Hey everyone, so as of late I’ve been debunking
a variety of pseudoscience in the realm of astrophysics. This comes in the form of cranks
and con men who gain traction with a select audience of laypeople who exhibit a bias
towards anti-establishment narratives. Given what I’ve debunked so far, whether it’s the
Velikovskian nonsense of the Thunderbolts Project, the cold fusion investment scam that is
the SAFIRE Project, or the doomsday cult of Suspicious Observers, the flavors may vary,
but the central theme is always the same. All of the “mainstream” physicists in the world
are wrong, blind, and dogmatic, while this brave, spectacularly unqualified non-physicist is right.
This type of narrative exists in other areas of science as well, but it is oddly
prevalent in astrophysics and cosmology, attracting those who simply like the idea that all
of physics is wrong, and will therefore implicitly trust anyone who tells them so, provided that
they use enough technical jargon so as to appear as though they know what they’re talking about.
Today I’d like to add one more person to this list of unqualified hacks, due to the frequency with
which his channel is cited in the comments section of my debunks. That is Pierre-Marie Robitaille,
whose channel is named Sky Scholar. Who is this guy? What does he say? And why is all of it so
painfully wrong? Let’s take a closer look now. First, a bit of background. Again, everyone who
falls for these narratives seems to believe that authorities on astrophysics should somehow include
engineers, computer salesmen, or even lawyers. And true to form, Pierre also is not
a astrophysicist. He is a radiologist. To give him the only credit he will receive in
this video, he was actually a good radiologist, and was involved in major advancements
in magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, conducting research at Ohio State University
until the year 2000. But then he suddenly went off the deep end and started publicly promoting
indefensible views on cosmology and astrophysics, in which he has zero training. For just a taste
of how ridiculous these views are, which will be dissected at great length in a moment, he thinks
that the cosmic microwave background radiation is not a remnant of the recombination era which
is part of the big bang cosmological model, but rather is just radiation reflecting off
Earth’s oceans, and he thinks that the sun is made of liquid metallic hydrogen. Some of you
may instantly see how dumb that all sounds, but if not, rest assured, we will dig
into those claims and others in a moment. Now with Pierre’s adventures in quackery
reflecting poorly on Ohio State, he was asked to step down from his position,
and no legitimate scientific publication has ever accepted any of his ramblings on this subject
because they do not constitute legitimate science. But with the resolve of any delusional narcissist,
Pierre wanted his views heard, and so in 2002 he spent something around 130,000 dollars to take
out a full page spread in the New York Times, blissfully unaware that he could have published
for free on arXiv.org, as many astrophysicists do. In the ad he outlined some of the classic rants
that he has become known for, predictably claiming that the world of legitimate peer-reviewed physics
just couldn’t possibly understand his ideas. You know, with their collective thousands of PhDs
and millions of hours of research in the field paling in comparison to Pierre’s none whatsoever
of either. Since then, he’s published exclusively in “Progress in Physics”, a pseudojournal that
is on a list of potential predatory journals, and acts as a haven for a variety of physics
cranks. He then started a YouTube channel in 2017. His YouTube videos will be the best
way to demonstrate that he is clueless, so let’s get into dissecting those now.
The first of his favorite claims we will be looking at is his insistence that the big
bang cosmological model is wrong. His attempt to discredit the model focuses primarily on
the cosmic microwave background radiation. Right away, with this single statement, we
can conclude that Pierre has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about. He is acting as
though the CMB is thought of as the afterglow of the initial singularity itself, and he even
specifies the time frame of 10^-36 seconds after the big bang. Anyone who knows anything
whatsoever about the big bang cosmological model knows that this radiation is a remnant of the
recombination event that occurred nearly 400,000 years after the initial singularity. This was the
moment that the universe was finally cool enough that protons and electrons could be coupled to
form neutral atoms, and when electrons relaxed to the ground state for the first time,
simultaneously everywhere in the universe, they emitted electromagnetic radiation,
making the universe newly transparent, and which has since cooled and stretched
out with the expansion of the universe to arrive at the 2.7 Kelvin it’s at today. This is
trivial knowledge. I learned this in Astronomy 101 as a freshman undergrad, and I’ve summarized this
basic information in a tutorial on cosmology in my astronomy series. Pierre is trying to discuss
something without even understanding the first thing about what it is. This single monumental
blunder is enough to dismiss him point blank, which is indeed what all astrophysicists do, when
Pierre cold emails them by the hundreds to promote his nonsense. But just for fun, let’s listen to
some more of his ignorance towards this model. Cosmology is a branch of astronomy, which is
a science. Saying that astronomy isn’t science is something that flat earthers do, while
pretending they know how science is done. There are thousands of cosmologists
who do science every day, Pierre just doesn’t understand any of it. This is the most unscientific statement anyone
could ever make. Pierre is not just making the claim that what is said to be known is not
actually known, he is saying that it can never be known. That it is unknowable. In saying this,
he is renouncing his former status as a scientist, and accepting the title of a preacher.
