1. The Need of New Approaches - Kritische Stimmen zur ...

Chapter 9: The Thought Experiment
From November 2008 until January 2009 the GOM project gave something of a small guest performance on
the Internet portal of the physics students’ representation, the
“Studienrichtungsvertretung Physik” of the University of Innsbruck.
Someone had uploaded a certain “kap. 3” [Ch. 3] in the column “stuff” without any further source listings on the
server of the students site, offering this for download - until on 12th January an end was put to the intrigue and the
entire heading “stuff” was deleted. (p. 213).
The Presence of the GOM Project in the Internet Forums
The development of the reception of the GOM project on the Internet sites of the partners and the other
significant supporters of the GOM project having been outlined briefly, this subsequent section should now outline
and document the reception in the individual Internet forums.
Speaking very generally, the following characteristics can be ascertained for discussion of the theories of
relativity in the Internet forums.
(1) There are a surprisingly large number of forums in which, as from the jubilee year of 2005 at the latest,
criticism of the theories of relativity have been discussed. On the basis of researches with the known search engines
we were able to detect, over the years since 2004, altogether an estimated 100 forums. This finding alone, which is
far from being complete, stands in glaring contrast to the boycott and the censorship of every bit of criticism of the
theory by our allegedly “free press” in the offline world. One could hardly wish for a better presentation of the
relationships between the rulers and the ruled.
If one assumes - very cautiously - an average for each forum of 10000 call-ups per year for all relativity-critical
topics, then in 100 Internet forums 1 million readers a year will have clicked into critical Internet sites, and at least
4 million readers in 4 years. In the offline world of our journalistic jailers these readers, confronted with a wall of
censorship, are confined to the nightmare world of mouth-muzzled silence and intellectual abstention. In this
context the journalists are also acting in their own interests, so that their own evil role, extending over decades,
remains uncovered.
(2) In many of these forums, at some time or other, the documentation published by the GOM project and the
subsequent “Open Letters” (commencing with the open letter to the members of the German Bundestag [Parliament]
of 28th October 2005) were brought into the discussion by those participating.
(3) In some forums the GOM project was itself made the explicit subject matter of one or more topics.
(4) The observance or non-observance of the topic in the course of a discussion depends largely on the
“stringency” of the moderation of the forum. If a discussion is continued over a longer period, the risk of deviation
increases, sometimes even to the extent that the topic under which the discussion is headed and the actual
discussion at times no longer have anything to do with each other. Greetings from the free and chaotic Internet!
(5) The number of debaters on a specific topic of the theories of relativity is generally very small. There are
often less than a dozen participants, who tend to know each other and easily fall into personal and private group
chinwag that tends to bore outsiders and those observers who are essentially interested in the topic.
(6) The same debaters on the same complex of topics often participate at the same time, or consecutively, in
several forums, sometimes even as a group.
(7) The small number of debaters on such topics stands in marked contrast to the astonishingly large number of
readers, as can be seen from the number of call-ups for those forums that give the figures associated with the
various topics.
(8) The topics relating to the GOM project usually attract far higher call-up ratings than other topics in physics.
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G. O. Mueller: STR 2012