© Jeffrey J Wolynskihttp://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2013/12/06/eu2014-in-the-news/
Taken from the Thunderbolts.info site:
It was only a few years ago that I had the opportunity to meet Bob Johnson for the first time when he came to Portland on other business. From our discussions, which included a few local Electric Universe enthusiasts as well, I had no doubt that he could emerge as a key contributor to EU theory. And that's exactly what has occurred.
I have said it many times privately and am now happy to say it more loudly. Bob is undeniably one of the most discerning researchers and critical thinkers we have ever gotten to know. His conference presentations from NPA18 in 2011 as well as EU2012 and EU2013 have produced consistent praise from the best researchers in our group. At last year's conference, his critical review of the Electric Sun model was a milestone contribution to EU theory, helping to move the research beyond its interdisciplinary underpinnings into more specialized experiment and analysis. All agree that his work will impact the future of science as the role of electricity in nature becomes more generally recognized.
Bob is always delighted to find points of disagreement in areas of supposedly settled science. "What truly amazes me," he says "is just how many 'settled' questions turn out, on closer inspection, to be nowhere near as settled as the specialists would apparently like us to believe. In fact, I doubt that there is any major discipline which is free from challenges to the 'consensus' model if you look closely enough."
He's not talking about challenges from the fringes, but challenges from within the discipline itself and published in the peer-reviewed literature. The only reason that many disciplines appear settled, Bob notes, is that the disagreements are seldom mentioned in the popular scientific media:
Why am I excited to uncover these challenges? It's because they say to me that there is still something left to be discovered after all, and that perhaps there is room for an outsider such as myself to be able to suggest new ways of looking at the problems.
But how can a non-specialist possibly hope to contribute to science in today's world of massive, well-funded and highly knowledgeable research teams? It's a fair question, but Bob reminds us that these teams are often so specialized that they are probably unaware of relevant findings from other disciplines.
This is where Bob's own interdisciplinary approach is so valuable. It brings new dimensions to a problem that may not be apparent from a specialized perspective. He has demonstrated the point more than once in his conference presentations by presenting outlines of new possibilities "where the existing model seems to be struggling to fully explain the evidence."
In his two talks at EU2014, Bob will talk about plant physiology and geology. In both disciplines, there are consensus models with wide support but with no generally accepted answers to the serious questions raised about them. "I hope that my suggested answers can offer a way out of the dilemmas," he says, "or at least some new factors to consider. That would be really exciting!"
Exciting indeed, and highly valuable contributions both to the EU movement and to scientific progress.