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Comment by philipov | Hacker News Reader

The salient quality of a theory, or a scientific hypothesis if you prefer, is that it can be tested, at least in principle. I am not a physicist, but it seems like, at least in principle, there's a way to falsify the inflation hypothesis, even though we might not be able to practically carry it out.

Personally, I'm a fan of Penrose's idea that what appears as inflation is instead the infinite limit of a previous universe, and that there's no big bang at all: just an endless stream of infinitely expanding universes.

> "The group’s fight against inflation isn’t news."

Oh! What an unfortunate turn of phrase for someone to use to describe their topic. If even the reporter doesn't think this is newsworthy, why are they writing about it?

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>> "The group’s fight against inflation isn’t news."

> Oh! What an unfortunate turn of phrase for someone to use to describe their topic. If even the reporter doesn't think this is newsworthy, why are they writing about it?

I think the author of the article is german (I'm german too) and this sentence is maybe a "false friend". What she most likely meant is that the groups goals are already well known.

The phrase is used in English to convey the same meaning, as well. The GP is probably being intentionally dense for some effect that eludes me.

I assume the author is Sabine Hossenfelder http://backreaction.blogspot.it/p/about.html

> The salient quality of a theory, or a scientific hypothesis if you prefer, is that it can be tested, at least in principle. I am not a physicist, but it seems like, at least in principle, there's a way to falsify the inflation hypothesis, even though we might not be able to practically carry it out.

The existence or not of a way to falsify a proposition does not qualify it as a knowledge, if it matches the criteria for scientific truth than it is knowledge and may be part of a larger set of propositions that encompass a theory.

Agreed, it is only enough to qualify it as a scientific hypothesis. The article, and the critics, are right to point out that it too early to give it the status of scientific truth.

I think that it is overly polemical to say that inflation is not a scientific theory because the technical definition of a theory is hazy for most people, but calling something unscientific is crystal clear, and this is misleading.

I fully agree with you, if news written like this influences lay people, they'll hold theories like General Relativity, Quantum Field Theory or even Evolution to the same standards as the next trendy, and almost impossible to falsify, subject of study...

> If even the reporter doesn't think this is newsworthy

The "reporter" is a working physicist, not a "reporter"

http://backreaction.blogspot.ie/p/about.html

My rant's motivation is the usual lack of consideration for philosophy by qualified scientists, which is not bad per se, just when they create a title that reads:

> Is the inflationary universe a scientific theory? Not anymore.

Which is not wrong, just requires making sense to be wrong.

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