Comment by prof-dr-ir | Hacker News Reader

Comment by prof-dr-ir | Hacker News Reader

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I just want to convey the following point: for the vast, vast majority of physicists the status of MOND is akin to what doctors think of the anti-vaccine theories. The evidence in the opposite direction is simply overwhelming.

You refer to a non-scientific article and to a youtube video, but any vaccine sceptic can probably easily find exactly the same kind of material to support their view. That would almost certainly include a video by a "professional doctor".

You might call me abrasive, but I am really just trying to be as clear as possible: this is the consensus in the field.

And before you continue this discussion it might be worth pondering the following questions. How do you think doctors should convince vaccine skeptics that vaccines work? And how big a percentage of their weekend do you think they should spend engaging on the details with anti-vaxxers? (And, in this forum, how many downvotes from obvious non-experts should they be willing to accept?)

In other words, what could I do to convince you in a reasonable amount of time?

> . How do you think doctors should convince vaccine skeptics that vaccines work

I think this is the root of the problem, because most 'vaccine skeptics' don't actually claim that vaccines don't work. I say this as someone who is not skeptical of vaccines at all. But when I read doctors defending vaccines it comes across as so out of touch with what the 'skeptics' are concerned about.

> In other words, what could I do to convince you in a reasonable amount of time?

For me at least, you don't need to convince me. It's clear that there are a lot of issues with all current formulations of gravitation. It's a pick your poison deal. You say MOND is wrong due to overwhelming evidence. I say the dark matter theories are wrong due to overwhelming lack of evidence that the stuff that is purported to exist even exists. Both wrong... It's hardly a bad thing to be labeled wrong when no one is right.

In general, if you're not right, then I don't see the point in dissing on those you consider wrong

> The evidence in the opposite direction is simply overwhelming.

No, many of LCDM's successes were not predictions but post-hoc adjustments, where MOND had many successful predictions, even though we had no expectation for it to work:

From galactic bars to the Hubble tension: weighing up the astrophysical evidence for Milgromian gravity, https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.06936

Yours is an opinion shared by particle physicists because they focus on particles, but astronomers are more neutral on MOND. It almost always just works (it's an "effective theory"), even though we don't know why.

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