Scientific spat and libel case in UK has Canadian connection

Neil Turok, Director of the Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics located in Waterloo, Canada, has been described as being insufficiently qualified to assess a fellow scientist’s work. Alok Jha, science correspondent for the UK’s Guardian newspaper, writes about the situation which includes a libel suit against Nature magazine in his Nov. 18, 2011 article,

A scientist who is suing one of the world’s most prominent scientific journals for libel compared himself to Albert Einstein in the high court on Friday [Nov. 18, 2011] as part of his evidence against the journal. Professor Mohamed El Naschie, also claimed that an eminent physicist brought in by the journal as an expert witness to analyse the value of his work was not sufficiently qualified to do so.

El Naschie is suing Nature as a result of a news article published in 2008, after the scientist’s retirement as editor-in-chief of the journal Chaos, Solitons and Fractals. The article alleged that El Naschie had self-published several research papers, some of which did not seem to have been peer reviewed to an expected standard and also said that El Naschie claimed affiliations and honorary professorships with international institutions that could not be confirmed by Nature. El Naschie claims the allegations in the article were false and had damaged his reputation.

On Friday, Nature called Professor Neil Turok, a cosmologist and director of the Perimeter Institute in Canada, as an expert witness to assess some of the work published by El Naschie.

In his evidence, Turok said he found it difficult to understand the logic in some of El Naschie’s papers. The clear presentation of scientific ideas was an important step in getting an idea accepted, he said. “There are two questions – one is whether the work is clearly presented and readers would be able to understand it. It would be difficult for a trained theoretical physicist to understand [some of El Naschie’s papers]. …  The second question is about the correctness of the theory and that will be decided by whether it agrees with experiments. Most theories in theoretical physics are speculative – we form a logical set of rules and deductions and we try, ultimately, to test the deductions in experiments.

There’s more at stake here than whether or not Turok is qualified or El Naschie’s work is up to the standards in his field, this is also about libel and libel laws in England. There have been some intended consequences from the current set of laws. Here’s an excerpt from the Wikipedia essay,

Libel tourism is a term first coined by Geoffrey Robertson to describe forum shopping for libel suits. It particularly refers to the practice of pursuing a case in England and Wales, in preference to other jurisdictions, such as the United States, which provide more extensive defences for those accused of making derogatory statements. According to the English publishing house Sweet & Maxwell, the number of libel cases brought by people alleged to be involved with terrorism almost tripled in England between 2006 and 2007.

Jha goes on to finish his first article on El Naschie’s libel case with this,

Sile Lane, a spokesperson for the Libel Reform campaign said: “Scientists expect publications like Nature to investigate and write about controversies within the scientific community. The threat of libel action is preventing scientific journals from discussing what is good and bad science. This case is another example of why we need libel law that has a clear strong public interest defence and a high threshold for bringing a case. The government has promised to reform the libel laws and this can’t come soon enough.”

I last wrote about the libel situation in the UK in my Nov. 12, 2010 posting, International call to action on libel laws in the UK.

17 thoughts on “Scientific spat and libel case in UK has Canadian connection

  1. Hassan my

    Please be accurate in your report. You have given a one-sided point of view. You should have reported El Naschie’s point view. If somebody like Turok doesn’t understand papers written by El Naschie’s clearly that doesn’t mean El Naschie’s ideas are wrong. It may be a limitation on the side of Turok and this is most probably the case as he is a cosmologist and an expert on quantum mechanics or fractal space-time. As for Einstein, remember that his relativity theory was not mainstream at the time and it was rejected by mainstream physicists on the same basis that Turok are claiming here of not understanding. Also, the fact that libel law in England may need reform doesn’t mean that El Naschie’s case against Nature shouldn’t be given a fair trial. Hence, Justice Sharp should be careful on this.

    It is always the case that revolutionary theories in any scientific discipline originate first outside the mainstream and it takes long time to be recognized and become mainstream afterwards. In this respect, one cites Einstein’s Relativity, Darwins’s Theory of Evolution, etc. and El Naschie’s fractal space- time theory is a new example. The future is going to prove this as all indications seem to imply at present. There is already such experimental and theoretical confirmations and the most important of which is Hardy’s entanglement in quantum physics which not many people have noticed to be the golden mean to the power of five as exactly predicted by El Naschie’s theory.

    I think humanity should have advanced to a great extent in its civilization to not admit another mistake like what happened to Galileo in the courts of the middle ages. Give the man fair trial and do not interfere with what Justice Sharp is going to judge.

