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Originally Posted by BillJ
Theories you have developed? I thought you were a civil engineer. Are you an astrophysicist too? Dedicated amateurs developed theories in the eighteenth century, but things have gotten a bit more complex since then...
This is why scientists go to university.
I don't want to minimize the excellent work done by the many amateur scientists of the world. They collect data from streams, search for young supernovae in other galaxies, count birds at the feeder - - they collect data and send it to real scientists for analysis. I just have no patience with the so-called self-taught scientists who have it reversed: the scientists collecting the data and the untrained amateur doing the analysis.
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Sorry to jump in here, and personally, I don't agree with Ward's theories, but this isn't a valid argument against them.
Science is not an actual ivory tower, and everyone has a right to theorize and study. "Real" scientist is a misnomer, especially when there are so many holes in science that "real" scientists ignore, so many "real" scientists that are bought and paid for, so many "real" scientists that conduct horrifically bad science. There is so much vaccuum there that of course amateurs are going to rush into the void—there's a demand for knowledge that's not being met.