Sokal’s paper brought up the possibility of a morphogenetic field affecting quantum mechanics, which sounds slightly less rigorous than a Discworld joke—Sir Pratchett can at least get the general aspects of quantum physics correctly. Likewise, Mrs. Jenna Moran’s RPGs have more meaningful statements on set theory than Sokal’s joking conflation of the axiom of equality and feminist/racial equality. I’d expect a lot of non-physicists would consider it unconvincing, especially if you allow them the answer “this paper makes no sense”.
((I’d honestly expect false positives, more than false negatives, when asking average persons to /skeptically/ test papers on quantum mechanics for fraud. Thirty pages of math showing a subatomic particle to be charming has language barrier problems.))
The greater concern here is that the evidence Mr. McCarthy uses to support his assertions is incredibly weak. The vast majority of his list of interspecies hybrids, for example, are either intra-familiae or completely untrustworthy (some are simply appeals to legends or internet hoax, like the cabbit or dog-bear hybrids). The only example of remotely similar variation to a chimpanzee-pig hybrid while being remotely trustworthy is an alleged rabbit-rat cross, but chasing the citation shows that the claimed evidence likely had a different (and at the time of the original experiment, unknown) cause and that the fertilization never occurred. Other cases conflate mating behavior and fertility, by which definition humans should be capable of hybridizing with rubber and glass. The sheer number of untrustworthy citations—and, more importantly, that they’re mixed together with the verifiable and known good ones—is a huge red flag.
The quote’s interesting—and correct! as anyone who’s shown the double-slit experiment can show—but there’s probably better ways to say it and theories to associate it with.
Sokal’s paper brought up the possibility of a morphogenetic field affecting quantum mechanics, which sounds slightly less rigorous than a Discworld joke
There are plenty of New Age people who seriously believe that the world works that way.
Or find it a reasonable / plausible theory…
I’m married to one who evolved into one who reads that pseudo-science, instead of the Stephen Hawking she used to read 20 years ago...
Sokal’s paper brought up the possibility of a morphogenetic field affecting quantum mechanics, which sounds slightly less rigorous than a Discworld joke—Sir Pratchett can at least get the general aspects of quantum physics correctly. Likewise, Mrs. Jenna Moran’s RPGs have more meaningful statements on set theory than Sokal’s joking conflation of the axiom of equality and feminist/racial equality. I’d expect a lot of non-physicists would consider it unconvincing, especially if you allow them the answer “this paper makes no sense”.
((I’d honestly expect false positives, more than false negatives, when asking average persons to /skeptically/ test papers on quantum mechanics for fraud. Thirty pages of math showing a subatomic particle to be charming has language barrier problems.))
The greater concern here is that the evidence Mr. McCarthy uses to support his assertions is incredibly weak. The vast majority of his list of interspecies hybrids, for example, are either intra-familiae or completely untrustworthy (some are simply appeals to legends or internet hoax, like the cabbit or dog-bear hybrids). The only example of remotely similar variation to a chimpanzee-pig hybrid while being remotely trustworthy is an alleged rabbit-rat cross, but chasing the citation shows that the claimed evidence likely had a different (and at the time of the original experiment, unknown) cause and that the fertilization never occurred. Other cases conflate mating behavior and fertility, by which definition humans should be capable of hybridizing with rubber and glass. The sheer number of untrustworthy citations—and, more importantly, that they’re mixed together with the verifiable and known good ones—is a huge red flag.
The quote’s interesting—and correct! as anyone who’s shown the double-slit experiment can show—but there’s probably better ways to say it and theories to associate it with.
The concept doesn’t come from Sokal but from Rupert Sheldrake who used the term in his 1995 book (http://www.co-intelligence.org/P-morphogeneticfields.html).
There are plenty of New Age people who seriously believe that the world works that way.
Or find it a reasonable / plausible theory… I’m married to one who evolved into one who reads that pseudo-science, instead of the Stephen Hawking she used to read 20 years ago...