There is no physical phenomenon that is fundamentally outside of the domain of science,
whether or not we will one day understand it. But Pierre doesn’t stop at playing the
dumb card. He has a lot more to say, since he needs to deal with the mountain
of firm evidence associated with the CMB. We can start with its discovery, the Nobel prize
winning work of Penzias and Wilson in the 1960s. As one would expect, he offers nothing more than
word salad and baseless claims about physicists not observing the laws of thermodynamics. This,
again, is reminiscent of clueless flat earthers, who complain about earth’s atmosphere
being adjacent to the vacuum of space somehow violating the laws of thermodynamics, because they don’t know that gravity exists,
nor do they know what those laws say. And here we get to Pierre’s single dumbest idea.
He thinks every measurement of the CMB that has ever been recorded is actually just measurements
of microwaves reflecting off the ocean. Earth’s oceans. Turbulent, flowing water. This
idea is like an onion of stupidity that gets dumber with every layer you peel away. First
of all, water would not give a blackbody curve if microwaves were reflected upon it because of
absorption bands in water at that range, as well as with the atmosphere, so there is precisely
zero chance of this even remotely resembling the data that he is referencing. But it gets much
worse. He says this not just about the results of Penzias and Wilson, who took measurements down
here on the ground and relatively near a coast, but also for the data gathered by satellites
millions of miles away from the Earth, pointed away from the Earth, which give very impressive,
smooth blackbody distributions, and the exact same value for the CMB, with much greater precision.
You may be stunned and confused, so allow me to restate for emphasis. Pierre believes that the
source of the CMB, which just happens to have a near-perfect Planckian distribution of frequencies
with a temperature of 2.72548 Kelvin plus or minus 0.00057 K, is the Earth’s oceans. That’s right,
a bunch of water molecules apparently conspire to impossibly produce an immaculate blackbody
spectrum at the precise temperature of 2.7 K along with the nearly scale-invariant perturbations
that agree magnificently with the predictions of inflationary cosmology down to a thousandth
of a percent. Vegas has never seen odds so low. Yep. You’re hearing him correctly.
Pierre is actually bold enough to claim that all the astrophysicists on Earth
believe that data associated with deep space is actually data associated with the ocean, as
though him graciously informing them of this fact should be enough to prompt
them to say “Duhhh… whoopsie! We not know how telescope work! Uh oh!” He
is essentially calling all astrophysicists complete morons to their face. As
insulting as this is, coming from someone with zero experience in the field or
even rudimentary comprehension of its principles, it’s actually not even the most insulting
thing he says, so stay tuned for that later. Again, by pretending that the CMB is supposed
to be the remnant of a primordial explosion, Pierre demonstrates that he does not know what
the CMB is, or honestly what the big bang is in general, as it was not an explosion. This is the
intellectual equivalent of a creationist saying that evolution is false because there are still
monkeys. Once again, the CMB is the most perfect natural blackbody curve that has ever been
observed, many orders of magnitude more flawless than that of any physical substance like
graphite. There is no doubt whatsoever amongst anyone who has a clue about these phenomena
that this radiation arose from a near-perfect thermal equilibrium, and it is at the precise
temperature that is predicted by the big bang cosmological model. Pierre therefore had to invent
something out of thin air to explain away the CMB, but what he settled on is so mind-numbingly
idiotic that it is astounding that a single human person takes him seriously, educated or not.
