Eric Lerner has been making the case that there was no BB for a long time now.
I think these are valid criticisms and he's now updated them wrt to JWST
It seems to me like he's a guy who has a theory he's held onto for decades and takes every opportunity to bring it up again. He tries to make it sound like there's new doubt, but the actual people that he misquotes deny they meant what he claims, and if you read the original quotes it's clear that he's cherry-picking. That's not to say that he's wrong, just that his arguments are very unpersuasive to me because they rely on misleading the audience.
https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-science-den...
I don't think that article you linked is fair to Lerner though. Casting him as a pseudoscientific denier is a recognizable trope, but is incorrect by their own criteria:
- Published in reputable sources? Yes, well-published on this topic in journals and leading newspapers[scholar,wiki]
- Associated with a University, with related credentials? Yes, has a BS in physics from Columbia[wiki], some grad work at UMD. More importantly, he's a notable plasma physics theorist/engineer (most of his career and publications).
- Anyone else agree? Yes, he's following in Alfen's plasma cosmology[alfven]; Alfven is a Nobel Prize winning physicist who also criticized the BBT.
- Cited references? Yes, the video I linked is well-cited, e.g. the 16 failed predictions of BBT vs 1 correct. See 23m45s for citations of this claim.
- Follow the logic? Well, Lerner's video is pretty straight forward and extensively reviews the primary lit, but the space.com article is mostly a string of ad hominem, comparing him to "people who deliberately peddle anti-science narratives" and flat-Earthers, and that "the tactics employed in Lerner's article are classic misdirections used by science deniers".
Which.. is bad journalism but to me signals its own bias and likelihood he's saying something important. I'm very much looking forward to the next few years on this!
[scholar]https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=eric...
[wiki]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Lerner
[alfven]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannes_Alfv%C3%A9n, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_cosmology
Thanks!