Carlos Castro Perelman and the tide

 Carlos Castro Perelman, a theoretical physicist, suffered in the past a similar fate as Frank Dodd (Tony) Smith, Jr. .

Carlos received his PhD in physics in 1991 from the University of Texas, Austin. His research goals, as stated in his CV, include: 

Research in the Extended Relativity Theory in Clifford spaces; Gravity, Strings and Membranes; Grand-Unification; Fractals, Quantum Field Theory, Mathematical Physics, Noncommutative Geometry and Number Theory. 

In the past Carlos was formally affiliated with the Center for Theoretical Studies of Physical Systems, Clark Atlanta University, but he had no permanent job. He was also blacklisted from arxiv.org, but this issue I will discuss later on.

Actually he is on the staff of "Quantum Gravity Research" founded by Klee Irwin.

Carlos is a coauthor of  "Against the Tide"

Against the Tide :A Critical Review by Scientists of How Physics and Astronomy Get Done

Authors: Carlos Castro, Martín López-Corredoira, Juan Miguel Campanario, Brian Martin, Wolfgang Kundt, J. Marvin Herndon, Marian Apostol, Halton C. Arp, Tom Van Flandern, Andrei P. Kirilyuk, Dmitri Rabounski, Henry H. Bauer

Abstract: Nobody should have a monopoly of the truth in this universe. The censorship and suppression of challenging ideas against the tide of mainstream research, the blacklisting of scientists, for instance, is neither the best way to do and filter science, nor to promote progress in the human knowledge. The removal of good and novel ideas from the scientific stage is very detrimental to the pursuit of the truth. There are instances in which a mere unqualified belief can occasionally be converted into a generally accepted scientific theory through the screening action of refereed literature and meetings planned by the scientific organizing committees and through the distribution of funds controlled by "club opinions". It leads to unitary paradigms and unitary thinking not necessarily associated to the unique truth. This is the topic of this book: to critically analyze the problems of the official (and sometimes illicit) mechanisms under which current science (physics and astronomy in particular) is being administered and filtered today, along with the onerous consequences these mechanisms have on all of us. Apart from the editors, Juan Miguel Campanario, Brian Martin, Wolfgang Kundt, J. Marvin Herndon, Marian Apostol, Halton C. Arp, Tom Van Flandern, Andrei P. Kirilyuk, Dmitri Rabounski and Henry H. Bauer, all of them professional researchers, reveal a pessimistic view of the miseries of the actual system, while a glimmer of hope remains in the "leitmotiv" claim towards the freedom in doing research and attaining an acceptable level of ethics in science.

To understand how bad it is nowadays you should read L.P. Koch, The death of Science", and also Adam Mastroianni, "The rise and fall of peer review Why the greatest scientific experiment in history failed, and why that's a great thing".

Carlos' publications listed on vixra.org make a huge impression. His interests include such topics as:

• Noncommutative Clifford Phase Spaces, 
• Born Reciprocal Relativity, 
• The Riemann Hypothesis, 
• Black Hole Thermodynamics, 
• Gravitational Entropy, 
• Jordan Algebra Models, 
• Quantum Gravity,
• Fractal Cantorian Spacetime,
• Conformal Gravity,
• Hopf Algebras, 
• Two-Times Physics, 
• Octonionic Nonassociative, 
• Ternary Gauge Field Theories, 
• Nonlinear Quantum Mechanics, 
• Noncommutative Phase Spaces, 
• Complex Domains, 
• Holography,
• ...

Carlos Castro Perelman had also interesting ideas about fractal universes. Apparently fractal universes are not what mainstream science is willing to tolerate. Laurent Nottale, who developed a number of interesting new ideas concerning fractal physics, does have a job – at LUTH Laboratory, Paris-Meudon – but he does not have an easylife. From what I know he is considered a black sheep in the community of “serious scientists”.

Iconoclasts in Science and Peer Review

What is common to all three iconoclasts is that their papers somehow failed to follow the strict rules of important journals. Yet the same journals do publish papers that do not follow the rules – if these papers have an “important supporter”.

I know this type of situation very well. What sometimes happens is that your paper gets rejected, but your original idea is then stolen and developed by someone else with more influence or someone who has influential friends. David Ruelle, a mathematical physicist who has made important contribution in statistical mechanics, who is also an honorary professor at IHES, Bures-sur-Yvette, wrote about his own experiences with the peer-review process in his book “Chance and Chaos”:

Reasonable looking papers are accepted, obviously bad papers are rejected, and good papers that are a bit original and out of the norm tend to be rejected too.

And then he added:

I myself worked in some areas in which I could freely discuss ideas with colleagues, and other areas in which it was unwise, because of the risk that the ideas would be stolen.

Coming next: Bertrand Russell and Independence in Science