In fact, we can go far beyond just demonstrating that his claim is totally unfounded. It’s quite
trivial to prove that his claim of the CMB as a local effect instead of a cosmological one
is objectively false. Although a bit esoteric, this can be done in three ways by anyone with
a moderate knowledge of astrophysics. First, there is something called the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich
effect, an example of a phenomenon called inverse Compton scattering. In short, the photons from
the CMB are given a boost in energy when they encounter relativistic electrons. This happens
when interacting with the hot ionized gas in dense regions, such as around massive galaxy clusters.
These electrons impart some energy to the photons, such that they achieve higher frequencies and
are no longer visible in the microwave range. The effect subtly distorts the CMB in a way that
precisely correlates with the locations of galaxy clusters. We have even used this information to
predict the locations of previously unobserved galaxy clusters, which can then be confirmed with
follow-up observations using other telescopes. You can’t get more empirical than that. So if
the CMB was a local effect, there is simply no way that it would precisely correlate with
the locations of all these galaxy clusters. This is radiation that originated in the early
universe, not on Earth, nor is it random noise. Second, there is something called
the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect. This has to do with photons that enter a
gravitational well, picking up energy as they dip down and losing it as they climb back out.
This is the basis for gravitational redshift, a prediction of general relativity. The phenomenon
was demonstrated in the laboratory in 1960, and has since been observed in astrophysical
settings, such as for a star at the closest point in its orbit around the supermassive black
hole at the center of our galaxy. CMB photons pass through these wells on the way to our telescopes.
We might expect no net change in their energy, with the energy gained going in equaling the
precise energy lost coming out. But due to dark energy, the universe expands faster than these
gravitational wells around massive objects can grow. So it’s as though the well becomes slightly
stretched out and therefore shallower as the photon is traveling through it, so these photons
do not lose all the energy they initially gained, and will appear slightly hotter in the direction
of the areas with the highest potentials, namely areas with high concentrations of galaxies.
This is yet another phenomenon responsible for the slight fluctuations in the CMB that correlate very
well with the locations of large-scale structure like galaxy clusters and superclusters, and thus
can’t be explained by terrestrial phenomena. Radiation that is local does not pass through
faraway galaxy clusters on its way from the Earth to an instrument in orbit, unless Pierre wants
to claim that these galaxies orbit the Earth, which would be more than a little noticeable.
This is also a very good tracer of the dark energy component of the universe, and would
not occur if the universe was not expanding. And third, there is gravitational lensing. If the
CMB were a local effect there would be nothing to lens it between the satellites and the Earth. But
lensing of the CMB is indeed observed. This is due to small scale anisotropies, or tiny imperfections
in the distribution of mass at the time the CMB was created. These anisotropies, tiny as they are,
are responsible for the large-scale structure we see in the universe today. Without these slight
density anomalies, galaxies and galaxy clusters would not have formed, as these anomalies allowed
discrete regions of matter to slowly come together to generate these structures. These anisotropies
in the CMB are distorted via gravitational lensing by this large-scale structure that has formed
since the CMB was produced, and this is manifested in the data by slight perturbations
in the temperature and polarization observed. Observations by satellites like Planck can then
be cross-correlated with observations from other instruments, looking at smaller areas of
sky using different wavelengths of light. There have been numerous such studies, and
they fit the Planck data extremely well. These three phenomena, the
Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect, the integrated Sachs-Wolfe effect, and
gravitational lensing, are certainly not trivial, but astrophysics is not trivial. It’s complicated.
And for anyone who wants to go beyond the basic, conceptual level in which I just described them
to you, the literature is there for you to find. None of Pierre’s followers have ever done this,
because they are not interested in physics, but rather anti-establishment narratives
that make them feel cool and special. So that’s all there is to it. Pierre’s views
regarding the CMB are spectacularly incompatible with the data, as are other crank ideas floating
around regarding the CMB being starlight, and other such nonsense. Regarding big bang
cosmology as a whole, even with the CMB alone, the picture is clear, so adding in the other
threads of evidence, like the recession velocities of galaxies, and the relative abundance of light
elements predicted by big bang nucleosynthesis, which I’ve covered in my astronomy tutorials,
it’s a done deal. The evidence supporting the big bang cosmological model is overwhelming,
and anyone who says otherwise objectively has no idea what they are talking about.
