by Will Jones, Daily Sceptic:
Dr. John F. Clauser, born 1942, is an American theoretical and experimental physicist known for contributions to the foundations of quantum mechanics. Clauser was awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly with Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger, “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science”.
Dr. Clauser spoke in July at the event Quantum Korea 2023. What follows is a transcript of his remarks that prompted the International Monetary Fund to cancel his appearance and kicked off a predictable pattern of broader cancellation.
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
Below find the speech and transcript.
Oh, I hope there wasn’t a significant miscommunication in the invitation for this particular talk, I’m going to give another one later on – the keynote address. I was asked for the first to make some brief remarks as inspiration to young Korean scientists. I’m not sure, wasn’t sure how to do that, so here’s my best shot at it and it really has very little to do with quantum technology, but here are my inspirational thoughts.
A long time ago, actually my whole life, I have been an experimental physicist. Have had the distinct privilege of literally being able to talk to God even though I’m an atheist. In a physics laboratory, I am able to ask carefully posed mathematically-based questions and correspondingly observe universal truth.
To do so I make careful measurements of natural phenomena. In the physics laboratory, I once settled the debate between Einstein and Schrodinger on one hand, Niels Bohr and John von Neumann on the other. In a laboratory, I asked a simple question: which one of these two groups was right? And which one was wrong?
I didn’t know ahead of time what answer I would get. I just knew I could get an answer. Nonetheless, I found real truth. For the answer. I assert that real truth can only be found by observing natural phenomena. By carefully observing natural phenomena.
Good science is always based on good experiments. Good observations always overrule purely speculative theory. Sloppy experiments, on the other hand, are frequently counterproductive and provide scientific disinformation. That is why good scientists repeat each other’s experiments carefully.
For inspiration to young scientists, I would suggest that today is an opportune moment for careful observations of nature. Why? The current world I observe is literally awash, saturated, with pseudoscience, with bad science, with scientific misinformation and disinformation, and what I will call ”techno-cons”. Techno-cons are the application of scientific disinformation for opportunistic purposes.
Non-science business managers, politicians, politically appointed lab directors and the like are very easily snowed by scientific disinformation. Sometimes they participate in its origination. The purpose is to try to inspire you as young scientists to observe nature directly so that you too can determine real truth. Use the information gained from carefully performed experiments and research to stop the spread of scientific misinformation, disinformation and techno-cons.
Well-educated scientists can help solve the world’s problems by acting as scientific fact-checkers. A fact-checker’s most common problem, unfortunately, is determining what is true and what is not. The world is awash with someone else’s perception of truth as an alternative to real truth.
Perception of truth frequently differs significantly from real truth. Moreover, given sufficient promotion and advertising, perception of truth becomes truth. Its promotion by commercial enterprise is called marketing, commonly used in the furtherance of political, commercial or various opportunistic ends by its promoters. When promotion is done by government or political groups, it’s called spin or propaganda.
To such a promoter, perception of truth is truth. If you can sell it, it must be true. If you can’t sell it, it must be false. Perception of truth is also malleable. If you can sell it, if you want to sell it, and you can’t sell it, that’s easy. You change it. You can change truth. You can claim false observations if necessary.
My favorite in this act is ChatGPT. It’s very good at doing exactly that. It has lots of man-made pseudoscience to copy and manipulate and emulate. It can lie and cheat even better than its human mentors whose writings are abundant in literature. In literature, you will observe there’s far more fiction than there is nonfiction. Pseudoscience is science fiction. Unfortunately, neither computers nor human fact-checkers can, in general, tell fact from fiction. Or science from science fiction or from pseudoscience.
If Starship Enterprise can fly faster than the speed of light, it’s gotta be possible, right? All you need is dilithium crystals, right? Wrong.
Real truth is not malleable. It can only be found by making careful observations. Well-tested laws of physics and observational data are important guides to allow you to distinguish truth from perception of truth.
Now, I am not alone in observing the dangerous proliferation of pseudoscience. Recently, the Nobel Foundation has formed a new panel to address the issue called the International Panel on Information Environment. They plan to model it after the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC.