  2. Anonymous

    Hassan, please be accurate in your comment. You have given an off-topic point of view. The lawsuit has nothing to do with El Naschie’s supposed theory. It is about El Naschie suing Nature for libel because they made the factually correct statments that a) he published a lot of his own papers in his own journal, b) there was evidence of poor or no peer review and c) El Naschie’s affiliations were false and/or could not be verified. Please get your facts straight and do not involve Einstein, Galileo, etc in this matter.

  3. Anon

    According to the ontological basis of E-infinity and through its topological perspective. The idea of weird topology is the backbone of E-infinity leading to weird results that seems very natural in E-infinity context. The transition from classical traditions of physics (here I mean classical and quantum) to E-infinity paradise is a paradigm shift and it could last many centuries for the ideas to be familiar and understood. In fact we reached the extreme boundary of knowledge without being matured enough, except the great man (Elnaschie) with his brave soul and his goodself holding the torch to illuminate our route for knowledge through darkness of ignorance.

    “We are just a tiny fractal of very large fat fractal, to be precise we are just remnant of fractal dust.”

    Anonymous

    “No one can take us out of the E-infinite paradise created for us by El naschie, I see it but I can’t believe it”

    Ping-Bong He

    ” El nascheism is a new brand of physical and mathematical theories that always flourishes into gold, for example golden quantum field theory, golden differential

    geometry, golden topology, golden market etc…. The essence of the idea is to make gold more cheap that could solve the global economic crisis beside scientific ones .”

    Ed. Nash (From the game of life)

    “All knowledge are fractals or counting on our golden fingers”

    Unknown primary school student

  4. Anon

    ##### An example of Junk paper for Elnaschie to be read by Neil Turok ####################

    In one of his numerous fascinating articles which he dedicated to Gerardus tHooft and titled “On quarks confinement and asymptotic freedom”

    (Chaos,Solitons and Fractals 37 (2008)1289–1291)

    The great man El naschie gave a new miraculous explanation for confinement. But unfortunately the great man doesn’t know enough physics, nor enough math, to get into sucha deep topic. The man has clearly a big confusion between the number of flavors and number of generations. According to him

    page 1290 “…This term appear as 33 –2 f where f is the number of fermion-anti fermion loops considered….” where the great man meant the one loop beta function. In the same page one finds the expression of the one loop beta function b= 33- 2 N_f/12 Pi ” …. For a number of generation equal to that of the standard model,namely N_f =3 one .nds b =0.716197….”. But to the knowledge of El Naschie N_f should be interpreted as the number of flavors not the number of generations.

    Maybe the great man can check this in any standard textbook on the subject

    or the one he used which is the first reference listed at the end of his article.

    Another extraordinary achievement of El Naschie is his freshman explanation for the confinement phenomenon. In page 1291, the great man gave us his magic explanation for confinement “… We cannot see quarks for the same reason that we cannot see real water at +300 degree centigrade or – 30 degree

    centigrade. In both cases we can see vapor or ice and we know it was water but we cannot see water……”

    Let me ask the great man a technical question, if your approach is a non-perturbative and can cope only with the one loop expression of beta function. What about the other contributions to beta function namely two loop, three loop and four loop do you interpret them as Trans-infinite corrections. To your knowledge the four loop correction to beta function appeared in 1997, which means you can not find it in the old edition of your first reference

    Yndurain FJ.The theory of quark and gluon interaction.Berlin:Springer;1992.

    By now there is the fourth edition 2006, and you can give a look at.

    The astonishing thing is that El Naschie uses just very elementary math operations like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Maybe in this particular paper he was a little more advanced and used the logarithm. That is just a pedagogical trick to make **** people understand. On the top of all these, El Naschie explains low energy phenomena(relatively) using Planck scale language (let us not say physics!).

    Now, let us ask the following interesting question: if the great man El

    naschie dedicates this article to Gerardus tHooft (Nobel prize laureate), then what has Gerardus tHoof dedicated to him? Although the question seems difficult, tHooft has made it easier for us. In his webpage tHooft gave an account of How to Become Bad theoretical

    Physicists.(http://www.phys.uu.nl/~thooft/theoristbad.html).The content of this page was of course dedicated to every successful case. tHooft did not mention any name but El Naschie can easily recognize himself as a champion of this webpage.