Moving on, denying well-substantiated cosmology isn’t the only trick up Pierre’s sleeve. He
also denies the entire field of solar physics. He thinks everything we know about stars like
our sun is wrong, a position that puts him in the good graces of the Thunderbolts Project and
all the rest of the Electric Universe cranks, such that he was invited to talk at one
of their little cult meetings in 2014. The funniest thing about the EU conferences is not
so much that everyone is wrong, it’s that they are all wrong in different ways that specifically
contradict each other. It seems that as long as you oppose well-established physics, you’re
part of the team! So the only real theme is anti-establishment narratives, which once again,
is the psychological basis for this and honestly almost all pseudoscience. So what does Pierre
say is so wrong about our knowledge of the sun? Saying gaseous plasma is like saying solid liquid. Gas and plasma are different
phases. The sun is plasma. Again, no, the sun is not gas, it’s plasma.
Gases are made of atoms and molecules that are intact. Plasmas are not. We do not view
the sun as gas all the way down to the core, because it’s plasma. It’s too hot in
there for atoms to exist. Gas and plasma are not synonyms. He doesn’t seem to
even know what the phases of matter are. He is comparing the emission spectrum of molecular
hydrogen gas to the sun’s blackbody spectrum, and complaining that if the sun is made of
hydrogen, these should look the same. He does not understand that the sun is not molecular hydrogen,
it’s a plasma of primarily hydrogen and helium nuclei. It’s not discrete hydrogen atoms with
an electron that moves between energy levels, absorbing and emitting photons to produce the
emission lines we are familiar with from observing molecular hydrogen gas in a canister here on
Earth. He doesn’t even seem to understand the Bohr model of the hydrogen atom, something which
is learned by every high school chemistry student. Kelvin degrees? They’re just
called Kelvin, Pierre. Again, high school chemistry students know this. Nope. Stars the mass of our sun fuse helium nuclei
together to produce carbon and oxygen through the triple alpha process, and heavier stars fuse
all the way up to iron during their lifetime, then producing the heavier elements when
they go supernova. We know this conclusively from spectral analysis. More Astronomy 101
information that is totally lost on Pierre. It is astounding the degree to which he
doesn’t know even the most basic facts about solar physics, which leads him to
so embarrassingly misrepresent the field. He is implying there is no pressure without a
surface. This means he doesn’t know what pressure is. Atmospheric pressure exists and has some
value no matter where you are in the atmosphere. You don’t have to scoop some of it up and put it
in a container in order for it to exert pressure. The same goes for liquids. There are no physical
barriers separating different ocean depths, but the pressure becomes greater as you go down.
And the same goes for plasma. The more massive the star, the greater the gravitational compression
pushing inwards. It’s not that hard to understand. Again, it’s not gas, it’s plasma. Stellar
material doesn’t expand to fill all of space because gravity exists. And stars don’t
collapse because of all the energy being released from the fusion reactions happening
in the core. Gravity pulls the matter in, fusion reactions push the matter out. It’s
called hydrostatic equilibrium. Ever heard of it? There you go, buddy! All good now? This is getting embarrassing, even for Pierre. He
is saying that atmospheric pressure only exists at the surface of the earth when gas particles strike
the ground, and that by extension, there can be no pressure inside a star, because there is no solid
surface inside a star. We now have to downgrade Pierre’s comprehension of basic scientific
terminology from failing high school to failing middle school. In Pierre’s world, our lungs
couldn’t function even five feet above the ground. Fortunately, in reality, the atmosphere exerts
a gradient of pressure from the ground all the way up to space. We can climb mountains and go
hang gliding without worrying about suffocating. The same applies inside the sun. When we talk
about pressure as being some force applied over an area, it’s just any hypothetical area. It
doesn’t have to be a literal solid surface. We can construct a shell of any radius and do
the math. Sorry, Pierre. Back to 7th grade. It’s not getting any better here. Pierre
thinks that a tiny sample of gas in a container and a gas cloud of many solar masses will behave
the same way. Sorry, they don’t. The gravitational attraction between some gas particles in a tiny
