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Drawing a line on offensive/obscene posts against CERN

Posted in education, ethics, existential risks, lifeboat, particle physics

In light of continued frustration by many users, and due to a recent request by Prof Peter Howell on the lack of web administration on obscene/offensive posts and the effect this can have on the overall impression of Lifeboat, I have taken measures on cleaning up posts by a contributor who regularly depreciates the standards of what can otherwise be a fine blog of academic opinion. Apologies to Prof Otto Rossler — but referring to CERN as ‘urinating soldiers’ etc is far below the standards Lifeboat aspires to — Please clean up your act.

Tom — Web Admin.

19 Comments so far

  1. Otto — of course you should continue to contribute to Lifeboat, a view endorsed by another Web Admin of Lifeboat above also — but please consider quality and not quantity. Take the recent contribution by Daniel Berleant which even included an executive summary and consider whether your contributions such as referring to CERN as ‘urinating soldiers’ (deleted yesterday), ‘child murderers’ (deleted two weeks) ago or ‘worse than hitler’ a month or so ago hold to the same standard. Your posts often don’t add a lot of value, and ‘flood’ the front page until all that is left is your posts. As a friend I ask please consider the overall impression you make of yourself, your cause, and Lifeboat in general.

  2. Thank you, Tom, thank you, riskalert.
    I had not known earlier articles of mine had been deleted, too.
    So you say I can continue if I change my tone, for which fact I thank you.
    Could you please first retrieve my last three postings which to the best of my recollection were entirely subdued and cooperative with CERN’s best intentions?

  3. Otto — I restored your two most recent postings, which I had deleted without reading over properly with the others due to the sheer number of your posts — many of which I noticed were off-key. You should know the level of what is OK. It is important to find a balance on the Lifeboat blogs so please consider others when posting — and the overall impression…

  4. Dear Tom: Thank you.

    I feel the quality of published theses should be judged according to their content more than according to the issuing institution’s rank — always.

    P.S. Could my harmless post “Someone Says: Please, Show me that my Proof that this Activity Risks Everyone’s Life” of March 26 also be restored (without my last comment of April 1, 2012 12:38 pm which prepared the deleted next posting)?
    Thank you that I was allowed to ask.

  5. Otto — you’ve got to be kidding? I went back to review and found you referring to others as ‘you monster and your fellow criminals’ amongst other traded insults. That besides, it’s also sensationalist. I can’t endorse that.

  6. As a regular hearer of Prof. Dr. Otto Rösslers lectures, I only can say please do not delete the posts of him.

    At Tübingen, Otto is generally accepted as a genius, someone whose expertise in mathematics, physics, information theory is unquestioned. Rössler often supervises doctorate theses, despite he is officially retired. He was recommended for a nobel prize by colleagues at Tübingen. The chancellor of the university as well as the dean of the faculty for chemistry and pharmacy , the dean of faculty of physics and the dean of the mathematics department at Tübingen support all of Prof. Dr. Otto Rösslers activities.

    Prof. Dr. Otto Rössler is, at it seems, the only one serious scientist who is able to deliver correct proofs that our planet is in concrete danger and something can be done to prevent a catastrophe from happening. To delete the warnings of such a brave man would be very stupid

  7. I am also a regular visitor of Otto Rösslers lectures.

    In his lectures from the last semester at Tübingen University, Otto made cristal clear, that [deleted portion of comment by Webmaster — reference to incitement to murder]. This was a very clearly expressed in the lecture of Prof. Dr. Otto Rössler. Perhaps not much scientists on earth have shown us that much straightforwardly what in their opinion should be done to save the planet.

    I do not understand how one can be so stupid and delete the enlightening texts of Prof. Otto Rössler. This man is a genius. He proved that our planet is in danger, and he showed all the students in his lectures what simple things could be done to rescue all lives on earth.

  8. dfdsfs — I can assure you I do not delete posts with any such science in them… Perhaps I should apply minimalist censorship where possible — as in above post. Please advise.

  9. Mr. Kerwick, I think that the editing you have done in terms of what posts came down and which stayed up was completely justifiable and very fair.

    Also the two above criticism’s of your editing were almost certainly written by the same individual based on the wording and structure of the posts and the time’s posted. It is an attempt to misrepresent the response to your editing decision when in fact it left up the posts that contributed to the conversation and removed those that did not.

  10. I applaud Tom Kerwick’s decision to edit out offending passages, as he did above, leaving other parts that legitimately contribute! Thanks, Tom, and to other posters, please self-censor yourselves so these controversies don’t arise and require others’ time to fix. Hysterical language may generate more comments but ultimately degrades the impact and respectability of the message.

  11. You fan boys must be kidding (or it’s Roessler himself)! No one, I repeat, no one, in Tuebingen takes him serious, and certainly no one on earth considers him to be a genius! The deans of the science departments are working hard to not get aligned with any of his actions! Everybody knows he is not a scientist but (as someone else said here) an imposter. He was never considered for a Nobel prize, the only person saying so is himself. He was not able to get any of his papers published in any peer-reviewed journals. Candidates chosen him as supervisor for their doctorate thesis saw their work being rejected by the university!
    Prof. Peter Howell

  12. “Hysterical language may generate more comments but ultimately degrades the impact and respectability of the message.”

    Thank you for saying so, dear riskalert. I totally agree.

    Whether in a situation of emergency, the same serenity of mind is always the best attitude, I sometimes doubt. But in retrospect, what you said is always correct.

    And: Lifeboat has deserved its name. Thank you all that you are so brave in a world which prefers complacency.