    At last, we argue the great man to devote part of his time to learn proper math and physics (although it is toooo late now!).

  5. Anon

    In fact Neil Trouk should read about Elnaschie’s local and global coherence. How these coherence is intimately connected to the idea of negative dimension and VAK conjecture. This coherence could help in explaining the non-Guassinty deviation which has been observed negative binomial state. The same results recently popped up again in Helmoholtz institute experiment.

    In fact the empty set could be assigned negative dimension, by empty set you can generate all integer numbers through a recursive power set construction. The idea of random cantor set of golden and silver dimension is deeply rooted in our experience, even brain reveal strange behavior when these words (Gold and Silver) are mentioned.

  6. Anon

    The future generations would remember us as the golden era of physics and mathematics. In fact, golden in all aspects of knowledge. It was more than enough to have the great man (El naschie) bridging the second and third Melina.

    Also would remembered us that we lost the golden chance with experimenting with ropes with knots and instead spending billions of Euros on LHC experiment on CERN.

    How many opportunities have been lost without using those ropes with knots.

  7. Anon

    I think that El naschie has extended the notion of dimension to be even complex, not just a real. This has a plenty of applications in psychology and brain studies. This can be related to El naschie -Feynman hypothesis, that if you sum over all fluctuating spaces of complex dimension living inside an infinite nested Hilbert cubes you get results free of schizophrenia. And for free you will get gravity theory. This technique is very efficient in studying market, and becomes more transparent when you super-symmetrize the theory, i.e to deal with super market. I hope any one could tell me details about these glorious work of El naschie.

  8. Anon

    Once a time the great man deviated from his simple strategy (counting on his golden fingers) and decided to use computers. Upon counting on his fingers the great man can attack many of the most difficult problems in theoretical and mathematical physics. What might be his aim if he used computer, of course would be one of the most difficult intractable problem namely Riemann hypothesis which last for 150 years. His ambitious target to prove Riemann conjecture or at least to uncover numerical violation.

    The story unfolded that way

    http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0008056v1

    On plausible violations of the Riemann conjecture due to fractal p-branes in Cantorian-Fractal Spacetime

    Carlos Castro, M. S. El Naschie, J. Mahecha

    It is explicitly shown using a Mathematica package that non-trivial complex zeroes of the Riemann zeta function may exist which {\bf do not} lie in the critical line: $ Re ~ s = 1/2$. The generation of the location of these plausible zeroes, that may violate the Riemann conjecture, is based on the study of fractal strings/branes moving in a Cantorian-Fractal spacetime. Since this result was very strange we did a search for any possible bugs in the package. We found that the package yields {\bf spurious} zeroes {\bf without any warning} when the variables are evaluated up to 16 decimal places. However when calculations are performed up to 40 decimal places there is a {\bf huge} discrepancy. Therefore it is warranted that true analytical calculations be performed to verify without any doubts whether these zeroes are spurious or not.

    The great man was unlucky to be confronted by golden bugs that destroyed his result. This golden bug annoys the fractal strings/branes moving in a Cantorian-Fractal spacetime.

    The great man did not give up and struggled through second version of the paper

    http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0008056v2

    then third version

    http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0008056v3 in which The incorrect affiliation of M. S. El Naschie was removed (The great man forged Cambridge affiliation.).

    Finally the paper was withdrawn due garbage content and affiliation arrogation.

    http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0008056v4

    Comments: v3: The incorrect affiliation of M. S. El Naschie was removed. v4: This paper has been withdrawn

    I suggest for the great man to prove Riemann conjecture using golden number in that way

    x^2 – x – 1 = 0 define the golden ratio

    if you complete square in the previous equation to get

    (x- 1/2)^2 – 5/4 = 0,

    here the surprise this fraction 1/2 represent the real part of the non trivial zeros of Riemann zeta function, and this can be directly related to VAC conjecture for which the most stable orbit must have winding number equal to the golden ratio, Eureka, Eureka …..Eureka

  9. Anon

    El naschie is a real spark in the human written history, he is startling . Al his predictions based on E-infinity theory are well verified. Among many and just to name:

    1-The well experimentally verified results about fiber wool pioneered by Huan. Who showed that the Hausdorff dimension of fiber wool is to be about 4.2325, very close to El Naschie’s E-infinity dimension, 4.2360. According to Huan this reveals an optimal structure for wool fibers. This is an easy proved fact and it doesn’t need high energy.

