bohr theory. If Setterfield won't listen to me, won't he please at least take heed of the referee's remark on the same subject?)
Regarding the other post, our apologies if Barry's work does not meet your criteria. But then, I doubt anything a creationist did would...
"My criteria" are those of any professional physicist. If he wants to publish as a professional physicist, and be respected among them, he must adopt their high standards.
Regarding his being a creationist, that has nothing whatsoever to do with what I have written about his paper. I have made many criticisms of it, but none has had to do with alleged creationist implications of the paper. Its physics is so bad that I haven't even gotten to the supposed creationist aspects yet. I doubt whether any of the Journal referees thought the article had any creationist implications either. In order to reach them one has to get to the equation transforming dynamical time to atomic time. But before getting ther one has to wade through too much "unphysics".
However, we have gotten to the point where he is not only gaining a great deal of respect among physicists both creationist and evolutionist,
Glad to hear it. I look forward to seeing many citations from many authors of this respected physicist's work.
ut where the volume of emails daily wanting to discuss something or ask questions is becoming almost overwhelming. So with all due respect, one person being one person, he just can't do everything at once.
He can start with the replacements for Newton's Laws of Motion. Without them his theory isn't just not right. It's not even wrong. It's not even a physical theory. The problem isn't that he hasn't done everything. It's that he hasn't done ANYTHING expected of a physicist with exciting and novel results.
He started off 24 years ago following the data.
I thought it was only 16 years ago in 1987. I thought we weren't allowed to discuss anything he did back in, say, 1983. Something about discussion of a calculated .99999999+ correlation coefficient for scattered data being verboten...