Jonathan Tennenbaum: In our last discussion, you said that the Big Bang theory, despite its widespread support in the cosmology community, is like Swiss cheese, full of holes. You and other scientists point to a long list of predictions of this theory, that are contradicted by astronomical observations.
In some cases, wrong by orders of magnitude. But instead of questioning the validity of the Big Bang, its supporters again and again invent new, ad hoc hypotheses to explain the discrepancies. This seems to go against one of the basic principles of science, that a theory has to be refutable or falsifiable. It cannot be like a piece of rubber, that you can stretch any way you want.
Eric Lerner: The fact is that people have to earn a living. And cosmology is actually a fairly narrow field. There probably are several thousand researchers in cosmology. But almost all of their funding comes from a handful of governmental sources.
So in the United States, if you want to get funding for cosmology research or if you are a professor and you want your graduate student funded, you’re going to apply to a committee. But the National Science Foundation’s and other committees are dominated by people whose entire careers have been based on developing theories about the Big Bang.