container is not only negligible in general, but also beyond negligible compared to the
gravitational pull of the Earth that the container is near. A cloud of many solar masses in deep
space is not the same. The gravity between the particles is the only force acting upon them, and
it’s a lot of gravity because it’s a lot of mass. This idiotic analogy he puts forward is the
equivalent of flat earthers asking to see water stick to a spinning ball. Well a tennis ball
doesn’t generate the gravitational field that the Earth does, and some gas in a box doesn’t generate
the gravitational field that a gas cloud of many solar masses does. Some people have criticized me
for comparing cranks like Pierre to flat earthers, but the more I do these debunks,
the more I see how similar they are. Again, Pierre is incapable of understanding
the difference between molecular hydrogen gas, with its emission spectrum, and the plasma
that makes up the sun. Stars are very hot. Too hot for atoms to exist. So the electronic
transitions between energy levels which produces the emission spectrum of hydrogen gas has nothing
to do with the blackbody spectrum produced by the sun. Stars have no true surface, so radiation
that hits it is scattered and absorbed. The light we see from the sun is therefore emanating
directly from the sun, and the distribution of this light is determined by the temperature of the
photosphere. It’s not a perfect blackbody because of the variance in the chemical composition of
the photosphere. It’s just an approximation. In fact there is no such thing as a perfect
blackbody. It’s an idealization. So really, every time Pierre talks about blackbodies, he just
reveals that he doesn’t know what that word means. Really? That’s funny, because I used
reducing agents like sodium borohydride all the time when I worked in a chemistry
lab. They deliver hydride ions to reduce carbonyls on a substrate. Reagents
like this are cheap and common. But Pierre isn’t pretending to be an organic
chemist, so we can let this one slide. This is a really common thing for con men
to say. They pretend that lots of money, usually taxpayer money, is being used
to promote fanciful claims. This is something sleazy creationists do to object
evolution being taught in public schools. Pseudophysicists will use the same tactic
regarding things like dark matter. It’s just people doing science that they don’t
understand, and bringing up money is just a way to connect emotionally with a suggestible
viewer so they can push their idiotic agenda. Now we get to the meat of Pierre’s absurd notion
of what the sun is. He thinks that because graphite is a good approximation of a blackbody,
and the sun is too, that the sun must be like graphite. But it has to be hydrogen, so he says
it’s liquid metallic hydrogen. This is very dumb. It’s like saying that apples are red, and blood
is red, so blood must be made of apples. Honestly, it’s that dumb. Two things that share a similar
characteristic aren’t automatically the same thing. Once again, stars are too hot for any
kind of molecular structure to exist within them. There is a chance that there is liquid metallic
hydrogen in the cores of the gas giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn, but planets are not
stars. I don’t think I need to explain how planets are not as hot as stars. Pierre wants the viewer
to reject the entire field of solar physics, with its mountain of firm evidence, and replace
it with the sun being a magic lattice of hydrogen atoms based purely on conjecture that ignores
basic physics. This is what crackpots do. The reason we think liquid metallic hydrogen may
exist in the cores of giant planets is due to the conditions we assume must be present, based on
the extrapolation of basic physics principles regarding temperature and pressure. We do the
calculations, observe from the phase diagram of hydrogen that liquid metallic hydrogen may well
be stable under those conditions, so this is a reasonable prediction. Pierre does none of that.
The same types of calculations tell us that it’s too hot in a star for liquid metallic hydrogen
to exist. He proposes instead that some sort of lattice fusion is responsible for the power output
of the sun, suggesting that it should then be able to produce all of the elements on the periodic
table, but apart from offering no intelligible mechanism for this process, it’s also objectively
false. It does not match spectroscopic data. Fusion in the outer regions of the sun would fry
us all to hell with gamma radiation. Furthermore, we would have to see fusion happening inside
Jupiter and Saturn too, where are all the gamma rays and neutrinos coming from that direction?