  13. Einstein had Autism. He couldn’t speak until he was 5. If he was disheveled as he was but his clothes old a cheap he could have been arrested for indecent exposure for his pants zipper down. Beethoven was constantly plagued with voices, sounds and music in his head that never went away. A brain operation today could have cured him. Beethoven was arrested once but was let go when they found out who he was.

    Those who think there is no chance of Collidor danger haven’t heard of chaos theory. That doesn’t prove the dander isn’t less then winning every lottery at once. However, many people were very afraid when the Colider was started up. Is there any reason to believe today that the Colider is safe more than the day it was started up?

    By the way, there was what was supposed to be a discussion of Einstein in Philadelphia, that turned out to be recruitment day for the Philadelphia Ethical society. No one was worried about micro black holes, the head of a college science club never heard of Otto Rossler, and didn’t know what epicycles were when I was trying to compare epicycles with Hawkins radiator and dark matter.

  14. Dear Mr. Kane:
    I learned Einstein’s speech problem was over at age 3.
    Thank you for mentioning the Philadelphia Ethical Society. There should be more such societies.
    Suppose you were in my place: Too stupid to defuse a connection between a scientific finding of yours (it was my gothic-R theorem) and an object called “LHC” of which you (I) had never heard before. I am trying to prove that that advice was a joke for 4 1/2 years by now.
    Do you have an idea how to, or know someone who could, speak up against the simplest version of my findings (Telemach)?
    Philapdelphia is a big city, I have been there. There is bound to be a scientist there today who knows another scientist who can help by finding the single physicist strong and kind enough to say where the error lies.
    There is this theorem that there is a 7-step connection between any two persons on the planet. Now only four more steps need to be filled-in (if I calculated correctly).
    Sincerely yours, Otto E. Rossler

  15. Despite the agreement of Mr Rossler’s above to curtail his inflamatory posts, I have taken measures to remove four more such postings in the last few days — two which accused CERN as child murderers, one attempting to draw white-supremist racist lines, and another which accused prominent scientists of academic fraud and perpetuated disinformation regarding the legal outcome of a plea for a safety conference. Otto, please be more reasoned in your contributions to Lifeboat. Thank you for your other contribution.

    Addendum: I received clarification from Dr William Kilgore (BNL) that comments on Lifeboat attributed to him are the work of an impersonator, as suspected. As such any further posts from same IP address attributed to Dr William Kilgore shall be removed.

  16. Dear all
    It is often stressful and emotional when we discuss such terrible risks and sometimes it leads to bad words.
    My opinio is that Tom Kerwick was fair to delete the bad comments and on the other hand I would not cite them once more here (to delete should be enough). I think fear has produced these words.
    Both sides (CERN and the critics) should be friendly with each other, to be taken serious.
    “Science is communication and friendship” (Otto E. Rössler).
    And I take Otto Rössler serious, because I know that he has a great knowledge and a good core.
    Best wishes to all.

  17. Interestingly the man with the amazing great knowledge falls always silent when asked for hard evidence for his statements. Actually he is not able to discuss something from the GM paper. When it comes to scientific dicussion, the great knowledge man avoids to give even rudimentary answers.

    But when it comes to accusations against scientists of being child murderers, nazis and so on there must be an even greater knowledge. Concerning these issues which revealed a really good core he had to be stopped by the blog administration…It would be also interesting what Rössler was fearing during the 90s and 00s before he found this LHC-stage when he wrote quite similar letters to local newspapers in Tübingen…he certainly was fearing something because, as Mr Tottoli pointed out correctly, this accusations and defamations are completely explainable by “fear”.

  18. What he feared there? Well, having read his letters at the local newspapers that time, that’s an easy question:

    He feard loss of money. Rössler was simply dissapointed why nobody backed him up during his trial with the government. He also was upset that he had to teach a lecture on chemistry for physicians.

    In germany, the exam in medicine is set up by government. So the government would have had an eye on what he teaches.

    It is now obvious that Otto lacks any scientific knowledge. He got his papers on chaos theory written only since someone had given him a folder with that stuff in it before. His other papers that had scientific content, where written with co authors. Left allone, Rössler has almost no scientific contributions. How on earth should someone like him now teach a chemistry lecture where government has an eye on what was lectured?

    He had no possibility to say that he was unqualified as a professor since to leave his chair would mean the loss of a lot of money. So he had to set up a campaign against the university. That campain had simply one goal:

    That the university leaves him allone and does not let him teach lectures where the curriculum is controlled by some higher instance, e.g. the government- It worked. from then on, rössler could teach what he wanted at Tübingen, no matter how wrong it was.

    There was just one problem: The journals did not accept his crude theses on relativity and physics. So, he set up a campaign again. This time against scientists who refuse to discuss his wrong papers.

    What I find kind of amusing is this comment from him:
    http://lifeboat.com/blog/2012/03/let-me-also-say-a-good-word-about-cerns-homegrown-old-safety-report/comment-page-1

    Otto Rössler wrote
    I appeal to friends in Japan not to tolerate being cut-off from potentially life-saving information from this portal.
    end quote.

    I remember, that after rössler sprayed graffiti on the main lecture hall, a letter to the editor appeared in the local newspaper where rössler wrote that he might leave the university to japan to teach where his knowledge would be coveted (he actually wrote “meine begehrten kenntnisse”).

    However, he has not revealed, which university that was where he wanted to go. I therefore thought that rössler would, as usually, bluff. Since no reasonable university in japan would have wanted him at that time.
    Now, he also refuses to say, which japanese friends he appeals to.

    It is also interesting, that the university of Tübingen had forbidden Rössler to hold guest lectures at other universities. This was since the university feared that their reputation could be damaged when rössler, as a full professor of Tübingen, “teaches” his nonsense in somewhere else’s lecture hall.

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