I'd rather put it in a more general way: people shouldn't post things they don't understand. As Maro shows below: anyone with some of understanding of the matter can immediately poke huge holes in it. It's pure speculation, which is why it doesn't belong here. The same holds for a lot of ArXiv papers in certain sections.
It's not censorship, it's just a social seperation of professional concerns. Non-physicists have no chance in hell to understand arxiv papers, in fact most physicists don't have a chance in hell to understand arxiv papers, even the ones from their own field. (I'm saying this as a physicist.)
In this case, the MIT TR writes about a bleeding edge, unpublished paper written by a non big-name physicist that will most likely be discarded and never be talked about in 6 months.
The author is from a "Institute of Statistics" and the paper was written in Word with double-space formatting. That means the author is probably not a physicist, and non-physicists have a very low chance of being able to grasp the problems with current models and propose better ones, not to mention accounting for all the astro observations coming out every day.
Looking at the actual paper as somebody with a cosmology background, what he's saying is:
1. Let's take the classical Einstein equations
2. Let's see what happens if c, the speed of light, is not constant, but a function of time c(t)
3. Hm, but to not break the original equations let's also make G be a function of time G(t) such that c(t)^2/G(t) is fixed
4. Hm, but then in the derivations, where there are derivatives wrt. to time new dc/dt and dG/dt terms appear
5. and so on
There is no new physics in this paper, it's just a routine derivation with a twist. The TR blogger is probably not a physicist and/or has not read it, he just pushed out some generic bullshit about space and time.
There's no point in talking about this paper for non-professionals. First, professionals have to reach concensus whether this makes any sense and is compatible with observations (the former part is easier, the latter takes longer and more people). Once a result passes these tests, then it makes sense to tell people about it.
If the TR wants to push out some sciency newsitem, they could for example talk about recent Higgs data from the Tevatron, which is bleeding-edge fresh but fairly uncontroversial, as it is a measurement and has gone through the Tevatron team:
Reply to scott_s (for some reason I can't reply to the comment): I agree, total seperation is not good. It's not good if all the physicists involved are pure academics, because it allows for sub-optimal incentives to dominate. I believe the good model is fOR physicists with no academic incentives (positions, grants) to also take part in the discussion, eg. somebody working at Morgan Stanley or doing a startup. This model would be similar to programmers donating their time to open-source projects. (The academic counter-argument which easily wins out today is that if you're not working in the field, you don't understand the issues and don't have a say.)
As a fellow physicist, I agree with you on all counts (except I believe the TR blogger is actually a physicist as well, used to write on www.arxivblog.com). The arXiv is far from the best source of actual scientific developments, but it sure is a great source of 'This idea just might change everything we knew about science!!' blog posts. I'm not sure if I can recall any examples of where this kind of theory has been developed into something more legitimate.
Not that there isn't newsworthy stuff posted to the arXiv, and not that it isn't worthwhile, thought-provoking and fun to read these papers and these ideas - you should just have an idea of where it's coming from, and where it's likely headed...
> Non-physicists have no chance in hell to understand arxiv papers
You mean "archive physics papers": mathematicians are usually non-physicists and sometimes understand the arxiv math papers. I used the arxiv for months before I found out it had physics papers too (and that in fact it was started for physics papers).
What on earth are you going on about? Saint-loup suggests arxiv papers should not be talked about on [HN] and you start ranting about censorship?
You are dealing with censorship when an entity uses his authority and power over you to prevent you from saying or hearing certain things. There are usually ideological reasons to prevent freedom of speech and information. We are not dealing with any of that here. At most, we are dealing with a democratically, self-imposed, self-maintained censorship, whose origins are not ideological in nature.
I think perhaps my dictionary is different to yours.
What I'm talking about is this: The web is a wonderful place, originally built to share academic documents, but which has blossomed into so much more. Government documents and many other things are now shared on the web, and discussion and openness is rampant.
Now I hear the suggestion that academic documents should be limited in some way - that they should only be discussed on "academic" websites, whatever that might mean.
This statement to me is analogous to "Government white papers should only be discussed on Government web sites" and reminded me of the recent Australian censorship to prevent "unnecessary premature debate".
I don't like Saint-loup's suggestion at all. If it's a social suggestion that we shouldn't talk about such things, then leave the conversation - don't try to shut it down. If it's a serious suggestion about controlling the conversation, then it is a censorship proposal.
No-one is blacking out words here, but what is the problem with discussing these papers? I asked for a reason, and Maro's very nice response seemed to indicate that it was justified as the material can't be understood by mere mortals. I don't think that's enough of a reason.
I understand that you don't like my response. I don't think I was ranting. I just really like the openness of the web and abhor any attempt to control it. If you don't like the conversation, move along.
The feeling you get when you read about something computer-science or software-engineering related in mass media ("oh my god those idiot journalists can't get anything right") is probably very similar to what a physicist feels when she reads discussion by non-physitics.
Thanks, but I understand their point, I just disagree with it. I agree with you about the feelings, but I think that trying to restrict their speech is the wrong way to go about it. That's my position, unpopular as it may be.
There is a difference between "academic stuff should be discussed on academic sites only" and "government stuff should be discussed on government sites only": unlike government sites, everyone can open an academic site (if we define "academic site" by the choice of topics and moderation policy instead of by being endorsed by a brick-and-mortar university (I would e.g. call LtU an academic site)).
