How much trust do you have in scientists who believe that they are being attacked by people from the future?

I believe anything Matt says. So, yes.

(I also saw and read Contact after meeting the author: I am a believer.)

I don’t trust them at all. I haven’t responded those other questions, but I think time travel is impossible (due to lack of a mechanism that won’t tear space-time), and to claim attacks from the future is laughable – possibly even worse than expecting the world’s most complex machine to work at capacity first time.

Physics has gone in some strange directions recently, or the strange physicists are the ones stealing all the publicity. The LHC is not dangerous if it is used responsibly, because cosmic rays are currently colliding with our atmosphere in huge quantities at energies far beyond those of the LHC. The only difference is that the LHC allows us to measure the results accurately. Are they letting any physics PhD into the team? Why aren’t they giving preference to intelligent physicists with viable theories?

I trust scientists who stick to scientific method and who are able to distinguish between confirmed theories, unconfirmed hypotheses and speculation. The latter deals with ‘what if’ scenarios which are perfectly okay to be conducted as thought experiments. What if a cat is dead and alive at the same time? Sometimes speculation turns into a hypothesis and eventually even into a theory. Quantum mechanics is a good example and so is plate tectonics. Alfred Wegener, a German geologist and meteorologist speculated in 1915 about Africa and South America being two pieces of a puzzle which fit together. From Wikipedia: He was unable to demonstrate a mechanism for continental drift, which, combined with his mostly circumstantial evidence, meant that his hypothesis was not accepted until the 1950s.

Scientists who believe that they are being attacked by people from the future are engaged in speculation and they are perfectly entitled to do so as already pointed out. I do trust them. Now if they try to sell this as a serious hypothesis or worse as a confirmed theory, I would NOT trust them.

Great question, my dark friend ;-)

The two scientists who are being quoted in that article are:

Dr. Holger Bech Nielsen (who does not work at the LHC)
and
Dr. Masao Ninomiya (who also does not work at the LHC)

Meaning, the folks who say “it’s safe!” aren’t the folks who are saying “the experiment is being sabotaged by the future!! <scary fingers>”

for me it depends in what context they claimed to have been attacked in. the statement: ’‘well you never know, it could be time travelers lol’’ is very different from the statement: ’‘hypothetically, it could be time travelers’’ that is in turn totally different from the statement: ’‘i firmly believe that time travelers is a viable explanation’’.

it all depends what kind of evidence they have to support their claim. as i understand things, this was all started by a private email conversation between them. and it got leaked and sensationalized. so regardless of how serious they are taking it, i believe they have held back from presenting the claim officially to others.

i have no problem with scientists looking in to any idea, no matter how insane that idea may be. so long as they use the words speculation, assumption, hypothesis and supposition as and when they are needed. if they where to start making claims that are based on nothing but faith, that’s when i would start to lose trust.

I trust the LHC scientists about as much as I trust anyone. As noted by @grumpyfish, the scientists who believe in the attack from the future are not actually working on the LHC. Even if they were, their speculation is, as far as I can tell, no more than a thought experiment about the nature of space time, rather than a concrete belief in an attack by people from the future.

The only reservation I have is a standing mistrust of people, and even more so of organizations. We all tend to assume the people around us know what they are doing, and have looked at all the (reasonable) possibilities to insure safety. The truth is that this is rarely the case. In the case of the LHC, I expect that the safety protocols are better than those that exist in many projects that we actually interact with every day (for example, the “big dig” in Boston, or the Minnesota bridge collapse).

Sigh.

Physicists are allowed to have a lttle fun once in a while. Sheesh. Besides, how “reasonable” are quantum mechanics? Does that mean that Bohr and Heisenberg were nut cases and not to be trusted?

@pdworkin At least attributed to Bohr: “We all agree that your theory is crazy. We are divided on whether you theory is crazy enough to be right.”

@grumpyfish Right! The good kind of crazy!

@pdworkin – Well there’s a difference between a crazy confirmed theory and speculation. But yes, physicists are allowed to have a little fun once in a while. But crazy folks listening to their fun should not create a new conspiracy theory out of this. Ha, was the destruction of the Roswell evidence also an act of sabotage from the future? Now it all makes sense. I want my own UFO and our governments should let us have them.

@mattbrowne But the government from the future won’t let us have our UFO’s.

@grumpyfish, @mattbrowne I don’t know what you guys are talking about, I have my UFO.

@gussnarp – Can I borrow it? I need to check how T’Pol is doing on Vulcan. She’s one classy talented lady.