    Hierarchy of wool fibers and its interpretation using E-infinity theory

    Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Volume 41, Issue 4, 30 August 2009, Pages 1839-1841

    Ji-Huan He, Zhong-Fu Ren, Jie Fan, Lan Xu

    2- A remarkable achievement of El naschie is his unique extra ordinary talent in revealing a deep connection between double slit experiment and particle physics. That is really a breakthrough in the field has never been acheived.

    The two-slit experiment as the foundation of E-infinity of high energy physics

    Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Volume 25, Issue 3, August 2005, Pages 509-514

    M.S. El Naschie

    3- El naschie is gifted in doing simple calculations and getting non-perturbative results. While ordinary people can get results by using supper computer in a one year, El naschie get the same results straight forward by counting on his fingers without using computer at all. These are due his GOLDEN FINGERS.

    On quarks confinement and asymptotic freedom

    Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Volume 37, Issue 5, September 2008, Pages 1289-1291

    M.S. El Naschie

    Quarks confinement

    Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Volume 37, Issue 1, July 2008, Pages 6-8

    M.S. El Naschie

    4- With a simple rope with knots El naschie could derive the spectrum of possible Elementary particles, and realy this is the discovery of the century.

    Any one can just bring a rope with knots and could easily testify El naschie’s conjecture.

    Fuzzy multi-instanton knots in the fabric of space–time and Dirac’s vacuum fluctuation

    Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Volume 38, Issue 5, December 2008, Pages 1260-1268

    El naschie may be the greatest thinker in the history of mankind and his theory is the most important discovery since the invention of wheel. El naschie maybe the most remarkable event after cosmic big bang. His theory can describe every thing after big bang and I’m sure El naschie will extend his theory to accommodate what has been before big bang. Please don’t wonder it is an E-infinity theory that could deal with such a long history of time.

  10. Hassan my

    This is Jason of elnaschiewatch.com again.
    You are twisting facts. There is no difference. The lawsuit is strongly connected with El Naschie’s theory and the claims by Nature were only superficially stated in terms of peer review and affiliations. There was no other way for Nature to attack El Naschie’s theory except to attack his integrity and personality. Hence, you know that these comments are not off-topic as you are trying to portray.

    And as far as the peer review process is concerned, we know that the standard is to send each single article to at least three independent specialist referees. So how come the High Court in London accept that all El Naschie’s work be evaluated by only three so called scientific witnesses?

    Why is all this fuss about El Naschie’s work if it is worthless? Just leave the man to rest in peace if you do not want to try to understand what he is telling you.

    This case has certainly got the flavor of Galilleo’s punishment.
    Sooner or later people will discover what is going on and what Jason is trying to tell us. Jason is just a poor guy who established his website in defense of science and scientific facts and nothing more!!!

  11. mustfa

    This Hassan is just the fraud called Elnaschie.
    I couldn’t understand what Neil Trouk was doing, the work of El naschie is not even wrong. There is nothing to be understood.
    The fraudulence of Elnaschie is quite obvious even for non specialist.

  12. Hassan my

    Clarification: My last comment on November 27 was in response to the comment by Anonymous on November 24 and not to confuse anybody as this gay called Jason and his gang are saying in their comments here. Sooner or later people will find out who you are Jason, and be assured I am not El Naschie as you claim. I am even personally a critic of many of El Naschiei’s ideas but I have strong belief that his general idea is almost correct and there are many confirmations of this. One confirmation is the envy and full of payed for unscientific illogical hatred you are putting on your filthy “pornographic” website.

  13. admin

    Hello Hassan, It is with some hesitation that I have accepted this last comment of yours. I had to think long and hard about censorship, right to free speech, and civil discourse. It’s my hope that this pause has allowed for tempers to cool. I will keep this matter under advisement. Maryse de la Giroday

  14. Jason

    Dear Maryse,

    That is very thoughtful of you, but please allow Hassan and anyone else to say whatever they want about me. Neither I nor anyone else has a right not to be offended. The remedy for offensive speech is speech in response. So let me answer:

    El Naschie Watch is not a pornographic blog. See this post for an explanation of Hassan’s allusion.

    Hassan says “Sooner or later people will find out who you are Jason” which is odd because I don’t blog anonymously or pseudonymously. My full name, contact information, place of residence, biographical details, etc., are easily found by anyone who Googles or clicks around my blog a bit.

    I’m not gay, not that there’s anything wrong with that.

    Best wishes for a happy 2012,

    Jason

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