Letter: Scientific claims are poppycock

OPINION: You bemoan "the suspicion of science that permeates a sometimes ill- informed community". Yet on the facing page you provide perfect grounds for such suspicion. In Hadron may show universal truths, Nobel prize winner Frank Wilczek claims, "We know that the universe today contains . . . . so-called dark matter". Poppycock.

Dark matter, and its even more mysterious counterpart, dark energy, are mere suppositions. They are the latest in a growing list of entities that scientists postulate, in flagrant contravention of Occam's razor, because otherwise their sums won't work. Despite all the creative accounting, the most important value in cosmology - the so-called Cosmological Constant - is almost exactly what it shouldn't be. Cosmological science today is in a parlous state.

Well-informed observers have every reason to be suspicious of scientists who claim to "know" everything there is to know. In areas such as particle physics and genetic engineering, a single mistake could have catastrophic consequences.

IAN SHEEN

Te Horo Beach

- © Fairfax NZ News

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