Where are all the high-energy neutrinos from the fusion of these heavy elements? The numbers and
energies of neutrinos we detect on Earth match the accepted model. It never ends. If someone proposes
a model, there are predictions that naturally arise from its application, and if none of them
are even remotely correct, there is no merit to the model. All observations and all data confirm
what we currently know about the sun, and anyone who says otherwise just has no clue what those
observations are. But we covered solar physics at great length in the debunk of the SAFIRE project,
so head over there if you need more information. Now we could do this all day, as Pierre
says a lot of really idiotic things, but let’s close on one more topic that
will lead up to what bothers me the most. This is just more preacher talk. There is always
something you can do to convince scientists they are wrong. Just explain the phenomenon in question
better than the explanation that exists. We see stars orbiting rapidly around a dark spot. Why?
We do calculations regarding stellar remnants above a certain mass and they produce black
holes. Why? Take a stab at it, Pierre. Try and personally dismantle the mountain of evidence for
black holes. Or just continue baselessly whining about scientific facts that discredit your stupid
ideas. To people who actually understand physics, black holes are not conjecture. They
are objects that definitely exist. Gibberish. Smaller nuclei fuse in a star’s
core and release energy in the process. When the material runs out,
the outward force stops, and the star collapses. It’s
not that hard to understand. Does it though? More false flag
alarmism. Scientists get grants to study the things they study,
such as black holes, which exist. Another common claim amongst every
perpetrator of this brand of pseudoscience. Identify the frontier of the field and just
call it mysticism. It’s a hook to ensnare the suggestible viewer. This is what would have been
said about bacteria in the 18th century, and atoms and molecules in the 19th. There will always be
things that we are currently trying to figure out, and as Pierre is not part of that process,
he shouldn’t be opening his mouth about it. This is what we call damage control. When you
publicly state for years that black holes don’t exist, and then someone gets a picture of one, you
then have to launch an extreme counteroffensive, which ends with denying the legitimacy
of brilliant scientific research. The data is right in his face, so he
has no choice but to accuse hardworking researchers of fraudulence. Let’s
see how he spins this, shall we? He’s saying that because a lot of scientists were
involved, and because the peer review involved other scientists that are part of the network
of all scientists, that there is some kind of conspiracy going on. In reality, Pierre is just
upset that he is not recognized as a scientist. He actually has the balls to whine about how
the reviewers of the black hole image papers didn’t reference his pseudopublications. Pierre, real scientists don’t care about what
you say, because you’re not a scientist. When everything you say is objectively wrong,
try not to also be a narcissist about it. Yeah, scientists all over the world
collaborating to do science. Incredible, huh? Or is it a conspiracy just
because you’re not involved? You’re like a preteen festering at lunchtime
wondering why none of the other kids want to sit with you. It’s pathetic. Do you have
anything to say about the actual data? I honestly don’t even know what he’s trying to say
here. It’s not the case that only a tiny fraction of the data gathered to generate this image
was needed. This many hard drives were required because it was an astounding technical feat, so
he’s just lying. It’s an image of a black hole in another galaxy that’s really far away. Pierre
would have no way of knowing this, since he’s not a scientist, but that’s really hard to do. And the
phrase “perfect knowledge” is meaningless in and of itself, while also having no application here.
This entire passage is essentially him just saying “yeah, whatever”. He is just saying words
to say words, for the gullible people who need to hear him say words to retain their
delusion, without caring what those words are. Yeah, we know that you used to do medical imaging.
This isn’t medical imaging. This is astrophysics. Just like your electric universe buddies who think
that everything in space is electrical engineering because they are electrical engineers,
stop pretending that your training in not anything remotely resembling
astrophysics somehow matters in astrophysics. Yes, Pierre. The black hole image is an
“artifact”, or just some random noise that happens to look exactly like what we knew an
image of a black hole would definitely look like, with mass estimates based on the image matching
the estimates based on orbits of nearby stars before we imaged it. The desperation is
palpable. The image of the black hole is an image of an accretion disk of matter around
a black hole. Real scientists don’t play pretend. This video is getting quite long so I won’t
lecture on the validity of the image, when a colleague of mine, Derek Muller, did a great job
of explaining what this image would look like before even having seen it, based on relativistic
physics, so I’ll just link to that video below. This is now the second video in a series of
three that he did addressing this singular image, because it was such a devastating
death blow to his ridiculous claims. And in it, he just continues with the same talking
points, regarding a billionth of the data set, which is literally meaningless. They got
data, constructed the image, and that’s what it is. He has nothing legitimate to say.
