Not everybody seems to realize it, but working on Dark Matter alternatives such as MOND requires a lot of knowledge: you have to understand not only that theory, but also it’s more popular alternative, and the successes and challenges faced by both (or more) approaches.
None of these approaches is without issues, but we all tend to weight different lines of evidence differently. Thing is, if you don’t know much about MOND, it is easily dismissed. But that’s a quite subjective reason.
If you work on MOND, though, you are in a constant debate about its feasibility and all the evidence in favor of Dark Matter. That’s not only with colleagues, you are debating yourself all the time.
So, accusing such scientists (@DudeDarkmatter & @skdh in this case) of cheating for writing this @sciam article about modified gravity, on your popular science blog of all places, is not only unacceptable. In a scientific context it borders on libel.
scientificamerican.com/article/is-dar…
scientificamerican.com/article/is-dar…
In particular since there’s not even a grain of truth to his accusation. Their article explicitly mentions shortcomings of modified gravity and even discusses a hybrid approach that might combine successes of both approaches. 
In my opinion, this deserves a retraction and apology from Ethan!
Oh wow, when I wrote those tweets I had not yet seen that he doubled, tripled, and quadrupled down on his unfounded and completely unprofessional accusations and personal attacks.
My last interactions with Ethan were quite pleasant, so I had hoped that he had stopped this kind of bullying. But it is in line with my own experiences with him a few years ago.
In 2013, in the final stages of my PhD, I was running the science blog “The Dark Matter Crisis” with Pavel Kroupa on the SciLogs Plattform (on their invitation).
Ethan contacted the hosts and tried to get our blog shut down.
Ethan contacted the hosts and tried to get our blog shut down.
He did succeed, they shut down the blog without even contacting us.
The cheerful support from some well known science communicators on hearing the new about the silencing of the blog was particularly hurtful.
The cheerful support from some well known science communicators on hearing the new about the silencing of the blog was particularly hurtful.
So much for his understanding of intellectual freedom and scientific debate, I guess.
It took me quite some effort to piece together what had happened and get them to reinstate the blog.
All while I was finishing my thesis and worrying about getting a postdoc…not encouraging if you can’t even have a science blog because someone accuses you of being unscientific.
All while I was finishing my thesis and worrying about getting a postdoc…not encouraging if you can’t even have a science blog because someone accuses you of being unscientific.
Most things turned out all right. I finished the thesis, got a job, have a career. My interest to blog took a hit, though. I eventually stopped. Also because I rather spend my time on science, but I still sometimes think about whether I would have continued had this not happened.
Anyway, you can read the whole story of how this popular science blogger worked to get our science blog shut down in our old blog post here: darkmattercrisis.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/the…