But since he has to say something, he focuses on just vomiting as much technical information
as possible about the instruments and data sets, rushing through as much esoteric terminology as
possible, concluding with the statement that the data is invalid, without having to substantiate
it whatsoever. If people watching want to believe that the image is invalid, they just listen to
him pretend to know what he’s talking about, conclude that he knows what he’s talking
about, and then take his conclusion on faith, usually while convincing themselves that they
understood everything he said, and commenting as much on the video, remarking at how wonderful
and elegant the emperor’s invisible clothes are. And we arrive at the third video. This one is
literally called “The Black Hole Image – Data Fabrication Masterclass!” The audacity is
unparalleled. He is outright accusing the researchers of committing fraud. This goes
beyond just presenting idiotic, unscientific, untenable ideas. This is truly inexcusable.
And the video itself is identical to the previous. More presenting technical data that he knows
laypeople have no chance of comprehending and talking quickly over it so that he can
rush to his baseless claim of fraudulence. If Pierre was a real scientist, he would submit
his objections in a paper to the journal in which the results were initially published,
giving the researchers the chance to reply to his accusations. He doesn’t bother, because it
would just be a public embarrassment for him, when his true intention is just to pose for his
gullible audience. They nod their heads and cheer, and Pierre lives to lie another day.
We could go on like this for several more hours, highlighting the blatant errors he makes regarding
thermodynamics and other basic principles of physics, but I think this has been sufficient.
If you are someone that has watched Pierre’s channel and become convinced that he’s some kind
of revolutionary, you must consider the question, why? Let’s acknowledge that laypeople should
not be expected to understand astrophysics, and therefore should not be expected to
be able to discern between science and pseudoscience on this matter. Then why does
one radiologist’s opinion mean more to you than the entire astrophysics community? You may
not be consciously aware of the answer, but I am. It’s the narrative. You like the story. It’s
David and Goliath. You like the idea that Goliath, those jerk scientists that think they’re
so smart with all their fancy science, is wrong. And David, the rebellious rogue
outsider, is right. Maybe it’s because you hated science in school, and this is your way
of getting back at it. Maybe it’s because you’re helplessly conspiratorial and you automatically
distrust anything you deem to be an authority, even when it’s not actually an authority,
but just a neutral body of knowledge. Maybe pretending that you’re in on a new discovery
that will change the face of science makes you feel smart and special, like you invested in Apple
stock in the 80s. Or maybe you’re a delusional narcissist just like Pierre who likes to pretend
you understand physics better than physicists, so you support anyone who validates that delusion.
But whatever it is, that’s why you fell for it. That’s why you talk like a fanatic. You don’t
understand science or even care about science. You bought a story, and you want that story to be
true really badly, like a child that is convinced they have magic powers. But adults accept reality.
Science isn’t shaped by how attractive a narrative is. It’s shaped by scientists who have studied
science for a very long time so that they can now do science. If you didn’t do that yourself, you
can either learn science, or trust scientists. Those are your two options. But these empty
arguments from authority centered on unqualified non-authorities are the epitome of immaturity.
It is not the case that every astrophysicist in the world is a complete moron that doesn’t know
which way to point their instrument, while Pierre stands alone as a genius. Astrophysicists are
competent researchers, some of whom are geniuses, and most are merely hardworking individuals with
specialized training, while Pierre is just some guy on the internet that pretends to know what
he’s talking about. There are a lot of them. Some pretend to be doctors. Others, nutritionists,
or psychics, or healers, or in this case, astrophysicists. Some do a better impression than
others, and Pierre’s is honestly not that great. So that’s it. If you’re someone who
has referenced Pierre in the past, hopefully you can now see him for what he is, a
dime a dozen Einstein in his own mind crank to the core. And if you’re interested in learning
any of this stuff for real, I have plenty of tutorials in basic physics and astronomy
that can help you do so. Until next time.
